Final Exam

Question 1

Social Media

Answer 1

Social media is a collective term for websites and applications which focus on communication, community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration.

Question 2

Media Literacy

Answer 2

Media literacy, put simply, is the ability to identify different types of media and the messages they are sending. When we speak of media, it encompasses print media, such as newspapers, magazines and posters, and theatrical presentations, tweets, radio broadcasts, etc.

Question 3

New Media

Answer 3

New media is any media – from newspaper articles and blogs to music and podcasts – that are delivered digitally. From a website or email to mobile phones and streaming apps, any internet-related form of communication can be considered new media.
These are information and entertainment which
provide access via the Internet or through mobile
communication, such as online newspapers,
independent and alternative online news sources,
informational websites and blogs

Question 4

Website

Answer 4

A website is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server.

Question 5

Indigenous Media

Answer 5

Indigenous media may be defined as forms of media expression conceptualized, produced, and circulated by indigenous peoples around the globe as vehicles for communication, including cultural preservation, cultural and artistic expression, political self-determination, and cultural sovereignty.

Question 6

Cultivation Theory

Answer 6

Cultivation theory is a sociological and communications framework; it suggests that people who are regularly exposed to media for long periods of time are more likely to perceive the world’s social realities as they are presented by the media they consume, which in turn affects their attitudes and behaviours.
This social theory asserts that television is
responsible for shaping or cultivating the
viewer’s conception of reality

Question 7

Gatekeeping Theory

Answer 7

Gatekeeping is the process of selection of information according to importance and relevance. The information is also published according to the amount of importance the media wants the information to have.
It looks at the factors an editor as “gatekeeper” takes into consideration when deciding news which news will be published and which news will not.
Gatekeeping theory is the nexus between two inarguable facts: events occur everywhere all of the time and the news media cannot cover all of them. And so, when an event occurs, someone has to decide whether and how to pass the information to another person, such as a friend, an official, or even a journalist.

Question 8

Framing

Answer 8

After the public’s attention is drawn to certain topics or
issues decided by the news media (agenda-setting), the media then influence the public on how to think about these issues (framing) framing effects refer to behavioral or attitudinal strategies and/or outcomes that are due to how a given piece of information is being framed in public discourse.

Question 9

Agenda Setting Theory

Answer 9

The press and the media do not reflect reality; they filter and shape it. Media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues. Agenda-setting describes the “ability to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda”.

Question 10

Magic Bullet Theory

Answer 10

Mass media is able to influence a very large
group of people “directly, immediately and
powerfully,” almost as they were shot at or
injected with messages designed to trigger a
desired response. The magic bullet theory (also called the hypodermic needle theory) suggests that mass communication is like a gun firing bullets of information at a passive audience

Question 11

Two-Step flow Theory

Answer 11

The two-step flow of communication model says that most people form their opinions under the influence of opinion leaders, who in turn are influenced by the mass media.
Opinion leaders (media celebrities and
politicians) receive the information from the mass
media. Then these opinion leaders pass on their own
interpretations in addition to the actual media
content. Two-step flow model of communication, theory of communication that proposes that interpersonal interaction has a far stronger effect on shaping public opinion than mass media outlets.

Question 12

Deconstructing the message

Answer 12

Ads, news, movies, TV shows, and many other types of media all want you to accept their messages at face value. However, you should look beneath the surface and ask questions to decode what these media messages are really saying. Who is the source of the message?
Knowing who is responsible for a message can reveal its true intention, as well as any possible bias. If the source isn’t obvious, you can find it by following links or checking legal disclaimers.

Question 13

Peace

Answer 13

Peace is a concept of societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence. In a social sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict and freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups.

Question 14

Violence

Answer 14

Violence, an act of physical force that causes or is intended to cause harm. The damage inflicted by violence may be physical, psychological, or both. Violence may be distinguished from aggression, a more general type of hostile behaviour that may be physical, verbal, or passive in nature.

Question 15

Cultural Violence

Answer 15

notion that a culture can sanction violent acts developed into what we know as culture of violence theory today. Two prominent examples of culture legitimizing violence can be seen in rape myths and victim blaming.

Question 16

Structural Violence

Answer 16

Structural violence is a concept for a form of violence wherein some social structure or social institution may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs.

Question 17

Social Mobilization

Answer 17

Social mobilization is the process of bringing together all societal and personal influences to raise awareness of and demand for health care, assist in the delivery of resources and services, and cultivate sustainable individual and community involvement.

Question 18

Digital Advocacy

Answer 18

Digital advocacy is the use of technology to galvanize people towards a cause, whether it’s a policy or a product. It’s an organized effort to influence public perception. Digital advocacy describes efforts to mobilize constituents to participate in political advocacy through the use of technology.

Question 19

Digital Activism

Answer 19

Digital activism is the use of electronic communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular information to large and specific audiences as well as coordination.

Question 20

Traditional Media

Answer 20

Traditional media are the mass media institutions that predominated prior to the Information Age; particularly print media, film studios, music studios, advertising agencies, radio broadcasting, and television.

Question 21

Intercultural Competence

Answer 21

Cultural competence, also known as intercultural competence, is a continuous and life long journey to increase people’s skills in being proficient in intercultural and intra cultural knowledge which can improve the ability to work with people with different culture.

Question 22

Semiotics

Answer 22

Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the study of sign processes (semiosis), which are any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the sign’s interpreter. The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory.

Question 23

Multimodality

Answer 23

Multimodality is the application of multiple literacies within one medium. For example, understanding a televised weather forecast (medium) involves understanding spoken language, written language, weather specific language (such as temperature scales), geography, and symbols (clouds, sun, rain, etc.).

Question 24

Sign (dyadic model)

Answer 24

Saussure’s model of the sign is in the dyadic tradition. He defines a sign as being composed of a signifier and a signified. He emphasizes that a linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name but between a concept (signified) and a sound pattern (signifier). The signifier is usually the word or symbol that carries the sound pattern or signifier. The sound pattern is not actually a sound because sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer’s psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses.

Question 25

Sign (triadic model)

Answer 25

The American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce offered a triadic (three-part) model consisting of:

1. The representamen. This is sometimes called by some semioticians as the “sign vehicle” and the material or form which the sign takes. Example: the wearing of “barong tagalog” to celebrate National Heroes Day.
2. An object. Also called the referent, this is something beyond what the sign refers to. Example: The Filipinos’ notion that the “barong tagalog” is a national costume because of its history.
3. An interpretant: What one makes sense of the sign after reading it from a certain sign system. Example: The wearing of “barong tagalog” during National Heroes Day is being nationalistic.

Question 26

Icon

Answer 26

An icon (also called likeness and semblance) is a sign that denotes its object by virtue of a quality which is shared by them but which the icon has irrespectively of the object. The icon (for instance, a portrait or a diagram) resembles or imitates its object. An imitation is the process undergone by a sign in order to be an icon. The object (signifier) is seen to be physically similar with the signified. Drawing , portrait, photograph, cartoon are considered to be iconic signs.

Question 27

Index

Answer 27

Index/indexical mode –Signs must undergo the process of association. Causality of the object (signifier) to the representamen (signified) must be considered. Medical symptoms, thunder, rain, smoke to indicate fire, handwriting, catchphrases, logos are considered to be indeces.

Question 28

Symbol

Answer 28

A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different concepts and experiences.

Question 29

Semantics

Answer 29

Study of knowledge encoded in the vocabulary of the language, patterns for building more elaborate meanings, up to the level of sentence meanings. In linguistics, semantics is the subfield that studies meaning. Semantics can address meaning at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, or larger units of discourse

Question 30

Pragmatics

Answer 30

Interaction of semantic knowledge with knowledge of the world. Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics and semiotics that studies how context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, linguistics and anthropology

Question 31

Context

Answer 31

Context refers to the text or speech surrounding an expression (word, sentence, or speech act). Verbal context influences the way an expression is understood; hence the norm of not citing people out of context.

Question 32

Interpretation

Answer 32

The basic definition of interpretation, according to the Webster dictionary is the “action of explaining the meaning of something; the way something is explained or understood.”
In terms of language, the definition of interpretation should be broader: rendering a spoken or signed message into another spoken or signed language, preserving the register and meaning of the source language content.
It is the spoken or signed language communication between users of different languages. A language interpreter or sign language interpreter must not only quickly and carefully interpret meaning, but also tone and intent of the original message into the target or interpreted language.

Question 33

Explicature

Answer 33

Basic interpretation using contextual information. Explicature is a technical term in pragmatics, the branch of linguistics that concerns the meaning given to an utterance by its context.

Question 34

Implicature

Answer 34

What is hinted at by an utterance in its particular context, what the sender’s “agenda” is. An implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed.

Question 35

Denotation

Answer 35

Whatever the expression denotes. Denotation is a translation of a sign to its meaning, precisely to its literal meaning, more or less like dictionaries try to define it. It is also the literal or primary meaning of a word, in contrast to the feelings or ideas that the word suggests.

Question 36

Subjective Culture

Answer 36

Subjective culture comprises ideas, attitudes and beliefs. An inter-culturist would focus primarily on subjective culture.
The definition of subjective culture is followed by a listing of the elements of subjective culture and an examination of the content of each element and the methodological problems in studying that element.

Question 37

Iceberg Model

Answer 37

Hall developed the iceberg analogy of culture. If the culture of a society was the iceberg, Hall reasoned, than there are some aspects visible, above the water, but there is a larger portion hidden beneath the surface.
What does that mean?
The external, or conscious, part of culture is what we can see and is the tip of the iceberg and includes behaviors and some beliefs. The internal, or subconscious, part of culture is below the surface of a society and includes some beliefs and the values and thought patterns that underlie behavior.

Question 38

Cross-Cultural Communication

Answer 38

Cross cultural communication thus refers to the communication between people who have differences in any one of the following: styles of working, age, nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Cross cultural communication can also refer to the attempts that are made to exchange, negotiate and mediate cultural differences by means of language, gestures and body language. It is how people belonging to different cultures communicate with each other.

Question 39

World Englishes

Answer 39

World Englishes is a term for emerging localized or indigenized varieties of English, especially varieties that have developed in territories influenced by the United Kingdom or the United States.

Question 40

Concentric Circles

Answer 40

Kachru constructed a model of the different uses of English around the world. This model is comprised of three concentric circles, which he labelled: the inner circle, the outer circle and the expanding circle.
1) The inner circle
The inner circle is comprised of those countries who are considered the ‘traditional bases’ of English, such as the U.K., U.S.A, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and anglophone Canada.
2) The outer circle
The outer circle is comprised of countries where English is not spoken natively but is still maintained as an important language for communication (e.g. as an official ‘second’ language or as the nation’s official language for business and commerce) largely due to historical reasons.
3) The expanding circle
The expanding circle includes much of the rest of the world’s population - countries that do not hold historical or governmental importance towards English, but class it as a foreign language or lingua franca.

Question 41

Globalization

Answer 41

Globalization, or globalisation, is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide.

Question 42

Diaspora

Answer 42

A diaspora is a scattered population whose origin lies in a separate geographic locale. Historically, the word diaspora was used to refer to the mass dispersion of a population from its indigenous territories.