Ch. 14 Flashcards
Media effects research
attempts to understand, explain, and predict the effects of mass media on individuals and society
Cultural studies
this research approach focuses on how people make meaning, apprehend reality, articulate values, and order experience through their use of cultural symbols
propaganda analysis
became a major early focus of mass media research
pseudo-polls
typically call-in, online or person-in-the-street polls that the news media use to address a “question of the day”
hypodermic-needle model
also called the magic bullet theory or the direct effects model. It suggests that the media shoot their potent effects direct into unsuspecting victims
minimal-effects model
social scientists began discovering and demonstrating that media alone cannot cause people to change their attitudes and behaviors.
selective exposure and selective retention
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.
uses and gratifications model
proposed to contest the notion of a passive media audience.
scientific method
blue print long used by scientists and scholars to study phenomena in systematic stages.
hypothese
tentative general statements that predict the influence of an independent variable on a dependent variable.
experiments
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.
random assignment
each subject has an equal chance of being placed in either group.
survey research
is the collection and measuring of data taken from a group of respondents.
longitudinal studies
make it possible for social scientists to compare new studies with those conducted years earlier.
correlations
associations between two variables
content analysis
to study these messages. such analysis is a systematic method of coding and measuring media content.
social learning theory
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)
agenda-setting
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.
cultivation effect
suggests that heavy viewing of television leads individuals to perceive the world in ways are consistent with television portrayals.
spiral of silence
theory links the mass media, social psychology, and the formation of public opinion.
textual analysis
highlights the close reading and interpretation of cultural messages, including those found in books, movies, and TV programs.
audience studies
research that focuses on how people interpret cultural content.
political economy studies
specifically examine inter connections among economic interests, political power, and how that power is used.
public sphere
space for critical public debate.
