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Chapter 01: Essay
Essay
1. Explain how the printing press helped books become the first mass medium.
ANSWER:
While paper and block printing developed in China around 100 CE and 1045,
respectively, what we recognize as modern printing did not emerge until the middle
of the fifteenth century. At that time in Germany, Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of
movable metallic type and the printing press ushered in the modern print era. Printing
presses and publications spread rapidly across Europe in the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries. Early on, the size and expense of books limited their audience to
the wealthy and powerful, but as printers reduced their size and cost, books became
available and affordable to more people. Books eventually became the first mass-
marketed products in history because of the way the printing press combined three
necessary elements: First, machine duplication replaced the tedious system in which
scribes hand-copied texts. Second, duplication could occur rapidly, so large
quantities of the same book could be reproduced easily. Third, the faster production
of multiple copies brought down the cost of each unit, making books more affordable
to less-affluent people.
2. What is the importance of the telegraph in media history?
ANSWER:
The gradual transformation from an industrial, print-based society to one grounded in
the Information Age began with the development of the telegraph in the 1840s.
Featuring dot-dash electronic signals, the telegraph made four key contributions to
communication. First, it separated communication from transportation, making media
messages instantaneous—unencumbered by stagecoaches, ships, or the pony express.
Second, in combination with the rise of mass-marketed newspapers, the telegraph
transformed information into a commodity that could be sold. By the time of the
Civil War, news had become a valuable product. Third, the telegraph made it easier
for military, business, and political leaders to coordinate commercial and military
operations, especially after the installation of the transatlantic cable in the late 1860s.
Fourth, the telegraph led to future technological developments, such as wireless
telegraphy (later named radio), the fax machine, and the cell phone, which ironically
resulted in the telegraph’s demise: In 2006, Western Union telegraph offices sent
their final messages.
3. Explain the two meanings of the term media convergence.
ANSWER:
Developments in the electronic and digital eras enabled and ushered in this latest
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course for the future.
The first meaning of media convergence involves the technological merging of
content across different media channels—the magazine articles, radio programs,
songs, TV shows, video games, and movies now available on the Internet through
laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
A second meaning of media convergence—sometimes called cross platform by
media marketers—describes a business model that involves consolidating various
media holdings, such as cable connections, phone services, television transmissions,
and Internet access, under one corporate umbrella. The goal is not necessarily to offer
consumers more choice in their media options but to better manage resources and
maximize profits. For example, a company that owns TV stations, radio outlets, and
newspapers in multiple markets—as well as in the same cities—can deploy a reporter
or producer to create three or four versions of the same story for various media
outlets. So rather than having each radio station, TV station, newspaper, and online
news site generate diverse and independent stories about an important issue or a
significant event, a media corporation employing the convergence model can use
fewer employees to generate multiple versions of the same story.
4. Using an example, explain the four stages in the development of a new mass medium.
ANSWER:
Media innovations typically go through four stages. First is the emergence, or
novelty, stage, in which inventors and technicians try to solve a particular problem,
such as making pictures move, transmitting messages from ship to shore, or sending
mail electronically. Second is the entrepreneurial stage, in which inventors and
investors determine a practical and marketable use for the new device. For example,
the Internet had its roots in the ideas of military leaders, who wanted a
communication system that was decentralized and distributed widely enough to
survive nuclear war or natural disasters.
The third phase in a medium’s development involves a breakthrough to the mass
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Chapter 01: Essay
exploitation of high culture, the disposability of popular culture, the decline of high
subsets that consume and chase particular products, lifestyles, politics, hobbies, and
forms of entertainment.
5. Describe the linear model of mass communication, and give at least one critique of the model.
ANSWER:
The digital era also brought about a shift in the models that media researchers have
used over the years to explain how media messages and meanings are constructed
and communicated in everyday life. One older and outdated explanation of how
media operate viewed mass communication as a linear process of producing and
delivering messages to large audiences. According to this model, senders (authors,
producers, and organizations) transmitted messages (programs, texts, images, sounds,
and ads) through a mass media channel (newspapers, books, magazines, radio,
television, or the Internet) to large groups of receivers (readers, viewers, and
consumers). In the process, gatekeepers (news editors, executive producers, and other
media managers) functioned as message filters. Media gatekeepers made decisions
about what messages actually got produced for particular receivers. The process also
allowed for feedback, in which citizens and consumers, if they chose, returned
messages to senders or gatekeepers through phone calls, e-mail, web postings, talk
shows, or letters to the editor.
But the problem with the linear model was that in reality, media messages—
especially in the digital era—do not usually move smoothly from a sender at point A
to a receiver at point Z. Words and images are more likely to spill into one another,
crisscrossing in the daily media deluge of product ads, TV shows, news reports,
social media, smartphone apps, and everyday conversation. Media messages and
stories are encoded and sent in written and visual forms, but senders often have very
little control over how their intended messages are decoded or whether the messages
are ignored or misread by readers and viewers.
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ANSWER:
While the skyscraper model is one way to view culture, another way to view it is as a
map. Here, culture is an ongoing and complicated process—rather than a high–low
vertical hierarchy—that allows us to better account for our diverse and individual
tastes. In the map model, we judge forms of culture as good or bad based on a
combination of personal taste and the aesthetic judgments a society makes at
particular historical times. Because such tastes and evaluations are “all over the
map,” a cultural map suggests that we can pursue many connections across various
media choices and can appreciate a range of cultural experiences without simply
ranking them from high to low.
Our attraction to and choice of cultural phenomena—such as the stories we read in
books or watch at the movies—represent how we make our lives meaningful. Culture
offers plenty of places to go that are conventional, familiar, and comforting. Yet at
the same time, our culture’s narrative storehouse contains other stories that tend
toward the innovative, unfamiliar, and challenging. Most forms of culture, however,
demonstrate multiple tendencies. We may use online social networks because they
are both comforting (an easy way to keep up with friends) and innovative (new tools
or apps that engage us). The map offered in the text is based on a subway grid. Each
station represents tendencies or elements related to why a person would be attracted
to particular cultural products. More popular culture forms congregate in certain
areas of the map, while less popular cultural forms are outliers. This multidirectional,
antihierarchical model serves as a more flexible, multidimensional, and inclusive way
of imagining how culture actually works.
8. Describe the five-step critical process for developing media literacy.
ANSWER:
Developing a media-literate critical perspective involves mastering five overlapping
stages that build on one another.
A. Description: paying close attention, taking notes, and researching the subject
under study
B. Analysis: discovering and focusing on significant patterns that emerge from the
description stage
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Chapter 01: Essay
9. Using your own favorite or familiar example from popular media (a hip-hop or an alternative
rock song, a TV show, a magazine), explain how it works as culture (a term you will need to
define).
ANSWER:
One way to understand the impact of the media on our lives is to explore the cultural
context in which the media operate. Often, culture is narrowly associated with art, the
unique forms of creative expression that give pleasure and set standards about what is
true, good, and beautiful. Culture, however, can be viewed more broadly as the ways
in which people live and represent themselves at particular historical times. This idea
of culture encompasses fashion, sports, literature, architecture, education, religion,
and science, as well as mass media. Although we can study discrete cultural products,
such as novels or songs from various historical periods, culture itself is always
changing. It includes a society’s art, beliefs, customs, games, technologies, traditions,
and institutions. It also encompasses a society’s modes of communication: the
creation and use of symbol systems that convey information and meaning (e.g.,
languages, Morse code, motion pictures, and binary computer codes).
Culture is made up of both the products that a society fashions and, perhaps more
importantly, the processes that forge those products and reflect a culture’s diverse
values. Thus, culture may be defined as the symbols of expression that individuals,
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1. The five major phases in communication history include the _______, written, print,
electronic, and digital periods.
ANSWER:
oral
2. The telegraph was the first media development to break the connection between transportation
and _______.
ANSWER:
communication
3. _______ refers to images, texts, and sounds that are converted into electronic signals that are
later reassembled as a precise reproduction of the original image, text, or sound.
ANSWER:
Digital communication
4. The phenomenon whereby audiences seek messages and meanings that correspond to their
preexisting beliefs and values is called _______.
ANSWER:
selective exposure
5. The stages in the development of most new mass communication industries are called the
emergence (or novelty) stage, the _______ stage, the mass medium stage, and the convergence
stage.
ANSWER:
entrepreneurial
6. _______ is the technological merging of content in different media channels.
ANSWER:
Media convergence
7. The common denominator that makes both our entertainment and our information cultures
compelling is _______.
ANSWER:
narrative
8. According to the textbook, one attains _______ by following a five-step critical process:
description, analysis, interpretation, evaluation, and engagement.
ANSWER:
media literacy
9. _______ is the second step in the critical process. It involves discovering significant patterns
that emerge from the description stage.
ANSWER:
Analysis
10. The final step in the critical process, _______, occurs when citizens actively work to create a
media world that helps serve democracy.
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ANSWER:
engagement
Multiple Choice
1. According to the textbook, the mass media are industries that produce and distribute cultural
products to large numbers of people.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
2. No media existed prior to the coming of the electronic era in the nineteenth century.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
b
3. Gutenberg played an active role in the transition from oral to written culture.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
b
4. The manuscript culture that existed between 1000 BCE and the mid-fifteenth century
primarily served the ruling classes.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
5. With the coming of the printing press, the printed newspaper became the first mass-marketed
product in history.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
b
6. Gutenberg’s invention of movable type allowed the book to become the first mass-marketed
communication product in history.
a.
True
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b.
False
ANSWER:
a
7. The printing press fostered the rise of tribal communities.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
b
8. The computer was the first electronic medium.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
b
9. The telegraph and newspapers transformed news into a salable commodity.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
10. In the linear model of mass communication, gatekeepers are the authors, producers, and
organizations that create the message.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
b
11. The senders of messages often have little control over how their messages will be received.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
12. The meaning of a message can be affected by a recipient’s gender, age, educational level,
ethnicity, and occupation.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
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13. Mass media audiences generally seek out messages that correspond to their cultural beliefs
and values.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
14. Google is the most profitable company of the digital age so far.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
15. Although the way we consume media today focuses on individual interests on mobile
devices, a positive result of the digital age is that family and friends gather to binge-watch
programs on weekends or during holidays.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
16. The classical view of art is that it should aim to instruct and uplift.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
17. According to the textbook, the high–low model of culture limits the way we look at and
discuss culture today.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
18. Most forms of culture demonstrate multiple tendencies; for example, a film could be both
conventional and innovative.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
19. Lassie went off the air because children got tired of seeing the same plot every week.
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a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
b
20. A high–low vertical hierarchy is a more multidimensional way of looking at culture than
viewing culture as a map.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
b
21. James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake challenges readers to decode its complex narrative.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
22. Efficiency and individualism are both values of the modern period.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
23. Modern artists such as Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) and Charlie Chaplin (Modern
Times) predicted a future in which technology would lead to less oppression and more individual
freedom.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
b
24. Populism tries to appeal to elite people by highlighting the differences between them and
ordinary people.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
b
25. Critics contend that postmodern style borrows too heavily from other eras and devalues
originality.
a.
True
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b.
False
ANSWER:
a
26. Postmodern culture questions the value of scientific reasoning and rational thought for
solving society’s problems.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
27. The textbook contends that many forms of media and culture cannot accurately be described
using binary terms such as liberal and conservative or high and low.
a.
True
b.
False
ANSWER:
a
28. _____ are the cultural industries that produce and distribute cultural products to large
numbers of people.
a.
Modern technologies
b.
Oral communications
c.
Illuminated manuscripts
d.
Mass media
ANSWER:
d
29. According to the textbook, the mass media have passed through which five historical stages?
a.
voice, pen, press, telegraph, computer
b.
speech, manuscript, book, image, information
c.
face-to–face, local, regional, national, global
d.
oral, written, print, electronic, digital
ANSWER:
d
30. Which of the following is the best way to characterize the transitions between the print,
electronic, and digital eras?
a.
The exact lines between each era are clear.
b.
As new technology was invented, the older forms of technology were rapidly
discarded.