P2SB: Language & Media

Question 1

What are the 3 primary functions of the media?

Answer 1

1. a mirror (in providing an objective perspective of society), facilitate discourse by establishing a common understanding of a public event
2. a mouthpiece (in expressing the popular opinion of wider society), give a public voice to the common man
3. a manipulator (in influencing what should and even can be talked about), advocating an agenda

Question 2

collective consciousness (Durkheim, 1983)

Answer 2

a set of shared beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and knowledge that are common to a social group or society

what people have accepted as “natural” because of their shared social experiences and/or social practices

layman term: “common sense”

Question 3

manufacture of consent (Chomsky, 1988)

Answer 3

the mass media leverages its influence to shape public opinion on a particular subject

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select material in relation to the values of those in power

Question 4

linguistic relativism (Sapir-Whorf)

Answer 4

language can influence thought

Question 5

hegemony (Gramsci, 1971)

Answer 5

hegemonic culture: one where wider society has come to accept the attitudes, beliefs and values of the ruling class even when doing so would clearly undermine their interests

*coercision via (implied) threat of physical and symbolic violence rather than through persuasion

Question 6

pseudo-environment (Lippmann, 1922)

Answer 6

a subjective and selective representation of the real world

Question 7

knowledge/power (Foucault, 1981)

Answer 7

those who have power have the means to determine what constituted knowledge and what did not. through this, the powerful could effectively control society’s access to knowledge by delegitimising the knowledge of the powerless

[t]he exercise of power perpetually creates knowledge and, conversely, knowledge constantly induces effects of power’

Question 8

news values (1991)

Answer 8

the more news values there are in a news story, the more newsworthy it will be

attribution, consonance, eliteness, facticity, negativity, novelty, personalisation, proximity, recency, relevance, superlativeness, unambiguity

attribution – how much provenance the source(s) in the new story has/have

consonance - how aligned the news story is to the readers’ preconceptions

eliteness - how prominent the key actors in the news story are

facticity - how much detailed information there is in the news story

superlativeness - how exceptional and/or unprecedented the news story is

Question 9

intertextuality (Kristeva, 1966)

Answer 9

a news story exists not on its own, but as part of a network of other news stories that preceded it. hence a news story is being constituted by multiple narratives

thus our interpretation of the meaning of a news story will be based on those of previous news stories that we have read