Chapter & Lecture 1

Question 0

What do philosophers say about communication?

Answer 0

• Consciousness has developed only under the pressure of the need for communication
• consciousness is really only a net of communication between human beings

Question 1

What is mass communication?

Answer 1

• Based on an asymmetrical relationship between a media organization and a large audience
  Ex: CNN

Question 2

What is the grand theory notion?

Answer 2

• An attempt to develop an all encompassing account of media systems and their impact on society
• An often overstated theory

Question 3

What is mediated communication?

Answer 3

• A sequence which has interpersonal communication at one end and mass communication at the other
• -> How different media are placed in this depends on the amount of control and involvement tag people have in the communication process
• -> Changing nature of the audience: from an amorphous, large mass to an “audience of one”

Question 4

What is the scientific method for defining traits?

Answer 4

• Search for an undiscovered truth
• Gather data to solve the problem
• Formulate a hypothesis
• Test the hypothesis empirically through data processing and interpretation

Question 5

What is the dilemma of social science?

Answer 5

• The more control of the object of study, the less natural life- like it becomes: everyday situation vs. Lab setting
• Practical difficulty: how to observe long-term effects of media vs. unlikeliness of short-term effect of media

Question 6

What are some difficulties of developing Media Theory?

Answer 6

• Difficulty of measuring the goal- oriented life world
• Multiplicity of factors relevant to human behaviour- hard to determine what caused what
• Self-reflexiveness: We act but also think about our actions
• The third person effect: The notion that media always affects others, but not me

Question 7

What is a theory?

Answer 7

• “Any organized set of concepts, explanations, and principles of some aspect of human experience”
• Relationship of variables
• Stories of causality
• An explanation of a puzzling phenomenon

Question 8

What 4 criteria do we classify theories under?

Answer 8

1. The goals of the theory
2. Ontology: What reality consists of, what we can know.
3. Epistemology: How knowledge arises and evolves
4. Axiology: Which values are relevant for research and for theory construction

Question 9

What’s a post positivist theory?

Answer 9

• Representational theory
• When a theory uses empirical observations as its basis, and the scientific method as a guide
  Goals: Explain, Predict, Control human behaviour
  Ontology: The world as it is, apart from our perceptions
  Epistemology: Search for laws, find casual links, use the scientific method
  Axiology: Objectivity, absence of personal values as in natural science.

Question 10

What is cultural theory?

Answer 10

• Representational theory
• Comes from hermeneutic theory: attempt to understand contemporary culture through the analysis of the structure and content of their community
• Social hermeneutics: a theory which attempts to understand how people being observed in a social situation make sense of that circumstance (ex: reality tv)
• Text: any upshot of social interaction which is interpreted in some manner
• Also known as interpretive theory
  Goals: Understand how and why human behaviour occurs in the social world
  Ontology: Meaning is dominant, social and mental reality construction
  Axiology: Acceptance of subject’s values, personal research “lens”, intersubjectivity as guideline

Question 11

What is critical theory?

Answer 11

• Non-representational theory
• Emancipation through knowledge (liberation from alienation)
• Goal: Observe and criticize human oppression and change forms of injustice

Question 12

Way is normative theory?

Answer 12

• Non- representational theory

- Aims to evaluate functioning of media by comparing with social norms/ ideas