Worked Examples

Question One · media and wider society

"Old media is now scared stiff. They finally have figured out that they must adapt – or die." (Ted Gioia)

Step 1 — Unpack it

• "Old media" is doing the heavy lifting — and it's undefined. Broadcast TV? Print news? Radio? Record labels? Cinema? Your first job is to stake out what you take it to mean and defend the choice. The 2025 report singles out failure to define this term as the main reason responses fell short.
• "Scared stiff" / "finally figured out" — the quotation claims old media was complacent and is now reacting from fear, late. Do you accept that account of why it's adapting? There's an argumentative opening here most candidates missed.
• "Adapt – or die" — a stark binary. Is it true? Some media adapted (radio → podcasts and streaming apps), some died in form but survived by remediation, some persist unchanged in niches (print books, vinyl). The binary itself can be the thing you evaluate.

Step 2 — Thesis options

Step 3 — A four-move plan

1. Establish the fear, concretely. The measurable collapse of the old model: linear TV audiences and advertising migrating to platforms and streaming. NZ evidence is sharp here — recent newsroom closures and cutbacks make "scared stiff" literal. Theory: gatekeeping and the advertising filter (Chomsky & Herman) explain what's actually being lost.
2. Test "adapt": who has, and how. A case of genuine adaptation — broadcasters building streaming platforms, radio becoming podcast networks. Theory: remediation — old media absorbed and refashioned rather than replaced.
3. Counter-move: the binary breaks down. Media that neither adapted nor died (niche print, cinema's post-pandemic persistence), and "adaptation" that amounts to dying more slowly. This is where you argue with Gioia rather than illustrating him.
4. Evaluate and extrapolate. Whose problem is this — media companies', or democracy's? End on the future-trends move the Outstanding criteria reward: if the adaptation logic continues, what does "old media" look like in ten years, and who funds the journalism?

Question Two · media production

"'Make me care' – please, emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically, just make me care." (Andrew Stanton)

Step 1 — Unpack it

• Three registers, named. Emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically — the quotation hands you an essay structure. How did your production try to make an audience care in each register? Which did you prioritise, and why?
• "Make me" — caring is produced, not hoped for. It's the result of deliberate craft decisions. That's the production-context claim you must demonstrate from your own work.
• The implied audience. "Me" is a viewer pleading. Every part of your answer should stay anchored to a defined audience — the report is blunt that answers without one fail.

Step 2 — What the question requires (and weak answers miss)

Question Two always demands critical understanding of one medium and its production context, evidenced by your own production experience. The structure that works, for each decision you discuss: decision → reason (audience) → constraint → outcome → connection to professional practice — the same framework as the Production Reflection page. The fatal pattern, named in every report from 2023 to 2025: narrating the process ("we storyboarded, then filmed, then edited") instead of analysing decisions and outcomes.

Step 3 — A plan shape

1. Position. Take a stance on Stanton's plea — e.g. "making audiences care is the entire job, and in my production every aesthetic choice was secretly an emotional one." Define your production, medium, and intended audience in two sentences.
2. Emotional register. One concrete decision (casting, music, a held shot) made to produce feeling; the constraint that shaped it; whether it worked — with evidence from real audience response. Connect to a model text or named creator who solves the same problem.
3. Intellectual / aesthetic registers. A decision that asked the audience to think, or a style choice that earned attention; same structure. This is where genre conventions, mode of address, and your medium's affordances do analytical work.
4. The honest evaluation. Where you failed to make them care, and why — examiners consistently reward critical reflection on shortcomings over success stories. End by generalising: what your experience reveals about how professional media engineers care at scale.

Question Three · close reading of media texts

"Film-making [or other media productions] is a way of understanding the world." (Alice Rohrwacher)

Step 1 — Unpack it

• An epistemological claim. Media doesn't just depict the world; it's an instrument for understanding it. Your close readings must show texts producing understanding — of history, identity, power, fear — not just representing things.
• Understanding for whom? The maker (production as inquiry), the audience (texts as lenses), or the culture (genres as collective sense-making)? Choosing one — or arguing they're inseparable — is your thesis decision.
• The plural: "media productions". Question Three expects close reading across texts. The report is explicit that single-text answers, or scattered texts with no thematic connection, fail. Your texts need a connecting spine.

Step 2 — Thesis options

Step 3 — A plan shape

1. Stake the claim. What kind of understanding your chosen texts produce, and through which formal means. Theory frame: Hall on representation as construction, or genre theory as collective sense-making.
2. Close reading one. A specific sequence analysed at the level of camera, sound, editing — showing the mechanism by which form produces understanding. Production/release context included: who made it, when, under what pressures.
3. Close reading two — extend or complicate. A second text that develops the argument (different era, different culture, or a text that fails to produce understanding — spectacle without insight — sharpening your criteria).
4. Evaluate the claim itself. Limits of "understanding the world" through media: whose world, whose understanding, curated by what industry? Link back to Rohrwacher with a position you've earned.