Mass Comm Midterm Review

ABC (American Broadcasting Company)

One of the major U.S. broadcast networks. It developed after the FCC forced NBC to sell one of its two networks; NBC Blue eventually became ABC.

Agenda Setting

The idea that mass media influence what people think about by emphasizing certain issues. The more attention media give an issue, the more important audiences may perceive it to be.

Adolph Ochs

Publisher who bought The New York Times in 1896 and helped establish its reputation for more informational, less sensational journalism. Associated with the rise of professional/objective journalism.

Amateur Radio

Early radio experimentation conducted by hobbyists or 'hams,' who built transmitters and receivers and helped develop radio culture before commercial broadcasting became dominant.

American Journalistic Professionalism

The development of journalism as a profession with standards such as objectivity, accuracy, neutrality, independence, and verification.

American Marconi

American subsidiary of Marconi's wireless company. An important early wireless-telegraph company that eventually became part of RCA.

Amos 'n' Andy

Extremely popular early radio comedy featuring white performers Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll performing Black characters, illustrating both radio's enormous popularity and the continuation of racial stereotypes/minstrelsy in broadcasting.

Amplitude Modulation (AM)

Radio transmission in which the amplitude/strength of the carrier wave changes to carry sound. Dominated early commercial radio.

Analog

A form of communication in which information is represented by continuous signals, as opposed to discrete numerical/digital data.

Analytic Survey

A survey designed to examine relationships between variables, rather than merely describing a population.

Anti-Metanarrative

A postmodern skepticism toward large, universal explanations—or metanarratives—that claim to explain history, society, progress, or truth.

Antonio Gramsci

Italian Marxist theorist associated with hegemony: the idea that dominant groups maintain power partly by getting their values and worldview accepted as normal or common sense.

Arthur Judson

An important figure in early network radio who helped create a system for representing radio performers and organizing programming; associated with the development of CBS.

Artist & Repertoire (A&R) Agents

Record-industry employees who discover, recruit, and develop artists and help determine what music gets recorded and marketed.

Association Principle

Advertising strategy that associates a product with a positive cultural value, image, person, lifestyle, or emotion so those positive qualities become attached to the product.

Audience Studies

Research focusing on how audiences receive, interpret, use, and respond to media.

Audion

Lee De Forest's vacuum-tube invention that could detect and amplify radio signals. It was crucial to the development of electronic radio broadcasting.

Bad Subjects

In Althusserian theory, people who do not accept or properly respond to the identities/roles that ideology offers them; they resist interpellation.

Bandwagon Effect

Persuasion technique encouraging people to adopt something because many other people supposedly already have.

Base

In Marxist theory, society's economic foundation—its means and relations of production. The base influences the cultural/political superstructure.

Benjamin Day

Founder of the New York Sun in 1833, a major penny press newspaper aimed at a mass audience.

Bessie Smith

Influential African American blues singer known as the 'Empress of the Blues'; important to the development and commercialization of blues and race records.

Big Five

The five dominant global publishing corporations/conglomerates that control a large portion of commercial book publishing.

Boutique Agencies

Smaller advertising agencies specializing in a particular service, creative approach, industry, or type of client rather than offering every advertising service.

Brand Identity

The collection of images, meanings, values, symbols, and associations that distinguish a brand in consumers' minds.

British Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi's British wireless company, central to the early commercialization of wireless telegraphy.

Canting

Exaggerated or stereotyped speech/performance associated historically with racial caricature and minstrel traditions.

Carter Family

Influential early country/folk recording group whose recordings helped establish commercially successful hillbilly/country music.

CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System)

Major American radio/television network developed under William Paley, becoming a major competitor to NBC.

Charlie Christian

Influential jazz guitarist who helped establish the electric guitar as a major instrument in jazz and popular music.

Clear Channels

Powerful AM radio stations assigned frequencies with little or no nighttime interference from other stations, allowing their signals to travel very long distances.

Clowning

Comic performance based on exaggerated behavior, stereotypes, or caricature; historically important to forms such as minstrelsy and vaudeville.

Communications Act of 1934

Major federal law regulating interstate electronic communications and creating the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Complementary Copy

Advertising copy designed so the words and visual elements work together and reinforce one another.

Compulsory License

Copyright provision allowing someone to record/reproduce a previously released song as long as legally established royalties are paid.

Content Analysis

Systematic examination and coding of media content to identify patterns, themes, representations, or frequencies.

Control Group

In an experiment, the group not exposed to the experimental treatment, providing a baseline for comparison.

Copyright Act of 1909

U.S. copyright law that established important protections and royalty arrangements for musical compositions and helped shape the commercial music industry.

Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)

Nonprofit corporation created by Congress to support and fund public broadcasting.

Correlations

Statistical relationships between variables. Variables change together but does not by itself prove causation.

Cover Music

A new recording/performance of a song previously recorded by another artist. Historically, white performers frequently covered songs first recorded by Black musicians.

Cultivation Effect

The potential long-term effect whereby heavy exposure to recurring media representations shapes a person's perception of social reality.

Cultivation Theory

George Gerbner's theory that long-term, repeated television exposure can cultivate viewers' beliefs about what the real world is like.

Cultural Studies

Approach examining media and culture in relation to power, ideology, identity, representation, and everyday life.

Culture as a Prison House of Language

View emphasizing that language and cultural systems constrain how people can understand and describe reality.

Culture as a Site of Struggle

Cultural-studies idea that culture is an arena in which different groups compete over meanings, values, identities, and power.

Culture as a Whole Way of Life

Raymond Williams's idea that culture isn't only elite art; it includes the ordinary practices, values, traditions, and meanings of everyday life.

Culture as Community

Understanding culture as shared practices and meanings that help create a sense of collective identity and belonging.

Demographic Edition

Magazine edition customized for readers belonging to a particular demographic category.

Demographics

Measurable population characteristics such as age, income, education, gender, occupation, and location, used heavily in media and advertising.

Dependent Variable

The outcome researchers measure to determine whether it changes in response to an independent variable.

Descriptive Survey

Survey designed primarily to describe characteristics, attitudes, opinions, or behaviors of a population.

Digital

Information encoded as discrete numerical values—usually binary 0s and 1s—rather than continuous analog signals.

Digital Culture

Culture shaped by digital technologies, including online communication, social media, streaming, participation, sharing, and convergence.

Disassociation Corollary

Advertising strategy attempting to separate a product from negative associations consumers might otherwise attach to it.

Dismemberment

In gender-advertising analysis, depicting only parts of a person's body rather than the whole person, potentially reducing that person to an object.

Dobyera Brothers

George Beauchamp's collaborators in early electric-instrument development; associated with the Dobro/resonator guitar and innovations leading toward amplified guitars.

Domination

Exercise of power by one group over another. Cultural studies asks how economic, political, and cultural power sustain domination.

Dr. Brinkley

John R. Brinkley, controversial physician/broadcaster who used powerful radio stations to advertise questionable medical treatments; illustrates problems that contributed to broadcast regulation.

Drive Time

Morning and afternoon commuting periods when radio audiences are especially large and therefore commercially valuable.

Early Models for Paying for Radio

Competing ideas included listener-supported broadcasting, manufacturer-supported broadcasting, government/public support, and ultimately commercial advertising/sponsorship.

Edison's Talking Machine

Thomas Edison's phonograph, an early technology capable of recording and reproducing sound.

Edward R. Murrow

Influential CBS broadcast journalist famous for World War II reporting and later television journalism; major symbol of serious professional broadcast journalism.

Edwin Armstrong

Radio inventor responsible for important technologies including FM radio, which provided higher-fidelity, less static-prone broadcasting.

Electrical Telegraph

System for transmitting coded electrical messages over wires across long distances.

Electromagnetic Waves

Waves of electrical and magnetic energy that can travel through space; their existence made wireless radio communication possible.

Electronic Culture

McLuhan-related concept describing culture shaped by electronic media, which reduce communication barriers of distance and time.

Elite Magazines

Early magazines directed primarily toward wealthier, educated, or socially elite readers.

Elite → Mass → Specialized

Historical development of magazines: first aimed at elite readers, then mass national audiences, and later increasingly specialized/niche audiences.

Emergent Culture

Raymond Williams's term for new cultural practices, meanings, and values currently developing within society.

Emile Berliner

Inventor associated with the gramophone and flat disc records, important innovations in recorded music.

Erving Goffman's Gender Advertising

Analysis of how advertising repeatedly represents gender through poses and visual conventions that often portray women as subordinate, passive, vulnerable, or dependent.

Ethnography

Qualitative research involving close observation of people and their behavior, often within their natural social/cultural environment.

Experimental Group

Participants exposed to the treatment or independent variable being tested.

Famous Person Testimonial

Advertising technique in which a celebrity or respected public figure endorses a product or idea.

Federal Radio Commission (FRC)

Federal agency established by the Radio Act of 1927 to regulate broadcasting and allocate frequencies; predecessor to the FCC.

Fireside Chats

Franklin D. Roosevelt's radio addresses to Americans, demonstrating radio's ability to create an intimate connection between political leaders and mass audiences.

First Amendment

Constitutional protection of freedoms including speech and press, fundamental to American journalism.

Focus Groups

Guided discussions with small groups used to gather qualitative information about attitudes and reactions.

Folk Music

Music rooted in communities and traditions, often passed down across generations rather than initially created primarily for commercial mass distribution.

Format Radio

Radio programming organized around a consistent music genre, audience demographic, or programming style.

Frederick Douglass

Abolitionist, writer, orator, and newspaper publisher who used the press to campaign against slavery.

Frequency Modulation (FM)

Radio transmission in which the frequency of the carrier wave varies. Armstrong's FM technology provided better sound quality and less static than AM.

General-Interest Magazines

Publications designed to appeal to a broad national audience rather than a narrow specialty.

George Beauchamp

Musician/inventor closely associated with development of one of the first commercially successful electric guitars.

Glocalization

Adapting global media/products to fit local cultures and markets; combination of globalization and localization.

Gramophone

Berliner's sound-recording/playback device using flat discs, an important predecessor of modern record players.

Guglielmo Marconi

Major pioneer of wireless telegraphy who commercialized radio communication.

Half-tone

Printing process using patterns of tiny dots to reproduce photographs and shades, allowing newspapers and magazines to publish photographs more effectively.

Harold Innis

Communication theorist who argued that communication technologies influence the organization of societies and distinguished time-biased and space-biased media.

Harold Lasswell

Communication scholar associated with propaganda research and the formulation: 'Who says what, in which channel, to whom, with what effect?'

Hegemony

Gramsci's concept describing how dominant groups maintain power partly by winning consent, making their worldview appear natural or common sense.

Heinrich Hertz

Scientist who experimentally demonstrated the existence of electromagnetic/radio waves predicted by Maxwell.

Hidden Fear Appeal

Advertising technique that subtly suggests consumers risk insecurity, embarrassment, rejection, or another negative outcome unless they use a product.

Hillbilly Music

Historical record-industry label for early commercial recordings of rural white Southern music that contributed to modern country music.

Historical Analysis

Research method studying historical documents, media, events, and evidence to understand communication across time.

Hock Kultur

Derogatory term associated with dismissing supposedly pretentious 'high culture,' useful in debates over elite versus popular culture.

Human-Interest Stories

Journalism focusing on people's emotions, experiences, personalities, or unusual circumstances rather than purely institutional facts.

Hyperreality

Baudrillard's concept describing a condition where media images/simulations become so powerful that the distinction between representation and reality becomes blurred.

Hypodermic Needle Model

Early media-effects model suggesting media messages are essentially 'injected' directly into passive audiences and produce powerful, predictable effects.