Unit One Flashcards
Socio-economic status (SES)
a measure of an individual or groups position in a community, is determined by such factors as your parents’ occupations, income, education, neighbourhood etc.
Life Experiences
Things like gender, ethnicity, age, religion etc. determine our life experience.
Peoples perspectives, as well as groups, can and do change. They change because people live through new experiences or alter their opinions as they grow older.
Individuals can hold a “left wing” position on one issue and a very different position on another.
Where do our perspectives come from?
Life experience and Socio-economic status
Importance of point of view?
Better Understanding
Conflict Resolution
Including others
Including others
Considering the points of view that
are represented and those that are missing helps us to be more inclusive in our thinking.
Conflict Resolution
Looking for differing points of view on an issue helps to settle arguments when people have different opinions
Better Understanding
Helps us understand the opinions, beliefs, and values of others
What is hard empathy?
When you have not gone through a specific situation/experience, however, feel sympathy and want to understand.
What is easy empathy?
Things that humans can easily relate to/gone through (ex. Christmas morning)
How do you distinguish an opinion?
Opinions reflect the beliefs you hold about the events in the world around you.
Opinions develop as you consider the facts in light of your values.
Opinions are SUBJECTIVE, meaning they form as a result of your perspective.
How can you tell a fact?
Are indisputable truths-knowledge that is certain, concrete, and incontestable.
Can be verified by accurate observation and measurement.
Your own personal experience cannot change the nature of factual information, meaning facts are OBJECTIVE.
What is The Single Story and why is it dangerous?
The single story is where the same story gets told over and over again about a people or a place we do not know first-hand.
The danger is that it leads to stereotypes, to half-truths, not the full truth.
How can you avoid Single Stories?
Fact check it (lateral reading), Diversify where you get your info from (use news sources from other countries), Put data in perspective
How has media impacted the world of issues
Mass media functions as the main, albeit not the only, source of information about world issues
Globalization of media has created a border-less world in terms of sharing information in real time
Internet – contributed to the spread of democracy, wealth creation, technological advancements etc.
Great benefits, but also great challenges
What is bias?
When an issue is presented from only one point of view. We all have biases because of our experiences.
Why is bias bad in the media?
The issue begins when bias is found in the media, as they start to persuade their audience to their social cultural/ religious beliefs.
Explicit Bias
Attitudes and beliefs that we consciously or deliberately hold and express about a person or group
Implicit Bias
Includes attitudes and beliefs (positive or negative) about other people, ideas, issues, or institutions that occur outside of our conscious awareness and control.
Everyone has implicit biases —even people who try to remain objective (e.g., judges and journalists)—that they have developed over a lifetime.
However, people can work to combat and change these biases.
Confirmation Bias
We have a persistent bias towards sources of information that confirm the beliefs we already have, while discounting info that disagrees with our preconceived notions
Selective Bias
Part of what drives confirmation bias.
Act of narrowing our focus in an attempt to eliminate irrelevant details that might interfere with our ability to discern important elements of a situation or issue.
Can also be driven by our biases in ways that are problematic. For example, stereotypes can be affirmed through selective attention to examples of behaviour that conforms to the overgeneralization.
Selective attention can cause us to pay more attention to a message or information that is consistent with our existing viewpoints, feelings, and ideas.
Availability Bias
The human tendency to think that
examples of things that come readily to mind are more representative than is actually the case.
Negativity Bias
Also known as the negativity effect.
The notion that even when of equal intensity things of a more negative nature have a greater effect on one’s psychological state and processes than neutral or positive things
Attribution Error
Whereby we as a species have a persistent bias towards assuming only good and noble attributes for ourselves and those we are close to
You judge other on their character, but yourself on the situation
Focus on the positive
Gate Keeping Bias
Declining to report on stories or keeping stories covered up
Coverage Bias
Covering only one aspect of the issue
Sensational Bias
Reporting events that are unusual or are, as if they are more common
First to press
Advertising Bias
Stories are covered up, selected, or modified to appease the advertisers
Corporate Bias
When the owners of the medium have an agenda or bias
Centrist Bias
Bias toward political centrism
Crowds out thought-provoking political views on the left and tight
Has to do with manufacturing consent
Afluent Bias
Media isn’t just biased toward the centre. It often
confuses the centre with views that are actually those of the affluent.
What is the occupy Wall Street movement?
Set out to protest against corporate injustice. Taking billions in bailouts while giving multi-million dollar bonus’s to CEO’s and high ranking employees.
It used the term ‘99%’ to bring attention to the
growing gap between rich and poor.
How did the news reporter (Erin Burnett) cover the occupy Wall Street movement on the media?
She made it sound like they were hippies, wealthy, etc.
When look into her background able to see her bias (affluent bias)
Her view was one of a wealthy persons opinion
Net worth 12 million
Began her professional career working for goldman sachs in the mergers
What is Manufacturing Consent
- Noam Chomsky co wrote a book about it
- Blasted apart the notion that the media acts as a check point of political power and that it is used to inform and serve the public to better engage In the political processes
- But rather Media manufactures our consent
- Tell us what those in power need them to tell us… so we can fall in line
- The idea that democracy is staged with the help of media that work as propaganda machines
He believed that Control cannot be imposed by force in a democracy and Limits are placed on
democracy by subtle means
What is setting the agenda
Has to do with manufacturing consent:
20% of pop. = “political class” (not easily fooled)
80% of pop. = follow the rules, status quo not
challenged, stay entertained
What is propaganda?
Persuasive messages, especially during military conflict
What does double speak break down into?
Euphemisms - Mild expressions designed to hide harder or more direct ones. Eg. Enhanced, interrogation (war prisoner torture)
Inversions- Expressions designed to hide the truth. Eg. collateral damage (innocent people die during a drone strike)
Deliberately ambiguous- Outright lies which state the opposite of the truth. Eg. successful mission (ask about this)
what are the 5 filters of editorial bias?
Media ownership, advertising money, the media elite, flack, and common enemy.
What is media ownership?
the dominant mass media outlets are large companies operated for profit and therefore they must cater to the financial interest of the owners who are usually corporations and controlling investors
The endgame of all mass media orgs is profit. “It is in their interest to push for whatever guarantees that profit
what is Advertising money ?
since the majority of the revenue of major media outlets derives from advertising (not from sales or subscriptions), advertisers have acquired a “de facto licensing authority”
What is the media elite?
“ large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access (to the nes), by their contribution to reducing the media’s costs of acquiring and producing nes. The large entities that provide this subsidy become ‘routine’ news sources
What is flack?
refers to a negative responses to a media statement or program (eg. letters, compliments, lawsuits or legislative actions). Flak can be expensive to the media, either due to loss of advertising revenue or due to the costs of legal defence of defence of the media outlets public image
When the story is inconvenient for the powers at being the news reporter then gets flack
What is common enemy?
This was included as a filter in th eoriginal 1988 edition of the book, but chomocky argues that since the end of the cold war anti communnism was replaced by the War on Terror as the major social control mechanism
Lack of acceptance
A common enemy to fear helps to corral public opinion
How does corporate media affect journalism?
Journalists more interested in keeping jobs so they follow values and truisms of mainstream media.
How does group think impact journalism?
reporting and stories are edited to meet the expectations of corporate culture
