30. An audience member’s skills at decoding the underlying message of an action show that
force is the proper solution to all problems involves the ______ dimension of media literacy.
a. cognitive
b. emotional
c. aesthetic
d. moral
31. An audience member’s skills at decoding the artistic success of a new novel involves the
______ dimension of media literacy.
a. cognitive
b. emotional
c. aesthetic
d. moral
True/False
1. Sponsors of the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics booked more than $1 billion worth of advertising
with NBCUniversal to have their ads appear on American coverage of the games.
2. Danielle Corsetto’s Web comic Girls With Slingshots has been widely criticized for its
stereotypical portrayal of people with disabilities.
3. The news about the attack that killed Osama bin Laden was inadvertently live tweeted by a
software consultant in Pakistan.
4. Intrapersonal communication is communication that you do with two or more people.
5. Interpersonal communication is communication that you do with yourself within your own
head.
6. Group communication involves an unequal number of senders and receivers.
7. Mass communication and the mass media are really the same thing.
8. The SMCR model is also known as the transmission model.
9. According to media scholar James Potter, media messages have consistent meanings to all
receivers.
10. Different media channels can give messages different meanings.
11. An example of semantic noise would be when static keeps you from understanding a
message on the radio.
12. An example of mechanical noise would be when static keeps you from understanding a
message on the radio.
13. Media scholar Neil Postman argues that a major effect of television is that it turns serious
subjects into entertainment.
14. The telegraph was the first electronic form of communication.
15. Consumers with low levels of media literacy assume the media have large, obvious, and
generally negative effects on the public at large.
16. One problem with studying the mass media is that all-new problems pop up every time a new
medium comes along; it’s useless to look to the past for explanations.
17. The media industry is so varied that it is impossible to make broad generalizations to
describe it at all levels from local to national.
18. Media companies welcome new technology because it gives them new ways to sell their
content.
19. The secret “All media are social” only applies to media in the twenty-first century. Before
then media weren’t social.
20. Young people who start using a new medium, such as mobile Internet, tend to discontinue
use of an older medium.
21. It is useful to make generalizations about the media industry as a whole.
22. When the cast of the popular TV show Glee performed a version of the musical The Rocky
Horror Show, producers received extensive criticism for maintaining all the gay themes of the
play.
Essay
1. Define communication.
2. Define mass communication.
Difficulty Level: Medium
3. What is the difference between mass communication and the mass media?
4. List each of the four elements of the SMCR model.
5. What is a heterogeneous audience?
6. What does Neil Postman mean when he says television is “amusing us to death”?
7. Name and explain two inventions that broadened the availability of books.
8. How did the telegraph differ from earlier forms of communication?
9. In a brief essay, explain, with examples, how a social networking site such as Facebook or
Twitter includes multiple levels of communication.
10. Define and provide an example of each of the following models of mass communication:
ritual, publicity, reception.
11. In a brief essay, explain James Potter’s four major dimensions of media literacy and how
people with higher levels of media literacy differ from those of lower media literacy.
12. Name and provide an example of three of the Seven Secrets.
13. In a brief essay, explain what kind of bias Fox News and CNN have in common that led to
the misreporting of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 decision about the Affordable Care Act (or
Obamacare).