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Discussion Aids
Have the students discuss what life in America might have been like in the years prior to World
War II and in those immediately after the war up to the 1960 publication of Klapper’s book. What was the
same then as now? What was different? How does this affect our understanding of media theory? Show
any of the Andy Hardy movies or segments from Leave it to Beaver, and ask students to compare the life
of a young person then to that of today‘s youth. The goal here is to set the stage for the move to the view
of more powerful media.
A good discussion starter is to show students Paper Tiger’s (www.papertiger.org) Mighty Morphin’
Censorship: Who’s Watching Children’s Television and ask them to compare early limited-effects notions
of television’s impact on kids (especially those of Schramm and his colleagues) to the view expressed in
this 30 minute video. Another good way to generate discussion is to talk about media’s role in building
support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Was the country’s early support for that action a “media effect” or
was it simply the response to what was, that is, to reality? But then ask students how that reality was made
known to the public (if not through media, then how?) and ask them to comment on how much of that
reality was, in fact, a product of media action/inaction.
There are several good videos that can support this chapter. The Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation did an hour-long documentary entitled The Question of Television Violence The U.S. Senate
Hearings, available from Phoenix Films. It is a summary of the testimony on the Surgeon General’s
Report which not only sets out the debate on the issue, but puts faces to many of the theorists introduced
in the text, for example Klapper and Berkowitz. The PTA and ABC also have good videos on children and
mediated violence. Media and violence are the subjects of two videos from Films for the Humanities and
Sciences (www.films.com), Violence and Sex on TV and TV Violence and You (both 30 minutes in length).
Insight Media (www.insight-media.com) offers a slew of great videos, ranging from 15 minutes to an hour
and a half: Crime, Violence, and TV News; The Impact of Television; Growing Up in a Video World: Media
and the Developing Child; Violence in the Media; Sex, Murder, and Video Games; The Killing Screens:
Media and the Culture of Violence; and Prime Time Violence. Also quite provocative are The Bro Code
(gender roles in media), Killing Us Softly (gender roles in media), Miss Representation (gender roles in
media), Shop ‘til You Drop: The Crisis of Consumerism, Returning Fire (video games), Dream Worlds
(effects of popular music), Generation M: Mysogeny in Media & Culture, Consuming Kids: The
Commercialization of Childhood, Militainment, Inc (militarism in popular culture), and Beauty Mark (gender
roles in media).
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CHAPTER 7
AUDIENCE THEORIES: USES AND RECEPTION
Multiple Choice
1. According to uses and gratifications theory, what accounts for most of our use
of media
a) social pressure from other people
b) inertia, we start using media and can’t stop
2. According to uses and gratifications theory, we stop using media when we
a) observe too many negative role models
b) develop inappropriate social expectations
3. Uses and gratifications theory is interested in
c) how people play with media
d) how people learn from media
4. In the fraction of selection, expectation of reward is divided by
c) gratifications sought
d) gratifications received
5. You regularly watch a certain television program because your friends watch it
c) the operation of a media dependency process in a social environment
d) a homeostatic balance between uses sought and gratifications obtained
6. In critical theory, the producer-intended meaning of a piece of media content
is called the
c) negotiated meaning
d) oppositionally decoded understanding
7. Media texts that are fundamentally ambiguous and legitimately open to
c) active
d) neo-Marxist
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8. Surveillance of the environment by journalists is an example of
a) a media use
b) a media gratification
9. Uses-and-gratification researchers are intrigued by computer-mediated-
communication’s ______, the ability of the media users to select from a wide
menu of content to tailor messages to their needs.
a) ubiquity
b) asynchroneity
10. When active-audience theorists say that audience members are often
obstinate, they mean that content consumers are ___________..
a) open to media influence
11. When Janice Radway questioned the readers of romance novels, she found
that
a) most had come to accept patriarchal myths embedded in these books
b) most didn‘t enjoy the books but could find nothing better to do
12. Entertainment theory is interested in
c) how people play with media
d) how people learn from entertainment media
13. _________ combines many ideas about media effects into a global
perspective on how campaign communication can change our actions and
achieve pro-social objectives.
c) Moderate effects theory
d) Gratifications theory
14. Individuals’ ability to reinvent or subvert media content to oppositionally
c) the digital divide
d) negotiated meaning
15. Who is often credited with originating Uses and Gratifications Theory?
a) Paul Lazarsfeld
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Essay
1. The founders of uses and gratifications theory understood from the start that social situations are
involved in how people use the media. What are the ways they saw this happening? Describe what each
means.
2. Discuss some of the reasons why early media research primarily focused on explaining and controlling
the effects of media rather than on cataloging routine media uses and gratifications. Was this focus
appropriate? What purpose can be served by looking at media uses and gratifications?
3. Consider your own uses of media. How gratifying are these uses? How likely is it that you would miss
various media or various types of content if they weren’t readily available? Consider the effects that these
uses of media have on you.
4. What were some of the reasons why uses and gratifications research was revived during the 1970s?
Explain some of its advantages in relation to routine limited-effects research.
5. Discuss some of the advantages and the limitations of uses and gratifications theory. Give some
examples of useful findings produced by this theory. List some of the important criticisms that have been
made of it.
6. Discuss the active audience assumption. To what extent do you think people make active use of
media? Give examples from your own use of media to illustrate your argument.
7. What does reception analysis add to our understanding of the process of mass communication? Is it
important that we understand ideas like oppositional decoding and dominant reading? Why?
8. Define oppositional decoding, and illustrate it with an example from your personal experience—a time
when you engaged in oppositional decoding as you made sense of media content.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. How active a media consumer are you? Are you always thoughtful in your choice of individual television
programs, for example? Are you more active with one medium than another? Why?
How has your willingness and ability to be intentional in your media choices changed as you’ve grown
older? Do you find yourself being more thoughtful in your choices at different times? If you regularly use
the Internet, has that use caused you to become more or less active in your media activity?
2. When you enter the room where your television is, do you turn it on and then flip around the channels,
searching for something to watch or do you first examine some sort of listing to determine what you will
watch and then turn the set to that choice? What does this say about audience-centered theory?
4. Do you use the Internet to download, swap, or otherwise acquire copyrighted music? If you do, subject
this media use to the fraction of selection. That is, complete the equation for your use of “legitimate” music
sites such as iPod. Now complete the equation for your use of “illegitimate” sites such as BitTorent and
KaZaa. How do the factors you consider in the numerators and denominators of each differ? What were
the “final scores” of each type of service? Were they accurate predictors of your preferences? If you do
not file share on the net, use the experience of a friend who does to complete this exercise.
Discussion Aids
Students enjoy subjecting their own media use to the fraction of selection. Therefore, have them
try it twice. First, have them process two pieces of content from the same medium, for example, the
network evening news and PBS’s The NewsHour. Then have them process two different media, for
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example, a movie on home video and that same film at the theater. The discussion can then move toward
why some forms of content seem to dominate over others and why some media are increasingly attractive
at the expense of other media. You can ask students to weigh their own contributions to these states of
affairs.
Oppositional decoding is supported by a fine video from Paper Tiger (www. papertiger.org), Twist
Barbie: Lynn Spigel Dreams of a Plastic Feminism. Goffman’s frame analysis and gender advertisements
can be supported by Slim Hopes: Advertising and the Obsession with Thinness from the Media Education
Foundation (www. igc.org/mef) and Myths That Maim from the Encinitas Center for Family and Personal
Development. YouTube’s ever-growing collection of consumer-created parodies of commercials is
wonderful for generating discussion of ideas like oppositional decoding, semiotic democracy, and semiotic
disobedience.
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CHAPTER 8
THEORIES OF MEDIA COGNITION AND INFORMATION PROCESSING
1. If someone’s cognitive resources are limited, this means that they
c) are exploring a situation by relying on old schemas
d) have spent too much time trying to process information
2. Which best describes how effectively TV news informs viewers
c) most people learn a lot by watching TV news
d) TV news is much more effective than reading newspapers
3. Information processing theory indicates that most of the time we are
c) information addicts
d) information sorters
4. Our conscious mind is able to
a) maintain conscious control over how we take in and use most information
b) prevent information from being filtered out
5. Information processing theory indicates that multitasking when we use media
c) will lead to fewer mistakes since we are less distracted
d) is a very efficient way of handling information
6. When we watch TV news we
c) remember most of what we see and hear
d) are more likely to remember political news than human interest news
7. The cognitive structures that are abstracted from past experiences are
a) cognitions
b) memories
8. When Doris Graber studied news consumers she conclude that
c) they remembered most of what they saw or read in the news
d) they were not selective in how they processed the news
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9. Tom Patterson’s research on how journalists frame elections has shown that
over the past 15 years journalists have
c) changed from horse-race frames to issue frames
d) made less use of any type of frame
10. Which theory states that partisans who feel strongly about an issue will tend
c) partisan media model
d) perverse media effect
11. Which theory states that there are two routes (central and peripheral) to
persuasion
a) hostile media effect
b) irrational processing model
12. People are more likely to be persuaded to make enduring changes in their
c) they are distracted while they use media
d) they aren’t hostile toward media
13. Which theory predicts that people will be persuaded if they become involved
in media stories and identify with media characters
a) media transportation effect
b) hostile media effect
14. The delay hypothesis states that learning from media tends to take place
slowly as people deal with the flood of information from media. As a result
learning tends to be
c) hostile and biased
d) elaborated
15. The theory of affective intelligence states that when messages contain
c) selectively avoid the information and quickly forget it
d) become depressed
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Essay
1. Differentiate between the central and peripheral routes to persuasion.
2. List and explain some of the reasons why people fail to learn much from TV news.
3. Explain how you could use narrative persuasion theory to try to persuade people that they should take
better care of their health.
4. Discuss the neuroscience perspective and the way it views media effects. How does this perspective
compare to information processing?
5. Discuss how people learn schemas and how do they use them after they are learned? Illustrate your
discussion with an example drawn from political communication.
6. Explain the hostile media effect and provide two examples to illustrate your explanation. You should
clearly indicate what causes this effect and the types of people most likely to be influenced.
Critical Thinking Questions
1. Just how good are your information processing skills? Try watching a news broadcast as you usually
do. When you finish, write down what you can remember. Did you come up with a detailed report with lots
of factual information or did you remember fragments of a few stories?
2. Are you someone who is affected by the hostile media effect or do you know someone who is? How do
you react when you see balanced news reports that include political views that you don’t like? Are you
concerned that less informed people could be influenced by these views? Do you blame media for
reporting these views?
3. Think back over some TV programs that you watched recently. Did you see a narrative that could
potentially persuade you to do something? Did the program include information about the social world that
you didn’t know but could change how you think or act? For example, were new illnesses, jobs or ideas
presented? Did you identify with a TV character and then want to do something that they did?
Discussion Aids
Narrative persuasion theory can be illustrated by showing parts of a TV program that centers around a
problem involving how people deal with illness. Blogs can be presented that feature personal stories about
the way someone coped with illness. These ways of presenting information can be contrasted with the
way information is presented on websites like health.nih.gov or webmd.com. Students can discuss which
form of information is more persuasive.
Illustrate the hostile media effect by showing balanced news stories presented on CNN or one of the major
network nightly news programs. Students should discuss their reactions to the presentation of information
or arguments that they think are wrong. Do they blame the media for presenting this information? Ask if
there are times when news shouldn’t contain balanced viewpoints. Consider some hot–button issues like
abortion, school prayer, or Obamacare.
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CHAPTER 9
THEORIES OF THE EFFECT OF MEDIA ON SOCIETY
Multiple Choice
c) when media provide prominent coverage of events, we “tune out”
d) when media provide prominent coverage of events, we “tune in”
2. Diffusion theory assumes that ___________ are most effective in spreading
acceptance of innovations.
a) powerful media
b) opinion leaders
3. A popular rock star becomes involved in a scandal that raises questions
concerning his close association with young boys. People become
hesitant to defend him publicly and he loses a valuable advertising
contract. This example best illustrates
a) social cognitive theory
4. According to media systems dependency theory, the primary reason that we
are increasingly dependent on media is that
a) media are getting more and more powerful
b) new media technology is so attractive
5. News production researchers like Gans argue that most news stories about
natural or technological disasters (airplane crashes) place the greatest
emphasis on
c) criticisms of the failings of private enterprise
d) the inability of average persons to come to grips with tragedy
6. Tuchman argues that routine news coverage tends to regularly support the
status quo. She thinks that the reason why this happens is that
journalists
a) are part of a conspiracy to prevent social change
b) are fearful of social change and so work against it
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7. Professional journalism practices designed to ensure objectivity but that
inevitably support the status quo are called _______ by news production
researchers.
a) codes of practice
b) media intrusions
8. One of the differences between agenda-setting and agenda-building is that the
former is more ________ and the latter more ________ in its view of media
effects.
a) positive/negative
b) negative/positive
9. When Apple Computers cut the price of its popular iPhone to spur sales soon
after the device’s introduction, those who had already bought the phone, or the
___________, were angry.
c) agenda-builders
d) primers
10. According to media systems dependency theory, we are becoming
increasingly dependent on the media (a) to understand the social world, (b) to act
meaningfully and effectively in society, and (c) ____________.
c) to better perform our duties as citizens
d) to satisfy personal gratifications
11. For seven days after a horrible coalmine disaster in your state your governor
holds a press conference at the site to assure reporters and the public that every
effort is being made to save the trapped miners. This is an example of
__________.
a) fragmented news
b) dramatized news
12. When reporters write a story on a topic, global warming for example, and
present “both sides” of the issue without qualification or evaluation, they are
engaging in ________.
a) social capital
b) media intrusion
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13. Researchers have documented systematic differences in knowledge
between better-informed and less informed segments of the population that can
be attributed to the differing availability of news. This is referred to as the
_________.
c) priming effect
d) ubiquity effect
14. In information/innovation diffusion theory, those who directly influence early
adopters and opinion leaders are called _____________.
a) first-order adopters
b) media elites
15. The first tenet in the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics,
c) All stories require at least two sources
d) Journalists are citizens first, reporters second
16. Cultivation analysis’s four-step process to measure the impact of television
on the culture includes message system analysis, which is
c) examining official government statistics
d) interviews with program producers
17. According to George Gerbner, the view of the social world cultivated by
prime-time television programming is
a) an accurate, detailed depiction of the way things are
b) highly misleading and designed to maintain certain elite groups in power
Essay
1. Discuss Bennett’s criticism of news. List and illustrate the four biases that he finds in news content.
2. Describe the basic assumptions of media system dependency theory. Do you agree with its notions
about the relationship between modern life and media use? Explain.
3. How do objectivity rituals turn journalists into “stenographers with amnesia”? Do you think contemporary
notions of objectivity can produce a different outcome?
4. What is the relationship between agenda-setting and agenda building? How might priming influence this
relationship?
5. According to Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder, how do vividness of presentation and position of story
influence agenda-setting?