Chapter 14: The Media

Question 1

Media Use

Answer 1

media industries = major businesses that own, or own interests in, radio and tv production and broadcasting; cell phone and other personal digital assistants; film, movie theatres, music companies; newspaper, magazine and book publishing; and internet services and content providers
= worldwide reach and influence
“In our current Canadian cultural context, democracy, consumption, and media have become inextricably linked.” (Kendall: 291)

Question 2

Media Ownership and Control

Answer 2

Media Concentration = clustering of media industries with the goal of enhancing profitability

Concentration of ownership (eg. television + radio stations + film studios + publishing houses)  influence over the news, the quality of information, and public opinion

Question 3

Forms of Media Control

Answer 3

Concentration of ownership within one industry
Cross-media ownership = more than one type of media
Conglomerate ownership = includes non-media businesses
Vertical integration = media content + its distribution

Question 4

Canadian Media Concentration Research Project

Answer 4

In 2015, the “big 5” television groups—Bell, Shaw (Corus), CBC, Rogers and Quebecor— collectively owned 217 TV services = over 86.2% of the total TV market by revenue
Bell is the largest communications and media conglomerate in Canada, single handedly accounting for 28% of all revenues.
Canada stands unique amongst countries in that telecoms operators own all the main television services, except the CBC.
Canada stands out relative to the rest of the world in terms of its extremely high levels ofdiagonalintegration between different “platform media” (e.g. mobile wireless, internet access, broadcast distribution) (essentially, telecoms operators), andverticalintegration between telecoms operators and TV (other media content). (Winseck, 2016)

Question 5

Consequences of Media Concentration: Consequences related to consolidation of power

Answer 5

Higher subscription rates
Management of demand, competition, and prices across each of their platforms
Turning market power into gate-keeping power
Influencing public opinion
Collection, retention, and disclosure of personal information to commercial and government parties
prioritizes news for profit vs news for the public interest
Lowers the quality of journalism
diminishes international news
discourages public debate
biased perspective
racial, ethnic and gender stereotyping (Kendall, 299-300)

Question 6

Violence and the Media

Answer 6

violence sells newspapers, tv
programs, movies, music, etc.

“…The poses and postures of advertising are often borrowed from pornography, as are many of the themes, such as bondage, sadomasochism, and the sexual exploitation of children…”

Question 7

Long term impact of media concentration

Answer 7

Three Scenarios:
“Apartheid”
Cultural Imperialism - s the process and practice of promoting one culture over another. Often this occurs during colonization, where one nation overpowers another country, typically one that is economically disadvantaged and/or militarily weaker.
Global Village (Hedley 1999, cited in Ravelli 2005. - coined by Canadian-born Marshall McLuhan, popularized in his books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) and Understanding Media (1964). It is a metaphoric shrinking of the world into a village through the use of telecommunications. Global village is also a term used to express the relation between economics and sociology throughout the world.

Question 8

Functionalism

Answer 8

Functions of media:
provides news and information
facilitates public dialogue on social issues
passes on culture to newcomers
entertains
confers celebrity status
provides a forum for opinion

Dysfunctions of media:
undermines social stability and social institutions like the family by undermining face-to-face communication

Question 9

Conflict Theory

Answer 9

capitalism is responsible for media concentration
controlled by power elites who exercise hegemony
confers legitimacy on the status quo
warns against implications of media concentration, eg. news for profit instead of for the public interest; stories are simplified; news is diminished in quality and depth; conservative views are promoted and critical views are silenced

Question 10

Interactionism

Answer 10

1) hypodermic needle theory = viewers are inoculated with content
2) theory of limited effects = with information and motivation, people make up their own minds about media content
3) use and gratification theory = people make conscious decisions about what they will watch and they are aware of the limitations of media
4) social learning theory = viewers may follow role models, but there is no simple cause-effect relationship between media and behaviour
5) audience relations approach = people use their cultural understandings to interpret media content

Question 11

Feminism

Answer 11

critical of how media contributes to power imbalances, the normalization of violence, the objectification of women, and stereotyping of various groups
media bias affects not only gender, but gender intersecting with class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, age, religion, etc.

Question 12

Political Economy of media

Answer 12

2013 - in the US fewer than 10 US corporations controlled most of the publishing, recording, television, film and theme park business
Many factors lead to the development of big media
Limited market demands for the information and entertainment provided by the newspaper and the length of time it took to get the product to consumers

Question 13

History of Media in canada

Answer 13

1919 - first broadcast license
1922 - radio
1995 - web

Question 14

Media Ownership and Control

Answer 14

The development of satellites in the 1970s made it more possible for cable television through the development of sophisticated space satellites.
This interconnectedness made it possible for the development and contributed to the success of cable networks.

Question 15

Media concentration

Answer 15

Refers to the tendency of the media industry to cluster together in groups with the goal of enhancing profitability
Media ownership is highly concentrated in canada - almost anywhere in the industrialized world.

Question 16

Media Concentration definition Shirley Biagi (2012)

Answer 16

Media owned by peoples who’s interests is making money.
Profits in this sector are high in comparison to manufacturing
1) concentration of ownership when one industry - Toronto star
2)cross media ownership - Quebecour and Rogers
3)Conglomerate ownership - rogers and bell
4)Vertical integration - Shaw communications and Rogers

Question 17

Synergy

Answer 17

Describe the process used in capitalizing on a product to make all the profit possible.
Ex. Corporation acquires the production studio and the television network, synergy is created.

Question 18

Problems Associated with Convergence

Answer 18

Involve the amalgamation of businesses but also the strategies to streamline media systems
Strategies like asking journalists to report on several different stories each day as opposed to one well research story
Concerns over the quality of journalism
Convergence has reduced the message pluralism

Question 19

Analyzed suggest Congergence problems

Answer 19

1) decline in journalism as a public service
2) constant pressure for all journalistic endorsers to be profitable
3)significant decrease in the quantity of international news available to Canadian audiences
4)the quashing of public debate on social issues
media Imperialism - dominates another countries culture

Question 20

Framing

Answer 20

Refers to how news content and the accompanying visual images are linked together to creat certain audience perceptions and give specific impressions to viewers and readers
Media bias in the form of structural media bias refer to the areas of life not covered in the media and can distort how people view the world.

Question 21

Potential Media Effects

Answer 21

Violence in Media
racial Ethnic Stereotyping
Gender stereotyping

Question 22

Racial and Ethnic Sterotyping

Answer 22

1) Perpetuating images appear to be positive in nature and this flatttering to members of a specific racialized group
2) exaggerated physical attributes
3) creating Racialized characters who have undesirable attributes
4) Using statements and images to link to crime and drug dealing
5) underrepresenting people in relation to their % in the population

Question 23

Cathartic Hypothesis

Answer 23

Viewers will feel aggressive too

This has been disproven it actually desensitized people to violence

Question 24

Gender Stereotyping

Answer 24

1) intertwining of age and gender as it relates to women
2) traditional roles perpetuated
3) Impulsive conduct by women in professional roles
4) women in positions of power abusing their roles
5) women overwhelmed by their work

Question 25

Interactionist Perspective: hypodermic Needle Theory

Answer 25

Passive individuals who injected with the message and directly affected by the message of people as people are by a drug.
Study of WWII soldiers shown movies of enemies designed to increase moral showed little change in the moral levels

Question 26

Interactionist Perspective: Theory of limited Effcts

Answer 26

States that the media have a minimal effect on the attitudes and perceptions of individuals
Those who are informed the media has little effect on, those who are not the media has a ton of effect on

Question 27

Interactionist Perspective: Gratification Theory

Answer 27

suggests that people are active audience about they will watch, listen to, read, and surf on the internet
This assumes that people are using different media sources

Question 28

Social Learning Theory

Answer 28

Based on the idea that people will act out what they see on tv
Bandura (1977) many factors influence aggressive behaviour in children including their relationship with their parents, how much formal education their parents possessed, and the personality of the children

Question 29

Interactionist Perspective: Audience Relations Approach

Answer 29

People use their own cultural understandings to interpret what they hear
Influenced by how much they know Abbott the suBject

Question 30

Functionalist Perspective: functions

Answer 30

focus on the function and dysfunction media has on society

1) media provide news and information
2) facilitate public discourse
3) pass on cultural traditions
4) confer status on individuals - celebrity
5) emergence of social media

Question 31

Functional Perspective: Dysfunction

Answer 31

misinformation like weapons of mass destruction that contributed to the war in Iraq

Question 32

conflict Perspective: hegemony

Answer 32

The use of media and other cultural institutions to represent the interests, values, and understandings of the capitalist class and other powerful groups as natural and universal

Question 33

Hegemony Theory

Answer 33

the view that the media are instruments of social control and are used by members of the ruling class to create "false consciousness"
most view the ownership and economic control as determining what kinds of messages are disseminated around the globe
built in bias of the media reflect dominant ideology

Question 34

hegemony theory: media Manipulation

Answer 34

1) sponsors control broadcasting
2) information may be suppressed
3) a story may be attacked or reporting may not represent a balanced view
4) negative labels - stereotypes
5) stories may be framed to convey a particular connotation

Question 35

Feminist Perspective

Answer 35

2nd wave feminsim focused on visual representation of women’s oppression
ex. normalization of violence against women
the gaze
presentation of women in the public and private sphere
today feminists looked at lived experienced and the role media has in shaping the life conditions and choices of people