Chapter 4

Question 1

What is “Media”?

Answer 1

Any form of communication that targets a mass audience in print or electronic format. We are talking about mass media here.

Question 2

What did Charles Wright state about the media?

Answer 2

Media is an institution. It contributes to social order by performing 4 functions

Question 3

What are the 4 functions that Charles Wright talks about? Explain them.

Answer 3

1. Surveillance of the environment: ways that information is collected and disseminated in society.
2. Correlation of parts of society: ways that information about our world is interpreted and prescriptions for behaviour in response to events. This can save our lives.
3. Transmission of social heritage: communication of information, norms, values from generation to generation. Ex. Canadian heritage commercials
4. Entertainment: communication intended to amuse/relax

Question 4

Explain the impact of media on society

Answer 4

Believed that media is responsible for discrepancy between dropping rates of crime and the perception that youth crime is out of control.

Question 5

What determines what media outlets are going to show?

Answer 5

Ratings - they have to sell drama
We tend not to hear about white collar crime because perpetrators oftentimes own the media outlets and are able to pay them off.

Question 6

What are the aspects of the dramatization of crime that is carried out by the media?

Answer 6

1. Language: Ex. “hookers”, “psycho”
2. Focus on atypical cases
3. Brief and horrific headlines

Question 7

Explain the effects on viewers by the media contributing to the incompleteness of reporting

Answer 7

Public is made unaware of how courts work, and the reasons for sentences. The public can then become less sympathetic to offender. They may believe that the sentencing is too lenient.

Question 8

What did Moynihan say about the impact of media on society?

Answer 8

“the normalization of deviance”

Deviant behaviour is so common that we’re not even recognizing it as such anymore. So, it dramatizes as well as normalizes. Ex. Swearing is no longer seen as deviant

Question 9

What is the Broken Windows Theory and explain it

Answer 9

Crime occurs whenever/wherever social controls are not strong. As signs of social disorganization become more visible, poor communities degenerate into more crime. It essentially encourages crime. Ex. if you don’t clean up your property, you’re inviting crime.

Question 10

Who created the Broken Windows theory?

Answer 10

James Q. Wilson & George Kelling

Question 11

What are the two media effects?

Answer 11

Short term and long term

Question 12

Explain the intended and unintended short term media effects

Answer 12

Intended - They intend to influence you quickly

Unintended - Think of violent video games which kids grow out of eventually

Question 13

Explain the intended and unintended long term media effects

Answer 13

Intended - Sesame street developed in recognition in the fact that tv was playing a more important role in children’s lives.
Unintended - People who watch a lot of violent tv and have a predisposition towards violence have decreased sensitization to violence. I.e. they don’t react to violence how we would expect them to react.

Question 14

What did Stanley Cohen state about the impact of media on society?

Answer 14

The media is instrumental in creating/ sustaining moral panics

Question 15

What are Moral Panics?

Answer 15

An exaggerated and sensationalized concern over a particular phenomenon, characterized by: heightened concern, hostility toward the offending group, a certain level of consensus that there is a real threat, disproportionality, and volatility. I.e. when society gets worked up to the point of panic and hysteria.

Question 16

What are Folk Devils?

Answer 16

Those who possess characteristics that make them a suitable screen upon which society can project sentiment of guilt and ambivalence. I.e. Scapegoats - think of the AIDS crisis and the treatment of homosexual men

Question 17

Explain The Mods and the Rockers termed by Cohen

Answer 17

The media CREATED a moral panic about young urban male youth. One suggestion he made what that if there was some fighting, the “fighters” were being defined in this way.

Question 18

What characterizes the idea of The Mods and the Rockers?

Answer 18

Increased concern, manufactured hostility toward the offending group, increased consensus over the threat-all newspapers framed the story the same, disproportionality, volatility

Question 19

What was the Kerner Commission (1968) concerned with?

Answer 19

Followed violent riots in the US in ‘67 in a number of cities. Found “shockingly random violence”. Considerable level of poverty in many African American urban communities - most people blamed the riot on young black men. Commission report blamed white racism (rather than black anger) - this was critical of the media coverage of the event.

Question 20

What was the first criticism from the Kerner Commission?

Answer 20

1. Media failed to accurately reflect the scale and character of the riots. Disorders were less destructive, less widespread and less of a black-white confrontation than the media portrayed,

Question 21

What was the second criticism from the Kerner Commission?

Answer 21

2. Media failed to adequately report on the underlying problems of race relations. From a white perspective, you’re not getting the whole picture of the situation.

Question 22

What was the third criticism from the Kerner Commission?

Answer 22

3. Media post - riot reviews lacking. Post Riot reviews emphasized: legislation which should be sought to control future rioting behaviour, control of riot actions/ containment strategy, underlying causes of riots not analyzed, post- riot reactions by middle-class African Americans and those who lived in the “ghetto” not sought

Question 23

What were the findings from the Kerner Commissions Report’s Interviews with African Americans?

Answer 23

African Americans reported white bias in the media, and police bias including a failure to report false arrests, a failure to give voice to the community affected, and journalists were all white and told stories from the white man’s perspective. Some reported that they only looted because the media was there, to put on a show and were encouraged by journalists. This essentially revealed that the media itself was deviant.

Question 24

What are the two critical approaches to the study of media and society?

Answer 24

Framing an Power.

Question 25

What does the media frame?

Answer 25

Individuals (how we think about a certain individual), health issues, social issues, social groups

Question 26

What are the three types of framing?

Answer 26

Conflict frame (you focus the frame on conflict, usually a social issue), Human Interest frame (focus on the life of an individual), Economic Consequences frame (focus on all the, for example, costs incurred)

Question 27

List and explain the implications of social group framing

Answer 27

1. Where a social group is not represented (if you don’t see yourself in the media, you feel irrelevant, ignored) 2. Where a social issue is associated with a specific social group (it’s inflaming) 3. Where media presents singular image (internalized meaning, thinking of being typecast) 4. Framing impacts social policy (people start thinking how media shows things is the way to address certain situations)

Question 28

What does the Marxist Approach say about media ownership and power?

Answer 28

Ownership of the means of production = power, ownership influences content, ownership increasingly concentrated; corporate empires control message

Question 29

What are the trends in media ownership?

Answer 29

Convergence = individual companies own multiple forms of media. 
Conglomeration = companies merge or buy out others, creating larger companies. 
Concentration = a small number of companies control most media products.

Question 30

What does symbolic interactionism say about the media, specifically mass communication?

Answer 30

Mass communication is different than other types of communication because it doe not allow for a mutual exchange of verbal and non-verbal cues. However, the media does promote specific discourses and influences social construction, therefore it indirectly our experience of reality.

Question 31

What do administrative approaches focus on with media?

Answer 31

Have a positivist, objectivist orientation. Focus on determining what types of messages will result in certain outcomes in people. Focus on cause/effect relationships. Sometimes focused on determining what is needed to change people’s behaviours. Example; what is the best condom - promotion campaign?

Question 32

Why is/was hip hop music deviantized?

Answer 32

Rather than promoting political engagement, being emancipatory and providing role models for black youth, it praised criminal lifestyles, insulted women and featured strong images of violence.