📕SOCIOLOGY PPE Section B

Question 1

Direct effects

Answer 1

theory that media content has immediate impact on audience behaviour, Suggesting a straightforward relationship between media messages and audience actions.

Question 2

Indirect effects

Answer 2

The theory that media influences audiences gradually over time, shaping attitudes and behaviours through cumulative exposure rather than immediate impacts.

Question 3

Active
audience

Answer 3

The concept that audiences actively interpret media messages rather than passively receiving them. Viewers bring their own experiences, knowledge, and critical thinking to decode media content.

Question 4

Moral panics

Answer 4

Widespread public fear and concern about a perceived threat to social values, often exaggerated or manufactured by media coverage. Characterized by disproportionate
reaction to the actual threat level.

Question 5

Deviance
amplification

Answer 5

The process by which media coverage of deviant behaviour can increase its occurrence
by giving it attention and inadvertently normalizing or glamorizing it.

Question 6

Age (young and old)

Answer 6

Media portrayals of different age groups, with particular attention to representations of youth and the elderly often revealing societal attitudes toward age.

Question 7

Gender (masculinity
and femininity)

Answer 7

Media representations of male and female characteristics, behaviours, and roles.

Examines how gender is constructed, portrayed, and sometimes challenged through media content.

Question 8

Social class (middle,
working, upper, under)

Answer 8

How different socioeconomic groups are depicted in media, often reinforcing class stereotypes and power structures.

Analysis focuses on how media represents wealth, poverty, and class-based attributes.

Question 9

Ethnicity (majority
and minority ethnic
groups)

Answer 9

How media portrays different ethnic groups, often reinforcing stereotypes of minority groups while normalizing majority ethnic representations. Analysis focuses on power dynamics in these portrayals and how they evolve over time.

Question 10

Liberalism

Answer 10

Emphasizes free market principles in media ownership and content production. Views media as serving consumer demands in a democracy where different viewpoints can be expressed freely.

Question 11

Pluralism

Answer 11

Views media as reflecting diverse viewpoints in society with multiple competing perspectives. Media is seen as relatively independent from state control, representing various interest groups rather than a single dominant class.

Question 12

Postmodernism

Answer 12

Rejects grand narratives about media effects, focusing instead on how media fragments reality into simulations and hyperreality. Media creates its own reality rather than
representing an external truth.

Question 13

Marxism

Answer 13

Views media as an instrument of the ruling class that produces content reinforcing capitalist ideology. Media representations serve to maintain class inequality by promoting dominant values and distracting the working class.

Question 14

neo-Marxism

Answer 14

A modernized version of Marxist theory that acknowledges media’s role in ideological control while recognizing audience agency and the possibility of resistant readings.
Focuses on hegemony rather than direct control.

Question 15

Van Dijk (1991)

Answer 15

Analysed media representations of minority and majority ethnic groups, finding systematic bias in how newspapers depicted racial minorities. Revealed linguistic strategies used to subtly reinforce negative stereotypes while maintaining a veneer of objectivity.

Question 16

Malik (2002)

Answer 16

Examined inaccurate representations of ethnicity in television, highlighting how media tends to homogenize diverse ethnic groups and perpetuate problematic stereotypes that influence public perception.

Question 17

Barker (1999)

Answer 17

Studied ethnic representation in the soap opera EastEnders, analysing how characters from minority backgrounds were portrayed and how these representations evolved over
time in response to changing social attitudes.

Question 18

Tuchman
(1978)

Answer 18

Introduced the concept of “symbolic annihilation” to describe how women were underrepresented, trivialised, or condemned in media, effectively erasing their significance in society through limited and stereotypical portrayals.

Question 19

Gill (2008)

Answer 19

Documented the shift from passive to active representations of women in advertising, noting the emergence of the “sexually empowered woman” as a new but potentially problematic stereotype in modern media.

Question 20

Gauntlett
(2008)

Answer 20

Analysed the development of more equal gender roles in media, highlighting how representations have become more complex but still often reinforce traditional gender expectations in subtle ways.

Question 21

Dodd and
Dodd (1992)

Answer 21

Examined representations of working-class characters in EastEnders, revealing how soap operas both reflect and shape public perceptions of class identities and relations.

Question 22

Jones (2012)

Answer 22

Analysed portrayals of working class characters in media, focusing on how class stereotypes persist even in supposedly realistic depictions of everyday life.

Question 23

Price (2014)

Answer 23

Studied media portrayals of underclass and poverty, highlighting how media often frame poverty as a personal failing rather than a structural
issue.

Question 24

Nairn (1988)

Answer 24

Investigated representations of the Royal family in media, showing how coverage reinforces the monarchy’s symbolic importance while carefully managing public
perception.

Question 25

Heintz-Knowles (2002)

Answer 25

Examined portrayals of children in media, finding that representations often strip children of agency or present them as either innocent victims or troublesome problems.

Question 26

Wayne (2007)

Answer 26

Analysed portrayals of youth in news media, revealing systematic bias toward negative representations that associate young people with crime, disorder, and moral decline

Question 27

Turkle (1995)

Answer 27

Presented a postmodern perspective on television and internet as reality, examining how digital media blurs boundaries between the real and the virtual.

Question 28

Lardis (2002)

Answer 28

Studied one-dimensional portrayals of older people in media, finding that elderly characters are often marginalized, stereotyped, or used as comic relief rather than presented as complex individuals.

Question 29

Milliband (1969)

Answer 29

Presented media as a "new opium of the people," arguing that mass media serves to distract working classes from their exploitation under capitalism, maintaining the status quo.

Question 30

Hall (1981)

Answer 30

Analysed stereotyping of ethnicity from a neo-Marxist perspective, introducing the concept of "encoding/decoding" to explain how media messages are created and interpreted within ideological frameworks.

Question 31

Whale (1980)

Answer 31

Presented a pluralist view of media representations, arguing that diverse ownership and competing interests in media lead to a range of perspectives being represented.

Question 32

Williams (2010)

Answer 32

Analysed journalism as part of democracy, highlighting the media's role in holding power to account and representing diverse public interests.

Question 33

Mulvey (1975)

Answer 33

Introduced the concept of "the male gaze" to describe how visual media is constructed from a masculine point of view, objectifying women for male pleasure.

Question 34

Lauzen (2014)

Answer 34

Documented the under-representation of women in the film industry, both on-screen and in production roles, revealing systematic gender bias in Hollywood.

Question 35

Whelehan (2000)

Answer 35

Analysed the rise of laddism in media as a backlash against feminism, showing how seemingly ironic sexist humour serves to undermine messages of gender equality.

Question 36

Strinati (1995)

Answer 36

Explored media saturation in contemporary society, arguing that the omnipresence of media messages makes them increasingly difficult to critically evaluate.

Question 37

Baudrillard (1994)

Answer 37

Introduced the concept of "hyperreality" to describe how media creates simulations that become more significant than the reality they supposedly represent.

Question 38

Hall (1973)

Answer 38

Developed the encoding/decoding model of media content, arguing that audiences actively interpret media messages within their social context rather than passively receiving them.

Question 39

Hall (1978)

Answer 39

Examined the ideological function of moral panics, arguing that they serve to reinforce dominant power structures by directing public anxiety toward marginalized groups.

Question 40

Anderson et al (2003)

Answer 40

Studied the effects of violent song lyrics, finding correlations between exposure to violent content in music and increased aggressive thoughts and hostile perceptions.

Question 41

Newson (1994)

Answer 41

Examined the desensitizing effect of children's exposure to media violence, arguing that repeated exposure normalizes violent behaviour and reduces empathy.

Question 42

Packard (1957)

Answer 42

Proposed the "hypodermic syringe model" of media effects, suggesting that media messages are directly "injected" into the passive minds of audiences, producing immediate and uniform responses.

Question 43

McQuail (1987)

Answer 43

Categorized different uses of media by audiences, developing a framework for understanding why people consume media and what benefits they derive from it.

Question 44

Klapper (1960)

Answer 44

Proposed the selective filter model, suggesting that audiences selectively expose themselves to, perceive, and retain media messages based on existing beliefs and attitudes.

Question 45

Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955)

Answer 45

Developed the two-step flow model of communication, arguing that media effects are mediated by "opinion leaders" who interpret messages for their social networks.

Question 46

Bandura (1961, 1963)

Answer 46

Conducted the famous Bobo doll experiments demonstrating that children learn and imitate aggressive behaviours they see modelled in media, providing evidence for social learning theory.

Question 47

Young (2003)

Answer 47

Analysed the narrative context of media violence, suggesting that the framing and justification of violence in media narratives influences its potential effects on audiences.

Question 48

Cohen (1972)

Answer 48

Analysed folk devils and moral panics, examining how media constructs deviant groups as threats to social values, leading to disproportionate public reaction.

Question 49

Wilkins (1967)

Answer 49

Studied deviance amplification, showing how media coverage of deviant behaviour can create feedback loops that increase its prevalence and public concern.

Question 50

Goode and Ben- Yehuda (1994)

Answer 50

Identified the elements of a moral panic, including concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality, and volatility in public and media responses to perceived threats.

Question 51

McRobbie (1994)

Answer 51

Analysed the changing influence of moral panics in a fragmented media landscape, suggesting that diverse media and active audiences have complicated the dynamics of public anxiety.