Ch. 14

Question 1

Media effects research

Answer 1

attempts to understand, explain, and predict the effects of mass media on individuals and society

Question 2

Cultural studies

Answer 2

this research approach focuses on how people make meaning, apprehend reality, articulate values, and order experience through their use of cultural symbols

Question 3

propaganda analysis

Answer 3

became a major early focus of mass media research

Question 4

pseudo-polls

Answer 4

typically call-in, online or person-in-the-street polls that the news media use to address a “question of the day”

Question 5

hypodermic-needle model

Answer 5

also called the magic bullet theory or the direct effects model. It suggests that the media shoot their potent effects direct into unsuspecting victims

Question 6

minimal-effects model

Answer 6

social scientists began discovering and demonstrating that media alone cannot cause people to change their attitudes and behaviors.

Question 7

selective exposure and selective retention

Answer 7

people expose themselves to to the media messages that are the most familiar to them and they retain the messages that are most familiar to them.

Question 8

uses and gratifications model

Answer 8

proposed to contest the notion of a passive media audience.

Question 9

scientific method

Answer 9

blue print long used by scientists and scholars to study phenomena in systematic stages.

Question 10

hypothese

Answer 10

tentative general statements that predict the influence of an independent variable on a dependent variable.

Question 11

experiments

Answer 11

in media research isolate some aspect of content; suggest a hypothesis; and manipulate variables to discover a particular mediums impact on attitude, emotion, or behavior.

Question 12

random assignment

Answer 12

each subject has an equal chance of being placed in either group.

Question 13

survey research

Answer 13

is the collection and measuring of data taken from a group of respondents.

Question 14

longitudinal studies

Answer 14

make it possible for social scientists to compare new studies with those conducted years earlier.

Question 15

correlations

Answer 15

associations between two variables

Question 16

content analysis

Answer 16

to study these messages. such analysis is a systematic method of coding and measuring media content.

Question 17

social learning theory

Answer 17

as a four-step process: attention (the subject must attend to the media and witness the aggressive behavior), retention (the subject must retain the memory for later retrieval), motor reproduction ( subject must be able to physically imitate the behavior), and motivation (there must be a social reward or reinforcement to encourage modeling of the behavior)

Question 18

agenda-setting

Answer 18

the idea that when the mass media focus their attnetion on particular events or issues, they determine that is, set the agent for the major topics of discussion.

Question 19

cultivation effect

Answer 19

suggests that heavy viewing of television leads individuals to perceive the world in ways are consistent with television portrayals.

Question 20

spiral of silence

Answer 20

theory links the mass media, social psychology, and the formation of public opinion.

Question 21

textual analysis

Answer 21

highlights the close reading and interpretation of cultural messages, including those found in books, movies, and TV programs.

Question 22

audience studies

Answer 22

research that focuses on how people interpret cultural content.

Question 23

political economy studies

Answer 23

specifically examine inter connections among economic interests, political power, and how that power is used.

Question 24

public sphere

Answer 24

space for critical public debate.