The growth of social media platforms means information is produced, distributed and consumed with increased immediacy, raising questions about accountability, regulation and influence. This growth has led to competition with traditional media forms and established media institutions. Traditional media continues to have power and influence, competing, cooperating and evolving alongside social media platforms. Through the study of Media, students gain a critical understanding of media and understand their role as both producers and consumers of media products.

Developments in technologies have transformed media at a rapid pace. The interplay between print and broadcast media and multinational-networked database platforms has enabled creative communication opportunities and reworked notions of key media concepts including audiences, forms and products, storytelling, influence, institutions and industries.

Students examine how and why the media constructs and reflects reality, and how audiences engage with, consume, read, create and produce media products.

For the purposes of this study the following specifications apply. Specific details of the scope of each specification are provided in the unit overviews and in the introduction to the relevant areas of study.

Audiences

The context of media shapes both production and the audiences’ reading. Contextual influences such as time, place, culture, societal attitudes and values may be reflected explicitly and implicitly in media products. Audiences also read and consume media through this contextual lens. The relationship between media and audience is complex. Students will interrogate notions of influence, power, audience, agency and the role that media plays in shaping views and values.

Audiences are consumers, users, creative and participatory producers and product. This has created a dramatic increase in communicative, cultural and creative possibilities. The greater involvement of audiences has generated enormous changes in the media economy and issues of content control.

Media literacy is defined as an interrelated set of competencies that help people to maximise advantages and minimise harm in the new information, digital and communication landscapes. Media and information literacy covers competencies that enable people to engage with information, other forms of content, the institutions that facilitate information and diverse types of content, and the discerning use of digital technologies critically and effectively.

VCE Media promotes media literacy by encouraging students to produce their own media products and engage critically with media as citizens in a democratic society.

Media narratives

Media language is evolving and dynamic. Students develop knowledge and use of the language of media in terms of design, production, distribution, consumption, engagement with, reception, reading and critique of their own and others’ media products. They also examine the terms used by media practitioners and institutions.

For the purposes of this study, media language is a framework for both the construction of media products and discussion of the ways the media communicates meaning to audiences. Creators, producers and audiences share an understanding of media codes, conventions and technologies and how these are selected and sequenced dependent on the media form, the intent of the product, genre, style and the making of meaning.

(Beaumont, n.d.)

Media products are designed and produced in a wide variety of media forms. The construction of a media product is dependent on the style and genre of the product and the intended audience, location, context and time in which the product was created, produced, distributed, consumed and read by audiences. Media forms refer to technological means and channels by which the media is created, produced, distributed, consumed and read. Media forms include:

• moving image: film, television, video, animation

• still image: photography

• audio: radio, podcast

• print: magazine, zine, comic, graphic novel, newspaper, poster

• digital: online video and audio, streaming video and audio, podcast, magazine, comic, graphic novel, newspaper, video game, blog, website, app

• convergent or hybridised media: the combination or joining of two or more media forms, such as photography and animation, print productions and a digital game, augmented and virtual reality products.

(Industrial Scripts, 2020)

Technical and symbolic tools are used to construct meaning in media forms and products. Media codes may include the use of camera, acting, mise en scene, editing, lighting, sound, typography, colour, visual composition, text and graphics and paper stock for print.

Excellent Resource: MediaKnite (2024) Codes and Conventions Booklet

Media products are the consumable output designed by media producers. They are distributed to audiences who engage with, consume and read them.

Through engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander creators and media products, all students develop respect for a recognition of the world’s oldest continuous living culture and understand the significant contribution of Australia’s First Peoples to the Australian media landscape, through traditional, historical and contemporary media narratives and voices. The inclusion and acknowledgement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander media texts and content will assist in the building of intercultural understanding for students. This understanding helps support cultural learning, encouraging students to make connections between their own world and the worlds of others, encourage collaboration and develop a mutual understanding with others. It will also provide students with the insight to understand themselves as part of a diverse and global community.

The Victorian Koorie community-preferred education model enables teachers to focus on inclusively supporting students to consider Victorian Koorie education matters, and systematically support students to learn about local, regional, state and national Indigenous perspectives. VCE studies involve a focused extension of this model and include a broader application of national and international perspectives.

Teachers are encouraged to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge and perspectives in the design and delivery of teaching and learning programs related to VCE Media.

(University of Minnesota, 2018)

(Russh, 2024)