COMMUNICATION FINAL
Terms
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- What are the categories of media effects?
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Levels - Micro and Macro
Domain - Content and topic
Duration - Long or Short Term
Intention - Intended or unintended
Medium - Radio, TV, Film, Internet, or Newspaper - What are the two levels of media effects?
- Micro and Macro
- What are the two domains of media effects?
- content and topic
- What are the two durations of media effects?
- long term and short term
- What are the two intentions of media effects?
- intended and unintended
- What are the mediums of media effects?
- radio, tv, film, internet, and newspaper
- What is another name for the magic bullet theory?
- Hypodermic needle theory
- Why is this theory also known as an S-R model?
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Stimulus - response
TV is shown (stimulus) and then something happens (response) - What are the two key assumptions of this theory (Magic Bullet Theory)?
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The media is a powerful instrument and able to persuade the audience
The audience is passive and powerless to resist - What is the S-O-R model?
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Stimulus-organism-response
It found that:
There are interviewing variables that infulence behavior
We do not all respond to media messages in the same way - What does the “O†stand for?
- Organism
- What is selective exposure (attention) ?
- We avoid exposure to information that we expect will increase dissonance
- What is selective perception?
- We see what we want to see we hear what we want to hear we interpret messages in a manner consistent with our attitudes and beliefs
- What is selective retention?
- We remember what we want to remember
- What is dissoncnce?
- psychological discomfort
- Why is the Law of minimal effects also called the reinforcement theory?
- Becuase the media has some influence on some people some of the time, under some conditions
- What is the premise of the law of minimal effects?
- The media does not serve as sufficent cause of audience effects, but functions through a nexus of other influential factors such as, attitudes, personality, and social situation
- How does Porter define news?
- News is what newsmakers promote as timely important interesting from which news orginizations select, narrate and package information formats that people consume
- What are the six characteristics of news stories?
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Conflict
Magnitude
Proximity
Prominence
Timliness
Currency
Novel - What is conflict?
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Disturbance of the status quo
Man v Man
Man V Nautre
Man V Self - What is magnitude?
- Impact the more, the more newsworthy
- What is proximity?
- The closer, the more newsworthy
- What is prominence?
- The great person theory
- What is timeliness?
- Today v Yesterday
- What is currency?
- Linked to themes of ongoing current intrest
- What is novel?
- Deviant, unusual, unexpected
- What are the three sources for news stories, according to Porter?
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Naturally occuring events
Created of subsidized news
Enterprise news (Beat news) - Which is most common?
- Created or subsizized news
- Porter mentioned six external constraints on the news. Why are these called “constraints�
- Because they hold back the story
- What are the constraints on news stories?
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Access to the story
Cost
Time and space
Prominence of the visual
Need to simplify the complex - Porter discussed some examples of the characteristics of news magazine programs. What are they?
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Emotionally loaded language
Heavy-handed narrative strategies
Visual manipulation to intensify the event
Dramatic camera angles
Emotional music
Dramatic questions, create suspense
Two-dimensional characters
Use of inclusionary tactics
viewer involvement - what would you do
Simplifies the complex
Emotional responses are privleged
not reasoned responses
Claims to have news value
Often treats the viewers as sensation seekers
Stories are often stretched beyond what is necessary in order to milk an emotional response out of the viewer - What is Ellen Wartella’s concern about television and violence?
- While violence in the media may not be the most important contributor to violence in the real world, it is one of the multiple, overlapping causes...of all the factors contributing to violence in our society, violence on television may be the easiest to control, the most tractable
- Describe Ann Marie Barry’s position about television violence?
- The issue here is not the impact of a single film or television program, but the cumulative impact of many images of violebce. The continual message of violence creates and image of the world that we come to accept and act on
- Identify the 4 primary effects of viewing media violence.
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The Learning Effect
The Mean World Syndrome (Fear Effect)
Desensitiation Effect (Bystander Effect)
Appetite Effect - What is the learning effect?
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High levels of iewing television violence are correlated with increased acceptance of aggressive attitudes and behaviors
Heavy viewers behave more aggressively then light viewers
Heavy viewers hold attitudes and values that favor the use of aggression to solve problems - What is the mean world syndrome?
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Viewing violence increases fear of becoming a victim of violence
Results in:
Increased protective behaviors
Increased mistrust of others - What is the desensitilization effect?
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Prolonged viewing of media violence can lead to emotional, desensitilization towards real world violence and victims
Results in:
Desensitization is a defense mechanism that turns the extraordinary into the ordinary in order to avoid fear
Continous exposure to violence creates the impression of normality - What is the appetite effect?
- A steady diet of media violence increases the appetite for more violence in both entertainment and real life
- Which is most comparable to Cultivation theory?
- The mean world syndrom
- What is another name for “the mean world syndrome�
- Fear Effect
- What is another name for the desensitization effect?
- Bystander effect
- What are the four assumptions of cultivation theory?
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TV is essentially and fundamentally different from other mass media
TV is the central cultural arm of American society
The realities cultivated by TV are not necessarily specific attitudes and options but rather the basic assumptions about the facts of life
The major cultural function of TV is to stabalize social patterns
The observable, measureable, independent contributions of TV to the culture are relatively small - Who was the major developer of the cultivation theory?
- George Gerbner
- What is imitation?
- The mechanical reproduction of behavior
- What is identification?
- Assuming the general characteristics of a character
- Which happens more often, imitation or identification?
- Identification
- What were the major findings of the Two-step flow study?
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There are interviewing variables that influence behavior
We do not all respond to media messages in the same way - What are the three types of media effects?
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Behavioral
Cognative or intellictual
Affective or emotional - Which type of media effect is most commonly considered when discussing media effects?
- Behavioral
- What does Porter suggest accounts for the paradigm shifts in the study of the mass media?
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Changes in research questions asked
Changes in attitudes towards human behavior we are not passive recipents - Why do we strive for cognitive consistency? How do we do this?
- We seek out mesages that are consistent with out values/beliefs. We avoide messages that challenge us. Infor not consistant with our existing values and beliefs creates dissonance
- What is Gresham’s Law.
- With limited time and space, popular and often simplistic programs will prevail, that is, subjects entertaining topics will not get the attention they deserve. This can cause a false perception of reality.
- What is cultivation analysis?
- The idea that people's ideas of themselves their world, and their place in it are shaped and maintained primarily through television.
- What scholar is noted as being most responsible for the paradigm shift from mass society to limited effects?
- Paul Lazarsfeld
- Is there a single theory of mass communication? Are theories of mass communication dynamic or static?
- No, they are dynamic
- What was the importance of the broadcast of the War of the Worlds?
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It was the beginning of the scientific perspective on mass communication
Halloween 1938 - Who is responsible for creating the two-step flow theory of mass media?
- Paul Lazarsfeld
- Who is Joseph Klapper? With which theory is he most closely associated?
- Head of social research for CBS, reinforcement theory
- When was the research for Klapper’s book conducted? What media did his research focus on?
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In 1960
Not TV, primary radio - What is the inhibitory effect?
- Seeking a character being punished for a behavior reduces the liklihood that observer will preform that behavior
- What is the disinhibitory effect?
- Seeing a character being revealed for bad behavior increases the liklihood that observers will preform
- Which theory are the inhibitory or disinbitiory a part of?
- Social cognnitive theory (imitation v identification)
- What is the foundation for critical cultural theory?
- The idea that media operates primarily to justify and support the status quo at the experience of ordinary people. Neo-Marxist Theory
- Consider the box on pp 442-443. How was the designated driver campaign a part of prime time activism. What were its results?
- In 1998 Jay Winsten developed a campaign to get Hollywood to push his designated driver campaign. Got 160 prime-time shows to integrate it into their story lines. 67% of U.S. adults said tehy were aware of the concept and by 1991 52% of adults under 30 said they had served as a designated driver.
- What are Gerbner’s three Bs of Television?
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Television blurs the traditional distinctions of people's view of their world.
Television blends people's realities into the cultural mainstream
Television bends that mainstream reality to it's own and it's sponsers' instutional intrests. - What is the difference between libel and slander?
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Libel is written
Slander is spoken - How is pornography treated in terms of First Amendment protection? How is obscenity protected?
- Pornography is protected expression, Obscenity is not. Sexually explicit content is pornography until c court rules it illegal, then it is obscene.
- What is the significance of the 1957 Roth v. U.S. decision?
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Obscenity is an unprotected expression
Determined that sex and obscenity were not synonymous - What is the significance of the 1973 Miller v. State of California decision?
- The definition/test for obscenity was established
- How is indecency defined? Why does the text differentiate between obscenity, pornography and indecency, for broadcasters?
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Indecency - that which depicts sexual or excretory activities in a way that is offensive to contemporary community standards
Obscenity and pornography are usually non-issues for broadcasters. Indecency is an issue for broadcasters - What is the safe harbor for the broadcast of indecent material?
- Times of the broadcast day (10pm-6am) when children ate not likely to be in the listening or viewing audience
- What is the exception to copyright? What are the implications of this?
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Fair Use
Limited non-commercial use
Use of limited portions of a week
Use that does not decrease the commercial value of the original
For public intrest