Key Concepts in Media and Cultural Theory

Posted on Dec 27, 2025 in Social sciences

Glossary of Terms

A

  • Active Audience: The idea that audiences actively interpret media texts.
  • Agency: The capacity of individuals to act within discursive constraints.
  • Anti-essentialism: The view that identities have no fixed or natural essence.
  • Arbitrariness of the Sign: The idea that the link between signifier and signified is historically constructed.
  • Archaeology: Analysis of historical conditions that shape knowledge.
  • Articulation: A temporary linkage between different social or identity elements.

B

  • Base: The economic foundation of society.
  • Biopower: Power exercised over life and populations.
  • Bricolage: The reworking of existing cultural symbols for new meanings.

C

  • Capitalism: An economic system based on private property and capital accumulation.
  • Connotation: The cultural or associative meaning of a sign.
  • Counter-hegemony: Resistance to dominant cultural meanings.
  • Cultural Codes: Shared conventions that link signs to meanings.
  • Cultural Materialism: An approach linking culture to material conditions of production.
  • Culturalism: An anthropological approach that sees culture as ordinary lived experience.
  • Culture: Shared meanings, practices, and ways of life of a social group.
  • Cyberspace: The virtual space of digital communication.
  • Cyberdemocracy: The use of digital media for democratic participation.

D

  • Decoding: The interpretation of meaning by audiences.
  • Deflation: A general decrease in prices across the economy.
  • Denotation: The literal meaning of a sign.
  • Diaspora: A dispersed community sharing cultural or ethnic origins.
  • Digital Divide: Inequality in access to digital technologies.
  • Discourse: The production of knowledge through language and practices.
  • Disciplinary Power: Power focused on controlling individual bodies.
  • Docile Bodies: Bodies shaped to be useful and obedient.

E

  • Encoding: The production of meaning in media texts.
  • Enlightenment Subject: A rational, unified individual.
  • Essentialism: The belief in fixed, inherent identities.
  • Ethnicity: Identity shaped by history, culture, and language.

F

  • Feminism: Movements and theories challenging women’s subordination.
  • Filter Bubble: Isolation from diverse information due to algorithms.
  • First-Wave Feminism: Feminism focused on legal and political equality.

G

  • Gender: Socially constructed roles associated with sex.
  • Genealogy: Tracing power relations and historical development of discourse.
  • Global City: A city functioning as a hub of global capital and information.
  • Globalisation: Increasing global social, cultural, and political interconnectedness.
  • Governmentality: Techniques for governing populations and selves.

H

  • Hegemony: Dominance achieved through consent rather than force.
  • High Culture: Elite cultural products such as art and literature.
  • Historical Materialism: The idea that material conditions shape social life.
  • Homology: The relationship between subcultural style and social position.

I

  • Identity: How individuals understand themselves socially and culturally.
  • Ideology: Systems of ideas that justify power relations.
  • Imagined Community: A community formed through shared imagination.
  • Information Society: A society where information is the key economic resource.
  • Invention of Tradition: Creating traditions to legitimize identity.

L

  • Langue: The abstract system of language rules.
  • Low Culture: Everyday practices and traditions of ordinary people.

M

  • Manipulative Model: A view of media as controlled by dominant power.
  • Marxism: A theory explaining society through material economic conditions.
  • Media Convergence: The merging of media platforms and consumption.
  • Myth: A cultural narrative that makes ideology appear natural.

N

  • Narrative: Structuring facts into a meaningful story.
  • Nation-State: A political entity with sovereignty over a territory.
  • National Identity: Imaginative identification with the nation-state.
  • Network Society: A society structured around information networks.

P

  • Panopticon: A model of surveillance producing self-discipline.
  • Parole: Individual acts of speech.
  • Patriarchy: A system of male dominance.
  • Place: Space filled with meaning and experience.
  • Pluralist Model: A view of media reflecting diverse viewpoints.
  • Polysemy: The existence of multiple meanings in a sign.
  • Postmodern City: A city shaped by globalization and fragmentation.
  • Postmodern Subject: A fragmented and shifting identity.
  • Post-structuralism: A theory rejecting fixed meanings and stable structures.
  • Power: A productive network shaping subjects and knowledge.
  • Preferred Meaning: The dominant intended interpretation of a text.

R

  • Race: A socially constructed category based on perceived difference.
  • Racialization: The process of constructing race socially.
  • Representation: The production of meaning through signs.

S

  • Selective Tradition: The process by which some cultural elements endure.
  • Semiotics: The study of signs and meaning-making systems.
  • Sex: Biological differences between bodies.
  • Sign: The unity of signifier and signified.
  • Signified: The concept associated with a signifier.
  • Signifier: The physical form of a sign.
  • Social Formation: A complex structure of interacting social levels.
  • Sociological Subject: An identity formed through social interaction.
  • Space: An abstract social construct.
  • Structuralism: The idea that meaning is produced through underlying structures.
  • Subculture: A group with values differing from dominant culture.
  • Subjectivity: Lived experience of being a subject.
  • Superstructure: Culture, politics, and ideology built on the economic base.

T

  • Third-Wave Feminism: Anti-essentialist feminism emphasizing diversity.
  • Time-Geography: The study of movement through time and space.

U

  • Urban Space: Space shaped by social and economic relations.

Y

  • Youth: A socially and historically constructed life stage.

Conceptual Frameworks and Groupings

  • Communication Circuit: Production, circulation, consumption
  • Convergence Culture: Technology, industry, users
  • Cultural Approaches: High culture, low culture, culturalism
  • Culture: Meanings, practices, lived experience
  • Diaspora Identity: Dispersion, memory, narration
  • Digital Divide: Access, inequality, exclusion
  • Disciplinary Discourses: Science, self, division
  • Encoding/Decoding: Preferred, negotiated, oppositional
  • Forces of Production: Technology, labor
  • Global City: Finance, information, command
  • Globalisation: Connectivity, compression, awareness
  • Hegemony: Consent, dominance, instability
  • Identity Formation: Social, relational, constructed
  • Information Society: Data, knowledge, economy
  • Language System: Langue, parole
  • Levels of Culture: Lived, recorded, selective
  • Marxist Structure: Base, superstructure
  • Media Globalisation: Flow, format, localization
  • Media Models: Manipulative, pluralist, hegemonic
  • Meaning: Difference, structure, system
  • Myth: Naturalization, ideology, culture
  • Nation: Imagination, sovereignty, community
  • National Identity: Narrative, symbols, memory
  • Network Society: Nodes, flows, connectivity
  • Place: Memory, identity, meaning
  • Postmodern City: Fragmentation, surveillance, inequality
  • Power Forms: Disciplinary, biopower
  • Sign: Signifier, signified, relation
  • Signification Levels: Denotation, connotation
  • Social Formation: Economy, politics, culture
  • Space Theory: Social, relational, dynamic
  • Subculture: Style, identity, opposition
  • Subcultural Practice: Homology, bricolage
  • Subject Types: Enlightenment, sociological, postmodern
  • Subjectivation: Power, discourse, self
  • Texts: Polysemy, interpretation, context
  • Urban Power: Capital, space, control
  • Youth Identity: Class, culture, resistance