Unit One

Question 1

Socio-economic status (SES)

Answer 1

a measure of an individual or groups position in a community, is determined by such factors as your parents’ occupations, income, education, neighbourhood etc.

Question 2

Life Experiences

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

Where do our perspectives come from?

Answer 3

Life experience and Socio-economic status

Question 4

Importance of point of view?

Answer 4

Better Understanding
Conflict Resolution
Including others

Question 5

Including others

Answer 5

Considering the points of view that
are represented and those that are missing helps us to be more inclusive in our thinking.

Question 6

Conflict Resolution

Answer 6

Looking for differing points of view on an issue helps to settle arguments when people have different opinions

Question 7

Better Understanding

Answer 7

Helps us understand the opinions, beliefs, and values of others

Question 8

What is hard empathy?

Answer 8

When you have not gone through a specific situation/experience, however, feel sympathy and want to understand.

Question 9

What is easy empathy?

Answer 9

Things that humans can easily relate to/gone through (ex. Christmas morning)

Question 10

How do you distinguish an opinion?

Answer 10

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.

Question 11

How can you tell a fact?

Answer 11

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.

Question 12

What is The Single Story and why is it dangerous?

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

How can you avoid Single Stories?

Answer 13

Fact check it (lateral reading), Diversify where you get your info from (use news sources from other countries), Put data in perspective

Question 14

How has media impacted the world of issues

Answer 14

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

Question 15

What is bias?

Answer 15

When an issue is presented from only one point of view. We all have biases because of our experiences.

Question 16

Why is bias bad in the media?

Answer 16

The issue begins when bias is found in the media, as they start to persuade their audience to their social cultural/ religious beliefs.

Question 17

Explicit Bias

Answer 17

Attitudes and beliefs that we consciously or deliberately hold and express about a person or group

Question 18

Implicit Bias

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

Confirmation Bias

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Selective Bias

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

Availability Bias

Answer 21

The human tendency to think that
examples of things that come readily to mind are more representative than is actually the case.

Question 22

Negativity Bias

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Attribution Error

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Gate Keeping Bias

Answer 24

Declining to report on stories or keeping stories covered up

Question 25

Coverage Bias

Answer 25

Covering only one aspect of the issue

Question 26

Sensational Bias

Answer 26

Reporting events that are unusual or are, as if they are more common

First to press

Question 27

Advertising Bias

Answer 27

Stories are covered up, selected, or modified to appease the advertisers

Question 28

Corporate Bias

Answer 28

When the owners of the medium have an agenda or bias

Question 29

Centrist Bias

Answer 29

Bias toward political centrism

Crowds out thought-provoking political views on the left and tight

Has to do with manufacturing consent

Question 30

Afluent Bias

Answer 30

Media isn’t just biased toward the centre. It often
confuses the centre with views that are actually those of the affluent.

Question 31

What is the occupy Wall Street movement?

Answer 31

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.

Question 32

How did the news reporter (Erin Burnett) cover the occupy Wall Street movement on the media?

Answer 32

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

Question 33

What is Manufacturing Consent

Answer 33

• 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

Question 34

What is setting the agenda

Answer 34

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

Question 35

What is propaganda?

Answer 35

Persuasive messages, especially during military conflict

Question 36

What does double speak break down into?

Answer 36

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)

Question 37

what are the 5 filters of editorial bias?

Answer 37

Media ownership, advertising money, the media elite, flack, and common enemy.

Question 38

What is media ownership?

Answer 38

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

Question 39

what is Advertising money ?

Answer 39

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”

Question 40

What is the media elite?

Answer 40

“ 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

Question 41

What is flack?

Answer 41

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

Question 42

What is common enemy?

Answer 42

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

Question 43

How does corporate media affect journalism?

Answer 43

Journalists more interested in keeping jobs so they follow values and truisms of mainstream media.

Question 44

How does group think impact journalism?

Answer 44

reporting and stories are edited to meet the expectations of corporate culture