Media and Digital Culture Vocabulary

Vocabulary terms covering digital sociology, media effects theories, representation, AI concepts, and audience navigational styles.

Digital disadvantage

Refers to the qualitative difference in the uses and consequences of technology, examining how people with different levels of privilege interact with it.

Drillers

Rappers who are part of a music scene that competes on a global stage to prove they are more ruthless, delinquent, and authentic than competitors.

Cloutheads

A subset of fans, also known as shooters, who latch onto popular drillers and their gangs to leech off their clout for their own micro-celebrity or online popularity.

The attention economy

A system where media creators and producers compete for the eyes, ears, and overall attention of the audience.

Situational authenticity

A state where a situation feels real despite the fact that it has been staged.

Personal authenticity

The feeling that a individual is a genuine person rather than a performance.

Reputational entrepreneurs

Individuals who use digital social media affordances to create, cultivate, and monetize their public personas through reputation management.

Numerical Representation

The statistical proportion or percentage of which a social group is included or excluded as creators or characters in film and media compared to the real world.

Quality Representation

The nature, authenticity, and depictions of portrayals on screen.

Centrality of Representation

Refers to the amount of screen time, prominence in the market, and budget allocations a representation receives.

Narrowcasting

Targeting a niche audience with tailor-made content based on the logic that audiences are attracted to programming featuring people who look, act, and talk like them.

Hypodermic model

A framework theorizing media messages are directly "injected" into the audience to influence and control everyone in the same way.

Minimal Effects model

A model suggesting media impact depends on pre-existing identities like gender and race, typically reinforcing pre-existing beliefs rather than changing them.

Archer-Bunker study

A study related to the Minimal Effects model showing that media content made conservatives more conservative and liberals more liberal.

Agenda-setting

The power of media to set up what an issue is and tell the public what to think about it through repeated exposure.

Framing

The aspect of media that determines how persuasive a message is.

Exemplification theory

The theory that media examples serve as powerful heuristics or mental shortcuts that stick in the brain's mental schemata.

Cultivation Theory/Mean World Syndrome

The idea that heavy TV use and frequent depictions of violence distort perception, making the audience believe the world is scarier than it actually is.

Schema

A cluster of ideas in the brain.

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts that are likely to be sorted and stick in the mental schemata.

Digital slumming

When more privileged residents use social media to penetrate and commodify the identities and hyper-violent lives of Chicago inner-city youth for authentic thrills.

Phone-based childhood

A period beginning after 2010 to 2012 where children's development is dominated by digital devices and virtual exposure.

Algorithmic bias

The reflection of cultural biases, ideological assumptions, and aesthetic norms of training data and engineers' moderation decisions within AI models.

Rules-based AI

A chatbot, such as ELIZA, that uses mimicked scripts and simple if/then logical rules to diagnose, classify, or answer information.

Large language models (LLMs)

A.I. systems designed to predict the next "token" (word or phrase) based on training from enormous amounts of human language data.

Polysemy

The concept that a single piece of media or content can have multiple meanings and interpretations for different audience members.

Gatewatching

The republishing, publicising, contextualisation, and curation of existing material.

Networked publics

Digital or online spaces.

Navigational styles

Classification of habitual strategies people develop to manage, cope with, or ignore overwhelming amounts of media messages.

The Fan

A navigation style focused on visceral, emotional, and affirmative connection through media.

The Critic

A navigation style characterized by aversion and critique rather than affirmation.

The Paranoid

A navigation style featuring a "technology vs. us" mentality, viewing media as addictive, hypnotic, or subliminally directing thoughts.

The Exhibitionist

A navigation style where individuals constantly display their identities openly, often known for being well-known.

The Ironist

A navigation style that views media through satire, parody, or playfulness due to an awareness of insider knowledge.

The Jammer

A navigation style that recognizes the power of media and images but attempts to find ways to reduce or change that power.

The Secessionist

A navigation style that involves withdrawing from technology for oneself.

The Abolitionist

A navigation style that involves withdrawing from technology for oneself and wanting others to drop it as well.