Study guide for 101 Midterm Exam

Note: Please use the information from the lecture slides on these terms in particular in your studying. Occasional questions were addressed only in the readings, not the lectures. Some questions were addressed only in the lectures, not in the readings.

Gladstone’s seven biases

1. Commercial Bias: the biggest bias, news needs conflict & momentum. It needs to be new

2. Bad News Bias: we are wired to care about anything that can remot

3. ely threaten us, so emphasizing bad news is good business.

4. Status Quo Bias: refers to our preference, all other things being equal, for things to stay the same

5. Access Bias: Antagonize power & the door is barred so sometimes journalists dance with the devil to get power

6. Visual Bias: news with a viral hook is more likely to be noticed

7. Narrative Bias: stories (beginning, middle, end) once a template is set with plots & characters, it can be used over and over.

8. Fairness Bias: appears balanced by offering equal time to opposing viewpoints

Media Literacy

The process of interacting with and critically analyzing media content by considering its particular presentation, its underlying political or social messages, and ownership or regulation issues that may affect what is presented and in what form

Edward R. Murrow: popularized radio as a form of media. Was a war correspondent and to bring people to the war.

The Gutenberg Parenthesis Model

• Pre-Parenthetical Era (Orality)

• Gutenberg Parenthesis (Literacy)

• Post-Parenthetical Era (Digitality)

The First Amendment

The PATRIOT Act

Passed after 9/11

Granted broad authority to government to arrest suspected terrorists

One of the outcomes was expanded surveillance (i.e. phone tapping) to better prevent terrorism

Case study of libel: New York Times v. Sullivan

Established the need to prove “actual malice”

Sullivan claimed he was libeled by errors in BY Times ad (indirectly) about him

Alabama courts ruled Sullivan was libeled, awarded him 500k

Supreme Court reversed Alabama court's ruling

Ruled that public officials must not sue unless they can prove media acted with "actual malice" (a reckless disregard for the truth) to win libel suit

Definition of Libel

Libel is written defamation; slander is spoken defamation

Mass communication models

• Transmission: speaker encodes a message, receiver receives message and decodes it

Shannon and Weaver

• Ritual: James Carrey; why audiences consume media

• To whom are these attributed?

Direct Effects Model

• More fears

  • Propaganda

• Direct effects

  • Media messages lead to consistent effects in audience

  • Scientific (Positivistic) approach

• Indirect effects

  • People are heterogeneous

  • Respond to messages differently

• Hypodermic Needle (Magic Bullet) - developed in the 1920s and 1930s

  • Media messages have a direct and uniform impact on the public

• Violence and the Media

  • Payne Fund (impact of films on children)

  • Bobo Doll Studies (violent TV influenced children's behavior)

  • "War of the Worlds" (media can incite panic) Orson Wells

Types of Communication

• Intrapersonal: talking to yourself

• Interpersonal: talking to someone else either face to face or over a medium

• Group: 1 talking to a few

• Mass: 1 to many; many to many

Critical/Cultural Model

• Cultural Studies: everyone is different

• Attempts to understand how meaning is produced among audiences and media producers

• Turns the focus of the researcher away from the media message and toward how the audience interprets it

• Examples of media theories that are critical/cultural tend to be more textual based

  • Uses and gratifications

  • Encoding/decoding

  • Reception theory

Theories of Media and Society

• Agenda Setting: Mccombs and Shaw; media can set the public agenda by selecting certain news stories and excluding others

• Uses and Gratifications - Kats and Blumleur; people actively use the media for their own purposes; what people do with media rather than what media does to people

• Spiral of Silence: if you think you are the minority in a situation, you tend to stay silent

Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann – German

• Cultivation Theory (and "Mean World Syndrome"): we think that the world is an unsafe world because the media shows that it is

George Gerbner

• What are the names of the theorists who coined these theories?

Media Ecology

• Marshall McLuhan: the study of media environments and how they affect people

The medium is the message

Alien and Sedition Laws

1798

Authorized president to deport unwanted citizens and didn’t allow criticization of the government

Defenses for journalists against accusations of libel

• Shield Laws

• Protects journalists from having to reveal their sources

• Truth

• Can use a code name

• Privilege

Protected against libel

• Opinion

If you state what you write as opinion rather than fact, you are protected against libel

Early American Newspapers

• Focused on opinion, not news

Penny Press Revolution

• Made possible by steam-powered presses

  • Larger circulations than ever before

• Sold on the street for one or two cents

• First papers to focus on "news"

  • Emphasized fasts over opinion

  • Largely ignored politics

• Penny press's effect was analogous to Gutenberg's press

  • How?

  • News became more egalitarian

  • Papers began employing more reporters

  • New marketing function

    • Supported by advertisers, not subscriptions

Everyone was reading the newspaper so the ideal of subjectivity came alive

Promoted democratic society

US transformed from rural to urban society

Kept public informed

CNN

• 1980: CNN airs, won’t sign off “until the end of world”

• 1991: Gulf War makes CNN station of choice

Six values reporters use to pick the stories they report on

1. Timeliness

2. Proximity

3. Prominence

4. Consequence

5. Rarity

6. Human Interest

Bruce L. Christensen devotional: Pluto & Kolob in the world of media. Pluto is the media, Kolob is the Church

Pluto

• Democracy sensationalism

• "junkyard Watch Dogs"

• Pluto's 13th article of faith

  • "if there is anything hateful, despicable, shameful, or rotten, we seek after these things."

Kolob

• Theocracy

• That which uplifts

• Revelations from a Prophet

• Church's 13th article of faith

  • Anything praiseworthy, virtuous, lovely, good report, we seek after these things

Current Trends in Magazines

• Targeting narrower audiences

• Articles are shorter

• Presentation matters

Development of Writing

• Pictographs & Ideographs

• Symbols that stand for ideas

• Phonographs

Around 2000 BC: phonography begins

• Symbols stand for sounds

• Alphabet

• 1700-1500 BC: alphabets developed

• Letters stand for sounds

Development of Paper

Papyrus

• 3100 BC

• Writing surface made from papyrus reed

Earliest books were papyrus scrolls

Parchment

• Made from skin of goats and sheep

• Much less fragile than papyrus

Paper

• 240-105 BC

Philosophies of Ethics

Virtue/Character ethics - living a virtuous life

• The Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have others do to you

• The Golden Mean (Aristotle) - the desirable middle between 2 extremes

Duty ethics - follow a prescribed set of rules, or duties, regardless of the outcome - if you are following the rules, you are acting ethically

• Immanuel Kant

• Categorical Imperative: Unconditional moral obligation to act in a way in which we would be willing to have everyone else act

Consequence Ethics

• John Stuart Mill: The consequences of the actions decide whether they are ethical or not

• Principle of Utility(Utilitarianism): The most ethical or right action is what does the greatest good for the greatest number of people

OR, that which causes the least pain is best

Social Justice

• John Rawls - Veil of Ignorance: Justice comes from making decision that maximize liberty for all people and without considering which outcome will give us personally the biggest benefit

The most fairness for everyone

Behind the veil, everyone is equal

Ethics and The News

• Sensationalism

• Tabloidization

• Chilling effect: when the government uses heavy methods to silence reporters

FCC and its Duties

It’s job is the keep the airways safe

In charge of stations and their licenses

Eminen’s line in his song “The FCC won’t let me be”

Audio

• Invention of the telegraph: 1844: Samuel Morse's telegraph

• Invention of the radio: Marconi (often considered inventor of radio)

• Storing Sound: it overcomes death

• Edison: 1877 phonograph

• Phonograph: recorded on tinfoil cylinders

• What did the gramophone do? 1888 by emile recorded sound on flat discs

• What do new music playback technologies do?

• Social music: music has become more personal