TEST 2 mass media Flashcards

Question

Columbia research found what?

Answer 1

Columbia research and individual decision news seem to change and few attentions. The newspaper and broadcaster did not change who they were going to vote for. We aggrade to the media in what we believe. Examine the media, and the world view and political ideologies is influence by parents older can change.

Answer 2

Randomly selected people are manipulated in a controlled environment. While never knowing they are in an experiment. Are manipulating to get data. This can be seen as unethical. Difficult to change someone's opinion.

Answer 3

There is a control group before and after are compare. It is reflexive this is reality naturalistic, and they know but are controlled.

Answer 4

essame street. The electric company, bill nye the science guy, reading raw bow, the magic school bus. Mr. Rogers neighborhood. They can in sesame street, programs that were very educative.

Answer 5

Surveillance or interpretation

Answer 6

Theory that states in the development of any social or political issues, the more highly educated segment of a population knows more about the issues early on and, in fact acquire information about those issues at a faster rate than the less educated segments, and so the difference between the two types of people grows wider.

Answer 7

how fast mass media speeding is.

Answer 8

When, how, and why people use various mass media or genres of mass media content.

Answer 9

the separation between those who have access to and knowledge about technology and those who (perhaps because of their level of education or income) do not.

Answer 10

Those who have and those who have not, capitalism.

Answer 11

Frankfort school, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Nore, viewing capitalism influence and working-class expectation. How the class divides lower class

Answer 12

Option different than Mainstream approaches (research models that developed out of the works of the Columbia school, the Yale school and the payment fund studies.)

Answer 13

Based on Marx and developed by the Frankfurt school

Answer 14

Differences of option on how to look at mass media, a bout where their powers lie, and a bout which of their aspects should be studied

Answer 15

Famous book to read: Critique theory, Stehpen Buner.

Answer 16

Mark capitalism: Meant from a ruling cast, to exploit the working class.

Answer 17

Capitalism Critique theory Co-optation Political Economy= Relationship between symbiotic economics and cultures. Rich and powerful. Wealthy and powerful society. The idea mediated systems Politics, culture, and all of that is connected that countries that have wealth. The mores, norms, pop-culture how they are related and work together. Critical Media industries research= Researching the media, operate between interviewing media workers. They analyze company records, they will examine the press, they will look at the publications. Surveillance capitalism: Company track, profit between users and collect a lot of data. Colonialism: When a powerful colonizes and controls and environment. Cultural colonialism: David Sheller studied can fuse weaker country with cultural materials. The idea in which various forms to influence and infuse the American values ideologies and the materials. And they reflect the values. Reflect the dominant culture, such as the American. First world countries that are reflecting, that we are wearing. Comedies material products.

Answer 18

Relationship between symbiotic economics and cultures. Rich and powerful. Wealthy and powerful society. The idea mediated systems Politics, culture, and all of that is connected that countries that have wealth. The mores, norms, pop-culture how they are related and work together.

Answer 19

Researching the media, operate between interviewing media workers. They analyze company records, they will examine the press, they will look at the publications.

Answer 20

Company track, profit between users and collect a lot of data.

Answer 21

Che guar t-shirt, commodity capitalist or revolutionary. Tame it, sell it and commodify it.

Answer 22

A conflict of interest can arise when conglomerates with a direct stake in business outside of journalism own the media outlets through which the public is informed. Example: Brian Ross’s “Disney: The mouse Betrayed” News segment. ABC news killed a journalism in1998. Recording Bryan ross, by peter Marshell.

Answer 23

Brian Ross, Peter marshall

Answer 24

Studies emphasize that when media systematically portray certain populations in unfavorable ways, the ideas that mainstream audiences pick up about those people help certain groups in society retain their power over the groups they denigrate. Although the phenomenon affects the individual, it also has a larger social implication.

Answer 25

Mean world syndrome(link). George Gerbner A famous cultivation, violence and cultivation. Violence makes us more scared of cultivations studies. Propaganda control people If they be afraid (George Gerbner). The people value security, that idea that if there is so much violence in the world, I'm at risk. 2/3 says that news from television Michel morgan. That is how they are portrayed in movies, human cost of mean world syndrome. Instill fear and create as giber, particular race and anxiety.

Answer 26

Studies start with the idea that all sorts of mass media, from newspapers to movies, present their audiences with technologies and texts and that audiences find meaning in them. When scholars ask questions that center on how to think about what “making meaning of technologies and texts means and what consequences it has for those audiences in society. Historical approaches Anthropological approaches Linguistic and literary approaches: How we interpret dose

Answer 27

When scholars ask questions that center on how to think about what “making meaning of technologies and texts means and what consequences it has for those audiences in society. Historical approaches Anthropological approaches Linguistic and literary approaches: How we interpret dos

Answer 28

Are the questions the researcher is asking interesting and important? Into what research does the study fall? How good is the research design? How convincing is the analysis? What do you wish the researchers would do next in their research? Where do you respect the effects and the result of media in society? Become better consumers and media literate hinder us or those it has and impact?

Answer 29

Mass communication researchers have been grappling for decades with the most important social issues involving media. Knowledge of mass communication research traditions and discoveries is crucial to developing media literacy. (31)

Answer 30

Research is the application of a systematic method to solve a problem or understand it better than in the past. (31)

Answer 31

Mass media research, then, entails the use of systematic methods to understand or solve problems related to the mass media. It asks about the role mass media play in improving or degrading the relationships, values, and ideals of society and the people who make up that society. This chapter addresses society’s bottom line, not a company’s bottom line. (31)

Answer 32

Early critical studies scholars explored the ideas behind a mass society. Did widespread media allow for a greater sense of community? Some scholars, such as Dewey, saw these media as enabling democratic participation and the formation of a common notion of society. (32-33)

Answer 33

Others feared propaganda, or messages designed to change people’s attitudes and behaviors. (33-5)

Answer 34

Interest moved to the role journalists played in their selection of news to cover. Lippmann raised the notion of “agenda setting,” the idea that media create “the ideas in our heads.” (33)

Answer 35

The magic bullet or hypodermic needle approach suggested that propaganda affected everyone in the same way at the same time. This idea was quickly modified due to its oversimplification of audience responses.

Answer 36

The Payne Fund studies employed a range of techniques to examine the question of the impact of violent films on young people. They found that youngsters’ reactions to movies were not uniform. Rather, they depended on key social and psychological differences among children. (35-36)

Answer 37

In the 1940s, researchers put forth a new theory that placed social relations—or the interactions among people—alongside individual social and psychological differences and the part those relations played in the way individuals interpreted media messages. (36)

Answer 38

Paul Lazarsfeld and other Columbia sociologists developed the two-step flow model of media influence. This model states that media messages are diffused in two stages: (1) media content is picked up by people who use the media frequently and (2) these people act as opinion leaders when discussing that content with others. Those others are then influenced by the media in a way that is one step removed from the original content. (36-37 and Figure 2.3 on p. 37)

Answer 39

Lazarsfeld and his associates developed the concept of an active audience, meaning that people are not simply passive receivers of media messages. (38)

Answer 40

Another outgrowth of the Columbia School research is the uses and gratifications model, which examines how people use media products to meet their needs and interests. This model of analysis maintains that it is as important to know what people do with media as it is to know what media do to people. (38)

Answer 41

Further analysis (Carl Hovland’s naturalistic experiments summarized as The American Soldier) emerged from the Second World War era and showed that even materials specifically designed to persuade people would succeed only under limited circumstances and with only certain types of people. This area of inquiry is called limited effects research. (39)

Answer 42

In the 1950s, researchers began building on previous findings. These later approaches can be divided into three areas of study: (1) opinion and behavior change, (2) what people learn from media, and (3) the motivations and applications of media use. (40-43)

Answer 43

In terms of opinion and behavior change, researchers look at the effects of TV violence on children and of sexually explicit material for adults. Family, social setting, and personality have a bearing on the results. Heavy exposure may lead to desensitization. (40)

Answer 44

In terms of what people learn from media, researchers have found that children can learn basic skills such as vocabulary. Media content, in theory, enables adults to participate in a democratic society; however, media content is also highly selective. Priming is the process through which the media affect how people evaluate media content. Not all people pay attention to media, nor does everyone have access to media content. This lack of access results in a knowledge gap, with those with access receiving information faster and earlier than other population segments. (40-43)

Answer 45

In terms of the applications and motivations for people’s media use, researchers draw on uses and gratifications research and sometimes media effects to develop answers to the question, “Why do people enjoy programming like radio soap operas and quiz shows?” A serious answer arises with the digital divide, that is, a separation between those who have knowledge access and those who do not due to limited education or income. (43-45; see Figure 2.4 on p. 45)

Answer 46

One problem is the research stresses change rather than continuity. By stressing change over continuity, critics contend that much of mainstream research focuses on whether a change will occur as a result of media exposure, ignoring the possibility that the many important effects of the media have to do not with changing people but with encouraging them to continue certain actions or views on life. Although outlooks or behavior may not be changed by media content directly, they may be reinforced by it. (45-46) The other problem is its emphasis on the active audience member in the media environment, rather than the power of larger social forces controlling that media environment. By focusing so much on the role of the individual, mainstream researchers are accused of ignoring the impact of social power. What ought to be studied, critics say, is how powerful groups come to influence the most widespread media images in ways that help them stay in power. (46)

Answer 47

“Critical theory” is the term used to describe these points of departure from mainstream media research. (47)

Answer 48

The Frankfurt School of researchers focused on the cultural implications of Marxism, or the belief that the direction of history would eventually result in labor’s overthrow of capitalism and, in turn, the more equal distribution of resources in society. Scholars wrote about the corrosive impact of capitalism on culture, emphasizing the ability of the mass media to control people’s worldviews. (46-47)

Answer 49

o-optation is used to explain how capitalism takes potentially revolutionary ideas and tames them to express capitalist ideals. (47)

Answer 50

Political economy theorists, in contrast, focus on the link between economics and culture. They ask when and how the economic structures of society and media systems reflect the political interests of society’s rich and powerful. Most critical work in this area focuses on how institutional and organizational relationships create requirements for media firms that lead them to create and circulate certain types of material over others. McChesney raised the issue of media conglomeration as an exacerbating and alarming trend. Concerns are raised over corporate ownership and suppression of certain topics of reporting. (47-48 and Figure 2.5 on p. 49)

Answer 51

Some political economists who are concerned about the corrosive impact of U.S. media content on other cultures study cultural colonialism—the exercise of control over an area or people by a dominant power not so much through force of arms as by surrounding the weaker countries with cultural materials that reflect values and beliefs that support the interests of the dominant power. (48-49)

Answer 52

Cultivation studies researchers focus less on industry relationships and more on information about the work that people pick up from media portrayals. It differs from mainstream research by taking the following approach: when media systematically portray certain populations in unfavourable ways, the ideas that mainstream audiences pick up about those people help certain groups in society keep power over the groups they denigrate. Further, George Gerbner argued that TV violence causes people to feel more strongly that the world is a scary, mean place. (49-50)

Answer 53

Cultural studies scholars often start with the idea that media presents their audiences with technologies and texts and that audiences find meaning in them. These scholars examine what it means to “make meaning” of such technologies and texts and what consequences this has for audiences. (51)

Answer 54

Approaches to cultural studies include: Historical, which ask questions about media and the past. Anthropological, which explore how people use media in different settings. Linguistic and literary, which incorporate multiple ways of reading media texts. Though complicated, the linguistic and literary approaches question where meaning is created in texts and understand that texts are polysemous, that is, open to multiple readings. (51-53)

Answer 55

polysemous, that is, open to multiple readings. (51-53)

Answer 56

Media research relates closely to media literacy. The history of mass media research provides students with tools to figure out three key ideas a media-literate person must know: (53-57) Where you stand with respect to the effects of media on society. (54) How to make sense of discussions and arguments about media effects. (54) Part of becoming media literate involves taking an informed stand on why the media are important. New ideas on the subject are emerging constantly, and it helps to stay current with press coverage of media developments or academic journal articles in this area. (54)

Answer 57

Are the questions the researcher is asking interesting and important? Into what research tradition does the study fall? How good is the research design? How convincing is the analysis? What do you wish the researchers would do next in their research?

Answer 58

How to get involved in research that can be used to explore concerns you might have about mass media. (56-57) See Table 2.1 (p. 55-56) for an overview of the different theories used in media research. This table summarizes the key research efforts explained in this chapter.

Answer 59

RAYMOND WILLIAMS, CULTURAL PHILOSOPHER

Answer 60

Propaganda is a form of persuasion that is often used in media to further some sort of agenda, such as a personal, political, or business agenda,

Answer 61

The body of theory that attempt to show how stereotyping in media extends power relationships is called cultivation studies. Pioneered by Gerber and his colleagues, cultivation studies suggest that the power derives from how, over time, people come to believe the stereotype they are shown. These stereotypes then cultivate these power relationships.

Answer 62

Mass media research involves applyng a systematic method to understand or solve problems regarding mass media.

Answer 63

The Frankfurt School

Answer 64

columbia school

Answer 65

Empirical research draws from observed or measured phenomena and derives knowledge from actual experimentation or observation.

Answer 66

Propaganda overtake

Answer 67

Cultivation studies

Answer 68

journalist Walter Lippmann, argued that the most important culprits hindering U.S. newspapers’ objective portrayal of the world were not propaganda forces. Rather, said Lippmann, the culprits were U.S. journalists themselves. Because they were mere mortals with selective ways of seeing things, and because they worked in organizations with deadlines, restrictions on story length, and the need to grab readers’ attentions, news journalists often portrayed predictably patterned (stereotyped), limited views of the world.

Answer 69

The media and social relation by lazzernefield katz, and merton

Answer 70

The elections to find in any mass media plataform affected the votes. Found that it had been active audience

Answer 71

Propaganda being able to manipulate, could not, film had been how british and france fought bravely( could not change values)

Answer 72

culture and capitalism

Answer 73

Ben badikian focused on political economists that focused on monopolized media.

Answer 74

how studies are different from political economy studies in that they focus not on industry relationships but on the information about the world that people pick up from media portrayals.Where cultivation researchers differ is in the perspective they bring to the work and how they interpret their findings.

Answer 75

emphasize that when media systematically portray certain populations in unfavorable ways, the ideas that mainstream audiences pick up about those people help certain groups in society retain their power over the groups they denigrate. Stereotypes, they believe, reinforce and extend (“cultivate”) power relationships.

Answer 76

Lipper weptman

Answer 77

the ideas of active audiences actually originated earlier with Columbia university sociology department

Answer 78

George Creel, wrote a popular book, How We Advertised America (1920), in which he boasted that expertly crafted messages —on billboards, on records, and in movies—had moved huge numbers of people to work for the war effort.

Answer 79

Because a soldier’s duty is to do what he or she is told, a team of social psychologists under the leadership of Carl Hovland conducted careful naturalistic experiments with large numbers of people, a task that is typically difficult to accomplish. A naturalistic experiment is a study in which randomly selected people are manipulated in a relatively controlled environment (as in an experiment) without knowing that they are involved in an experiment. Some (who make up the experimental group) see the media message that is being evaluated, whereas others (the control group) do not. Researchers ask both groups the same questions at different points in time

Answer 80

robert McChesney examined ownership patterns of media companies in the early 2000s. He concluded in his 2004 book The Problem of the Media that we have reached “the age of hyper-commercialism,” where media worry far more about satisfying advertisers and shareholders than about providing entertainment or news that encourages people to understand their society and become engaged in it

Answer 81

“There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.”

Answer 82

the use of systematic methods to understand or solve problems regarding the mass media

Answer 83

Nearly a hundred years ago, two major media issues preoccupied the thinkers of the day. The first was the media’s role in helping to keep a sense of American community alive. The second was the media’s role in encouraging bad behavior among children—an issue that faded rather quickly, only to reappear many years later.

Answer 84

University of Chicago argued publicly and in their scholarly writings that it was precisely because of the mass media that the situation in “mass society” was not nearly as bleak as some thought. Professors Robert Park, John Dewey, and Charles Cooley suggested that the widespread popularity of newspapers and magazines in the early 20th century allowed for the creation of a new type of community

Answer 85

Robert Park conducted a study of the immigrant press in the United States and concluded that, far from keeping the foreigners in their own little ethnic worlds, the immigrant newspapers were helping people (over time) acclimate to American society.

Answer 86

Nevertheless, they were among the first U.S. academics to show how systematically presented ideas and research about the mass media could feed into important social issues Chicago school

Answer 87

Harold Lasswell saw mass media organizations as powerful weapons of persuasion because they reached enormous numbers of geographically dispersed people in very short periods of time. America use propaganda

Answer 88

messages designed to change the attitudes and behavior of huge numbers of otherwise disconnected individuals on controversial social issues

Answer 89

George Creel, wrote a popular book, How We Advertised America (1920), in which he boasted that expertly crafted messages —on billboards, on records, and in movies—had moved huge numbers of people to work for the war effort

Answer 90

The Brass Check (1919), a book by the social critic Upton Sinclair, alleged that major advertisers demanded favorable coverage of their products in newspapers in exchange for ad space purchases

Answer 91

Many liberal thinkers of the day saw these activities as fundamentally threatening to democracy, given that citizens often had no idea of the intentions behind the messages they were seeing and hearing.

Answer 92

Journalist were mere mortals with selective ways of seeing things, and because they worked in organizations with deadlines, restrictions on story length, and the need to grab readers’ attentions, news journalists often portrayed predictably patterned (stereotyped), limited views of the world

Answer 93

Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann argued that the news media are a primary source of the “pictures in our heads” about the external world of public affairs that is “out of reach, out of sight, out of mind.” Lippmann’s notion that the media create “the ideas in our heads” about what is going on in the world is referred to as agenda setting.

Answer 94

Academics of the 1920s and 1930s, such as Leonard Doob, Alfred McLung Lee, Ralph Casey, and George Seldes, tought of propaganda analysis

Answer 95

Chief of Staff George C. Marshall enlisted well-known director Frank Capra (who later directed It’s a Wonderful Life, among other films) to create a series of seven propaganda films that the government showed American soldiers during World War II to explain why it was important for them to be fighting in this war.

Answer 96

examined two years of articles about the Soviet Union in major U.S. newspapers

Answer 97

propaganda analysts took a magic bullet or hypodermic needle approach to mass communication

Answer 98

the idea that messages delivered through the mass media persuade all people powerfully and directly (as if they were hit by a bullet or injected by a needle) without the people having any control over the way they react

Answer 99

But the terms “magic bullet” and “hypodermic needle” are too simplistic to describe the effects that propaganda analysts

Answer 100

For one thing, the propaganda analysts certainly did not believe that all types of messages would be equally persuasive. (They stated, for example, that audiences would more likely accept messages that reinforced common values than messages that contradicted common values.) For another, they emphasized that propaganda is more likely to work under circumstances of media monopoly than when many competitive media voices argue over the ideas presented. They believed, too, that people could be taught to critically evaluate (and thus not be so easily influenced by) propaganda.

Answer 101

Nevertheless, propaganda analysts of the 1920s and 1930s tended to focus more on media producers and their output than they did on members of society. Forget world views?

Answer 102

important of these projects, formally known as Motion Pictures and Youth, is more commonly referred to as the Payne Fund Studies because a foundation called the Payne Fund paid for the project.

Answer 103

Professor W. W. Charters of Ohio State University and was conducted by the most prominent psychologists, sociologists, and educators of the day. The studies, published in 1933, look at the effects of particular films on sleep patterns, knowledge about foreign cultures, attitudes about violence, and delinquent behaviour.

Answer 104

Some popular commentators in the 1930s suggested that the results showed that individual movies could have major negative effects on all children—a kind of hypodermic needle effect. Most of the Payne Fund researchers themselves, though, went out of their way to point out that youngsters’ reactions to movies were not at all uniform. Instead, these reactions very much depended on specific social and psychological differences among children.

Answer 105

Columbia university found relation of means of social interaction.

Answer 106

Erie County, Ohio, about the 1940 presidential election Lazarsfeld and his colleagues and study for panel survey.

Answer 107

four similar samples of approximately 600 people about their use of radio and newspapers in relation to the election using a panel survey. He questioned if people had change electoral votes by the means of the media during the month. Did not

Answer 108

to change few people’s voting intentions

Answer 109

The researchers were struck by the importance of voters’ influence on one another. Find information from quittance or friends.

Answer 110

This model states that media influence often works in two stages: (1) media content (opinion and fact) is picked up by people who use the media frequently, and (2) these people, in turn, act as opinion leaders when they discuss the media content with others

Answer 111

Paul Lazarsfeld, his colleague Robert Merton, a graduate student named Elihu Katz, and other members of Columbia’s sociology department went on to conduct several other studies on the relationship between opinion leaders

Answer 112

they meant that people are not simply passive recipients of media messages. Rather, they respond to content based on their personal backgrounds, interests, and interpersonal relationships.

Answer 113

The best-known aspect of this research, which came to be known as uses and gratifications research, studies how people use media products to meet their needs and interests

Answer 114

You may remember that in chapter 1 we discussed why people use the media and raised such topics as enjoyment, companionship, surveillance, and interpretation

Answer 115

One method involves interviewing people about why they use specific media and what kinds of satisfactions (gratifications) they get from these media. Often such research involves a small population so that the research can be conducted in depth. The second research method involves surveys that try to predict what kinds of people use what media or what certain kinds of people do with particular media

Answer 116

Remember how powerful the propaganda analysts of the 1920s and 1930s considered the mass media to be? Well, in the 1940s, social psychologists were pointing out that even media materials specifically designed to persuade people would succeed only under limited circumstances and with only certain types of people.

Answer 117

Why go to war and serve

Answer 118

Hovland conducted careful naturalistic experiments with large numbers of people 4,200 solides, a task that is typically difficult to accomplish.4,200 soldiers involved in the study were not told they were involved in an experiment. Instead, they were told they were being given a general opinion survey. Were told after 9 weeks, to find the long term.

Answer 119

is a study in which randomly selected people are manipulated in a relatively controlled environment (as in an experiment) without knowing that they are involved in an experiment. Experimented and controled.

Answer 120

Hard to change cultural values, film battle of Britannia he team found that the movie had strong effects on what men learned about the battle; how much they learned depended on their educational background. When it came to convincing the men in the study that the British and French were doing all they could to win, however, the film had much less effect; few soldiers who were suspicious of the French and British before they saw the film changed their opinion

Answer 121

ineffective in strengthening the overall motivation and morale of the soldiers. Specifically, one item on the questionnaire given after the experimental group saw the film asked whether the soldiers preferred military service at home or joining the fighting overseas. Only 38 percent of the control group said they wanted to fight. For the film group—supposedly fired up by the film—the comparable figure was 41 percent, not a significant difference

Answer 122

Columbia and later to Yale went on to run the influential Program of Research on Communication and Attitude Change at Y

Answer 123

The seeds planted by the Columbia School, the Yale School, and to a lesser degree the Payne Fund Studies bore great fruit in the 1950s and beyond, as researchers in many universities and colleges built on their findings. We can divide these later approaches into three very broad areas of study: opinion and behavior change; what people learn from media; and why, when, and how people use the media. Let’s look at these one at a time.

Answer 124

Tnvolving media in the second half of the 20th century— those centering on the effects of TV violence on children and the effects of sexually explicit materials (pornography) on adults

Answer 125

In general, researchers seem to agree that the ways in which most adults and children react to such materials depend greatly on family background, social setting, and personality. At the same time, they also agree that consistent viewing of violent television shows or movies may cause some children to become aggressive toward others regardless of family background.

Answer 126

There is mounting evidence that in the case of some viewers, irrespective of their background or initial attitudes, heavy exposure to such materials may desensitize them to the seriousness of rape and other forms of sexual violence. For example, in one study viewers of sexual violence had less concern about the supposed victim of a violent rape than the control group viewers who hadn’t seen such materials. Cant be know by the real world.

Answer 127

Sesame Street, which made its TV debut in 1969, has been the subject of a great deal of research into what children learn from it. Researchers have found that the program can teach boys and girls from different income levels their letters and numbers and can be credited with improving the vocabulary of young children.

Answer 128

Since the success of Sesame Street, other planned educational programs, such as Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Square One Television, Reading Rainbow, Gullah Gullah Island, Blue’s Clues and Magic School Bus, have been found both to increase children’s interest in the educational content of programs and to teach some of the planned curriculum. In addition, other children’s shows, which focus less on teaching cognitive skills but more on such positive behaviors as helping others and sharing toys, can be successful. The most important evidence here comes from a study of preschool children’s effective learning of such helping or prosocial behaviors from watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Answer 129

The basic belief that guides their work is that a democratic society needs informed citizens if public policies are to be guided by the greatest number of people. Some of their questions center on Walter Lippmann’s agenda-setting concept that we discussed earlier in this chapter

Answer 130

mainstream position that differences among individuals make it unlikely that the mass media can tell you or me precisely what opinions we should have about particular topics. They point out, however, that by making some events and not others into major headlines, the mass media are quite successful at getting large numbers of people to agree on what topics to think about. That in itself is important, these researchers argue, because it shows that the press has the power to spark public dialogue on major topics facing the nation.

Answer 131

Professors Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, demonstrated this agenda-setting effect in research for the first time in a 1970 article. but to the priorities that the media outlets in Chapel Hill presented at the time more than 200 others.

Answer 132

Researchers have also described an effect called priming as a “close cousin of agenda-setting.”

Answer 133

Priming is the process by which the media affect the standard that individuals use to evaluate what they see and hear in the media. The idea is that the more prominent a political issue is in the national media, the more that idea will prime people (that is, cue them in) that the handling of that issue should be used to evaluate how well political candidates or organizations are doing their jobs.

Answer 134

Researchers have found that mass media agenda-setting has the ability to affect people’s sense of public affairs priorities and that mass media coverage primes people with respect to the criteria they use to evaluate particular issues. Nevertheless, researchers emphasize that individual backgrounds and interests weaken these effects.

Answer 135

the strongest agenda-setting effects have been found in experimental studies, forced to pay attention

Answer 136

In the late 1960s, Professors Phillip Tichenor, George Donahue, and Clarice Olien of the University of Minnesota came upon a sobering survey finding that relates to the difference in the amount of current events information knowledge gapp was dangerous for society in an age in which the ability to pick up information about the latest trends is increasingly crucial to success

Answer 137

a theory that holds that, in the development of any social or political issues, the more highly educated segments of a population know more about the issues early on and, in fact, acquire information about that issue at a faster rate than the less educated segments, and so the difference between the two types of people grows wider

Answer 138

2011. By 2012, Facebook allowed corporations to embed advertisements in News Feeds By summer 2014, the cat was out of the bag: Facebook not only measured our online behaviors for advertisers, but it explicitly manipulated our emotions. Change positive and negative post to measure expeirment/

Answer 139

Columbia University had been the first, to ask interviews than numbers then uses and gratifications research.

Answer 140

which again means that individuals are not just passive receivers of messages. Rather, they make conscious decisions about what they like, and they have different reasons for using particular media, depending on different social relationships as well as on individual social and psychological differences.

Answer 141

A huge amount of literature explores how people use a variety of media and why. Researchers such as danah boyd, Mimi Ito, Zizi Papacharissi, and Sonia Livingstone explore people’s use of social media in different ways and from different perspectives.

Answer 142

A major contemporary theme is that people interact not just with the reading, video, and audio material big companies provide to them but with the material they create for themselves.

Answer 143

Henry Jenkins, for example, has studied the way fans of particular TV programs or movies take advantage of the phenomenon of media convergence to spread their interests across different devices.

Answer 144

Digital divide in the United States—a separation between those who are connected to “the future” and those who are being left behind (see the separation between those who have access to and knowledge about technology and those who (perhaps because of their level of education or income) do not

Answer 145

As you can see, the mainstream approaches—the research models that developed out of the work of the Columbia School, the Yale School, and the Payne Fund Studies—have led to valuable work that has helped many researchers contribute to society’s most important debates. At the same time, however, other researchers insist that the questions asked by mainstream approaches are not really the most important ones when it comes to understanding the role of mass media in society.

Answer 146

One problem is its stress on change rather than continuity. The other is its emphasis on the active role of the individual—the active audience member—in the media environment and not on the power of larger social forces that control that media environment In referring to a focus on change over continuity, critics of mainstream research mean that much of this research focuses on whether a change will occur as a result of specific movies, articles, or shows. Critics say that this approach ignores the possibility that the most important effects of the media have to do not with changing people but with encouraging them (or reinforcing them) to continue certain actions or perspectives on life. Mainstream researchers emphasize that most people’s opinions and behaviors don’t change after they view television or listen to the radio. What the researchers don’t emphasize, the critics point out, is that the flip side of change—reinforcement—may well be a powerful consequence. In fact, the critics argue, reinforcement is often the major consequence of mass media messages They argue that mainstream research has placed so much emphasis on the individual’s relationships to media—the second major problem we identified—that it has ignored social power. It has neglected to emphasize that there are powerful forces that exert control over what media industries do as part of their control over society.

Answer 147

agenda setting and digital devided

Answer 148

Like the propaganda analysts, contemporary critical scholars emphasize the importance of systematically exploring the forces guiding media companies.They also place great value on analyzing media content to reveal the patterns of messages that are shared broadly by the population. Like the propaganda analysts, their aim is often to expose to public light the relationships between media firms and powerful forces in society. They want to publicize their findings in order to encourage public understanding and, sometimes, to urge government regulations that would promote greater diversity among creators of media content and in the content itself

Answer 149

Three prominent perspectives that guide critical researchers are the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, political economy research, and cultivation studies.

Answer 150

This shorthand name comes from the original location of the institute in Frankfurt, Germany. The researchers who made significant contributions to this school of thought are Theodor Adorno (philosopher, sociologist, and musicologist), Walter Benjamin (essayist and literary critic), Herbert Marcuse (philosopher), and Max Horkheimer (philosopher and sociologist). Each of these philosophers shared markism.

Answer 151

According to Marx, capitalism is the ownership of the means of production by a ruling class in society They exploit the working class and celebrate that exploitation in literature and many other aspects of culture. Marx believed that the direction of history was toward labor’s overthrow of the capitalist class and the reign of workers in a society in which everyone would receive what he or she needs.

Answer 152

by Adorno stress the power of “the culture industry” to move audience members toward ways of looking at the world. Writings by Marcuse suggest to researchers how messages about social power can be found in all aspects of media content, even if typical audience members don’t recognize them

Answer 153

, cooptation is a well-known term that Marcuse coined to express the way capitalism takes potentially revolutionary ideas and tames them to express capitalist ideals

Answer 154

Many media scholars today feel that the members of the Frankfurt School tended to overemphasize the ability of mass media to control individuals’ beliefs. Nevertheless, over the decades, the philosophies collectively known as critical theory have influenced many writings on mass media

Answer 155

theorists focus specifically on the relationship between economics and the culture. They look at when and how the economic structures of society and the media system reflect the political interests of society’s rich and powerful.

Answer 156

In this vein, professor and media activist Robert McChesney examined ownership patterns of media companies in the early 2000s. He concluded in his 2004 book The Problem of the Media that we have reached “the age of hyper-commercialism,” where media worry far more about satisfying advertisers and shareholders than about providing entertainment or news that encourages people to understand their society and become engaged in

Answer 157

huge media conglomerates that control large portions of the revenues of particular media industries for the purposes of selling advertising time and spaceHe and political economist Edward Herman put that idea succinctly in a 1997 book called The Global Media:

Answer 158

economy perspective, Ben Bagdikian, points out in his book The Media Monopoly that huge media firms are often involved in many businesses outside of journalism

Answer 159

could not report due to ABC news owned by major coparations. news president David Westin’s killing of the story had nothing to do with any network reluctance to criticize its parent company

Answer 160

The work by McChesney, Herman, and Bagdikian looks into the economic relationships within the media system and tries to figure out their consequences for issues of social power and equity. These scholars might explore, for example, whether (and how) major advertisers’ relationships with television networks affect programming. They would look at the extent to which advertisers’ need to reach certain audiences for their products causes networks to signal to program producers that shows that aim at those types of people will get preference.

Answer 161

Western (often U.S.) news and entertainment throughout the world. These political scientists consider such activities to be cultural colonialism. Colonialism means control over a dependent area or people by a powerful entity (usually a nation) by force of arms. England and France practiced colonialism in places such as India and Vietnam for many years. Cultural colonialism involves the exercise of control over an area or people by a dominant power, not so much through force of arms as by surrounding the weaker countries with cultural materials that reflect values and beliefs supporting the interests of that dominant power.

Answer 162

Other political economists focus on the concerns of media in individual countries. They look, for example, at the extent to which ethnic or racial minorities can exert some control over mainstream media. Their fear is that social minorities often do not get to guide their own portrayals in their nation’s main media. The result is under-representation and stereotyping of these groups by producers who are insensitive to their concerns. These political scientists urge changes so that minority producers and actors can have input regarding their groups’ depictions.

Answer 163

Cultivation researchers are also interested in depictions, but in a different way. Such studies are different from political economy studies in that they focus not on industry relationships but on the information about the world that people pick up from media portrayals.

Answer 164

Where cultivation researchers differ is in the perspective they bring to the work and how they interpret their findings. Cultivation studies emphasize that when media systematically portray certain populations in unfavorable ways, the ideas that mainstream audiences pick up about those people help certain groups in society retain their power over the groups they denigrate. Stereotypes, they believe, reinforce and extend (“cultivate”) power relationships

Answer 165

studies that emphasize that when media systematically portray certain populations in unfavorable ways, the ideas that mainstream audiences pick up about those people help certain groups in society retain their power over the groups they denigrate

Answer 166

Professor George Gerbner and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Answer 167

Cultivation work is most associated with Professor George Gerbner and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication from the 1960s through the 1980s. Gerbner began his work with the perspective that all mass media material—entertainment and news— gives people views of the world. Those views, he said, are the mass-produced output of huge corporations. These corporations have a vested interest in perpetuating their power along with the power of established economic and cultural approaches in U.S. society. Their power is seen especially in the way violence is used in television entertainment, the most widely viewed entertainment medium in the United States.

Answer 168

Game of thrones of women sexually harrased.

Answer 169

Although TV violence may sometimes encourage aggression, most of the time it cultivates lessons about strength and weakness in society. e “hidden curriculum” of TV violence tells us that women and blacks, who tend to be the objects of violence, are socially weak. White males, who tend to be perpetrators of violence (including legal violence by the police or military), are socially strong

Answer 170

hey conducted a telephone survey of a random sample of the U.S. adult population and asked the people questions about how violent the world is and how fearful they are. They found that heavy viewers of television are more fearful of the world than light viewers. Over time, these viewers also engage in more self-protective behavior and show more mistrust of others than do light viewers. The message of fear helps those who are in power because it makes heavy viewers (a substantial portion of the population) more likely to agree to support police and military forces that protect them from that scary world. Not incidentally, those police and military forces also protect those in power and help them maintain control over unruly or rebellious groups in society

Answer 171

Let’s say that you accept the importance of emphasizing the connection between mass media and social power, but you’re a bit uncomfortable with what you feel is the too-simplistic perspective of the political economy and cultivation theorists. “Media power isn’t as controlling as they would have it,” you say. “I don’t believe that everybody in society necessarily buys into the images of power that these systems project. People have minds of their own, and they often live in communities that help them resist the aims of the powerful.”

Answer 172

Writings in this area often tie media studies to concepts in literature, linguistics, anthropology, and history. Cultural studies

Answer 173

Cultural studies scholars often start with the idea that all sorts of mass media, from newspapers to movies, present their audiences with technologies and texts and that audiences find meaning in them. Major questions for these scholars center on how to think about what “making meaning” of technologies and texts means and what consequences it has for those audiences in society. As you might imagine, there are many ways to answer these questions.

Answer 174

studies that start with the idea that all sorts of mass media, from newspapers to movies, present their audiences with technologies and texts and that audiences find meaning in them; scholars then ask questions that center on how to think about what “making meaning” of technologies and texts means and what consequences it has for those audiences in society

Answer 175

One way to answer cultural studies questions is from a historical perspective. Professor Lynn Spigel, for example, explores the expectations that men and women have had for audiovisual technologies in the home and how those expectations have tied into larger social issues. She points out, for example, a historical relationship between home TV use and social fear:

Answer 176

Another way to look at what technologies mean in the context of social class and social power is to take an anthropologist’s approach and closely examine the way people use media. Cultural studies researchers tie people’s uses of the media to their class, racial, or gender positions within society. Here, for example, is Professor Ellen Seiter writing in 1997 on differences between men and women in the use of television and computers in the home. Consider whether you think the particulars she emphasizes apply today.

Answer 177

You probably found the paragraphs by Ellen Seiter and Lynn Spigel quite straightforward and easy to understand. The same can’t typically be said for the areas of cultural studies that apply linguistic and literary models to the meaning of media texts. They tend to use the complex phraseology of linguistics and the jargon of literary analysts to make their points. That is unfortunate because some of the scholars involved in this area often proclaim that their goal is to encourage viewers and readers to “resist” the dominant models of society that are suggested in the text. discussion recalls Stuart Hall’s interest in “dominant” and “resistant” readings but considers whether they may be even more ambiguous and unstable than Hall had believed

Answer 178

At one extreme are scholars who believe that a text is open to multiple meanings (they say that it is polysemous) because people have the ability to subject media content to endless interpretations based on their critical understanding of the world. So, for example, Professors Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes interviewed people in Israel and Japan to find out how they understood the popular 1980s U.S. TV series Dallas clear goal: They would say, for example, that trying to limit the power of media conglomerates is not nearly as important as teaching people how to interpret media critically, in ways that resist any support of the dominant system. To them, firms that create agendas in news and entertainment have enormous power that cannot be overcome simply by teaching criticism. Active work to limit the power of these conglomerates is also necessary.

Answer 179

Philosophically, most scholars take a position between these two extremes. They accept the notion of polysemy, but they argue that most people’s interpretations of media texts are very much shaped by the actual texts themselves and by the industrial and social environments in which these texts are created. They stress that texts are likely to “constrain” meaning in directions that benefit the powerful

Answer 180

w. One is where you stand with respect to the effects of media on society. A second is how to make sense of the discussions and arguments about media effects. A third is how to get involved in research that can be used to explore concerns you might have about mass media.

Answer 181

Journal of Communication, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, or the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media.

Answer 182

Are the questions the researcher is asking interesting and important? Into what research tradition does the study fall? Is it a study of priming, an example of cultivation research, a study of message persuasion, or a representation of another one of the streams of work that we have discussed How good is the research design? How convincing is the analysis? What do you wish the researchers would do next in their research?

TEST 2 mass media Flashcards

(209 cards)