7 Popular Culture and Media Texts Free Online FlashCards

What does popular culture include?

Popular culture includes widely encountered entertainment and everyday expression, such as television, music, games, fashion, memes, and sports.

What is a genre?

A genre is a culturally recognized category of media texts.

What is fandom?

Fandom is engaged audience participation, including close interpretation, community discussion, collecting, creative work, edits, and campaigns.

What does circulation mean in media?

Circulation is the movement of media texts among people, platforms, and communities, including the ways texts may be reframed along the way.

Why can a popular media text become culturally significant?

Popularity alone does not explain cultural significance; people use media texts to express identities, negotiate values, and connect with others.

What happens in Hall’s encoding/decoding model?

In Hall’s encoding/decoding model, producers encode messages using familiar cultural ideas and conventions, while audiences interpret them from their own social positions and experiences.

What is a preferred reading?

A preferred reading accepts the message’s intended meaning.

What is a negotiated reading?

A negotiated reading partly accepts a text’s preferred meaning while questioning some aspects.

What is an oppositional reading?

An oppositional reading interprets a text against its preferred meaning.

How do genres organize expectations?

Genres organize expectations through recurring conventions, including themes, characters, settings, styles, and story patterns.

How do conventions and variations shape genres?

Conventions make a text recognizable, while variations and combinations—such as comedy mixed with science fiction—keep genres changing.

How do industries and audiences use genre categories?

Genres also operate through industry practices and audience discussion: distributors use categories to promote media, and audiences use them to describe, compare, and choose texts.