Finally! Week 7 Lectorial and it was mentioned@
What was mentioned? Well… I remember writing a scathing blog post earlier about over analysis of texts, looking too deep for meaning. What if it just “IS” what if thats just the way it is? Finally i believe it was Rachel Wilson that mentioned, sometimes we can take this analysis too far. And i totally agree.

However, what did we do in the Lectorial, well, this weeks topic was “texts” this was the focus of the lecture and the readings. Particularly interesting was the  analysis of the photographs that we conducted for example we took a photo of a clothing ad and then we broke it down. for example

1. The meaning its trying to communicate

2. The individual media components. ie. text, images, colours

3. Social codes employed. ie. Status, class, gender, socialised identities, connotations

In the particular billboard we analysed we were able to pick out the different elements and discuss them. I believe that one way in which we can think of ‘texts’ is see them as ‘contexts’. So in summary we analysed the context of the place it is displayed.

I do this lots in my life as a media content creator. I have worked extensively for Townshend International School  creating their Promo Material and helping with their website. We always needed to make sure that the images and ideologies that the school supported were being conveyed and displayed appropriately. For example in the image below it was important that all the uniforms matched, there were both males and females, they were all happy and they were from diverse cultural background. This photo appears on the home page of the Townshend website and needs to appeal to both parents and prospective students.

In this way, analysing texts for a purpose and not just to give them meaning is whats most important to me, and thats the part I have valued learning about this week.