FILM 114 concepts

Ergodics

Combining “work”, “play”, and “stuff”, meaning the work you have to do in order to complete stuff

Continuous interactive feedback loop

Players are seen as implicated in the construction and composition of the experience

Ludology

The study of play, which sees play as fundamental to video games (games with narratives added)

Narratology

The study of telling a story, which sees video games as an extension of cinematic storytelling (a story with added game points)

Ideology

Karl Marx, the ruling class uses cultural institutions in order to get across their message (the ruling class believes that the authority that they have is legitimized)- the way which ideas can either be hidden or presented as truths, as they are shared ideas that appear to be natural

Hegemony

Domination of a singular groups worldview, in which power is maintained through force and consent

Structuralism

Structures in media and the methods associated with it used to analyze semiotics (Althusser)- 3 models of power; powerful media, media makes people powerful, media are agents of power

The Male Gaze

It generates looking without being seen, a power imbalance that enacts control over the female body, generating an idea of what women “should” look like

Sex

Biological classification based on physical characteristics such as chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive anatomy, regularly assigned at birth

Gender

Historically and culturally variable meanings attached to sexed bodies, including roles, expectations, norms, performances, etc.

Sexuality

Patterns of desire, attraction, intimacy, and identity, including sexual orientation, erotic attraction, sexual practices, emotional attachments, etc.

Heteronormativity

Masculinity and femininity are culturally produced ideals of gendered behaviour, however they are not limited to any one sex and are not stable across time and culture. What is considered to be “normal” is historically contingent , and nothing is self-evident

Optimistic media determinism

The positives outweigh the negatives, media is a positive force in society

Pessimistic media determinism

Technology is an agent of negative change, and has the power to destroy society

Media panics

Extreme view of possible negative consequences, fearmongering

Symbolic interactionism

The character and conduct of people’s social interactions are powerfully shaped by the symbolic meanings they assign to objects, events, other people and social contexts.(ex: friends episode when they burn the objects of their old boyfriends to “move on” from them)

Dramaturgy

It is the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance

Frame analysis

Frames (or frameworks) are social constructs that organize our experience

Performativity

Your body is a canvas for symbols, There is no performer behind the performance. The performance makes the person

Equipment for living

Based on the premise that messages provide individuals with symbolic resources for addressing and resolving the anxieties and difficulties they confront in everyday life. It is rooted in symbolic action

Simple audience

A small, localized group sharing a live, direct experience in one place (e.g., a theater play)

Mass audience

a large, dispersed, and heterogeneous group connected only by technology and shared attention to the same, often impersonal, media content (e.g., TV, internet)

Encoding information

The process of converting thoughts, data, or information into a specific, transmittable code or format (e.g., words, signals, or bytes)

Decoding information

Interpreting or translating that code back into understandable information or meaning

Hypodermic needle theory / magic bullet theory

metaphors for the, now largely discredited, belief that mass media has a direct, immediate, and powerful influence on a passive audience. They imply that messages are injected or shot into people, instantly shaping opinions and behavior uniformly.

Uses and gratifications model

Audiences are active, not passive, users who deliberately choose specific media to satisfy personal needs, such as information, entertainment, social interaction, or identity construction.

Third-person effect

Coined by W.P. Davison, a communication theory proposing that people tend to believe mass media messages have a greater influence on others (the "third person") than on themselves

Dominant reading

Reading that accepts the intended, mainstream message

Negotiated reading

Reading that partially accepts the message but adapts it to personal beliefs

Oppositional reading

Reading that reading understands the intended meaning but completely rejects it

Race

Categorizes people based on physical characteristics like skin colour

Settler colonialism

An ongoing, systemic process that seeks to eliminate an indigenous population in order to seize its territory for itself. It seeks its own erasure.

Algorithmic bias

When AI and machine learning systems produce unfair or discriminatory outcomes, often by reinforcing existing social prejudices related to race, gender, or age

Ethnicity

Categorizes people based on cultural similarity

Stereotyping

The act of oversimplifying and generalizing beliefs about a specific group of people, often ignoring individual differences

The “noble savage”

Romanticizes Indigenous peoples as primitive and pure stewards of nature incompatible with modernity

The “imaginary Indian”

A collection of stereotypes, such as the “noble savage”. A 1992 book by Canadian historian Daniel Francis that explores how non-Indigenous Canadian culture has created, marketed, and maintained a fictionalized image of Indigenous peoples.

Cultural determinism

The belief that the culture in which we are raised determines our personality, behaviors, beliefs, and values. It asserts that human nature is not fixed by biology, but rather is highly malleable, shaped entirely by cultural conditioning and social upbringing.

Reductionism

Collapses (or reduces) the higher level of meaning and being into the lower level of elemental parts; when this collapse occurs what is left is not the whole but its parts.

Attention economy

An economic model that treats human attention as a scarce and valuable resource

Monetization

Companies monetize user attention through advertising, data collection, and subscriptions

Addictive design

Platforms maximize those affordances that most capture attention

Free digital media business model

Infotainment - engagement - behaviour prediction/manipulations

Surveillance capitalism

The main product that prosumers produce is behavioural data, value is created through the monitoring, analysis, and manipulation of human behaviour. You are not the consumer, you are the producer, and the product is your future behaviour.

Data aggregation

Sorts us into overlapping clusters based on homophily (‘same’ + ‘friendship’)

Engagement-based ranking

An algorithmic approach used by social media and content platforms (e.g., TikTok, Instagram, Twitter) to prioritize content based on predicted user interactions—likes, shares, comments, and watch time—to maximize retention and engagement.

Post-truth era

A 21st-century phenomenon where objective facts have less influence in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals and personal beliefs.

Deceptive patterns/dark patterns

User interface designs intentionally crafted to trick or manipulate users into taking actions that benefit a company. These manipulative techniques exploit cognitive biases to force compliance.

Structural and regulatory solutions

Comprehensive strategies used to address complex problems—such as climate change, systemic risk, or economic inequality—by altering the fundamental, foundational setup of a system rather than merely treating its symptoms.

Multimodal

Strategic use of multiple communication modes—textual, visual, audio, spatial, and gestural—across both digital and physical spaces to mobilize action, construct collective identity, and challenge established powers.

Space of autonomy

The freedom of journalists and content creators to operate independently from political, economic, or institutional pressures, allowing for ethical, creative, and critical reporting.

Castells’ culture of autonomy

A fundamental shift in the 21st-century social landscape, where individuals and social movements, empowered by the internet and wireless communication, construct their own meaning and project their own projects against the dominance of global networks

Decentralized movements

Collective actions lacking formal hierarchy or central command, relying on distributed, autonomous networks and digital coordination to achieve shared goals

Virality

The tendency of an image, video, or piece of information to be circulated rapidly and widely from one internet user to another.

Mobilization

The process of motivating, organizing, and engaging people and resources to take collective action for social or political change

Timeless time

Living day-to-day in practice while imagining an indefinite future

Monocausal explanation

Powerful but simplistic, reducing complex wholes to effects of just one part

Power through ideas

Power exercised that tends to be more efficient - if you can make people willingly accept their own subjugation, they will be less likely to resist

Power through force

Power exercised that is inefficient and unstable, producing resistance

Interpellation

Althusser’s idea of being “hailed” by ideology - that is, to be constituted as a subject. Materially connected to institutions like the law or the university.

Repressive State Apparatuses (RSA)

Institutions like the police, army, prisons, courts, etc that work as a relatively unified front, operate in the public domain, and function through violence

Ideological State Apparatuses (IRA)

Institutions like religion, education, the family, media, culture, & politics that are more fragmented and multiple, operate in the personal/private domain, and function through ideology

Superstructure

The laws, media representations, culture, ideas of family, educational system, modes of consumption, and social organization we live by. These maintain the acceptance of the economic system.

Economic base

The economic foundations of society - capitalism, profit and loss, private ownership, etc. give support and rationalize the ideas of the superstructure.