Rumour has it that the government aren't sure whether or not they will be keeping Media Studies as a qualification as of 2016 as a GCE qualification. As a student who has taken the GCSE and is currently studying A-Level Media (as well as it being my favourite subject), I am outraged that in the near future children won't be able to learn about the world via the media.
Firstly, lets get some misconceptions out of the way about GCE Media Studies:
- It is an easy subject - Nope, It is ridiculously academic. Although the subject is heavily coursework based, it is also heavily based on knowledge that you have obtained elsewhere about the outside world. "Good Media students", as one of my teachers would say, are having to constantly be looking out for things that could be used within the subject. What I have noticed about doing AS Media is that I can no longer just watch an advert and that be that, I have to analyse it as I watch it looking out for "mise-en-scene" and "representations" and whether or not "the advert is a cliché of every other advert ever". A couple of weeks ago we were given the "revision guide" for our Media exam this Friday and it was a sheet of A4 paper. Although we have less exams than other A-Levels (because we do coursework through out the year), we cannot revise because the exam specification is so broad, the questions could be on anything as well as the exam being 2h30 long making it (I think) the longest exam apart from Art. As I say to my friends, "the Media exam is hard because it isn't a memory test.". In subjects such as the sciences, the answers are determined from the guides the exam board release where as (like I said before) the Media exam can be on anything.
- It is a girl's subject - The same as the sciences are a boy's subject? Let us not forget that as close as 40 years ago, journalism was a form of MEDIA almost exclusively run by men. It has only been it the past few decades that we have seen strong and truly amazing women come into the profession. Yes, in my Media class there is probably one boy to every three girls but journalism is still predominantly a male profession and many of them are there out of privilege rather than the quality of what they are saying. Look at current journalists such as Owen Jones who is from a working class background standing up for the mis-representation of the working class in the media, he came from state funded education and now regularly writes for the Independent as well as being a successful author as a result of his books on the working class. He is one of the most intelligent people I can think of in today's media and he is a "normal bloke".
So with these two misconceptions straightened out why does our male-dominated, academic government feel that Media Studies isn't worth our time? Well, this is my theory: I believe that the media run the world. They can take a reasonably good politician and make him look bad as well as taking a reasonably bad politician look good. We do not listen to the government directly, we listen to the media's (already altered) view on what the government have told us and so (depending on what paper/channel we hear it from) we are going to take that view rather than the government's direct view. It isn't just politics, it is everything... two-step flow theory: the mass media (ie: everything that is going on in the world at present) is picked up by the media - called "the gatekeeper" (ie: newspapers, news channels, blogs etc) and give it to you. It could be a kind of soap or a film, anything! Media tycoons are some of the richest and most powerful in the world. Rupert Murdoch has more money than sense and has political influences not only in the U.K but in America also. Simon Cowell has dictated what kind of music the world listens to for about 20 years now. The media has tremendous power over the world we live in today.
To me, I think that politicians are seeing a form of aid for themselves (in order to increase voters or boost popularity etc) slowly begin to become more powerful and more influential than government itself. Social media, for example, has given everyone with internet access a voice to be heard by people across the world (even me, a 17-year old school girl) and with that people are able to see what is actually going on in the world without the aid of two-step flow and it has become much easier for people to question what the government are actually doing. Also, an increasing amount of young people from working backgrounds are coming into the media with left-wing views (many of which are women) threatens the Etonian, right-wing government that are currently in power. They want to decrease the power of left media before people actually begin to question the greedy policies that the "selfservatives" puke out upon the British public.
Of course, I am not saying that this is a feminist attack or that the sciences are any less important than the arts as Media Studies tends the reflect both and you can look at the media via both routes. I just cannot stand people bringing it down because it is a subject that they haven't bothered their time to partake in and won't because women do it. If there is such a push to get more women into sciences such as engineering and physics then surely shouldn't we also be trying to encourage more men into media?
As someone who hopes to study Media at university, I, naturally, would say it is the best subject in the world but let me tell you one thing. When I chose Media as an opinion in year 9, I thought it would be the most boring piece of crap I'd ever experienced yet I now it is something that my life revolves around.
I couldn't embed an extract lecture by Owen Jones on the working-class that we watched this year in Media into post so here is a link to it.
What do you think about Media Studies as a qualification? Please leave a comment!
