New Words

• Active audience theory- theories on audience theories about behaviour that see the audience as active participants in the process of decoding and making sense of media texts.
• As 'Little Britain' is a programme based on stereotypes audience have either the choice to be passive or active in believing these stereotypes or challenging them. However, being a comedy text audiences tend to see the funny side and choose not to believe it.

• Althusser, Louis (1918-90)- French Marxist with interest in the role of the media in supporting dominant ideology and in the symbolic order separating us from reality.
• Dominant ideologies in society are shown througout this text and waht it does my making fun of those ideologies is what is separating fact from reality.

• Attitudes, beliefs and values- factors influencing the reception of media messages.
• Attitudes are the positions people adopt in relation to a particular issue.
• Beliefs are deeply held views.
• Values represent the moral or ideological structure within which beliefs and attitudes are formed.
• Again leads back to whether audiences will be drawn into the values and beliefs the show holds about British socities. Some of which are very strongly held for some people, does that create tension as the show tends to mock them.

• Audience theory-can be divided into active and passive models where the audience is seen as reacting to a text (active) and challenging it or where the audience is influenced and manipulated (passive).

• Bias- the slanting of a media text, usually factual to represent one point of view more favourably than another.
• The show is literally based on two people's views on what they believe the people of Britain to be like. Not only that but they're two white, middle class men who don't have anyone elses experiences except their own, making the show bias.

• Black comedy- a type of comedy that deals with serious or disturbing subjects in a comic way.
• 'Little Britain' holds certain conventions of black comedy in that it does deal with serious issues and tends to make jokes of them. The style of comedy although very funny does have certain repercussions from their critics as any successful show.

• Censorship- the practice, exercised by elite groups in authority of monitoring and controlling media content by removing, surppressing or classifying elements deemed offensive or subversive for moral, political, economic, social or religious reasons.
• The show having a lot of content deemed to be repulsive in the two fat ladies sketch and offensive to women in nearly all of them hasn't been censored at all dispite some criticism. Controversial issues about assilum seekers, homosexuality and much more are allowed to be shown on a public service broadcaster and lately the main one (BBC1).

• Closed question- a question to which the answer is restrcited, assumed or obvious and which doesn't allow the person questioned a flexible response.

• Cognative dissonance- the feeling of inconsistency and disharmony experienced by an individual when strongly held attitudes, beliefs and values are contradicted or challenged by new information or a new experience.

• Cultivation theory (George gerbner)- research into how watching television affects people's views on the real world. They argue that television can have long term affects which can be very significant. Cultural imperialism- the dominance of Western, particularly the US, cultural values and ideolgies across the world e.g. Muslims as terrorists.
• Having a long term affect on audience's views towards the world from this show could prove controversial to passive audiences who may choose to see the show as telling the truth rather than making fun of what is the supposed truth could cause racism, misogyny and other forms of hatred possibly.