Language and Media Dictionary of Key Terms (April 2016) Martin Montgomery

film theory media n. the study of film from an academic perspective with particular attention to its relationship to reality, to its audiences, to its modes of production, to its genres and to its formal characteristics. mmo

flashback media n. an interjected scene or sequence that takes a narrative back to a point prior in time to that which has currently been reached. Most commonly used to refer to film but also applicable to other forms of narrative such as drama, comic strip and the novel.

folk culture media n. the traditional culture of a settled rural community usually kept alive by word of mouth, example and informal apprenticeship in its ways. => ORAL CULTURE. ****

folk devil media n. member of a social group regarded by mainstream society as both deviant and as a threat to the general social order. Typically folk devils are discovered among the less advantaged members of society and it usually difficult to find statistical support for the scale and incidence of their undesirable behaviour. In other words, the threat that they pose is as much imagined as real. For this reason, folk devils need particular properties to resonate as such with the general population and it is common for some negative characteristics of the group to be highlighted and exaggerated. The identification of a folk devil is usually matched by a degree of shared moral outrage at their behavior. ‘Football hooligans’ have more potential to be folk devils than ‘bankers’. mmo

footing media n. the stance or alignment taken up by a participant on a moment by moment basis in the course of an interaction in relation to the communicative events at hand. The term derives from the work of American sociologist, Erving Goffman (1922-1982). mmo

Fourth Estate media n. a term used by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), the Scottish historian, essayist and social commentator, reporting Edmund Burke (1730-97), the Irish statesman, political thinker and philosopher, as saying that while the Westminster Parliament consisted of ‘Three Estates’, the Lords Spiritual (the Church), the Lords Temporal (the Peerage) and the Commons (members of the House of Commons), there was ‘a Fourth Estate more important than they all’ – namely the Press. Burke was not necessarily wrong to imply that the press of the day, communicating the discussions and decisions of Parliament to the general public but also adding their own sometimes scathing commentary, wielded more influence than all Three Estates combined. The term is still used to refer to the press and journalism in general.

framing media n. in the composition of the news, material is framed: selected, focused and presented according to tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters. The term derives from the work of American sociologist, Todd Gitlin (b.1943), though it bears useful comparison with work in artificial intelligence and cognitive linguistics. mmo

free press media n. a term used to describe journalism that is free from control by the state, political parties or commercial interests, with the implication that it can thereby be considered honest and truthful. mmo