aqa media a level coursework

AQA Media Studies

Introduction.

Media Studies provides a great opportunity to explore and evaluate why we engage with a wide range of media texts. Representation and media form are other important aspects of the course. AQA’s course also requires you to develop the practical skills needed to create your own exciting products.

Close Study Products

To demonstrate your understanding of the key concepts in media studies, you need to analyse various media texts from a broad range of media forms, such as television, newspapers, magazines, digital media and computer games. The following guides apply the relevant theoretical frameworks to AQA's list of A-Level Close Study Products.

• AQA A-Level

Media One - Advertising and Marketing

Sephora – Black Beauty is Beauty Campaign

Score Hair Cream

Media one - music videos.

Old Town Road

Media one - newspapers.

The Daily Mail

The Guardian Newspaper

Media one - media industries and audience.

The War of the Worlds

BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat

Blinded by the Light

Taylor Swift and Social Media

The Gentlewoman Magazine

Analysis of GQ Magazine

BBC’s Capital

Deutschland 83

Media two - video games.

The Sims FreePlay

Horizon Forbidden West and Genre

Representation in Horizon Forbidden West

Unseen questions.

Past Papers and Mark Schemes

You can access various materials from the dedicated AQA assessment resources page .

Non-exam Assessment

You need to create a cross-media production which demonstrates your knowledge and understanding of the theoretical framework. You also need to produce a Statement of Intent - a 500 word commentary on your chosen brief and how you intend to fulfill its demands.

Research and Preparation

• Statement of Intent

• Indicative Content

Assessment Objectives

AO1: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the theoretical framework of media and contexts of media and their influence on media products and processes.

AO2: Apply knowledge and understanding of the theoretical framework of media to:

(a) analyse media products, including in relation to their contexts and through the use of academic theories; (b) evaluate academic theories; and (c) make judgements and draw conclusions.

AO3: Create media products for an intended audience, by applying knowledge and understanding of the theoretical framework of media to communicate meaning.

Recently Added

Deus Ex Machina

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

Key concepts.

Ideology and the Media

Prosumers and the Media

Intertextuality

Media studies.

• The Study of Signs
• Ferdinand de Saussure and Signs
• Roland Barthes
• Charles Peirce’s Sign Categories
• Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation
• Binary Opposition
• Vladimir Propp
• Tzvetan Todorov
• Quest Plots
• Barthes’ 5 Narrative Codes
• Key Concepts in Genre
• David Gauntlett and Identity
• Paul Gilroy
• Liesbet van Zoonen
• The Male Gaze
• Judith Butler and Performativity
• bell hooks and Intersectionality
• The Cultural Industries
• Hypodermic Needle Theory
• Two-Step Flow Theory
• Cultivation Theory
• Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory
• Abraham Maslow
• Uses and Gratifications
• Moral Panic
• Camera Shots

A-Level Media Studies

• Wider reading
• Media Focus
• Film studies

Week one induction

Suspense sequence project brief, component 3 brief, coursework brief for submission in 2025, aims and intentions, aims and intentions guidelines, project brief and exemplars (2024/5), examples of how to write about industry context, music video production, how to dump/upload footage from an sd card new and better guide, dates and deadlines 2024 (for submission in 2025), initial tasks , thinking about the music industry: major labels, how to dump/upload footage from a camera with an sd card, how to create a visually striking music video, narrative and music videos - types of narrative, how to export a rough cut or a final cut in premiere pro, print media production, adobe lightroom classic basics (video), introduction to newspaper magazines and examples of newspaper magazine double page spreads, ten magazine challenge examples, making a flat plan, talking still images with a dslr, examples of specialist music magazine covers, examples of gig and tour posters, examples of double page spread articles, examples of student magazines, how to make an excellent magazine cover in just twenty minutes.

A-level  MEDIA STUDIES

News.  advice. ​ ​.

Thank you for visiting this free A-level Media Studies revision site; constructed for the modern Media student, to supply them with relevant, engaging and accessible content to study the important, contemporary and exciting subject that is Media Studies. 

No login or registration is required but please consider clicking on our ad banners to keep the site running.   Teachers : use and adapt resources and content for lessons HERE using a collaborative Google Drive Link and become part of the Facebook Group.  Bookmark this page and share it with your media classes!  It is growing and will continue to grow.

MEDIA STUDIES IN THE NEWS

Check the twitter feed to see what case studies and resources are circulating the web right now.  If you have a good one that you want to share, DM @alevelmedia and get yourself known...

LATEST RESOURCES

Students and teachers asked for the following.  Be careful what you wish for:

>   Case Studies

​>   Media Theorists

​>   Essay Structure

​>   Feedback - what you said

​>   Legacy Specification

​>   Coursework woes

​>   Key Concepts

​>   Media in the news

​>   Become part of the team

  more to follow soon.   

We've got everything you need for starting Media Studies in Year 12 to finishing off in Year 13 and beyond (and VERY soon, everything for GCSE Media Studies and Film Studies).

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A-level Media Studies 7572

A-level Media Studies Specification Specification for first teaching in 2017

PDF | 878.51 KB

3.0 Subject content

• media language
• media representation
• media industries
• media audiences.
• advertising and marketing
• online, social and participatory media
• video games
• music video

Film is an inextricable part of the wider media landscape, which is intimately connected with other media, such as television, video games and online media. However, to avoid overlap with GCE AS and A-level film studies, film should not be a primary object of study in this context. Students may study individual feature films, but this must only occur in the context of cross-media study, which explores the convergence of media platforms and technologies, or in the context of the study of media industries. For the purposes of this specification, film will only be studied in the context of the study of media industries.

• • 3.1 Close study products (CSPs)
• • 3.2 Contexts of the media
• • 3.3 Extended response and synopticity
• • 3.4 Media language
• • 3.5 Media representation
• • 3.6 Media industries
• • 3.7 Media audiences
• • 3.8 Non-exam assessment