Meanings: How do media use audio, visual, graphic and verbal languages to convey information and ideas? What are the effects of particular technical choices, e.g. a type of camera shot?

Conventions: what to we expect to see, hear and read? How do these conventions operate in different types of media text such as news, horror, comics? How do the uses of language become familiar and generally accepted.

Genres: how are conventions used by different texts in a similar form,e.g. BBC News, Sky News; horror films, romcom films.

Narratives: How is meaning conveyed through the order in which we encounter elements of the text? What ideas do endings suggest? Narrative applies to both fiction and non-fiction, e.g. the order of stories in a news bulletin.

Editing: How is meaning conveyed through selecting and combining images, sounds or words?

Technologies: How do technologies affect the meanings that can be created?  

   Realism: How realistic is this text intended to be?

   Telling the truth: How do the media claim to tell the truth about the world e.g. events in non-fiction, emotional truth in fiction. How do they try to be authentic?

   Presence and absence: What is included and excluded from the text? Who speaks and who is not given a voice?

   Bias and objectivity: Does the text support particular views about the world?  Do they convey moral or political values?

   Typing: How do the media represent particular social groups? Are they limited to a few characteristics (stereotyping)? For what purpose is the stereotyping used? How are character types common to all texts (archetypes) used, e.g. hero, outsider, villain.

   Interpretations: Why do audiences accept some media representations as true, or reject others as false?

   Influences: Do media representations influence our views of particular  social groups or issues? 

   Targeting: How are the media targeted at particular audiences? How do they try to appeal to them?

   Categorisations: How are audiences grouped, e.g. socio-economic, fans, psycho-graphic profiles, lifestyles?

   Address: How do texts speak to audiences? What assumptions do the media producers make about the audience?

   Making sense: How do audiences interpret texts? What meanings do they make?

   Social differences: What is the role of gender, social class, age, ethnicity  in audience behaviour?

   Uses: How do audiences use the media in their daily lives? What are their habits and patterns of use? For what purpose is a text used?

   Pleasures: What pleasures do audiences gain from the media? What do  they like or dislike and why? 

   Technologies: What technologies are used to produce, distribute, and  exhibit media texts? What differences do they make to the product? What differences do they make to audience uses and pleasures?

   Professional practices: Who makes media texts? Who does what, and  how do they work together?

   The industry: What types of companies produce, buy and sell the media? Who owns them? How do they make a profit? How does competition affect products?

   Circulation and distribution: Who controls the production and distribution  of media? How do texts reach their audiences? How much choice and  control do audiences have?

   Connections between media: How do companies sell the same products across different media? How does ownership affect what gets made?

   Regulation: Are there laws, self-regulation, codes of practice? How effective are they?

   Access and participation: Whose voices are heard in the media? Whose  are excluded and why?