Media

Question 1

What do people do if they are not all passive consumers of media?

Answer 1

We filter, interpret, and resist what we see and hear if it contradicts our experiences and beliefs

Question 2

Who usually dominates in the interaction between audiences and media sources?

Answer 2

Media sources - have more power

Question 3

Mass Media

Answer 3

Print, radio, television, and other communication technologies

Question 4

What does the “mass” imply in mass media?

Answer 4

the media reaches many people

Question 5

Most of the mass media are..

Answer 5

Recent inventions
• Printing press
• Print media
• Newspapers
• Telegraph messaging

Question 6

Who sent the first telegraph message?

Answer 6

Samuel Morse -
Long-distance communication no longer required physical transportation.

Question 7

ARPANET

Answer 7

Forerunner to the internet

Question 8

Most of the electronic media are creations of..

Answer 8

the twentieth century.
• The first commercial television broadcasts
• U.S. Department of Defence - ARPANET
• World Wide Web
• Wi-Fi

Question 9

Three Factors that explain the Rise in Mass Media

Answer 9

• The Protestant Reformation
• Democratic Movements
• Capitalist Industrialization

Question 10

The Protestant Reformation (Mass Media)

Answer 10

In the 16th century, Martin Luther encouraged people to read the Bible themselves instead of relying on priests
• Technological improvements
in papermaking and printing made the diffusion of the Bible and other books possible
• The most significant landmark was Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press

Question 11

Democratic Movements (Mass Media)

Answer 11

Beginning in the eighteenth century, citizens of many countries demanded and achieved REPRESENTATION in government
• People wanted to become LITERATE and gain access to previously restricted centres of learning
• Democratic governments depended on an INFORMED CITIZENRY, and therefore encouraged popular literacy and the GROWTH of a free press

Question 12

Capitalist Industrialization (Mass Media)

Answer 12

Modern industries required a LITERATE and NUMERATE workforce.
• They also needed rapid means of communication to do business efficiently.
• The mass media turned out to be a major SOURCE OF PROFIT in their own right.

Question 13

Media Effects - Functionalism

Answer 13

Mass media perform important functions, including the following:
1. COORDINATE the operation of INDUSTRIAL and postindustrial societies.
2. Act as agents of SOCIALIZATION.
• what you can and can’t say, expectations out of life
3. Engage in SOCIAL CONTROL by helping ensure conformity
4. Provide ENTERTAINMENT

Question 14

Mass Media - Conflict Theory

Answer 14

•Social inequality can be fostered by the mass media.
•Some people benefit from the mass media more than others do.
•Mass media favour interests of dominant classes and political groups.
• spread their messages to keep people oppressed

Question 15

Media Ownership is..

Answer 15

Is INCREASING in Concentration
• less and less voices in the market place, and MORE and more and domination of a few messages (of the powerful)
• conflict theory

Question 16

Vertical Integration

Answer 16

Media ownership in ONE field (Production, distribution, consumption of films)

• owns every part of the process
• like how Disney owns every part of their media chain

Question 17

Horizontal Integration

Answer 17

Media ownership across many industries
• not as common, not always connected

Question 18

Media Bias

Answer 18

The MORE concentrated media ownership is, the FEWER viewpoints it represents
• conflict theory

Question 19

What does media bias give rise to?

Answer 19

• Deprives the public of INDEPENDENT SOURCES of information.
• LIMITS DIVERSITY of opinion.
• Encourages the public to ACCEPT their society as it is.

Question 20

Biasing Mechanisms (conflict theory)

Answer 20

According to Edward HERMAN and Noam CHOMSKY: subtle mechanisms help to bias the news in a way that SUPPORTS powerful corporate interests and political groups:

1. ADVERTISING: FEAR of losing business may lead news carriers to SOFTEN stories that big advertisers might find offensive.
2. SOURCING: Most news agencies rely heavily on government and corporate sources that routinely slant information to reflect favourably on their policies and preferences.
3. FLAK: Journalists who depart from official and corporate points of view are attacked.

Question 21

Cultural Studies in Mass Media (symbolic interactionist)

Answer 21

These studies focus not just on the cultural meanings producers try to transmit, but also on the way audiences FILTER and INTERPRET mass media messages in the context of their own interests, experiences, and values.
• how does the audience react to media

Question 22

Two-Step Flow

Answer 22

• Media to Opinion leaders
• Opinion leaders to the people they influence
• Not many people listen to the media, but to opinion leaders. Opinion leaders consume a lot of news, and then tell their opinions on such news to the people who listen to them, and become influenced.

Question 23

Audience Interpretation sociologist

Answer 23

Stuart Hall
• Encoding - Decoding

Question 24

Encoding-Decoding

Answer 24

● Producers encode media messages
● Viewers decode them in three ways

Question 25

What are the three ways in which media messages are decoded?

Answer 25

●The way they were intended (by the producer)
●Modified
●Oppose them (reject completely)

Question 26

Feminist Critiques on Media

Answer 26

• Women tended to be cast in subordinate roles.
• Women usually appeared in domestic settings.
• Advertising targeted women only as purchasers of household products.
• The news rarely mentioned issues of importance for many women.

Question 27

Women can actively _____ texts of _____

Answer 27

Reinterpret texts of capitalism
• Women know that romance novels are unrealistic, but read them for joy rather than be subjugated to the patriarchy

Question 28

What is the Internet seen more as?

Answer 28

Democratic - makes the mass media more democratic by partially BLURRING the distinction between producer and consumer

Question 29

What does the Internet offer more of?

Answer 29

offers more OPPORTUNITY for audience influence than do the traditional mass media
• Provides new ways for media conglomerates to restrict access to paying customers.
• Gives consumers new creative capabilities

Question 30

What is the fastest growing means of mass production?

Answer 30

The Internet

Question 31

Media Imperialism

Answer 31

The domination of a mass medium by a single national culture and the undermining of other national cultures.
• American domination is another striking feature of Internet content

Question 32

Concerns over the Digital Divide and Access

Answer 32

• Primarily individual users must pay for the Internet’s expensive infrastructure.
• In Canada, households that are richer, better educated, urban, and younger are most likely to enjoy Internet access.
• Internet access is not evenly distributed globally as well.

Question 33

What is the major big source of revenue for many big Internet companies?

Answer 33

Advertising

• The Internet provides advertisers with ways to influence consumers more effectively than newspaper, magazine, radio and TV ads do.
• Advertisers buy information on internet activity and demographic characteristics so they can target specific market segments.

Question 34

Algorithms

Answer 34

Rules that computers follow and which drive the Internet and social media.
• Algorithms have incorporated biases which tend to favour privileged and/or right-wing groups.
• One expert in the field labelled such biased algorithms “weapons of math destruction.”
• People seeing only what they want to see, hardens views, but more money for companies due to ads

Question 35

How does social media affect our Identities?

Answer 35

• Social media offer people opportunities to manipulate the way they present themselves to others and to explore aspects of their selves that they may suppress in embodied social interaction.
• Some social media users are aware that the selves they present online are problematic.

Question 36

How does social media affect our social relations?

Answer 36

• People tend to use social media to augment telephone and face-to-face communication, not to replace them.
• Social media tend to increase interaction and build community—but not community in the traditional sense.

Question 37

How does our use of Social Media affect SOCIAL ACTIVISM?

Answer 37

Social media open up new ways of engaging in social change.
• People advocate and spread awareness of a wide variety of causes using social media.
• People also use social media to mobilize others for demonstrations, petitions, meetings, support concerts, and fundraising.