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Baran: Theories
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Early Window | "children confront the world in all its splendor and vulgarity through television-- to kids what they see is real |
| willingly suspend disbelief | to enjoy what we consume we ___________, or we willingly accept as real what is put before us |
| Micro Level | personal level of media effects, for most people media has relatively few direst effects at a personal level |
| Macro Level | cultural level of impact, ex: violence on TV contributes to the cultural climate in which real-world violence becomes more acceptable |
| Administrative Research | ask questions about the immediate, observable influence of mass communication; ex: does a commercial campaign sell more cereal? |
| Critical Research | asking larger questions about what kind of nation we are building, what kind of people we are becoming |
| Transmissional Perspective | see media as senders of information for the purpose of control; either media effects our behavior or they do not |
| Ritual Perspective | views media not as a mean of transmitting messages through space, but as central to "the maintenance of society in time"; necessary to understand the cultural importance of mass communication |
| Mass Communication Theories | explanations and predictions of social phenomena that attempt to relate mass communication to various aspects of our personal and cultural lives or social systems |
| Cultivation Analysis | the idea that people's idea of themselves, their world, and their place in it are shaped and maintained primarily through TV |
| Attitude Change Theory | solution to the dime-drawing task; even though every one of us has a real-world experience with dimes, our attitude toward the coin shape our behavior towards it (almost every one draws it too small) |
| Middle-Range Theories | explain or predict specific, limited aspects of the mass communication process |
| Symbolic Interaction | how we give meaning to symbols and how these symbols influence our behavior (mass communication theory) |
| Dependency Theory | explains something as individual as how media influence people in times of change or crisis (mass communication theory) |
| Mass Society Theory | the idea that the media are corrupting influences that undermine the social order and that "average" people are defenseless against their influence |
| Hypodermic Needle Theory or Magic Bullet Theory | media are a dangerous drug or a killing force against which average people are defenseless |
| Grand theory | Mass society theory is an example of this; one designed to describe and explain all aspect of a given phenomenon |
| Limited Effects Theories | media influence was limited by individual differences, social categories, and personal relationships |
| Tow-step flow theory | by Lazarsfled; media influence passes through opinion leaders to opinion followers, because leaders and followers share common personal and social characteristics, the potential influence of media is limited by their shared assumptions, beliefs, and tudes |
| Opinion Leaders | people who initially consumed media content on topics of particular interest to them, interpreted it in light of their own values and beliefs |
| Opinion Followers | People like opinion followers who had less frequent contact with media |
| Dissonance Theory | argues when confronted by new or conflicting information people experience a kind of mental discomfort, a dissonance |
| Selective Processes | 3 processes (selective exposure, selective retention, selective perception) that help us "select" what information we consume, remember, and interpret in personally important and idiosyncratic ways |
| Selective Exposure | the process by which people expose themselves to or attend to only those messages consistent with their preexisting attitudes and beliefs |
| Selective Retention | assumes that people remember best and longest those messages that are consistent with their preexisting attitudes and beliefs |
| Selective Perception | predicts that people will interpret messages in a manner consistent with their preexisting attitudes and beliefs |
| Reinforcement Theory | Klapper's theory; based on social science developed in the 1960's |
| Uses and Gratifications Approach | claimed that media do not do things to people, rather people do things with media; the influence of media is limited to what people allow it to be; emphases audience members motives |
| Agenda Setting | argues that media may not tell us what to think, but media certainly tells us what to think about |
| Dependency theory | we are dependent on media, the degree of our dependence on media and their content is the "key variable in understanding when and why media messages alter audience beliefs, feelings, or behavior" |
| Social Cognitive Theory | the idea that people learn through observation |
| Modeling | copy the behaviors they see; happens in two ways (imitation and identification) |
| Identification | a special form of imitation in which observers do not copy exactly what they have seen but make a more generalized but related response |
| Observational Learning | observers can learn new behaviors simply by seeing those behaviors performed |
| Inhibitory Effects | seeing a model (:ex: movie character) punished for a behavior reduces the likelihood that the observer will perform that behavior |
| Disinhibitory Effects | seeing a model rewarded for prohibited or threatening behavior increases the likelihood that the observer will perform that behavior |
| Cultural theories | meaning and therefore effects are negotiated by media and audiences they interact in culture |
| Critical Cultural Theory | the idea that media operate primarily to justify and support the status quo at the expense of ordinary people |
| Neo-Marxist theory | believe that people are oppressed by those who control the culture, the superstructure (religion, politics, art, lit, and mass media) |
| Frankfurt School | approach was centered in neo-marxism, saw consumption of art as a means to elevate all people toward a better life |
| British Cultural Theory | provides a home for much feminist research and research on popular culture in Europe and USA |
| News Production Research | the study of how economic and other influences on the way news is produced distort and bias news coverage toward those in power (ex: personalized news, dramatized news, fragmented news, normalized news) |
| Meaning Making Perspective | the idea that active audience members use media content to create meaning and meaningful experiences for themselves |
| Product Positioning | when advertisers encourage their audience to perceive their products as symbols that have meaning beyond the products' actual function |
| Social Construction of Reality | argues that people who share culture also share "an ongoing correspondence" of meaning |
| Symbols | objective meaning, we routinely interpret them in a usual way (ex: stop sign) |
| Signs | subjective meaning; ex: BMW is a sign of wealth |
| Typification schemes | bring together what we learned about signs and symbols; collections of meanings assigned to some phenomenon or situation; form a natural backdrop for people's interpretation of behavior in an everyday life |
| Mainstreaming | moving individuals and different people towards a shared, TV-created understanding of how things are |
| Cultivation Analysis | TV constructs (cultivates) a reality of a world, although possibly inaccurate, becomes meaningful to us simply because we believe it is true |
| Stimulation Model | a direct causal relationship between violent content and aggressive behavior |
| Agressive Cues Model | the idea that media portrayals can suggest that certain classes of people, such as women, are acceptable targets for real life aggression |
| Catharsis | the idea that watching violence in media reduces peoples innate aggressive drive; social cognitive theory deflated this notion |
| Vicarious Reinforcement | the idea that observed reinforcement operates in the same manner as actual reinforcement |
| environmental incentives | the notion that real-world incentives can lead observers to ignore the negative vicarious reinforcement they have learned to associate with a given behavior |
| What is required to establish effects of media violence? | a direct casual link |
| What are the three dichotomies that characterize the difference sides in the effects debate? | micro v. marco level effects, administrative v. critical research, and transmissional v. ritual perspective on communication |
| What are the four major areas of mass communication theory? | mass society theory, limited effects theory, cultural theory, and the meaning-making perspective-- the latter mark a return to the idea of powerful media effects |
| The emergence of cultural theory in mass communication signaled a return to | the belief in powerful media effects |
| The era of the limited effects perspective on mass communication theory began with what famous media event? | the Orson Wells radio production of "The War of the Worlds" |
| Mass communication theory has undergone multiple paradigm shifts during its development. This is due to all of the following EXCEPT | social science's move away from qualitative research methods |
| The theory that says media do not do things to people; rather, people do things with media is | uses and gratifications |
Created by:
eroberts093