A complete, active 60-minute AQA A Level Media Studies lesson exploring how meaning is created, controlled and contested through a controversial Converse advertisement.
Students investigate the advert through media language, representation, audiences and media industries. The lesson develops from close textual analysis to increasingly challenging theoretical debate, culminating in a structured plan for a 20-mark AQA-style essay.
The resource encourages students to distinguish evidence from inference and consider whether meaning is controlled by producers, shaped by industry decisions or created by audiences.
THE LESSON INCLUDES
• A professionally designed PowerPoint lesson
• A student workbook containing every activity
• A detailed teacher guide and answer booklet
• Advert annotation and first-response tasks
• Fact versus inference activity
• Barthes meaning-chain analysis
• Hall’s preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings
• Theory jigsaw covering Gilroy, bell hooks, Jenkins, and Curran and Seaton
• Analysis of the advertising approval chain
• Judgement-line classroom debate
• A structured plan for a 20-mark essay
• Model paragraph and indicative responses
• Marking and feedback guidance
• Links to supporting sources
• Copyright and classroom-use guidance
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Students will:
• Analyse how media language constructs meanings
• Explore contested representations and ideology
• Apply audience and industry theories accurately
• Evaluate the relative power of producers and audiences
• Construct a supported judgement suitable for an extended AQA response
SUITABLE FOR
• AQA A Level Media Studies
• Year 12 or Year 13
• Representation, audiences and industries revision
• Unseen-media preparation
• Formal lesson observations
• Cover lessons for an experienced Media Studies group
No additional worksheet preparation is required. The PowerPoint, workbook and teacher materials are designed to work together as a complete lesson.
Please note: this is a teacher-created resource and is not endorsed by AQA. The advertisement is included for critical classroom analysis; copyright guidance is provided in the teacher materials.

AQA Media Studies, A Level Media Studies, Converse advert, representation, audience theory, Stuart Hall, Barthes, Gilroy, bell hooks, Jenkins, Curran and Seaton, advertising, unseen media, 20-mark essay