Media Studies
Why study Media?
Media Studies is available as a Key Stage 4 option subject and for interested Key Stage 3 students, we offer an extra-curricular Media Studies and filmmaking club.
You now live in a media-centric world. Whenever you pick up your phone, browse Netflix, have the radio on in the car, play a video game, look at an advertisement or waste three hours of your life flicking through TikTok, you are engaging with the media. In order to navigate this world, you need to know how it works, and that’s what we do in Media Studies. Even if you choose not to continue your study of the media beyond your time at The Heath, you will have still developed skills and knowledge that will be forever useful to you in our technology and media-driven age!
There are also often issues in the media that you should be aware of in your day to day lives - fake news has been a huge problem for social media companies in recent years, the impact of advertising is also still hotly debated and the issue of how free ‘free speech’ should be is raised every time another celebrity faces discrimination online – because these things are part of your life and you should be able to make decisions about what to read and watch, and what to avoid.
The Media is also a huge and still developing sector in terms of careers. Every company and business in the world now have some kind of involvement in the Media (even Asda has someone to manage their social media for them) so it is a sector that has good opportunities for employment.
Media Studies students are interested and interesting people who are open-minded and informed and this should be something we all aspire to be.
Statement of Intent
The Media Studies curriculum has been designed to equip students with the knowledge and skills to navigate an ever increasingly media-dominated world. Students should be able to approach the media critically and question the texts they see, watch, read and hear and be able to make informed decisions about the media they consume or are exposed to.
As part of this curriculum, students can expect to:
- Be exposed to a wide variety of media text types and learn how to ‘read’ the messages communicated to us as an audience, developing their media literacy.
- Explore issues of representation of groups and events within the media and the impact this can have on audiences.
- Develop teamwork skills as part of production projects, working together to complete all stages of production of a short film.
- Have their educational and practical needs met in order to prepare them for a variety of higher education and vocational pathways.
- Understand that the media is a sector which will only develop and change further in the years to come, and to be prepared for such changes.
- Be supported to develop their literacy skills within the context of media studies and consider different viewpoints and ideas through reading criticism and applying theory to media texts.
- Be aware of the social and historical contexts of media texts and understand the changes that have taken place in what is deemed ‘acceptable’ within the media.
- Understand wider issues within the media and the ways that media can mislead, persuade or influence audiences, developing their status as informed and critical consumers of media.
Media Studies Revision Resources
