LIIAR - The KEY concepts of ANY media product!

LIIAR covers the key concepts of media, and is useful for analyzing, creating and evaluating media products. The Letters stand for language, ideology, institution, audience and representation, all of which I have explained about below.

Language - The Language is the particular terminology used in a media product. It has to be relevant to the audience that the product is intended for. For example, a music magazine will include specific music terms relevant to readers of music magazine. A car magazine will include specific terminology aimed at people interested in cars. So not only is the language relevant to the audience, but it has to fit in with the genre of the magazine.

Ideology - This is basically the ideas, beliefs and values behind a Media product. The ideas behind a car magazine is to inform the audience about new cars, and any other information about transport. The idea behind a music magazine is to tell the audience about new bands, new albums, recent gigs and gossip to name a few. You could say it's a sort of theme.


Institution -  The institution is who controls the production process, who who makes money out of the magazine. In short, it is any company or organization associated with the media product. After all, one of the key things about the media is to make money. This is true in commercial magazine, where you will find that a significant proportion of the magazine is taken up by adverts, which are aimed specifically at the readers of the magazine. In return, the advertisers pay the magazine institution a lot of money for showing their advert.


Audience - The audience (or target audience) is simply who the media product (magazine) is aimed at. For example, a music magazine is aimed at people that genuinely love music. It is vital that the producers of a media product know their target audience inside out. This is because they need to know what the audience wants from a magazine, so they can design it appropriately to their need's, and include specific content and language related to the audience.

Representation - This is predominantly what the magazine represents, and more importantly, how it represents this. For example, a music magazine will want to represent music in a positive way, and make it sound like it is the talking point of the moment. A car magazine is aimed at people who like cars, so it's not going to represent them in a negative way. It's going to talk about the positives.



I will be using LIIAR throughout my coursework to demonstrate my understanding of these concepts. I will use it in all of my analysis, and apply it to my planning. I will also talk about it in my final evaluation.