Genre

"Genre isn't fixed but is dynamic and changing over time"

Steve Neale - 'Genres are instances of repetition and difference' (1980, 45)
                    - 'Difference is absolutely essential to the economy of genre' (1980)

Tzvetan Todorov - 'Any instances of a genre will be necessarily different' (1985, 60)

Lacey - 'Repertoire is elements' that work together to suggest genre and that these are a useful                                              framework to use for analysis'

Gledhill - 'There are no rigid rules of inclusion and exclusion' (1985)
              - 'Genre… are not discrete systems, consisting of a fixed number of listable items' (1985)

Chandler - 'It is difficult to make clear cut distinctions between one genre and another; genres overlap, and there are 'mixed genres' such as comedy thrillers' (2000)

Burton - 'each text is given genre shares particular key elements to make up the generic formula, these include; Protagonists, Stock Characters, Plots and Stock Situations, Icons, Background and Décor Themes'

Rick Altman - 'there are two ways to look at genre, the semantic approach and the syntactic approach. The sematnic is casing that here are certain signifiers that suggest genre, such as the with conventions of characters, location,  props, shooting style, music and other signifiers. The syntactic approach is about the realties between these elements and also narrative structure'

Baudrillade - hyperreality and mediation

Henry Jenkins - participatorial and spectatorial

Stan Cohen - moral panics (everybody has got involved in a smaller situation), deviance amplification (one deviant act triggers more deviant acts due to other people feeling that because one person is able to do it, they are also able to do so),  folk devils (certain groups of people can be dangerous and damaging towards the rest of the people)

Gerbner - mean world syndrome/cultivation theory (people that watch a lot of TV over estimate the amount of crime in the real world, so by consuming media, people will over estimate how mean the world is)

David Gauntlett - 'Identities are not 'given' but are constructed and negotiated'

David Buckingham - 'A focus on identity requires us to pay close attention to the diverse ways in which media and technologies are uses in everyday life, and their consequences for both individuals and for social groups'

Gramsky - Society is run by the ruling elite (very small group of people) to make sure they keep their position. Therefore the media is run by a very small group of people who wish to maintain their status and position. Hegemony (Gramsky's theory)

Steve Anderson - 'younger people are becoming a lot more empowered because of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging' - power is transferring away from older people in charge of producing media, to the audience itself (through social media).
1b answer 
Attempt to identify genre by referring to the following; Setting, Character, Narrative, Iconography, Style

Genre can be identified in a variety of different ways, for example by setting, character, narrative, iconography and style 

Narrative theory - meaning, structure, character and conflict and resolution

Meaning - Roland Barthes - texts may be 'open' (i.e. unravelled in a lot of different ways) or 'closed' (i.e. there is only one obvious thread to pull on") Barthes also decided that the threads that you pull on to try and unravel meaning are called narrative codes. 
Structure - Tvzetan Todorov - texts are constructed around the basic scaffolding of equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium.
Character - Vladimir Propp - produced a character typography of characters and their actions.