1. Socialization, Research, & Media Theories Flashcards
What is socialization
The process by which we learn the behaviours, values, skills, beliefs, and norms of our society
Nature or nurture in socialization?
NURTURE–Environment around you teaches you how to behave, feel, etc.
Agents of socialization (5)
- family (most important)
- peers (models)
- school (formal and informal)
- religion (formal and informal)
- mass media
Negative agents of socialization?
Schools socialize us to have negative beliefs about failure (failure is bad)
When does socialization have the most profound impact?
sig. focus on youth, early development (victor of averyron)
- different aspects of socialization may be different across different stages of life
What is Media?
- Plural of medium → middle, intermediary
- The intermediary to transmit information
- Means for communicating a message
What is Social Media and why is it difficult to define?
Internet based platforms/sites that allow users to create, share, and exchange their own content/information.
Social media is constantly, rapidly shifting -> makes definition difficult
How is social media different from traditional media?
Traditional media is seen as one direction
- You are a recipient
Social media allows you to be both a recipient AND a creator
- bidirectional
Content analysis definition
Analyzing the content of media (Eg: how much sexual content is there in TV targeted towards adolescents?)
Content analysis steps
- Define and identify content (“TV targeted towards adolescents”)
- Gather a sample of such media
- Define “sexual content”
- Analyze!
Drawbacks of content analysis
- Doesnt inform us of effects
- Doesnt inform impact
- Variations on chosen definition
- Coding = time consuming
Correlational design
relationship between 2 variables
Drawback of correlational
- doesn’t tell us direction (does X cause Y or vice versa?)
- Memory unreliable
- Social desirability bias
- Third variables unaccounted for
- Correlation =/= causation
what is the gold standard design?
experimental
steps to experimental
- random assignment
- manipulate iv
- measure dv
limitations to experimental (4)
- Difficulty in controlling variables
- Difficulty in content media
- Topic, age, plot, violence
- Difficult to isolate sexual content - Dependent variable = difficult to measure
- Ethical concerns with assigning/manipulating variables
natural experiment
Where naturally-occurring circumstances “randomly” creates differences between individuals (Done where it wouldn’t be ethical or achievable to randomly assign people to different groups)
explain notel study (natural experiment)
- Interested in effect of TV
- Geography limits access to TV in one town naturally, but not another
- Town’s position in mountains didn’t allow access to TV (NO-TELevision)
- Compared differences between these towns
- Eventually Notel got TV access
- Participation in community events declined, creativity in kids declined
- Eventually Notel got TV access
How did cable change gender attitudes and fertility in villages in india? (a natural study eg.)
- After towns got cable, women gained autonomy (able to make more decisions within a household)
- After cable = drop in pregnancy rates
what design is longitudinal most commonly used with
correlational–establishes the time-order of two variables: helps to give further support to a potential causal effect (CAN be used in experimental designs to explore effects over time)