Lecture 4

Question 1

Media

Answer 1

Any form of communication that targets a mass audience in print or electronic format.

Question 2

What does media do?

Answer 2

Defines social problems, shapes public debates, and defines boundaries between groups.

Question 3

Administrative approach to media:

Answer 3

Effects of media messages on individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Scientific approach.

Question 4

Critical approach to media:

Answer 4

Structures of power and processes of social control. How the media constructs events, issues, and identities. Power relations. Who’s telling us that something is deviant?

Question 5

Framing

Answer 5

The overall way that an issue is depicted in the media. Affects what we notice about reality.

Question 6

Framing of ethnicity:

Answer 6

Invisible, stereotypes, social problems, adornments, white-washed.

Question 7

Framing of gender:

Answer 7

Feminine touch, ritualization of subordination, licensed withdrawal, and infantilization.

Question 8

What game was released in the 1980’s leading to moral panic?

Answer 8

Dungeons and Dragons.

Question 9

What was Dungeons and Dragons linked to by activists?

Answer 9

Linked Dungeons and Dragons with suicide, drug use, and satanism.

Question 10

What is the modern moral panic in media?

Answer 10

Attention is now brought on what role playing violent video games do towards violence in real life.

Question 11

What is ironic about the Dungeons and Dragons moral panic?

Answer 11

What once caused moral panic is now seen as a solution to a young generation that does not use their imagination enough.

Question 12

GamerGate

Answer 12

• Social movement.
• Implicated in broader critiques, particularly with respect to gender and sexuality.
• Pro-GamerGate and Anti-GamerGate.

Question 13

Pro-GamerGate

Answer 13

There is lots of collusion and corruption in the video game industry.

Question 14

Anti-GamerGate

Answer 14

This is a distraction, and what we needs to be concerned about is sexism in video games (in culture and in the games).

Question 15

Which view says that:

• Gets picked up by media more often.
• Gamers are behind the times.
• Says that Pro-GamerGate has gone to war against women under the hashtag #GamerGate.

Answer 15

Anti-GamerGate.

Question 16

Explain the Pro-GamerGate perspective:

Answer 16

• Video game makers have a history of colluding with those who review video games.
  
  • Reviewers were forced to resign or fired when writing a negative review of a particular video game.

Question 17

How does the media skew the Pro-GamerGate perspective?

Answer 17

This is not the narrative that makes its way to media. Media portrays this as white men who want to protect their hobby from women.

Question 18

Media ownership is characterized in 3 ways:

Answer 18

Convergence, conglomeration, and concentration.

Question 19

Convergence

Answer 19

Company owns multiple forms of media.

Question 20

Conglomeration

Answer 20

Merging of media companies.

Question 21

Concentration

Answer 21

Small number of companies own the majority of media products.

Question 22

Media causes deviance. It constructs deviance and normality. However, it…

Answer 22

Can also be used as a tool for deviance.

Question 23

How can media be used as a tool for deviance?

Answer 23

Using mostly new media.

Question 24

Cyber-deviance is a form of new media that includes:

Answer 24

• Cyber-crime.
• Cyber-piracy.
• Cyber-bullying.

Question 25

Cyber-Crime

Answer 25

• Credit card fraud.
• Identity theft.
• Hacking.

Question 26

What are the 5 elements of being a hacker?

Answer 26

• Emerges at a young age.
• Quest for and level of knowledge being foundational to hacker identities.
• Commitment to persist in doing what they do despite obstacles they may encounter in pursuit of this knowledge.
• Authenticity.
• Debates over the forms of hacking that are acceptable/unacceptable.

Question 27

What are the 3 points of the hacker philosophy?

Answer 27

• Ingenious use of any technology.
• Tendency to reverse-engineer technology to make it do the opposite of its intended design.
• Desire to explore systems.

Question 28

Categorizations of hackers:

Answer 28

• True hackers.
• Hardware hackers.
• Crackers.
• Microserfs.
• Hacktivists.

Question 29

True Hackers

Answer 29

Computer pioneers of 1950’s and 60’s. Toyed with capability of computers.

Question 30

Hardware Hackers

Answer 30

Innovators of 1970’s.

Question 31

Crackers

Answer 31

Hackers in the 1980’s who exploited systems for malicious purposes.

Question 32

Microserfs

Answer 32

Hackers in the 1990’s who sold out. Were Crackers, but identified with certain aspects of hackers, but wanted pension plan. Involved with corporate cultures.

Question 33

Hacktivists

Answer 33

Hacker + activist. Big into conspiracy theories, obsessed with privacy and secrecy, membership is fluid, big into political philosophies, general anti-capitalist sentiment, culture of humour and creativity; embrace absurd and offensive.

Question 34

Hackers have started to see themselves as social and political warriors in recent years. True or false?

Answer 34

True.

Question 35

How did hackers become social and political activists?

Answer 35

• Wanted to be accepted as legitimate members of society where they could move away from deviant and rebellious side.
• Current political and economic context is characterized by income inequalities, unfair labour laws. Increase of corporate and state power.
• Hacker-activist culture emerged from state and corporate attempts to control intellectual property.
• Continuous with artistic communities and their attempts to manipulate the mass media to create alternative meanings.

Question 36

Culturegen.

Answer 36

Artistic communities and their attempts to manipulate the mass media to create alternative meanings.

Question 37

Example of culturegen.

Answer 37

Graffiti.

Question 38

What is the reasoning behind a lot of graffiti?

Answer 38

Purpose is not to vandalize, but to challenge state and corporate power.

Question 39

Cyberlibertarianism

Answer 39

Unconstrained progress in digital technology to solve social problems.

Question 40

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Answer 40

Unrestricted security and privacy on the internet.

Question 41

Anonymous

Answer 41

A hacktivist group against class inequality. Socio-economic justice. Internet should be controlled by civil society.

Question 42

4Chan

Answer 42

A place on the internet that started with anime sharing, but is now a place where adolescents post pornographic, violent, or basically anything.

Question 43

What are some Anonymous activist actions in recent years?

Answer 43

Organized the blockage of Habbo Hotel. Campaign against Hal Turner. Serious action when Church of Scientology tried to suppress video of Tom Cruise.