Key terminology

Media text -
Any product in discussion. Can be any type of media: Trailers, music and a newspaper are examples.

Study tool -
An interesting acronym of relative importance would be liar. Language, Institute, Audience and Representation is what it stands for.
Language means codes and conventions. Media texts follow certain rules depending on the platform used; for example, TV/Film follow the rules of visual media. Keep in mind that shot types, mis-en-scene, editing and sound are all relevant.

Media institutions -
Institutions create media texts, ranging from small independent companies to conglomerates.

Media audiences -
These are the people who indulge in a media text. They are often grouped, depending on their age, race, ethnicity and other such things. A lot of media texts are designed to appeal to a certain audience, for example a profuse amounts of One Directions songs are aimed at teenage girls, whereas Stormzy's product is aimed at young teenage boys.

Media representation -
This is the way in which media represents a certain group of people, such as the way Only Fools and Horses portrays working class men.

Genre -
Genre comes from the French word for Type. Media genres cal apply to all different types of audiences. For example, Cory in the house may appeal to anime fans.
Each genre has their own set of distinguishing features, such as style, setting, characters, props and colours and lighting. Children films would be brighter and will generally likeable main character, to allow the children to empathise with them, and potentially buy the films merchandise, whereas a horror film would be more sullen, with multiple protagonists who are vulnerable, to bring about a sense of fear and uneasiness to the viewer, leading them to believe their first encounter with the antagonist will be their final.
With genres there are also sub and hybrid genres. A sub-genre would be that Zombie movies would be associated with horror, as Zombies are scary. A hybrid genre is where there is more than one genre in a piece of media, like a song may be pop-punk, like a lot of Fall Out Boy's work, or a book being a Sci-Fi comedy, such as Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy.

Narrative -
A story is a sequence of events. A narrative is the way the aforementioned events are put together to be presented to the audience. There may be a linear narrative, which is when the story is told in it's original story.  A non-linear narrative is when a film uses different techniques to tell the story in a different order, such as in the movie Pulp Fiction. Said film contains various flashbacks and time skips.
Narrative is delivered to the audience by expectation, suspense, tension and closure. It was designed to lead audiences to expect certain things to happen.