Five Biggest Media Institutions

After a number of mergers and acquisitions five powerful media conglomerates lead the world's content production and distribution. They operate on an international basis with subsidiaries all around the globe and engage in every imaginable kind of media industry.

1.     AOL Time Warner (US)	26,838.000.000*
2.     Disney (US)	22,976.000.000
3.     Bertelsmann (GER)	16,389.000.000
4.     News Corporation (AUS)	12,841.000.000
5.     Viacom (US)	12,100.000.000

Summer Research Project Power Point

Mortal kombat summer project

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London Riot Debates

The Guardian

Certainly, the first online gathering of people mourning – and soon vowing to avenge – the death of Tottenham resident Mark Duggan took place on Facebook. Some of those behind the page, which now boasts more than 7,500 fans, launched into action shortly before 10.30pm on Saturday evening – more than five hours after the first public show of protest, outside the police station on Tottenham High Road. At 10.45pm, when rioters set a double decker bus alight, the page posted: "Please upload any pictures or video's you may have from tonight in Tottenham. Share it with people to send the message out as to why this has blown into a riot."

However, otherwise, if there was any sign that a peaceful protest would escalate, it wasn't to be found on Facebook. Twitter was slightly more indicative: tweets about an attempt to target Sunday's Hackney Carnival were spotted by police and the event was abruptly cancelled. Scotland Yard warned on Monday afternoon that those "inciting violence" on the 140-character social network would not go unpunished. Deputy assistant commissioner Stephen Kavanagh confirmed that officers were looking at the website as part of investigations into widespread looting and rioting. However, the most powerful and up-to-the-minute rallying appears to have taken place on a more covert social network: BlackBerry Messenger (BBM).

Using BlackBerry handsets – the smartphone of choice for the majority (37%) of British teens, according to last week's Ofcom study – BBM allows users to send one-to-many messages to their network of contacts, who are connected by "BBM PINs". For many teens armed with a BlackBerry, BBM has replaced text messaging because it is free, instant and more part of a much larger community than regular SMS.

Three Quotes

1.     “BlackBerry Messenger played a key role as police look on Facebook and Twitter for signs of unrest spreading will have missed out – they should have watched BBM” - The Guardian

2.     “BBC news reports that the most up-to-the-minute rallying in the London riots took place not on Twitter or Facebook "but on a more covert social network: BlackBerry Messenger". – BBC

3.     “Users of social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), could see their access to services blocked if they are “plotting violence, disorder and criminality”, David Cameron told MPs”. – The Telegraph

Summer Research Project

Media Representations 



 In this text men and women are being represented. The men are being represented in a very violent powerful stereotypical manner to possibly reinforce the believe that men are the stronger beings. The trailer included no female footage, however the text represents females in a very subjective manor, this image is taken of the character Meelina, as we can she has been constructed in a way to pleasure the male consumers of this text, she has revealing clothing, posed sexually. These representations were finalized and decided by Warner Brothers, they are the institution that created this text ‘mortal kombat’. The characters are represented this way because ideally this is how according to the game industry characters should look. They should look aesthetically appealing to the consumers so they are persuaded to buy the game, this representation is highly inaccurate women are not constructed to perfection they come in all shapes and sizes, and men are not bound to violence. The opportunities of self-representation can be sensationalised in this text as half of the characters are not humans they contain special powers which makes them very different from the humans, so possibly the construction of the characters is to further reinforce their individuality as beings.

       



Media Language and forms
Within this text the denotative and connotative meanings are clearly evident. Analysing this text from a denotative point of view we can clearly see it is violent and sexist as this female character is being objectified and demoralized. The character has an unhealthy clench for death and many close up shots are used after the fatality, to compliment the characters body however subjecting her more as she is being used as a tool for male pleasure. Alternatively, the character could invoke substitute thoughts into the audiences mind such as females must bee seen as dangerous and powerful, which reinforces the statement ‘more then just a pretty face’. The significance of the texts connotations send a very powerful message to the audience, subjecting female characters in such away will implant false stereotypes in to male viewers minds, because they play games with female characters constructed like this, they will think a women can only be perfect unless she has a perfect figure. The character Meelina is portrayed in a very sexual manner, at times her behavior could even be seen as arousing as she tries to seduce the screen which is the person playing the game, juxtaposing the male non-verbal construction as the powerful stereotype has been reinforced within the male characters but has not been so heavily sensationalized as the female characters. 

The mise en scene of all the levels on the text have been colored and designed in a way which bring more attention to the characters, the level beneath is dull and colours such as black and grey have been used to contrast with the suggestive clothing of the other characters. The sound has no dramatic effect on the text, as it only enhances the scene when a character has the opportunity to perform a fatality (finishing attack). The dominant iconography, which has been reoccurring in this text for the last 10 years, would be the violence, characters are able to chop other characters in half and tear of body parts. This is important to the genre of the game, which is violence because the audience expects to see these things when they play these games so the text has to live to the expectation of the genre. A key visual technique used would be the continuous shot of the character from when she finished her fatality. The camera remains attached to her; a track shot is used to insinuate her body further subjecting the character for male voyeurism.


Genre

Mortal Kombat, commonly abbreviated MK, is a science fantasy series of fighting games created by Ed Boon and John Tobias. The first four renditions and their updates were developed by Midway Games and initially released on arcade machines. The text has been constructed in a very simple way characters will fight one another until they reach the highest position on the pedestal and are given a chance to fight Shao Kang king of the mortal kombat. The audiences are guided through the text, as there is know alternative story game play, they are given a core story to complete which has been constructed by producers Ed Boon and John Tobias. All characters are portrayed as fighters, they all have personal weapons to use in kombat and each character has their own personal story, which the consumer will be able to access while playing story mode. The heroes are constructed as Homo sapiens (humans) whereas the villains are constructed in a super natural form. Features such as sound, mise en scene and editing fulfill a role in enhancing the existing violence within the text; the values within the text are that super beings have a higher ranking over humans, as they are more powerful, and ideologies such as boundary breaking are implemented into this text as humans are able to battle and destroy the super beings.  

Media Institutions

The institutional source of the text is from Warner Brothers games department. For many years Warner Brothers have been creating high graphic, exciting, and carefully configured games, because Warner brothers focus more on deconstructing realities and re-creating them in fantasying ways, this text has had to follow in that course which is why the graphics have been carefully configured to make the characters aesthetically pleasing to the consumers in addition throughout the story mode a greater sense of the narrative has been giving as 20^th century Warner Brother games want to be more insightful to their consumers. The source is a commercial institutional because of this the text will be given more recognition because Warner Brothers have the money to fund promotional and sales campaigns for the text. This text is distributed through game franchises such as ‘Game’ and ‘Blockbusters’ there the games are sold for which is how customers by them, Time Warner owns Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers is the 3rd oldest movie studio in America, which has had continuous operation. The company is located in Burbank, California.

Media Values and Ideologies

The major values in this text are that humans can be powerful if they train and are willing to sacrifice their lives. A key value promoted is that power is everything and without it you are worthless, assumptions within the text are that humans are weak, so weak that super beings are able to invade the earth, the super beings have moderate success once invading and are only stopped when text goes against its key values and that is when the humans begin to fight and conquer the super beings. Underpinning ideologies are evident through the construction of the male and female characters, That all races posses a perfect body which has been crafted to perfection in addition that violence is the absolute way to solve problems, and life is something that can be created and taken away. Within the text new fighters are created and existing fighters are killed in gory deaths. 

Media Audiences

The text is addressed at players of the age of 18+, which shows the target audience of this text are older teens who do not need supervision or guidance as the text contains excessive violence. Assumptions we can make about the audience who consume this text are that they are probably misogynistic as women are attacked in the text and are subjected as no more then tools for the pleasure of the male audience, in addition murder displayed in a supernatural form is acceptable as it is not real which has desensitized the existing audience.  An evident assumption about the text is that audiences who are intrigued about murder and violence will buy this text; this is the 9^th game of the series so we can assume that the text has a very large audience, because game after game has been created which shows each game has been successful enough to have a sequel. As mentioned before this text would appeal to older teenagers interested by fantasy and marital arts, as I am a fan of this text, I am slightly intrigued by the values the text promotes. Something about playing as human fighters and defending the earth against super beings is very interesting the reason being why is because the text has been continuously constructed in an insightful knowledgeable way, as audiences can engage in the story taking in a full understanding of the narrative.