Hanson, Mass Communication, 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
Chapter 10: Online Media: The Internet, Social Media, and
Video Games
Test Bank
Multiple Choice
1. Journalist Keah Brown created the ______ hashtag to help install pride in young
people who are disabled.
A. #DisabledAndCute
B. #DisabledButCute
C. #CuteBecauseDisabled
D. #DisabledLivesMatter
2. Which of the following is not a characteristic of online media?
A. They are social.
B. They are mobile.
C. They are location based.
D. You can’t fool me, all of these are characteristics of online media.
3. Twitter was originally created so people could share their answers to this question.
A. What did you watch on television last night?
B. What are you reading?
C. What did you have for breakfast?
D. What are you doing?
4. Paul Baran’s idea of cutting messages into small pieces and sending them on the
easiest route was known as which of the following?
A. digital pipeline
B. packet switching
C. teleconferencing
D. e-mail
5. ARPAnet, a predecessor of the Internet, was created to do which of the following?
A. allow incompatible computers to talk with each other
B. provide the military with a network that could survive nuclear war
C. serve as a medium for advertising clothing
D. allow people to share music, movies, and television programs
6. Who developed TCP/IP, the original specification for the Internet’s protocols?
A. Tim Berners-Lee
B. Steve Case
C. Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf
D. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
7. The term SMS refers to ______.
A. secure mobile systems, a security protocol for mobile apps
B. short message service or text messaging
C. social mobile systems, a term for social media
D. standard management standards, an online data protocol
8. Which of the following is the address for where web pages are located?
Hanson, Mass Communication, 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
A. http
B. URL
C. HTML
D. TCP
9. The first web browser that could handle graphics was called which of the following?
A. Internet Explorer
B. Safari
C. Mosaic
D. Firefox
10. People connect to the Internet using which of the following?
A. wireless services
B. telephone lines
C. cable television lines
D. all of these
11. The movie that revolutionized Internet-based promotion of films was which of the
following?
A. The Blair Witch Project
B. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
C. Star Wars Episode III
D. 300
12. ______ are a major new medium of mass communication?
Hanson, Mass Communication, 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
A. Video games
B. Cell phone calls
C. Handwritten letters
D. Memory sticks
13. The word cyberspace is used to mean which of the following?
A. a computer pilot
B. a science of communication and control theory
C. the Internet and the interactions that take place there
D. the future in outer space
14. Video games can be considered to be a major new medium in part because
______.
A. they contain advertising
B. they made more money in 2015 than the movie industry did
C. video game consoles are general purpose media delivery devices in addition to
providing games
D. all of these
15. Worldwide, ______% of the population has access to the Internet.
A. 12
B. 23
C. 46
D. 78
16. Fandor is an online service that provides ______.
Hanson, Mass Communication, 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
A. streaming video of science fiction and comic book conventions
B. online purchase of movie tickets
C. streaming video of art house films, B-movies, and documentaries
D. all of these
17. On a website, cookies are which of the following?
A. visitors to the website
B. the address of the website
C. ads that pop-up or under the main window
D. files used to identify and track visitors at websites
18. Websites use ______ to track users while they are on the site.
A. small files called cookies
B. remote-controlled web cameras
C. the person sitting next to you at a cybercafe
D. a site map
19. Twitch is a streaming video service that shows ______.
A. lesser-known sports like Australian-rules football
B. people playing video games
C. homemade cat videos
D. reruns of sitcoms from the 1950s and 60s
20. Twitter’s big innovation was ______.
Hanson, Mass Communication, 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
A. connecting mobile Internet, mobile phones, and computer-based Internet as part of a
single channel
B. combining GPS and mobile phones
C. allowing people to post mobile phone video to the web
D. allowing people to “tag” where they had observed different birds
21. Radio and the Internet have which of the following in common?
A. They both were initially developed as tools for machine-assisted interpersonal
communication.
B. They both were initially developed as media of mass communication.
C. They both are owned and operated by the government in the United States rather
than by private industry.
D. They replaced other forms of mass communication, which were then driven out of
business.
22. The next-generation Internet will be used primarily for which of the following?
A. having increased loads of e-mail
B. playing online video games
C. providing high-quality video and audio links
D. allowing unrestricted file sharing of commercial music and news
23. According to Tim Berners-Lee, which of the following is a principle upon which the
web is based?
A. The web should only be a tool for retrieving accurate information.
B. Users should be able to link to any document at anywhere in the world.
C. Some documents should only be accessible to a few people.
D. Copyright should be eliminated.
24. The World Wide Web became the standard for posting documents on the Internet
because its creator did which of the following?
A. created something that was better than any of the alternatives
B. had support from both Microsoft and Apple
C. gave it away for free
D. came up with a unique idea
25. YouTube was created with the purpose of ______.
A. making it easier to share video from mobile phones and digital cameras
B. providing on-demand access to music videos
C. providing an alternative to Netflix for streaming movies
D. sharing clips from popular television shows
26. Video games could be considered a new mass medium because ______.
A. the major video game systems are all produced by the top six Big Media companies
B. the consoles can be used to deliver a range of media content and video games are
becoming a new way to deliver advertising
C. video games are available using a range of technologies
D. you can’t fool me, no way are video games a new mass medium
27. One common complaint about video games is that ______.
A. people of color and LGBT people are underrepresented as characters in games
B. White males are underrepresented as characters in games
C. there isn’t enough violence in video games anymore because of new federal
regulations limiting it
D. there are too many advertisements in the games that slow down game play
Hanson, Mass Communication, 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
28. One of the big advantages of distributing a movie over the Internet instead of in
theaters is which of the following?
A. the quality of the image is higher online
B. the quality of the sound is higher online
C. you can charge more for people to see it
D. the cost of online distribution is close to zero
29. Amazon bought the video game streaming service Twitch for almost US$1 billion
because ______.
A. showing people playing video games is a good way to attract video game customers
to the Amazon online store
B. lots of people like to watch people playing video games
C. Twitch has approximately 15 million users a day
D. all of these
30. The expression “everything is data” means that ______.
A. everything we know has been digitized and is available online
B. we make decisions using all kinds of contradictory information
C. the transmission of digital data online is gradually replacing other forms of media
D. none of these
31. Social media are online services that allow users to ______.
A. generate content
B. comment
C. tag
D. all of these
32. ______ is a social media service built around sharing photos with a variety of filters
applied.
A. Snapchat
B. Instagram
C. Twitter
D. YouTube
33. ______ is a social media service built around sharing messages and photos that
disappear after a short period of time or after the recipient views them.
A. Snapchat
B. Instagram
C. Twitter
D. YouTube
34. ______ is a social media service built sharing short messages often accompanied
by a link to a website.
A. Snapchat
B. Instagram
C. Twitter
D. YouTube
Hanson, Mass Communication, 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
True/False
1. Online media differ from traditional media because they contain elements of
interpersonal, group, and mass communication.
2. The hashtag was added to the social media service Twitter more than a year after the
service was launched.
3. Approximately 43% of the people living on the African continent have access to the
Internet.
4. The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the address of content placed on the web.
5. HTML consists of a series of tags that say how text ought to be represented, where
graphics should be placed, and what links should be included.
6. The World Wide Web was developed almost entirely as a for-profit venture.
Hanson, Mass Communication, 7e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
7. The purpose of hypertext is to let people move electronically from one document to
another without necessarily knowing which computers the documents are located on.
8. The authoritative LexisNexis news database now contains entries from a number of
blogs.
9. A blog is a collection of links and commentary in hypertext that can be created and
posted on the Internet.
10. Bloggers have been successful in fact-checking news stories from Big Media
outlets.
11. The Chinese government allows its citizens to freely search the Internet.
12. The hacker movement is characterized by people who think that computers and the
Internet are an evil force destroying American society.
13. By 2018, less than half of Americans were online with mobile devices like
smartphones and tablets.
14. By 2018, 89% of American adults were online in one way or another.
15. By 2018, more than two thirds of Americans reported going online with their mobile
device.
16. Convergence is the process of bringing together the characteristics of multiple
media on the Internet.
17. The video game Grand Theft Auto V made more money that the movies Avatar and
Titanic combined.
Essay
1. What is the Internet?
2. The creators of which network never intended for it to be used for e-mail or other
forms of interpersonal communication.
3. Video games played competitively for audiences are known as what?
4. Tim Berners-Lee is best known for inventing what?
5. High-speed Internet service is also known as what?
6. What is a weblog or blog?
7. What is citizen journalism?
8. List two of the four principles of the hacker ethos.
9. What is reverse synergy?
10. Name two ways that Russian propagandists reportedly interfered with the 2016 U.S.
presidential election.
11. Name two of the three ways you can post messages to the social networking tool
Twitter.
12. In a brief essay, discuss how bloggers can serve as a force to correct mistaken
news published by legacy media.
13. In a brief essay, discuss how cell phones and user-generated video sites such as
YouTube can be used as a channel for citizen journalism.
14. In a brief essay, explain what Wired magazine meant when they wrote in 2010 that
“the web is dead.”
15. In a brief essay, explain why video games are considered by many to be a new form
of mass media. Use specific examples.
16. In a brief essay, explain why President Donald Trump likes using Twitter to
communicate with the public and why his doing so can be controversial.