Amplitude
or contextual factors are at the centre of the
communication model devised by Elizabeth
G. Andersch, Lorin C. Staats and Robert N.
Bostrom and presented in Communication
in Everyday Use (Holt, Rinehart & Winston).
Like barnland’s transactional model,
this one stresses the transactional nature of the
communication process, in which messages and
their meanings are structured and evaluated by
the Sender and subjected to reconstruction and
evaluation on the part of the Receiver, all the
while interacting with factors (or stimuli) in the
environment. See topic guide under commu-
nication models.
Anecdote A short narrative, usually of a personal
nature, used to illustrate a general issue.
Anecdotes are often used in media coverage to
heighten the emotional aspect of an issue. Colin
Seymour-Ure in Th e Political Impact of the Mass
Media (Constable, 1974) recounts the use made
of one such anecdote by the politician Enoch
Powell in his eff orts to bring the immigration
issue to public attention during 1967 and 1968.
Powell claimed to have received a letter from a
correspondent in Northumberland expressing
concern about an elderly widow in Wolverhamp-
ton who feared harassment by newly arrived
immigrants in the area. Th is anecdote was widely
reported by the press, yet, despite strenuous
eff orts, no trace of the elderly widow could be
found. Th e story did, however, do much to fuel
the emotive manner in which the immigration
issue was discussed in the popular press. See
loony leftism.
Animatic Sequence of drawings representing the
story of a television advertisement, prior to fi lm-
ing. Another term for storyboard.
Animation Th e process of fi lming still drawings,
puppets, etc. in sequence to give the illusion of
movement; also the actual direct drawing and
painting on to positive or negative stock or on to
clear celluloid itself. Long before cinematog-
raphy was invented, devices were in use which
gave drawings the illusion of movement. By 1882
Emile Reynauld had combined his Praxinoscope
with a projector and a decade later opened the
Th éâtre Optique in the Musée Grevin in Paris.
Live-action cinema became all-important
once the Lumière brothers had shown its possi-
bilities in 1895, but animation soon captured
interest, from 1908 onwards, with the work of
J. Stuart Blackton in the US and Emile Cohl in
France. New York Herald cartoonist Winsor
McCay made Gertie the Dinosaur in 1909, and
in 1919 the fi rst animated feature, Th e Sinking of
the Lusitania.As with all the online traders, diversifi cation
has been key to survival and prosperity; the
company partnered 20th Century Fox in a fi lm
production, Th e Stolen Child in 2008. Amazon
also ensured that it was in the vanguard of enter-
prises supporting the increase of independent,
print-on-demand (POD) publishing, creating
in 2010 Amazon Encore (republishing works
of quality that had gone out of print, suff ered
neglect, or both) and Amazon Crossing (trans-
lating and issuing French works into English, the
fi rst of these being Th e King of Kahel, 2010).
Like other online operators Amazon has
been involved in controversies concerning anti-
competitiveness, price discrimination, censor-
ship and acting outside international copyright
laws. It took fl ak in 2010 for putting a bar on
wikileaks’ business, justifying its decision
on the grounds that the whistleblower had
broken Amazon’s rules for usage.
Amplitude See news values.
Analysis: modes of media analysis See
discourse analysis; ethnographic
(approach to audience measurement);
functionalist; marxist; social action
(modes of media analysis).
Anarchist cinema Epitomized in the work of
French film-maker Jean Vigo (1905–34) who
was twelve when his anarchist father, known
as Miguel Almereyda, was found strangled in a
French police cell in 1917. In A propos de Nice
(1930), Vigo expressed the anarchist’s views on
inequality, contrasting the luxurious, suntanned
life of wealthy holidaymakers with the underfed,
deformed bodies of slum children. In his comic
masterpiece Zero de Conduite (Nought for
Conduct) produced in 1932, Vigo used anarchist
friends as actors. His theme was the rebellion of
schoolchildren against the rigidity of the school
authorities. It was immediately banned by the
French authorities. Vigo was a direct inspiration
for the ‘anarchistic’ film of a modern, public
school rebellion in Lindsay Anderson’s If, made
in 1968. (Anarchy: complete absence of law or
government.)
Anchorage Th e part that captions play in helping
to frame, or anchor, the meaning of photographic
images, as reproduced in newspapers and
magazines. French philosopher Roland Barthes
used this term to describe the way captions help
‘fi x’ or narrow down the choice of meanings of
the published image. He defi nes the caption as
a ‘parasitic message designed to connote the
image’.
★Andersch, Staats and Bostrom’s model
of communication, 1969 Environmental