Media

Question 1

Digital Media: Curran and Seaton.

Answer 1

Neophiliacs argue that new technology is good for democracy. Monitoring and criticism of the powerful and organising protest groups is easier.
Decline of community.

Question 2

Digital Media: Boyle.

Answer 2

Digitalisation means it is easier to connect technologies. Digital convergence led to social and economic convergence. Emergence of new markets.
No longer constrained by television schedules, greater choice.

Question 3

Digital Media: Seaton.

Answer 3

Internet generates political activism. Can revitalise democracy. Like-minded people are given a voice and a chance to create social change.

Question 4

Digital Media: Cornford and Robbins.

Answer 4

Interactivity and media have improved due to old technology.

Question 5

Growth of New Media: Boyle.

Answer 5

New media often associate with young people. Age gap is declining.

Anxieties of impact of media on children:
Pornography, terrorist propaganda, cyberbullying, grooming.

Question 6

Growth of New Media: Cornford and Robbins.

Answer 6

Do not believe new media will be more democratic. Corporations exert more power. Digital class divide feeds into inequalities. Biggest grievances, least likely.to have internet access.
New technologies provide more choice.
Encourages materialism.

Question 7

Growth of New Media: Keen.

Answer 7

No governing moral code.
Selective truth.
Social networks are vehicles for narcissistic self-broadcasting.
User generated sites are biased and unreliable.
Lies and trolling are the norms.
Contributes to illiteracy and short attention spans.

Question 8

Ownership and Control: Pluralism.

Answer 8

Market dominates media content.
Whale: diversity of media products means it is nearly impossible for owners to influence content. Media owners lack time to think about the details of running a business due to struggle with trade and investment.

Question 9

Ownership and Control: Marxism.

Answer 9

Instrumental: media owners manipulate and control the proletariat. Existing economic system remains unchallenged.
Hegemonic: owners have little power. Professionals produce media for profit.
The Frankfurt School: media owners control working class. Bread and circuses approaches shows media output is entertainment oriented.

Question 10

Ownership and Control: Postmodernism (Baudrillard, Trowler, Levene).

Answer 10

Individual consumers own and control content in the media.

Baudrillard: hard to distinguish between reality and media (hyperreality) due to too much online information.
Undermines power of truth and objectivity.
Media is subject to interpretation.

Trowler: messages are polysemic (interpreted in many different ways), difficult for one message to be more powerful than another.

Levene: greater choice in access to a greater selection of media making it easier to challenge or reject narratives.

Question 11

Ownership and Control: Patterns of Ownership (Curran, Bagdikian).

Answer 11

Curran: press barons owned most newspapers. Greater economic control. Most newspapers are owned by individuals.

Bagdikian: patterns of merging and taking over small businesses.

Question 12

Ownership and Control: Extent to which owners control content.

Answer 12

GUMG: media support the interests of capitalists. Hegemony is an accidental by product of white, middle class, male journalists and broadcasters.
Consensus views are generally unthreatening and appeal to the majority. Views outside of this are ‘extremist’, receive little coverage and are ridiculed. Profits from consensus views. If media is not consumed, advertises will refuse contracts and deprive companies of money. Avoids inequalities.

Question 13

Global Culture and Global Media: Pluralism.

Answer 13

No mass culture due to media and technology. More choice and knowledge. Harder for one set of ideas to dominate.

Question 14

Global Culture and Global Media: Marxism.

Answer 14

Popular culture maintains ideological hegemony and power of dominant social class. Lulled into uncritical, undemanding passivity, less likely to challenge dominant ideas. Globalisation increases consumption.

Question 15

Global Culture and Global Media: Strinati.

Answer 15

Distinction between high and popular culture is blurred. Greater consumer choice. Boundaries between different cultures creates a pick and mix culture. Media saturated audiences are media literate.
There cannot be a single truth.
Reliability and comfort in media led virtual lives.

Question 16

Global Culture and Global Media: Lechner and Boli.

Answer 16

If certain activities become more globalised, people will have more in common.

Question 17

Effects of Globalisation: Flew.

Answer 17

Spread of global media has led to cultural imperialism. American culture has become dominant. Focus on profit rather than quality.

Question 18

Effects of Globalisation: Fenton.

Answer 18

Brands sold on a global scale. Beliefs are forced into everyone.
Cultural homogenisation: a variety of cultures blended into one.
Some reject the input from other cultures.

Question 19

Effects of Globalisation: Storey.

Answer 19

Mass culture is commercial culture.
Neo Gramscian Hegemony Theory: popular culture as a struggle between resistance and forces of incorporating interests of dominant groups.
Embrace entertainment but must protect political understanding and reject anti intellectualism. Media helps create and communicate in cultural practices.
Embracing a globalised popular culture may lead to fewer issues for oppressed groups.

Question 20

Social Construction of News: Jones.

Answer 20

Print media holds those in power to account and provide a space for competing views to be aired.

Fair, neutral and balanced.

Question 21

Social Construction of News: Galtung and Ruge.

Answer 21

Reference to elite people or elite nations.
Continuity/composition.
Extraordinaires.
Negativity.
Threshold.

Frequency/unambiguity/personalisation.

Brighton and Foy: limited representation, assumes consensus between all journalists, news values may no longer exist.

Question 22

Social Construction of News: Davies.

Answer 22

Churnalists: churning out facts or stories from government spin doctor’s, public relations companies and corporate interests.

Question 23

Influence of Audience: GUMG.

Answer 23

News is the product of middle class backgrounds. Unconsciously sides with the powerful and the rich: more in common.
Do not welcome radical changes from the poor and the powerless.
Trade unions are demanding but managers give offers.

Question 24

Influence of Audience: Jewkes.

Answer 24

Problem groups are newsworthy. Audiences share their concerns, believed they were giving the public what they want. Different levels of deviance.

Question 25

Age: Wayne et al.

Answer 25

82% of the focus on young people were as victims or perpetrators.
1% was from the perspective of young people.
Image of youth encouraging dear and condemnation.
Distracts people from issues such as housing and unemployment.

Question 26

Age: Stereotypes.

Answer 26

Sexist double standard, older women less likely to be on television.
Biggs: older people represented as forceful, vague and difficult.
Signorelli: biased towards middle aged people. Children represented as innocent. Youth represented as social problem.
McRobbie: young girls presented as passive. Girl power used to free girls.

Question 27

Social Class: Newman.

Answer 27

Focus on the lifestyles of wealthy and privileged.
Focus on consumer items only affordable by the wealthy.
Not enough coverage for inequalities.
A lifestyle to aim for.
Limited coverage of working class.

Question 28

Ethnicity: Wayne.

Answer 28

50% of news stories dealt with young black people committing crimes.

Question 29

Ethnicity: Van Dijk.

Answer 29

Representations of black people: criminals, a threat, unimportant.
Moral panics around: immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, Muslims.

Some media suggests that lives of white people are more important.

People living in high ethnic minority areas will be less likely to believe any negative stereotypes.

Question 30

Gender: Wolf.

Answer 30

Beauty myth:
Women should adhere to an ideal in terms of looks, shape, weight and size.
Encouraged to put this central to their personal happiness rather than competing with men for positions of power, creating a false consciousness.
Deters them from making the most of available opportunities.

Question 31

Sexuality: Batchelor et al.

Answer 31

Homosexuality is barely integrated into mainstream representation.
Appears in the form of anxiety or embarrassment.
Target for teasing/bullying.
Lesbianism completely invisible.

Question 32

Disability: Barnes.

Answer 32

Identification of recurring disability stereotypes:
Pitiable/pathetic.
Sinister and evil.
Atmospheric/curio.
Supercripples.
Sexually abnormal.
Incapable of participating in community life.

Rarely presented as normal. Seen as unhealthy or tragic. Media presentations reflect prejudice of able bodied. Fear of the unknown.

Question 33

Changes in Representation: Connell.

Answer 33

No single, unchanging form of masculinity. Culturally dominant form of masculinity. Heterosexual is connected to marriage.
Homosexuality is seen as the nullification of masculinity.
Mass media sustains hegemonic masculinity.
Subject to change due to crisis of masculinity.

Question 34

Changes in Representation: McRobbie.

Answer 34

Media projected towards young women. Popular feminism promotes girl power. Traditional feminism belongs to an older generation. Sexuality inequality through ‘shagging, snogging and having a good time’.
Popular feminism is mainstream.

Question 35

Sociologists: Digital Media.

Answer 35

Curran and Seaton, Boyle, Seaton, Cornford and Robbins.

Question 36

Sociologists: Growth of New Media.

Answer 36

Boyle, Cornford and Robbins, Keen.

Question 37

Sociologists: Ownership and Control.

Answer 37

Pluralism, Marxism, Postmodernism, Curran and Bagdikian, GUMG.

Question 38

Sociologists: Global Culture and Global Media.

Answer 38

Pluralism, Marxism, Strinati, Lechner and Boli.

Question 39

Sociologists: Effects of Globalisation.

Answer 39

Flew, Fenton, Storey.

Question 40

Sociologists: Social Construction of News.

Answer 40

Jones, Galtung and Ruge, Davies.

Question 41

Sociologists: Influence of Audience.

Answer 41

GUMG, Jewkes.

Question 42

Sociologists: Changes in Representation.

Answer 42

Connell, McRobbie.