Media Flashcards
Social effects of media (2)
- Status Conferral
2. The Lowering of Popular Taste
1900 Media mogul who gained notoriety during the rise of the mass “penny” press
William Randolph Hearst
Media hypothesized to have direct effects.
The magic bullet theory
The Magic bullet theory aka
The Hypodermic Needle theory
A study called ___ : studying media influence in voting behavior
Personal Influence
Lazarsfeld and Katz tested the
Powerful Effects theory
Voters were influenced more by people they thought were better informed.
T or F
True
The two step flow
Mass media -> opinion leaders -> Followers
Media influence is indirect and therefore not as powerful as initially theorized.
Theory of Limited Effects
x -> x
x + y + c + m + a -> z
Powerful Effects vs Limited Effects
Educational attainment, class, gender, media, source credibility can affect
Influence
Proponent of Cultivation theory
George Gerbner
A storytelling system and a primary source of socialization and everyday information
Television
Television does not have the effect of providing a shared way of viewing the world. T or F
False
Situated vs __ culture
Mediated
Implies long-term cumulative consequences to media exposure to an essentially repeating and stable set of messages
Cultivation effect
Predicts that heavy viewers will view the world as more dangerous compared to light viewers
Cultivation Theory
Effects of heavy television viewing (3)
Blurring, bending and blending
- Television types develop same outlook towards society that doesn’t happen with radio exposure
- Heavy viewers share the same meanings, orientations and perspectives with each other.
Mainstreaming
Proponents of The Agenda Setting Function of the Media
Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw
- Capability of filtering stories, media tells what to think about.
- The media may not be successful in telling us what to think. But they are successful in telling us what to think about.
The Agenda Setting Function
How media tend to regulate the flow information by making some issues more salient than others
Gatekeeping
Three part process of agenda setting
- Media Agenda
- Public Agenda
- Policy Agenda
Proponent of the Spiral of Silence theory
Elisabeth Noelle-Neuman
- People have a sixth sense when it comes to the opinion of the public
- People speak up more when they feel that their opinions conform to the the popular ones
- People don’t speak up when they feel like their opinions are unpopular
The Spiral of Silence theory
- Media helps form public opinions
- Promotes opinions over others
- Gives us a sense of what the public opinion is
Media participation in the Spiral of silence
Proponent of Media Ecology
Marshal McLuhan
Media ecology aka
Technological Determinism
- Refers to media as environment
- We are shaped by the tools that we use, as they become extensions of ourselves.
- Relationship of technology and human relationships and how media affects human participation and understanding.
Media Ecology
“Media Ecology is the study of media environments, the idea that technology and techniques, modes of information and codes of communication play a leading role in human affairs”
Lance Strate
New Media Technology impacts a change in
Social environments
Behavior
Society
Partner of McLuhan (capitalism)
Harold Innis
The media act as extensions of the human senses during each era
T o F
T
Four eras in media history
- Tribal Era
- Literate Era
- Print Era
- Electronic Era
Proponent of the Semiotics theory
Roland Barthes
How we assign meaning to signs
Roland Barthes
Three things we consider in the field of semiotics
The sign itself
The system of codes, their development and the channels through which they are transmitted
The culture within which signs, and their codes, operate
Focused on texts and how we make sense of them
Semiotics
Perceived and recognized to stand for something other than itself
A sign
He illustrated the Semantic Triangle
C.S Pierce
Three things in the Semantic triangle
Sign
Object
Interpretant
Refers to a physical object, something that exists
Sign
He came up with the signification process
Ferdinand de Saussure
Three things in the signification process
The signifier
The signified
The signification
Process of giving meaning to external reality
Signification
The mental concept attached to the sign
Signified
Classification of signs according to Pierce and Saussure (3)
Icon
Index
Symbol
- Icons resemble the sign in some way
2. Meaning is highly motivated and constrained
Icon
- There is a direct, existential relationship between the sign and its object
- Meaning is less motivated and constrained, as there is more room for interpretation
Index
- There is no direct connection between the sign and the object.
- The connection between the sign and the object is a matter of convention or rule.
- Meaning has low motivation and constraint; open to interpretation.
Symbol
Meaning is contingent on
The organization of signs
Refer to the conventions or rules that accompany the combination of signs
Syntagms
Units from one can be chosen
Paradigms
___ are the system within which signs are organized
Codes
Signification of Roland Barthes (2)
- Illustration
2. Myths
Illustration of Roland Barthes (3)
- Denotative level
- Connotative level
- Mythical/Ideological level
First order illustration level
Denotative level
The emotions associated with the first order level
Connotative level
Third order level: naturalized meanings that have social-political-power implications
Mythical/ideological level
The story by which a culture explains or understands some aspect of reality
Naturalized meanings produced by a dominant social group
Myths
These reinforce the dominant value of a culture
Mythic signs
Proponent of Cultural Studies
Stuart Hall
Moving from powerful media to not so powerful media (1930s-1980s)
Effects paradigm of communication research
Audiences are quite purposeful and selective in their media use
Uses and Gratifications Paradigm
Uses and Gratifications Paradigm (3)
- Empowerment
- Pleasure
- Self-confidence
Media messages benefit an elite few rather than work towards a public good.
T or F
T
Pioneers of the Critical Media Scholarship, applying Marxist thought to the study of mass culture
The Frankfurt School
- Unquestioned assumptions about how the world works
2. Taken for granted ways of thinking
Idealogy
Politics, Law, art, education, media, security and religion are examples of
Superstructures
Stuart Hall is heavily influenced by the works of (3)
The Frankfurt school
Roland Barthes
Michel Foucault
Images, concepts and premises which provide the framework through which we represent, Interpret, understand and make sense of some aspect of social existence
Idealogy
Corporate ownership of the media prevents free expression and participation.
Stories of the ordinary are framed for them, therefore they have no presence in the media.
T o F
T
According to _ some people hold more discursive power than others
Michel Foucault
Mass media communicate myths that shape perceptions of the world; instruments of social control.
Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding model
The social and political contexts of media content production
Encoding
The everyday life context of media content reception
Decoding
They encode a dominant or preferred meaning into the text
Producers
Audience interpretation (3)
- Dominant
- Negotiated
- Oppositional
- Surveillance of the environment
- The correlation of the parts of society in responding to the environment
- The transmission of social heritage from one generation to the next
- Entertainment
functions of media
