Authority
- power people perceive as legitimate, not coercive
- Traditional: power legitimized through respect for long established cultural patterns
- Rational-legal: power legitimized by legally enacted rules and regulations
- Charismatic: power legitimized through extraordinary personal abilities that inspire devotion and obedience
- Routinization of charisma: the transformation of charismatic authority into some combination of traditional and bureaucratic authority
Fascism
-Nationalist
-Anti-Communist/Anti-Socialist
-Authoritarian
>a political system that denies popular participation in government
>rejects equality
-Expansionist Imperialism
>positive view on use of violence
>mass militarization of society
-Stress on Masculinity
-Anti-intellectual indoctrination
Voter Turnout
- 57.5% of eligible voters participated in 2012
- 36.4% of eligible voters participated in 2014 — lowest since WWII
Pluralism
-Power is equally distributed
>no one group is politically dominant
>several veto groups that compete to win support
>the rise of a multitude of veto groups has neutralized the historical power of wealth
-The federal government acts neutral
>acts as a mediator which smooths conflict in the best interests of all
The Power Elite
-Corporate rich
>direct participation in government
>campaign contributions
-Military leaders
>political and economic pre-eminence started during WWII
-Executive branch
>reign over an immense bureaucratic network
>presidential office and cabinet agencies have progressively expanded in size and importance
Media Selection Bias
-selective reporting of events/frames
>cultural resonances
>corporate hegemony
>relying on authority as sources
Focusing Events
- an incident that “draws attention to some conditions more than to others (Kingdon 1984: 206).”
- also knows as “triggering events” and “information shocks”
- provide a window of opportunity for social movements
- Ex. Fukushima nuclear disaster
Media Systems
- Polarized Pluralist Model
- Mediterranean area of Southern Europe
- lows levels of newspaper circulation and journalistic professionalization
- high levels of political parallelism and state intervention
- weaker development of commercial media - Democratic Corporatist Model
- central and northern Europe
- high levels of all four dimensions
- historical coexistence of commercial media/media tied to social and political groups - Liberal Model
- North Atlantic region and UK
- medium levels of newspaper circulation
- commercial newspapers dominate
- strong role of the market
- strong professionalization
- low levels of parallelism (except UK) and state intervention
Two-Step Flow
- the idea that “opinion leaders” mediate decisively between mass communicators and audiences
- Criticism: neglects the role of media in shaping the agenda and framing events (Gitlin 1978)
gatekeeping
the role of editors and media mangers in deciding to cover or not cover certain news stories
framing
a set of concepts and theoretical perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies organize, perceive, and communicate about reality
the cold war
- economic and political struggle between the West and the Soviet Union
- US elites saw the Soviet Union as constituting a political and military threat
- spread of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe as evidence/fall of China in 1949
- socialism as a threat to capitalist interests
PTSD
- results from trauma or stress in battle
- nightmares, difficulty sleeping and concentrating, flashbacks, jumpiness and hyper-alertness guilt of surviving, and feelings of detachment from people
- 11% of veterans of the war in Afghanistan
- 20% of Iraq war veterans
Terrorism
- acts of violence used as a strategy to gain political objectives
- always includes violence against civilian populations for political ends
- include bombings, hijackings, and assassinations
- see violence as a legitimate response to injustice
- focuses world attention on their issues and demands
Blowback
the violent, unintended consequences of a covert operation that are suffered by the civilian population of the aggressor government
business elites
consists of those who are primary owners and top managers of major business firms
inner group elites
consists of members of the business elite who have significant connections with at least several major corporations
corporate consolidation
The consolidation of several business units or several different companies into a larger organization. Business consolidation is used to improve operational efficiency by reducing redundant personnel and processes. It is most often associated with mergers and acquisitions. Business consolidation can result in long-term cost savings, but in the short-term can be expensive and complex.
Misperceptions of Iraq War
- close relations between Iraq and al Qaeda has been found
- weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq
- world public opinion favored the US going to war with Iraq
television exposure hypothesis
exposure to local television news increases the perceived personal likelihood of criminal victimization and heightens its perceived importance as a political problem`
civil liberties
Civil liberties are personal guarantees and freedoms that the government cannot abridge, either by law or by judicial interpretation.
Strategic Defense Initiative
The intent of this program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system in order to prevent missile attacks from other countries, specifically the Soviet Union.
sociotropic threat
a generalized anxiety and sense of threat to society, the country as a whole, or the region where one lives
security
most people prefer protection of their civil liberties over their personal security
