Final reading guide Flashcards
What are three common themes in reality TV shows?
- Actors engage in confessional moments, where they disclose their inner thoughts.
- They form alliances and build entourages
- Reality participants carefully manage their onscreen identities.
Please describe the term cultivation analysis.
Developed by George Gerbner, suggests that heavy TV viewing “cultivates” perceptions of reality consistent with the view of the world presented in television programs. Concentrates on the long-term effects of exposure-on both adults and children-rather than on the short-term impact on attitudes and opinions
What are the three problems that that cloud cultivation findings?
- Difficult to determine cause and effect
- People differ in ways other than their TV viewing habits
- Technical decisions about the way TV viewing and attitudes are measured can have a significant impact on findings.
Please define the terms cultivation and resonance.
Cultivation: the process of trying to acquire or develop a quality or skill
Resonance: a situation in which the respondent’s real life experiences are congruent with those of the television world, thereby leading to a greater cultivation effect.
Please define the term agenda-setting.
An agenda is a list of things to be considered or acted upon. When we say that the media have an impact on agenda setting, we mean that they have the ability to choose and emphasize certain topics, thereby causing the public to perceive these issues as important
Please define the term framing.
The general way a news topic is treated by the media
Please define the term agenda building.
Research on this topic examines how the media build their agenda of newsworthy items.
Please define catharsis and stimulation theory.
Catharsis theory: traced back to Aristotle, theory holds that viewing scenes of aggression can actually purge the viewer’s own aggressive feelings. Thus, a person who sees a violent television program or movie might end up less likely to commit violence.
Stimulation theory: argues the opposite, seeing scenes of violence will actually stimulate an individual to behave more violently afterward.
Please define the terms reinforcement and crystallization.
Reinforcement: strengthening of support for existing attitudes and opinions
Crystallization: the sharpening and elaboration of vaguely held attitudes or predispositions
What is the cocoon effect?
The process whereby people surround themselves with only the political and social information that they find comforting, appealing, or acceptable.
Please define the term functionalism and explain how it is related to media.
Mass media serve key functions in society, and as new media become available, the functions
are altered This is called the functional perspective through which society is regarded
as a system of interlocking parts with each part serving its own function. Lasswell (1948)
was first to offer a functional explanation for the role of the mass media in our society. He
said the media fulfilled the three roles of surveillance, correlation, and transmission. The
media, through their news organizations, provide a constant surveillance of the environment
and inform people about the most important events, issues, and people. As for correlation,
the media socialize people into a common way of thinking that leads to consensus
building. By forging and maintaining a common set of values, the media provide continuity
And the mass media transmit a cultural heritage from generation to generation.
Wright (1960) elaborated on these three functions by adding a fourth: entertainment
Wright argued that entertainment provided people with a sense of relaxation and escape
from their everyday lives. This helps society by reducing the level of tension (Mendelsohn,
1966). Later a fifth function was added: mobilization. The media can be used by people
campaigning for social action to address social, economic, or military problems.
Mobilization refers to the function of allowing people to focus the population’s attention
on certain common objectives (political, governmental, religious, and the like) and motivate
people to action.
Please define the term integration and explain how it is related to media.
Integration. Some scholars argue that the mass media serve to pull people together who
would otherwise be scattered in some way, such as geographically By presenting a set of
messages simultaneously to a wide range of people, the mass media give people a sense of
community; that is, people know that there are many other people who are experiencing
the same messages and who are thinking about the same ideas. Over time, the repetition
of these ideas shapes society into a coherent whole. Thus the mass media are regarded as
formulating societies by attracting people with a common set of values, then reinforcing
them with a continual flow of ideas and information Ganowitz, 1952; Rogers, 1993).
The mass media are able to integrate society better than other institutions because of
their common messages and pervasive exposure. The media create a public sphere, which
is a forum in which ideas get debated and a range of positions gets aired. Over time certain
ideas become more accepted, and this builds unity among members of society Because
everyone has such easy access to this continual stream of media messages, everyone can
learn the values and norms of society.
Please define the term fragmentation and explain how it is related to media.
Fragmentation: scholars see society fragmenting as a result of mass media.
That is, there is a reduction over time of the “public sphere,” that is, a shared forum in
which people can debate political and cultural issues and form some identity about who
they are. The media foster social isolation as individuals each pursue their
own media exposure agendas This leads to less public activity and less sharing of values
that bind people together into a unified society. There is less civic and social participation and over time the public sphere grows smaller.
What is the confetti generation?
The confetti person is inundated by experience but ungrounded in any cultural discipline for arriving at any reality but the self.
What is the neo-Marxists perspective on what role the media plays in society?
These scholars elaborated the idea of ideology and argued that the mass media were a powerful tool that disseminated the ideology and supported the superstructure that kept the working class enslaved in a false consciousness
