Resistance (of audience to media)A B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWate. Rapport-talk is used for establishing and
reinforcing intimacy. Th ese diff erences refl ect
the diff erent genderlects that Tannen believes
men and women use, which in turn refl ect one
main difference in their use of conversation:
men using conversation to establish status and
control, women to establish intimacy. See topic
guide under gender matters.
Representation A core function of media is to
‘re-present’ to audiences the realities of ‘the
world out there’. Most of our knowledge of that
world is brought to us via the media; and our
perception of reality is mediated by newspa-
pers, TV, advertisments, fi lms, etc. Th e media
image the world for us. Th ey do this by means
of selection and interpretation which operate
through gatekeeping and according to agen-
das which are suff used by ideology. Th e media
represent to us the past as well as the present,
and representations – or interpretations – of the
past aff ect our perceptions of the present. Out of
such representations arise issues concerning, for
example, the representation of women, of race,
asylum seeking, poverty, minorities.
What we as audience know of Africa and
Africans, of Serbs and Albanians, of Israelis and
Arabs, of Moslems or Sikhs, is what we have
experienced through the reports and pictures
brought to us by the media. Th e study of media
representation, therefore, is central to cultural,
media and communication studies. Because
it is impossible to represent the world in all its
massive complexity, media representation has to
be viewed as a ‘version’ of reality, in which fram-
ing has taken place according to criteria such
as news values or pressures to propagandize,
sensationalize, binarize (that is, divide ‘us’ from
‘them’ – see wedom, theydom) or a desire to
impose meaning upon webs of complexity.
Representation is essentially about defi nition, and
media representation tends to be about promot-
ing certain defi nitions, and therefore meanings,
over others; thus endeavouring to affect the
preferences of the public. See discourse. See
also topic guide under representation.
Representation, machinery of See machin-
ery of representation.
Representation of crime on screen See
crime: types of crime on screen.
Representative sample See sampling.
Repressive state apparatus See ideological
state apparatuses.
Repressive use of the media See emancipa-
tory use of the media.
Resistance (of audience to media) See domi-
nant, subordinate, radical; polysemy.nevertheless created in the BBC an organization
resistant to commercialism, favouring the arts,
serious debate and notions of public responsi-
bility. Reith strove for impartiality but never
achieved balance: coverage of Royal activities in
the 1920s and 1930s was not in any way matched
by coverage of the activities of the Labour move-
ment and the unions and, during the General
Strike of 1926, the BBC remained strictly
‘neutral’: it stayed silent. Reith, the Napoleon
of Broadcasting, as Colonel Moore Brabazon
called him, resigned as ‘DG’ (Director General),
as his own staff spoke of him, in 1937. See bbc,
origins. See also topic guides under media
history; media institutions.
Relationship marketing See marketing.
Relic gestures Th ose physical gestures that have
outlived their original situation, yet continue to
be used to eff ect even though their derivation is
no longer obvious or explicable. Such gestures
survive not only from historical past, but also
from a human’s infantile past – for example the
rocking to and fro of disaster victims in the face
of intolerable grief.
Remediation; reconfiguration See media-
tion.
Repertoire of non-verbal behaviour See
non-verbal behaviour: repertoire.
Reporters: embedded reporters See embed-
ded reporters.
Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters
Without Borders) Montpellier-based group
of journalists set up in 1987 to defend press
freedom worldwide, and campaign on behalf of
journalists in trouble. Produces valuable data on
the plight of reporters, photographers and fi lm-
makers – those injured, imprisoned or killed in
bringing home the news.
Report-talk, rapport-talk Th is is one way in
which men and women’s conversational style
diff ers, according to Deborah Tannen in You Just
Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conver-
sation (Virago Press, 1992). Men, she argues, are
confi dent with public speech or what she calls
report-talk, whether this be in a formal or an
informal situation where several people are in
conversation.
In these situations, when the company is
mixed, men typically participate more in
conversation than women and in part their
performance may be a way of establishing status
and control. In a more private setting, though,
this diff erence in the participation rate between
men and women may change or even reverse.
Here rapport-talk, with which women, Tannen
argues, are more comfortable, is more appropri-