Section B: The Cross-Media Study
There was much positive evidence once again this series that centres and their candidates have truly embraced the Cross-Media Study.
Helped by the change in question format, there was far less regurgitated description (of box office, directors, studio names etc.) at the beginning of responses. The three platforms were prevalent in the vast majority of responses (most now being structured around the platforms; aiding clarity and question focus). There was also very little evidence of no cross-media study having been prepared and MEST 2 coursework (or even the unseen Section A text) being used instead. Overall there still seems to be a pleasing range of cross-media studies being developed with enthusiasm and real engagement by candidates ranging from Music, News, TV Fiction, Film Fiction, Documentary and Hybrid Forms and the increasingly popular area of Lifestyle.
However, some issues remain. Many centres still seem to be playing it safe and teaching the cross-media study in a very rigid and controlled way. In these cases responses lacked individuality and most importantly any critical autonomy, running against the spirit of the specification. At its worst this resulted in rote learning and regurgitation with all candidates using exactly the same media products, examples, ideas and even essay structure (e.g. representation of youth on E4, Eminem).
Unfortunately, there is still some evidence of older products being used (9/11 news broadcasts, a potted history of the horror genre, for example) making it very difficult for candidates to individually research related contemporary cross-media products.
It once again needs to be reiterated that a cross-media study does not constitute the study of just one core text and one linked product in each platform. This is far too limited in scope for an AS course and will not provide students with a wider understanding of the whole topic area. A range of contrasting products (in terms of audience and institution) should be encouraged across the platforms thus fostering a greater understanding of the topic area at hand.
Indeed many cross-media studies had little sense of the topic they linked to. Where candidates had this wider topic knowledge and understanding they were more likely to able to evaluate the reasons why media products are the way they are and in turn achieve much better question focus through the application of the conceptual framework.
Synergy is the process by which media institutions use a range of platforms to promote, sell and distribute their products. Assess the impact of synergy in your cross-media study.
Support your answer with reference to a range of examples from three media
platforms. (32 marks)
Question 6
Pleasingly just over a half of all candidates who opted for this question also achieved a level three or above.
Really successful responses challenged the orthodoxy of the question and queried whether the use of synergy had actually had much impact at all on audience reception and response.
Many though found the notion of synergy challenging (despite the definition offered in the question). In this case the sense of synergy working across the platforms was missed, instead a series of isolated (yet related) products being analysed from different platforms with no real sense of the links between them. Some responses often became descriptive with no real sense of why synergy was used by the institutions concerned.
Better responses took an institutional point of view and got to grips with both how and why synergy was used. Weaker responses instead often used examples which were more audience than institution-lead (e.g. online forums) and thus failed to fully consider why. The same was also true of print examples such as film reviews, which again are out of control of the main institution and not an example of synergy.
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