Because of all this, and the sheer amount of time we spend consuming it, particularly television, it is in our interests that we get the most out of it, that we understand it and that our responses to it are more active than passive. For more information go to ATOM's site here . Most public and private Secondary Schools in Australia have a Media Studies component. Most major tertiary institutions run courses, with Deakin University and Swinburne in Melbourne offering particularly strong courses in Media Studies. There are also some entire educational institutions devoted to it - Sydney Film and Television School, being one.
Genre is a French term used for classifying types of media programs or products.
For example, Science Fiction, Westerns, Soap Operas, are all types of genres. For example, space ships and aliens are conventions of Science Fiction, whether it's a book or a film. Popular culture is the values, beliefs, practices, stories, images, songs, etc, that grow out of and express a particular way of life. Today it usually refers to those mass media products and ideas that briefly capture the public imagination or that occasionally embed themselves in the language of the culture they have become popular in. Sometimes it is a bit of both.