Theories

There are many ways you can apply theories to what conventions a music video or any other form of advertising or entertainment has.

In a 1973 study by Katz, Gurevitch and Haas, mass media was described as a means by which individuals connect or disconnect themselves with others. They developed 35 needs based on the social and psychological functions of the mass media, and placed them in five categories:

• (1) Cognitive needs — Acquiring information, knowledge and understanding;
• (2) Affective needs — Emotion, pleasure, feelings;
• (3) Personal integrative needs — Credibility, stability, status;
• (4) Social integrative needs — Family and friends; and
• (5) Tension release needs — Escape and diversion.

An example of this would be how adults may watch soaps such as Eastenders as escapism from there busy world to take sometime out and relax to watch it as they can relate to some aspects of the soap to thier own lives.

Frith (1988) talks about how music videos are characterized into three catogories, there catagories are:

• Performance based-To covey a in-concert experience, performance based.
• Narative based- Has a sory line to do with the lyrics of the music video
• Concept based-Metaphor based video which has more then one meaning, in other words quite random.