Key Words

ABC
Audit Bureau of Circulation—gathers circulation figures of
magazines and newspapers, primarily for advertisers but also used
by students and researchers.


Aesthetic
Visual appearance, related to taste.
Ambience


Background atmosphere.


Anchorage
The ‘pinning down’ of the meaning of an image by text.


Audience
Collective group of people reading any media text. Digital
technology has led to increasing uncertainty over how we define
an audience, with general agreement that the notion of a large
group of people, brought together by time, responding to a single
text, is outdated and that audiences now are ‘fragmented’.


Avatar
An on-screen representation of the player in a videogame.


BARB
Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board—responsible for gathering
TV viewing figures.



Censorship
The practice of ‘cutting’ or preventing access to material.


Classification
Restricting access to material on the grounds of age.


Compression
Transferring data into less space and sending it from one place to
another, through encoding data using fewer units in digital coding.


Connotations
The meanings brought to a sign or symbol by the person/people
interpreting it.


Continuity
In editing, the process of disguising the construction of the scene
by making it appear to ‘flow’ as in real life. The 180 degree rule and
the eyeline match are crucial to this.


Conventions
The expected ingredients in a particular type of media text.


Convergence
Hardware and software coming together across media, and
companies coming together across similar boundaries, to make
the distinction between different types of media and different
media industries increasingly dubious.


Copyright
The owned rights of creative or intellectual property.


Cross-cutting
Editing between two scenes that are happening at the same
time—manipulating space for the audience.