CMN 140 - All the Quizlets I could find.

What makes a website like Wikipedia work?

a large number of knowledgeable people willing to participate

Cultivation theory

argues that mass-media exposure cultivates a view of the world that is consistent with mediated "reality" (television's reality)

three basic genres

drama, comedy, romance

efficiency

economy works better when all resources are used most effectively through elimination of unnecessary duplication

what's the earliest form of interactive media?

electronic games

Recent surveys show that 30% of the general population says it gets its news from Facebook.

true

Research shows that there is generally no dialogue when a parent and child watch television together.

true

Some media (i.e., books, magazines, and recordings) never reach a peak, but can still be important or successful.

true

The overall audience shrinks for newspapers, TV news, and even Internet news.

true

When did big news peak?

1980's

percent of women writers

18%

Current trends in gaming marketing.

Ask Jaime

Attentional state

Aware of the message and interacting with the message

Young people are a very important target for many Hollywood films.

True

direct support

directly to the media company (cable, subscription etc.)

What do we mean when we state that advertising is pervasive? In which way?

○ The US is saturated with advertising ○ 8% of worlds population, but ISA has almost half of the world's advertising expenditures ○ Surrounded by ads constantly - Many mediums of advertising

Intersubject Correlation

(Hasson et al., 2008) -ISC can help us see general responses across time to media content -See what media content make audiences think alike

Analog vs Digital Coding

*Analog:* recording, storage, & retrieval of info that relies on the physical properties of a medium *Digital:* using a sequence of symbols or bytes (usually numbers) that are not dependent on the physical characteristics of any one medium

Five Different Perspectives on News

*Political philosophy perspective Traditional journalism perspective News-working perspective Economic perspective Consumer personal perspective*

Popular ways to group media messages is between:

*reality* & *fantasy*

Traditional Journalism vs News-Working Perspective

- First is the workers perspective usually; 2nd is usually editors

Disposition Theory Applied to Drama genre

- Strong dislike/like for characters increases involvement - Favorable outcome for liked person leads to enjoyment

affective tone

- designers must think how they want their players to feel as they interact w/ the games

public relation's influence on news

- manufactured news 'events' - video news releases - press releases - how the fake news works

the news industry

- news as business - historically, less so -attracting eyes to advertisements

Early News (pre-19th century)

-Mostly factual; focused on accuracy -Affluent readership -> only the rich were able to buy news/most poor had limited literacy

Regulations

-cyberspace vs. geographic areas

Three broad areas of research within LC4MP

1) Cognitive Load 2) Motivated Processing 3) Memory

What are the three generic info-processing tasks?

1) Filtering 2) Meaning Matching 3) Meaning construction

Consider drama genre. What are the three basic subgenres of drama?

1) Tragedy 2) Mystery 3) Action/horror

What are the THREE types of mergers?

1. HORIZONTAL MERGER 2. VERTICAL MERGER 3. CONGLOMERATE MERGER

Who qualifies as a journalist?

1. knowledge 2. organization 3. autonomy

percent of women in advertising

65%

Competency

Ability to control an outcome, especially by way of mastery of a situation.

Downward Spiral Model

Aggressive people seek violent media, which influences aggressive behavior, which influences subsequent preferences for violent media, and so on

6 categories of play as determined by the objective of the game

Agon Alea Mimicry Ilinx exploration social * popular games usually feature a combo of two or more of these

Socioeconomic Status

Almost half the characters on television were wealthy or ultra-wealthy

What is the beginning point of judging reality?

An assessment of whether a portrayal actually happened

Info Processing Theories

Answers questions about psychological processes & context -> hints at ways to achieve attention & acceptance *How are people processing the info in a media message?*

How are electronic games marketed? Consider demographics.

Average player is 30 years old; 74% of gamers are 18 or older; 47% of gamers are women; 67% of households

Electronic Games

Became part of the mass media

What does it mean to be flexible from the media literacy perspective?

Being flexible means being willing to traverse the entire spectrum of messages and being willing to enjoy the full range of messages.

Put-down Comedy

Certain characters have power over other characters and exercise that power in humorous ways. ex. The Office

living

Contact with friends is virtual and people generally do not interact in real life. Second Life is virtual world launched in 2003. Individuals create and maintain avatars.

Exploration >>

Discovery, new places, new experiences

What are the major steps in general formula that entertainment follows?

Entertainment that follows this formula begins with 1) a problem for at least one character 2) followed by heightened conflict 3) and the climax where the conflict is resolved.

Vaules

Examining the arts within a culture is a way to determine the values of the culture.

Pysiological Type Effect

Example: Suspense elevates heart rate + blood pressure

Pictorially mediated models

Exert a strong influence on children's learning about social situations

1. what people accept has changed 2. sex and violence offended people in the 80's, but not today 3. music has changed overtime as it use to be love/sex related, now its more explicit

Explain how "Storytelling formulas must evolve as public tastes change overtime" in constraints

a lot of stereotypes in TV are made. some are harmful to the more sensitive topics like black people, gender, jobs, sexual orientation, etc

Explain stereotypes in character patterns

Audience conditioning

Feeding the same audience a message multiple times over; successful companies want to condition you to continually use their services so it becomes a habit you cannot live without (i.e. Youtube offering their app, then AutoPlaying other videos so you stay on their app)

audience perspective

Find messages they cannot get in real life Impossible to get messages in real life High cost to get messages in real life

Factors influencing media effects (2 main types)

Fluctuation factors, baseline factors

controlling

Google presents us with search results using algorithms. Our Internet searches are also affected by our past search history.

Next step reality -ways to judge realtity

How do we make sense of the complexity of reality judgement?

What is interactivity? (In communication)

Interface between the end-user in the medium, audience creates content, audience is not paid and instead pays the company

Typicality

Likely to happen?

Belief Type Effect

Media messages can shape our beliefs over time

music

Napster was a social network for sharing music. It was founded in 2009 and was shut down by the RIAA in 2001.

Balance

Occurs when journalist present all sides of an issue in an equal manner.

Risk-takers

Prefer riskier choices, competitive/threatening situations (e.g. horror movies, violent video games, sports, etc.)

Risk-avoiders

Prefer safer choices (puzzle/strategy games, soap operas, etc.)

Advertising is deceptive

Pseudo-claims ( x fights cavities) Comparison with unidentified other (X has better cleaning action) Comparison of product to its earlier form (new and improved) Irrelevant comparisons (is the best of its kind) Pseudo-survey ( 4 out of 5 dentists recommend this) Juxtaposition (happy faces next to a product)

formality of play

Refers to the level of rules involved in the game

Why do we use interactive media

Self determination theory

The history of interactive media is dominated by failures...

Some lack a "marketing concept" Some lack a "killer app"

Different Media

Telling an entertaining story presents a different challenge as you move from one medium to another.

Neutrality

The story is free from journalistic bias or editorializing.

Baseline Effects (of Media)

The typical degree of risk of experiencing a media effect

Disposition Theory

Theory describing why we enjoy media We enjoy seeing: -good things happen to people we like -bad things happen to people we dislike We hate seeing: -bad things happen to people we like -good things happen to people we dislike

Cookies

Tiny files that Web sites create to identify visitors and potentially track their actions on the site and the Web. -netscape created cookies in 1994; claiming it led to an "easier experience" -due to privacy pressures Netscape developed a tool to disable cookies

Acquisition (interactive media)

Users seek out and find information, goods, services and other resources (ex. Search engines, Wikipedia, Amazon)

1. tragedy 2. mystery 3. action/horror

What re the 3 types of dramas?

Advertising as the engine

Why its important to the economy: 1. decline in proportion of farmers and blue-collar workers and increase in white-collar (meaning people aren't as self-sufficient and must buy food and clothing) 2. higher level of employments; ability to purchase more leads to an increased standard of living

why is next-step reality fundamental to media literacy?

b/c it shifts the question and hence focuses our attention

Line between real world and media world is increasingly ________ because memories are ______.

blurry / interlaced

how do you increase overall income?

by creating multiple revenue streams

When did de-regulation begin

by the 1980's FCC began de-regulating changing from 7 am, fm, tv stations to 12

put-down comedy

certain characters have power over characters and use that power in humorous ways

If an explosion occurs at 1 o'clock in the morning, it will most likely NOT appear in the morning newspaper because of the constraint of ______.

deadlines

The two factors that can be seen as responsible for the trend toward more concentration of ownership of media businesses are:

efficiencies and deregulation

Knock-offs

ex. Hardcore Pawn. knock-off to Pawn Stars

Synthesis means using general principles to explain particulars.

false

Technological convergence

how innovations in production, storage, & retransmission of messages brings about changes to a media industry

key to a successful game

lies in understanding the consumer and having the talent at designing the game itself

Our baselines are primarily shaped through ______.

long-term conditioning

over-value of a resource

no one will want it

Conglomerate Merger

one company buys other companies that can be in the same industry (same type of business or a company's suppliers and distributors) as well as in other industries film studio buys newspapers radiostations restaraunts etc

ethnocentrism

other countries are judged against american standards

news-framing influences

purely constructions of journalists to help them do their jobs more easily and to fulfill the goals of the businesses that employ them

the media

spin reality to make it appear more exciting and thus attract people away from their real lives.

News viewership is _____ in TV and ____ in print

stagnant; declining

the more aware of the layers of meaning in messages...

the more you can control the selection of which meanings you want

If your personal locus is low, you allow the media to exercise a high degree of control over your media exposure.

true

Producers depend the viewers'...

willing suspension of disbelief

The goal; net winners and losers

winners: negotiated resources so well that payoffs are greater than costs losers: vice versa

Echo Chambers

*Argument:* social media lets viewers expose themselves to sympathetic info & audiences (selective exposure) -More than 50% of Americans believe news is biased (splits along partisan affiliation)

Important Neuro Concepts

*Forward Inference:* experimentally manipulate task & observe corresponding brain activation *Subtraction Logic:* activation from one condition is subtracted from the other *Reverse Inference:* activation in a brain region that a specific mental process is occurring (logical fallacy: affirming the consequent)

Organization:

- "how a profession may require membership of professional associations that legitimately represent the profession as a how practitioners must be able to earn a living from engaging full-time in their profession, and how formal codes of ethics organize the profession." - Journalists do have professional organizations and a kind of cannon of ethics.

what is the cost of a new game and getting the world up and running? what are the big expenses?

- $5 million minimum w/ an investment of $30 million being spent by the larger companies - licensing and providing the continuing line service

Example of Cultivation Differential

- 1% of US works in law enforcement - 50% of light vs 59% of heavy viewers answered 5% - 9% difference = Cultivation differential

how many people on a game development team? how long does it take to create and test?

- 12 - 20 people - takes about 15-18 months to create and test

what percent of shows contain sexual content/sexual intercourse?

- 64% contain some sexual content - 14% contain sexual intercourse

what percent of American population is overweight/obese? what percent on tv?

- 64% of US - 6% of males on tv - 2% of females on tv

what percent of children age 14 -17 were able to buy M-rated games? what percent of boys play these games? girls?

- 69% of children under the age of 17 were able to buy M-rated games - 87% boys play M-rated games - 46% girls play M-rated games

what percent of new stories were completely balanced? And why?

- 7% - authors concluded that that pro capability and/or ethical self-consciousness are lacking in many journalists

states

- A drive or emotional reaction that occurs in response to some temporary stimuli

Subtraction Logic

- Activation from one condition is subtracted from the other - Take neural activity from flow condition, subtract non-flow condition, and see what is left over = leftover is brain activity that is unique to the flow experience

Reverse Inference

- Activation in a brain region means that a specific mental process is occurring (logical fallacy: affirming the consequent) - This is not always accurate → example: bc someone has reaction in the amygdala, they are experiencing fear → false bc this region controls other things too Get around this fallacy by forward inference

Advantages and disadvantages of automatic routines

- Advantages: Efficiency - Disadvantages: When our minds are on autopilot, we may miss out on a lot of important messages; also, "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention"

Monkey Business Illusion

- Attention as a spotlight - Attention can be widely or narrowly focused - Narrow focus enhances one object at the expense of others - Relates to how we often multitask while using media

LC4MP

- Based on the metaphor/idea of the brain as a computer - Attention, encoding, storage, and retrieval

Character patterns on TV do not match real world demographic patterns. How so?

- Population of characters on television very different from real-world population - Research on patterns across all television genres rare now; so much fragmentation

The Long Tail

- Historically, media content were produced with the goal of reaching the widest possible audience - Lowest Common Denominator - Make content that appeals to the largest amount of people - Anderson says that actually there is money in the small audience, not just the mass audience - Small audience media will not displace LCD media - Rules for the Long Tail Economy 1) Make everything available 2) Cut the price 3) Help people find content

Criticism of Cultivation Theory

- Is is correlational, not causal - Most research is survey-based and lacks an experimental manipulation - What constitutes "heavy" TV viewership changes with each study - Cultivation effect is an artifact that disappears when the proper statistical controls are put into place Gerbner countered: subgroup analyses are important

What can you do to form your own informed opinion about this issue?

- It is essential that your opinions be informed by accurate facts rather than faulty information, informed by your own personal values that you use as evaluative standards, and informed by the differences between social responsibility and economic responsibility.

Simplified extended conflict (SEC)

- Journalists look for an angle of conflict that appears very simple but can be played out over a period of time.

What are strategies that can help one become media literate with entertainment messages? Consider both challenges and solutions.

- Strengthen knowledge structures regarding content patterns, discrepancies from real world, formulas - Separate reality from fantasy - Be entertained by fantasy - Avoid being guided by unrealistic expectations -Ask questions; be skeptical - Stay active during consumption

How is Suspense Different than mystery?

- Suspense = emotional, mystery = cognitive - Disposition = related to emotions, not cognitive

Filtering Messages

- Task: Making decisions about which messages to ignore/process - Goal: Pay attention to messages that have some kind of usefulness for the person + ignore the rest - Focus: Messages in the environment - Human mind can take in many messages at once, but can only be aware of a small # - Minds have programmed filters - Media create a lot of filters for us → ex: autofill on google search, personalizing searches

From the economic perspective, how marketing affects the content and quality of the news stories?

- News decisions are made by marketers instead of journalists. - It tends to change the content of news in a way that is somehow harmful to the public.

Traditional Journalism News Perspective

- News is reported by journalists objectively; free of outside influences

Consumer News Perspective

- News is whatever people seek out/think is important - Think like Buzzfeed quizzes

Economic News Perspective

- News is whatever sells - Info that maximizes revenue + minimizes expenses - Stakeholders

News Working Perspective

- News learn, through experience, what types of info are most likely to be read

From the economic perspective, how commercialism affects the content and quality of the news stories?

- News organizations are in the business of constructing large audiences so they can rent those audiences to advertisers. - News organizations present the kinds of stories that audiences want most.

Is what Piaget suggests about cognitive development completely accurate?

- No because he suggests that cognitive development plateaus around 12, but there is evidence that adults continue to experience cognitive changes throughout their lives - Less than 30% of adults exhibiting reasoning at the fully functional level - Ability to reason morally doesn't always increase with age

Now consider controversial content elements such as offensive language use. How does media address this issues? Is it successful? What is still problematic?

- Obscenity - Regulated by FCC - Depends on context - Recent increase on network TV, especially during "family hour" - Racial and gender slurs

Concepts related to media and morality (from Social Cognitive theory)

- Observational Learning (Morality is learned by watching others; rewards/punishments for social/moral behavior) - Self-regulation (people self-sanction their own behavior; morality is rooted in self-regulation rather than abstract reasoning) - Moral competence (ability to behave) - Moral performance (willingness to behave)

Flow

- Observed people getting lost in tasks + called this experience flow - In order to achieve → people must deeply immerse themselves in a task so their lose all track of time + place

Consumer Personal Perspective

- People are seeking out information strategically that benefits them. - As the audience for news fragments, news vehicles are getting more and more specialized, which is known as hyper-localism.

Second Life

- an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab

source/establishment bias

- believe whatever powerful people do is news - if they have power then what they do is newsworthy

The players: the advertisers

- brings money to the game - money for time and space in the media - look for media vehicles to advertise their message for the lowest cost

counterfeiting

- duplication of a copyrighted message and packaging it as the real product

what shapes the news?

- news values/practice - ownership

moral knowledge regarding news

- of criticism of news and of the meaning of bias, objectivity, balance, and fairness - of other stories on this topic and how those journalists achieved balance and fairness - highly developed moral code for jounalism

aesthetic knowledge regarding news

- of writing/graphics/photography/etc - of good and bad stories and the elements that contributed to those qualities

what are the arguments against efficiency?

-harming the economy and society -increase barriers -as the market loses competition this builds monopolies which lead to degraded products and services w/ increased prices -range of information narrows

Breaching secure databases

-internet security likely to grow worse w/ the shift to storage of private info. in "cloud" service -cloud allows for access from many different services -moving databases from in-house to clouds (this offers savings and is growing rapidly) -w/ highly sensitive and personal information on a single network - becomes very attractive to hackers

aesthetic knowledge regarding entertainment messages

-of writing/directing/acting/editing/sound mixing/etc - of good and bad stories and the elements that contributed to those qualities

What are the rules of the game

-you must have resources and a willingness to exchange

5 Stages of technological development

1) Innovation 2) Penetration 3) Peak 4) Decline 5) Adaptation

Why Treat Children as a Special Audience?

1) Lack of Experience 2) Lack of Maturation

Consumer Standards for Evaluating the Quality of News (7)

1) Objectivity 2) Accuracy 3) Complexness 4) Context 5) Neutrality 6) Lack of Bias 7) Balance

Top three diagnosis on UC campuses

1)Anxiety 2) depression 3) stress

Information assessment

1. what is publicly available 2. Map info by privacy labels (public, limited sharing, purely personal)

what fraction of the public believes the media gets the facts straight?

1/3

how much of their time does the average internet visitor spend on social networks?

22%

what percent of games make a profit?

3%

Radio can own as many stations as it wants including....

3-8 in a single market

Meaning Matching

- Task: Use basic components to recognize referents + locate previously learned definitions for each - Goal: To access previously learned meanings efficiently - Focus: Referents in messages - Recognizing elements and search our memory for meanings we have attached to them - Relatively automatic Example with first learning to read vs now - Develops competencies Our ability to recognize certain elements (referents) and recall their denoted meanings

Meaning Construction

- Task: use skills to move beyond meaning matching and construct meaning for oneself - Goal: Interpret messages from more than one perspective, then choose one or synthesize several - Focus: One's own knowledge structures - Not automatic - Moving beyond denoted meanings to create our own meanings - We bring multiple factors with us to any media message and then use these as a frame that we use to interpret - Matching + construction are intertwined

Synthesis (Media Literacy)

- The assembling of elements into a new structure

Psychographic

- Uses a wide variety of variables - Lifestyle

emotional skill regarding entertainment messages

- ability to analyze portrayed feelings of characters - ability to put one's self in the position of diff. characters in the story - ability to control one's emotions elicited by the plot and themes

What are some factors that cause fluctuation of media effects?

-Content of the messages -Context of the portrayals -Cognitive complexity of content -Motivations -States (a temporary drive or emotional reaction that occurs in response to some stimuli) -Degree of identification (how much we identify/attach to particular characters)

Documentary style

Cameras record what happens in everyday life. (Big Brother, Jersey Shore)

Magic window

Children, but not limited to them View TV as simple, unvarnished truth of what is happening in the real world

What age group is usually connected to the Magic Window and why?

Children, but not limited to them. They view TV as simple, unvarnished truth of what is happening in the real world.

Is adult discount always complete by age 12?

False, not always true. Although children's perceptions of reality decreased by age 9 to 12 for fantasy programs, there was no change in their perception of reality of so called reality programs.

Telescoping

Focusing on a sequence of ordered objectives in a hierarchy of priority them moving through them in the correct sequence.

controversial content elements: sex

Frequency Prevalent on television, especially teen TV Two-thirds of network TV shows contain talk about sex or sexual behavior (5 scenes/hour) Rates change in cyclical pattern Consequences Topics related to safe sex, responsibilities, and risks increasingly included Infrequent overall

David Marr's Tri-Level Framework

Fully understanding any behavior requires explanation at three levels: *Computation:* why does a behavior exist? *Algorithm:* what rules govern the behavior? *Implementation:* how is the behavior physically implemented?

marketing

Game developers market both to players and other developers through middle-ware market. There has been a shift from selling games on discs to selling Internet subscriptions.

The Next Step Reality

Has real elements to draw the audience in, however, it has some unrealistic elements to keep audience interested. ex. The Office: the setting, Jim/Pam realistic. Micheal as a boss, unrealistic.

Drama

Has three basic sub-genres that illuminates three types of drama entertainment. 1. tragedy 2. mystery 3. action/horror

Manifestation Level

If my stress goes above this level, then it becomes "observable"

Gerbner &Gross, 1976 (Cultivation Theory difference)

If people are exposed to police/crime TV they will think more people work in law enforcement. Another experiment shows that 39% of light viewers and 52% of heavy viewers said 1 in 10.

stealing one's identity

If someone gains access to your name, date of birth, and social security number they can steal your identity. Identity thieves ruin individual's credit. Approximately 85% of victims of identity theft found out about the crime due to an adverse situation. Criminals can now buy verified credit card numbers for as little as $1. Each year in the United States, 10 million people become victims of identity theft.

traditional journalistic perspective

Journalists believe that their purpose is to inform the public, rather than persuade the public. This is a normative not descriptive perspective. There are seven criteria an event must have in order to be considered newsworthy: Timeliness, significance, proximity, prominence, conflict, human interest, and deviance.

Humans have evolved the capacity to ______ from stories

Learn

People are slightly ______ likely to select news stories they think will challenge pre-existing beliefs

Less

Why are reality show liked by programmers?

Less expensive to produce

values

Mass media messages are carriers of cultural messages Television themes studied by Comstock (1989) and Walsh (1994) Examples: materialism, instant gratification Parents as fools; certifying teens as autonomous culture

Nature of competition

Monopolistic competition -large firms in competition fo resources -high profits attract firms -w/in a market all products are indistinguishable (cnn, cbs - similar messages) -the key is make consumers think your product is different from others (why advertising is crucial)

two characteristics

Messages appear real Present a little more than everyday reality; one-step removed

Comedy

Minor conflict situations flare up and set the action in motion.

What does the "Monkey Business Illusion" teach us?

Narrow focus enhances one object at the expense of others If one is multitasking with their media, it does come at a cognitive cost -> not able to take in as much information

marketing

News decisions are made by marketers instead of journalists. It tends to change the content of news in a way that is somehow harmful to the public.

news

News is not a reflection of actual events; it is a construction by news workers who are subjected to many influences and constraints

News Perspectives: Economic perspective

News is that which is presented by news businesses & is shaped by decisions regarding resources, in order to increase profits by maximizing revenue & minimizing expenses -Two most salient characteristics: *commercialism* & *marketing perspective*

Economic Perpective

News is that which is presented by news businesses and as such is shaped by decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources in a way to increase profits by maximizing revenue and minimizing expenses.

Economic Perspective

News is that which is presented by news businesses and such is shaped by decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources in a way to increase profits by maximizing revenue and minimizing expenses

2. socializers

Players who like to interact with other players.

Long term effects

Show Up only after many exposures. No single exposure or single message is responsible for the effect instead it's the pattern of repeat exposures that sets up the conditions for a long-term effect.

Media literacy

The ability to access & process information from any kind of transmission Includes visual literacy (pictures, real-life), story literacy (plots in books, TV, films), & computer literacy (ability to create digital messages & process meaning from electronic screens)

Attraction to Electronic Games

The desire to compete is a fundamental part of being human, and the playing of competitive games is as old as civilization itself.

objectivity

The idea of objectivity is a very general philosophical concept. It means a separateness from the object being observed so that the object is perceived accurately and that the perception is not distorted by human limitations.

Physical exposure

The message & the person occupy the same physical space for some period of time; space & time are regarded as barriers to this exposure

friendship

The most prevalent platform for friendship is the social networking site (SNS). SNSs offer a sense of community. There are relaxed geographic limitations. Popular SNSs include SixDegrees.com, Myspace, and Facebook.

Mystery

The mystery genre must have an element of plot that is missing.

What is one of the consequences of our minds being on "automatic pilot?"

We may be missing messages that might be helpful or enjoyable.

Responsible Health Patterns

The use of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs has dramatically declined over the years on television. Smoking was a frequent activity until the mid-1980s Despite high rates of consumption across many characters, only 1% of television drinkers are portrayed as having a drinking problem.

Objectivity

The use of objectivity as a standard for journalists is unrealistic. Journalists can never be purely objective. Even when they try to avoid being influence by their biases, they cannot know all of their biases.

Affective Tone

The way the players might feel as they interact with the game aggression, confidence after beating a boss, mystery, suspense etc.

What are the characteristics of this stage for the news industry?

The younger generation is interested in finding out what is happening in the world; however, they focus on what is happening to their friends.

dating

There are SNSs specifically designed for partner seeking. Skout is an app that uses GPS to help singles find local dates

six design rules

There are six design rules that help condition players for repeat playing. Rewards Easy to learn Predictable Consistent Familiar Challenging

what is the key benefit I want t sell

There are three choices: Physical features, functional features, and characterizational features. Physical features refer to the actual components of the product itself. Functional features refer to the way consumers can use the product. Characterizational features refer to how consumers feel when using the product.

dealing with risk

There is a huge risk in selecting stories to present on television. Shows that are too formulaic may bore audiences, but if shows deviate from the norm too much, they may offend audiences. Television producers tend to approach this issue in a conservative manner. Because the financial risk in producing television programs is high, producers need to attract large audiences.

Formality of Play

There is a range in the number of rules that a game can have. Informal - very few rules/rituals Formal - many rules and rituals that require discipline to follow

The more you think about media exposure habits, the more media literate you become.

True

There is a positive as well as a negative side to stereotypes.

True

To improve your media literacy, you need to increase your awareness and control.

True

1. Involves mostly children 2. Uses TV to inform them of the real world

What is the magic window?

analysis

What is the main product claim (reason for buying the product) of the ad? Is the claim presented explicitly or implicitly (do you have to infer it)? Is there a use of puffery? What is the intention of the ad (awareness, positive emotion, change attitude, inoculation, reinforcement, buying product)? Look beyond the surface of the ad and then list some values that these ads are teaching.

health: responsible health patterns

Use of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs has dramatically declined over the years on television Movies characters still frequently abuse drugs and alcohol without worrying about consequences

news working perspective

Use of sources Although news workers are aware of normative news perspectives that tell them what they should do, they frequently cannot achieve the prescribed standards because of unavoidable constraints, such as deadlines, limited access to sources, and limited financial resources. Over time, journalists develop the "news perspective."

entertainments follow this formula 1. begins with a problem for at least one character 2. followed by heightened conflict 3. and the climax where the conflict is resolved.

What is the general formula?

What is Algorithm?

What rules govern the behavior?

information

Wikis are online databases. Wikipedia began in 2001.

Critics argue that when a market loses competition and moves toward a monopoly, the products and services offered to consumers ______________ while the prices of those products ______________.

Degrade; increase

becoming media literate w/ entertainment messages

learn to appreciate the divergence as fantasy and limit yourself to being entertained by their unreality

Damage to the white matter of your brain or spinal cord can _______

affect your ability to move, use your sensory faculties, or react appropriately to external stimuli. Some people with damaged white matter suffer deficits in reflexive reactions.

Psychologist Jean Piaget found that a child's cognitive development occurs from birth to what age?

age 12

campaign strategy

ampaign Strategy is the planning document that companies or advertising agencies develop to sell a product or service.

Why are reality programs popular with viewers?

appeals to the publics voyeuristic interest in following real people as they struggle then succeed in competitions.

stereotypical portrayals in entertainment

are positive from the point of view that they are easy for viewers to recognize

In order to change behaviors, you need to ______

ask yourself to what extent your behaviors correspond to your beliefs

magic window

assumption that children see the media, especially tv, as a magic window on the world (younger than 3) psychologists believe that young children perceive tv as the simple

Being aware of the messages and actively interacting with the elements in the messages refers to what exposure state?

attentional

The media spin reality to make it appear more exciting and thus....

attract people away from their real lives.

______ occurs when a mass media organization first attracts you to a message and then immediately tries to draw you in for repeated exposures.

audience conditioning

In order to survive in our media-saturated world, we often enter into a state of ______.

automaticity

the identity judgment

based on a feeling of parasocial involvement w/ particular characters

social utility judgement

based on whether viewers believe they can use the info in the portrayal in their own lives

plausibility

believability

opinion sharing

blogs are web logs where people create a website and then post their thoughts so that others can access them

developmental maturities

cognitive/emotional/moral as we mature, ability to process more and apply more developmental skills increases we learn to be rational and to control our emotions

ROR (return on revenue)

companies difference b/w revenue and expenses

Selling information

companies sell compiled data to anyone willing to pay

ROA (return on assets):

comparing profit to assets (the money invested into the business)

agon

competition = primary focus; enjoyment derives from cometing

social play

contact w/ others by joining special clans w/ secret languages/nicknames/initiation rites

emotional involvement

degree to which a person's feelings and sense of identity are pulled into a message

Spin-offs

ex. Bachelor in Paradise, spin-off to The Bachelor

Journalists will write stories that are not strictly news but that instead promote commercial products being marketed by the organization that owns the news organization.

false

Making fine discriminations between specific emotions, such as outrage and fury, is natural to us.

false

Mass media businesses have stopped looking for message needs in the general population.

false

The idea of attention refers to unconscious exposure, not conscious exposure.

false

The oldest form of market segmentation is by age.

false

The process of electronic game design involves three simple steps.

false

There are more influences that serve to decrease risk compared to influences that push risk levels higher.

false

We should be more concerned about political biases within news stories than biases related to commercialism and superficiality.

false

News-working Perspective use _________ to gather information for their stories. What questions do they ask themselves?

formulas; who, what, when, where, how, why

exploration

fun experienced in exploring new places and discovering new things

telecommunications act of 1996

further relaxed to guise competition -the ban on owning a tv and a radio in the same marketplace was lifted -this triggered mergers in the 90's

What is the term for the basic programming needed to support a game?

game engine

alea

games of chance

During the peak stage of development, a medium garners the most attention from the public and ______.

generates the most revenue compared to other mediums

Which audience segmentation is becoming less useful in an increasingly mobile society?

geographic segmetation

Your personal locus is composed of ______.

goals and drive

AHRA (1992)

had to incorporate a serial copy management system (allowed digital recorders to make a first generation city of digitally recorded works - no 2nd copies or first generation copies) (didn't apply to computers; only digital recording devices) however these laws were claimed as no longer adeuqate

Stories that most closely follow the general entertainment story formula typically ______.

have the largest audience

next-step reality

idea is embedded in how media messages get produced and why certain messages attract large audiences shows us that every media message is a mix of fantasy and reality

People who have a strong personal locus have ______.

increased awareness of the effects process

Defenders of the trend toward concentration take the position that the overall economy is strengthened when:

independent companies become STRONGER

Interpersonal techniques which people use in their everyday lives to help others with their media literacy are ______.

informal

baseline effects

initial core values/attitudes/thinking

The most popular type of interactive platform that allows people to share their opinions is the blog.

true

sharing copyrighted messages w/o paying for access

use of (P2P) networks

verbal violence compared to physical violence on tv

verbal violence more prevalent on tv than is physical violence

conglomerates

very large companies that own and operate many businesses across different industries

At the highest level of media literacy, users are ______.

very strategic in using Facebook

misattribution of arousal

we attribute arousal induced by media to some other source

knowledge structures

much of our know comes from the media we cannot check all media info, thus empowering the media fewer real-world experiences result in belief that the real world is like the tv world

Media literacy is...

multidimensional & a continuum (not categorical; varies by degree)

use of resources in news

news is shaped by sources that journalists use to gather info (public info officers in businesses and govt. units)

branding in news

news shows brand their reporters

demographic character patterns

patterns of gender/ethnicity/age/marital status/socioeconomic status/occupations have been very diff. in the world compared to the real world and assume they are the same

A new technology moves into which stage when the medium has created a new need or has satisfied an existing need?

penetration

Ilinx >>

whirlpool vertigo, fairground rides

Anderson's five kinds of aggregators:

physical goods (Amazon, eBay, etc.) digital goods (iTunes, etc.) advertising services (Google, Craigslist, etc.) information (Google, Wikipedia, etc.) communities/user-created content (Facebook, etc.) *These aggregators rely on recommendations to direct users to the products & services they are most likely to buy*

operational bias

places emphasis on players/policies/predictions of what will happen next

explorers

players who are curious and want to discover things/happy when game is big and can only be found by persistence and creativity

narrative consistency

refers to the plot of a story and how well it makes people feel that sequence actions are believable

ownership

reinforces marketing perspective

the censorship effect

reporters/editors/producers censor themselves when ti comes to parent companies

fully developed knowledge structure

requires in-depth exposure to the issue from as many diff. points of view as possible

For people who have been consistently socialized with particular values for a long period of time, the baseline will be ______.

resistant to change

Interactive mass media are platforms that attract audiences who want to create...

their own media experiences either for purposes of competition or cooperation.

Alea

risk , uncertainty Games of chance

RIAA

served more than 21,000 lawsuits most settled but 2 went to court

How can media literacy help with understanding / dealing with next-step reality phenomenon?

shifts the question and hence the focus of our attention. Tells us to analyze media messages to help you develop a sensitivity to how big of a step you usually tolerate in one-step removed messages.

small-town pastorialism

small towns and rural areas are the font of virtue

Spam Filters are dangerous b/c

someone else is deciding what's spam

To compensate for above the line workers...

they pay below the line workers as little as possible

awareness in media literacy

thinking about where you are in the spectrum and knowing the diff. standards of appreciation to apply to diff. places on the spectrum of reality

under-value of a resource

though you sell, you are short-changed

what is the major reason for using social networking sites?

to achieve contact w/ others

Honey pots:

spam traps

Denial-of-speech

spammers jammed spamhaus w/ so much info. it shut the server down

programmer's perspective

story begins w/ what looks like everyday situation; then, step-by-step, producer takes audience farther away from reality but does it in a way that the audience is not lost, but willingly must take it one step at a time

How big is the piracy problem when it comes to print?

student plagiarism 30% of college papers

If I take existing elements and construct a new structure, I am using my ______ skill.

synthesis

What are the major characteristics of the reality programming genre?

take a handful of real people and put them in a competitive situation. As the participants compete and reveal their personalities; audience members begin to identify with certain players.

how do producers attract your attention?

teach you something or make you feel something (excited/intrigued/aroused)

Three stages of moral development (Kohlberg)

(not completely fixed ages, but boundaries are made for context) *Pre-conventional stage:* 2-7 years old, children depend on authority; child's conscious is external *Conventional stage:* early adolescence; children begin to develop their own conscious & can internalize right from wrong *Post-conventional stage:* middle adolescence; social conscious > rigid moral rules

Organizing principle

- Audience exposure decisions guided by desire for it - It also guides decisions from programmers' perspective

what do games that have fighting/stealing/deception/killing teach players?

- these games teach players that antisocial behaviors are successful w/ such actions

Social Cognitive Theory

-The mind has the capacity to learn by observing others -This means we can learn by observing mediated others -The basis for media effects research

What are the three fundamental decisions that producers need to make about the game design? Define and explain each. Provide examples.

1) Category of play 2) Formality of play 3) Affective tone

Minorities account for what percentage of film and television writers?

2%

When did reality programming become a recognizable as genre?

2000. - When the 3 of the most popular shows (Survivor, American Idol, and Big Brother) were unscripted series using real people instead of professional performers.

1. characters not shown to have good habits, but appears healt 2.lots of violence, little suffering 3. illnesses rarely shown 4. mental health is portrayed as a sterotype 5. doctors are over-represented

what is deceptive health patterns?

typicality

what usually happens

conglomerate mergers

when a media company buys a combo of other media companies or non-media companies

Psychological convergence

when audiences see overlaps between media technologies, & these overlaps create new opportunities for production & use

Mass Media Economy: Digital Convergence

Refers to the digitization of media; has eroded the characteristics that made various forms of media so different from one another

key idea of proactive perspective on media effects

We need to be proactive—rather than reactive—in understanding how the media affect us We also need to realize that there are many factors interacting in the effects process. When we understand these two ideas, we can gain control over the process of effects.

1. drama 2. comedy 3. romance

What are 3 basic subgenres?

1. Medium related challenges 2. changing public taste 3. Storytelling formulas must evolve as public tastes change overtime

What are the 3 constraints the entertainment formula has?

1. Sex 2. homosexuality 3. violence 4. language

What are the 4 elements in controversial content?

1. Documental style (Jersey shore) 2. Reality-legal (Judge judy) 3. Realty competion/game show (Masterchef) 4. Self Improvement (extreme makeover) 5. Social experiment (Wife swap) 6. Hidden camera (what would you do?) 7. Supernatural (ghost hunters) 8. Hoax sub genre (punk'd)

What are the 8 sub genres of reality programming?

includes real, non-scripted people in unordinary situations.

What are the major characteristics of this genre?

1. Creates the "Misconception of reality" 2. Forces children to learn something isn't true 3. Makes it hard to distinguish reality and fantasy

What are the negative effects of the "Magic Window"?

cognitive type effect

Media can affect what we know by planting ideas and information into our minds

Manifested Effects (of Media)

Media effects that we can easily observe

What is Next-Step Reality?

Media messages must be based on the real-world elements (recognizable characters, situations, etc.) so that audiences can relate to what is happens in those messages but then the messages must also take a step away from pure reality by adding fantasy elements in order to capture and hold the audience's attention.

findings from research

Media producers may find scholarly research useful. Violence is a story element that attracts audiences, but it is the arousing nature of violent portrayals that is the active element. Humor is popular but not universal. Suspense has been found to be a useful characteristic but not all audience members enjoy suspense the same way.

Niche audiences

Media programmers construction of special kinds of messages to appeal to particular kinds of people -> once a media business has identified a niche audience, they create messages geared towards those groups

Process Effects (of Media)

Media that influences how we think, feel, act, etc.

regulations

Regulators and law enforcement agencies have their jurisdictions limited to geographical areas, but Internet activities take place in cyberspace. The federal government has been slow to pass new regulations and laws to control these threats, because the agencies that are charged with enforcing the existing regulations and laws are having so much trouble with this enforcement.

Mass Media Economy: Importance of Valuing Resources Well

Resource valuation depends on considering supply & demand AND assessing how well a resource will achieve a particular goal (e.g. buying/selling antiques without the price knowledge example)

1. Children are less capable vs. adults 2. Better with age 3. Adults vary in sophistication of reality judgements 4. Man overestimate degree of reality on reality tv/news

What can be said about reality judgements?

self-determination theory (SDT)

People have three innate needs 1) autonomy 2)competence 3) relatedness. Optimal function happens when all three needs are met.

How do people try to draw a distinction between journalists and non-journalists?

People who try drawing a distinction between journalists and non-journalists appear on the surface to draw the line between people who work in mainstream traditional news outlets and those who work in upstart internet news outlets.

debate over expert or response to market

People who try drawing a distinction between journalists and non-journalists appear on the surface to draw the line between people who work in mainstream traditional news outlets and those who work in upstart internet news outlets. The juxtaposition of Brian Williams and John Stewart.

Consumers' Strategies: Media Literacy Strategy

People who use this strategy consider the value of their own resources & want to negotiate a better exchange for those resources (i.e. direct support -> paying for a streaming subscription; indirect support -> investing time in their medium)

Personal Locus (baseline factors effecting Media Effects)

People with strong personal locus have more awareness of the effects process, so they have constructed their baselines to conform to their personal goals

hidden camera

People's actions are recorded without their awareness. (What Would You Do?, Cheaters)

Hidden Camera

People's actions are recorded without their awareness. (What Would You Do?, Cheaters)

reality legal

People's behavior is recorded as they deal with legal problems. (People's Court, Cops)

Reality-Legal

People's behavior is recorded as they deal with legal problems. (People's Court, Cops)

______ is a combination of an awareness of your goals as well as the drive and energy to search out information and experiences to attain those goals

Personal Focus

How can media literacy help with interactive messages? Consider both personal and broader implications.

Personal; need to make a clear distinction between opportunity and addiction; things you need to consider as an individual so that you can avoid the risks of negative effects and increase the probability of positive effects Broader; when people spend money online it does not get spent in the real world; Interactive media platforms affect the economy; the way the increasing use of the interactive platforms has been changing society and the economy

how is physical different than perceptual exposure?

Physical exposure is literally just proximity to the message. Perceptual is how much you are perceiving the auditory and visual cues of the message.

What are the three types of exposure?

Physical, Perceptual, and Psychological

3. achievers

Players who are attracted to the games in order to build something.

Achievers

Players who are attracted to the games in order to build something.

four types of audiences 1. explorers

Players who are curious and want to wander around inside the game world to discover all its territories and experiences.

Explorers

Players who are curious and want to wander around inside the game world to discover all its territories and experiences.

Socializers

Players who like to interact with other players.

Controllers

Players who want to dominate others.

controllers

Players who want to dominate others.

Gerbner & Gross, 1976 Results

The heavy TV viewers were more likely to give the incorrect answer of 1 in 10 instead of 1 in 100. Whereas light viewers were more likely to give the correct answer.

Character Comedy/Comedy of manners

The humor arises out of character quirks that illuminate the craziness of everyday situations. ex. The Big Bang Theory

advertising

We live in a culture saturated with advertising messages. Some popular criticisms of advertising form the public discourse, but the issues of more important concerns lie at deeper levels.

What are ads really selling? What is the intended effect of the ad? What are your needs?

What can you do to form your own informed opinion about this issue?

Magic window

What children believed TV to be when reality & fantasy were clearly separated -> children able to distinguish fictional programming from news by age 5

1. Being flexible means to be open about all messages and willing to enjoy a full range of messages 2. Being aware means thinking about where you are in the spectrum and knowing the different standards of appreciation to apply to different places on the spectrum of reality

What does it mean to be flexible and aware from the media literacy perspective?

Problematic content

What does violence in media look like? What is the specific content? How do we quantify violence in media?

Does the media message engage peoples feelings so they are pulled into action and feel it as its really happening?

What is "Emotional Involvement"?

1. Does the message show what actually happened? -uses magic window 2. Is the media message an actually showing whats happening?

What is "Factuality"?

producers take ordinary settings and typical plots and slowly deviate from normal situations one step at a time, so the audience does not get lost

What is "Fiction" in next step reality?

are the characters portrayed in media the same in real life? can these characters exist in my world?

What is "Identity"?

journalists carefully selecting what gets reported and what gets ignored.

What is "Information-type" (news) in next step reality?

Does the media message present characters and settings that look real?

What is "Perceptual persuasiveness"?

Does the media message portray something that could happen?

What is "Plausibility"?

Does the media message portray social lessons that can be used by people in their everyday lives?

What is "Social Utility"?

does the media message portray something that usually happens?

What is "Typicality"?

1. telling a story is harder on different platforms 2. the internet makes it more competitive 3. many Hollywood movies fail

What is "medium related challenges" in constraints?

1. Audience exposure decisions guided by desire for it 2. Guides decisions from programmers perspectives

What is "organizing principle" in next step reality: audience?

copying the formula used in the original Tv show knock and spin off responsible for growing numbers of reality programming.

What is a knock off?

Behavior Change Theories

What is it about a message that will change an audience's behavior? -These theories guide the selection of routes to behavior intention & certain beliefs to target

1. tells stories in real life by they are bigger then life 2. removes audience fro reality one step at a time; formula with farce

What is next step reality: programmers?

1. use of alcohol and drugs have decreased in TV over years 2. though, Movie characters still abuse drugs and don't care about consequences

What is responsible health patterns?

starts at 5 years old done at 12 -not always accurate because not everyone experiences the same thing

What is the adult discount in "Magic Window"?

Perceived Bias

When audiences think that the story is slanted.

Adult discount

When children's minds age cognitively & they are able to identify what is real & what is fictional (start to develop a skepticism about media messages)

creating a campaign strategy

When creating a campaign strategy, three things must be kept in mind. Advertising is a science and an art. Advertising is a risky endeavor. The role of advertising has changed with the growing popularity of newer media along with the fragmentation of the population.

2000

When did reality programming become a recognizable as genre?

We begin when judging reality with an assessment of whether a portrayal actually happen

When do you begin to question reality in the media?

The timing of effects distinction focuses on

When evidence of the effect starts to show up more so than on how long it lasts

info type messages

when journalists select what gets reported they are not as interest in typical events as they are in anomalous events - the twist in the event makes it news - crimes are news b/c they are aberrant behaviors

agon

a struggle or contest (competition is the focus; competition is the source of enjoyment)

sentiment analysis

a technique that allows marketers to analyze data from social media sites to collect consumer comments about companies and their products

The innovation stage is characterized by ______.

a technological advance that makes a channel of transmission possible

Flow Theory

a theory of motivation that suggests that individuals will experience an intense level of enjoyment, concentration, and lack of self-awareness when actively engaged in activities that have clear goals, unambiguous feedback, and a match between one's skills and the challenge of the task

belief type effect

a type of media-influenced effect that is manifested as the acquiring of a belief or the long-term alteration as well as reinforcing of an existing belief

macro type effect

a type of media-influenced effect that is manifested as the gradual altering or reinforcing of processes in aggregates of individuals such as organizations, institutions, and society

Behavioral type effect

a type of media-influenced effect that is manifested as the triggering of actions in a person or over time of altering as well as reinforcing patterns of action

Now think about the process of constructing advertising messages:

a. What is campaign strategy: - the planning document that companies or advertising agencies develop to sell a product or services is the campaign strategy b. When creating a campaign strategy, what are the three things that must be kept in mind? - first they need to realize that advertising is both a science as well as an art. - Second, planners must realize that advertising is a risky endeavor - Third, the role of advertising had changed with the popularity of newer media long with fragmentation of the population

Marketing convergence

when multiple mediums are used to broadcast a marketing message

According to the textbook, what are two types of interactive media platforms?

competitive and cooperative

Interactive Media can be split into three types?

competitive, cooperative, and acquisition

is news a reflection or construction?

construction; the media present us w/ stories about the events and stories are constructed by journalists who are influenced by constraints/news-framing influences/"news perspective"

What are the fluctuation factors affecting media effects?

content of messages context of portrayals cognitive complexity of content motivations states degree identification

forces that have shaped the development of the interactive mass media and hence their content

convergence the importance of a creative commons the need for social contact and social networking the attraction of advertising support

the powerful force of convergence

convergence means the moving together of previously distinct channels of cmn such that the barriers that separated those channels and made them unique that have broken down

A company that owns a radio station and a media website asks a radio commentator to post a column on the website. This is an example of ______.

cross-media promotion

When the mass media's perspective was that the audience was a mass, media businesses mostly tried to ______.

develop messages to appeal to every type of person

Copyleft

developed to set out rules for sharing computer programs that were in contrast to the rules for using copyrighted material - new users can revise -follow-on users have the same opportunity to alter code to improve it

Sally was 10 years old when she saw a board game advertised on TV that was, "TEN GAMES IN ONE!" She asked for the toy for her birthday, only to find it to be ONE cheap and flimsy game. At that point, Sally was probably in which stage of media literacy?

developing skepticism

What are the baseline factors influencing media effects?

developmental maturities cognitive abilities knowledge structures sociological factors lifestyle personal locus media exposure habits

Baseline factors

developmental maturities, cognitive abilities, knowledge structures, sociological factors, lifestyle, personal locus, media exposure habits

Trend towards concentration of ownership (2 things push it that way)

efficiency and deregulation, Through three ways: horizontal, vertical, conglomerate integration

Interactive media platforms can be used strategically as tools to provide people with experiences to satisfy their needs for ______.

emotion, building skills, and social connections

1. US TV has long history of ignoring and stereotyping gay people 2. 1st lesbian and gay character lead: Ellen, will & Grace 3. LGBQT in 15% of TV programs 4. not moving forward

explain 'Homosexuality" in controversial content?

1. Population in TV are different in real world 2. in tv, mostly white middle age males 3. more women are married 4. overall more rich as most jobs portrayed are the hard ones

explain demographics in character pattern

By about age 4, children are spending less time in the ______ mode and more time in a ______ mode while watching television.

exploratory; search

typically see what four audiences in marketing electronic games?

explorers socializers achievers controllers

audience's perspective

expose themselves to messages they can't get in real life

Which of the following is NOT a method for becoming more media literate about news?

exposing yourself to a smaller number of news outlets

Hall found complex definitions that varied by genre and were based on 6 ideas

factuality plausibility typicality emotional involvement narrative consistency perceptual persuasiveness

All media effects eventually become manifested.

false

Around 55% of the people working in advertising are women.

false

Evidence shows that the mandated V-chip has been highly successful in helping parents monitor television content for their children.

false

Fabrication of news content is limited to political and business journalists.

false

For more than 50 years, Congress has periodically held hearings on television violence and its effects on children. Based on these hearings, Congress has passed several pieces of legislation regulating content.

false

Marketing convergence refers to people's perceptions about barriers breaking down due to recent changes in the media.

false

Media literacy is one particular kind of skills.

false

Media programmers know that we have a very wide exposure repertoire.

false

Not all mass media industries begin at the innovation stage.

false

One rule of game design is to make the game relatively easy to learn.

false

People play video games to fulfill emotional needs rather than cognitive needs.

false

Research has shown that a person's interpretation of a news story is influenced only by the way the media frame the story and not by the personal frames of that person.

false

The costs of attracting members of an audience to their first exposure are low.

false

When people "blame the media" for causing a tragic event, they are taking into account all the factors that influence behavior and making an informed decision.

false

When they are in the automatic state of exposure, people do not look active to outside observers.

false

True or false: The solid criterion was: "journalists were reporters and editors working for newspapers, the broadcast media or wires services." is still the best working criterion for what a journalist is.

false; because this focuses on identifying journalists by their place of employment

moderatism

fanaticism of any kind arouses skepticism

cognitive abilities

field dependency type of intelligence type of thinking conceptual different

If I am overwhelmed when reading a newspaper article because I am given too much information to remember, which natural ability am I lacking?

field independency

Sifting through a flood of information to pay attention to a small amount is called ______.

filtering

The key to media literacy is to be _____ and _______.

flexible / aware.

When we talk about media effects, we typically mean only ______ effects that break through the manifestation level.

fluctuation

diverse domains influenced

focus on only behavior; only fluctuations' only pathological is obviously flawed

horizontal merger

when one media company buys another media company of the same type ew. newspaper chain buying another newspaper

When Scott watches a murder mystery, he likes to have a clear understanding of who the killer is and why they did it. Otherwise, he tunes out the message. Scott ______.

has a lower tolerance for integrity

The main difference between the critical appreciation and social responsibility stages of media literacy is that people in the social responsibility stage ______.

have an external, as opposed to an internal, perspective

What is the primary function of story formulas?

help designers of entertainment messages attract audience attention and condition audiences for repeat exposures.

1. Age and race plays a part 2. some people grows up with different experiences 3. some can differentiate reality and fantasy

how do individuals vary in their judgements of reality?

1.Strengthen knowledge structures regarding content patterns, discrepancies from real world, formulas 2. separate whats real and not 3. avoid being guided by unrealistic expectations 4. be active during consumption and ask questions when skeptical

how do you become more media literate with entertainment content?

1. Characters are real and non script, more attractive, more prone to conflict 2. audience only sees 2% pf whats filmed

how does the popular show "Survivor" relate to audience/programmers perspective in next step reality?

people's need for info varies according to what?

how relevant the issue is the them

As the audience for news fragments, news vehicles are getting more and more specialized. This is known as ______.

hyperlocalism

Mimicry

imitate, copy (role playing, make believe)

bad language on tv

includes racial and gender slurs

The amount of information being produced each year ______.

increases

People make judgement based off criteria n an __________ manner.

independent

core american values

individualism moderatism social order leadership ethnocentrism altruistic democracy responsible capitalism small-town pastoralism

Once we begin paying attention to a particular message, we tend to keep paying attention. Therefore, our media consumption is ______.

inertial

The goal of meaning construction is to ______.

interpret messages from more than one perspective and to construct meaning for one's self

basic formula of all popular songs

is a story about love or sex 70% of all songs

comedy

is characterized by minor conflict situations, which flare up and set the action in motion Character comedy/comedy of manners Character comedy involves humor, which arises out of character quirks that illuminate the craziness of everyday situations Put-down comedy involves certain characters that have power over other characters and exercise that power in humorous ways.

A medium enters the adaptation stage of development when ______.

it begins to redefine its position in the media marketplace

Flow

when playing video games, the experience of being so focused on playing the game and achieving ones goals that the player loses track of time and place

news perspective

take constraints and influences together; grows naturally out of practice of the status quo and leads us to ask, How could News be any other way?

cognitive complexity of content

when the message makes few cognitive demands on viewers, people can process its meaning easier

Public domain

where anyone can use (and not have to pay) for a certain message

Successful interactive media often requires...

technological convergence (e.g. Twitch -> technological convergence of games (competitive) & video streaming (cooperative))

Digital Rights Management (DRM)

technologies that let copyright owners control the level of access or use allowed for a copyrighted work, such as limiting the number of times a song can be copied

Attaining higher levels of media literacy does not mean avoiding the media world. It means being able to...

tell the two worlds apart as the two merge together under pressures from newer message formats and newer tech that seem to make the boundary lines between the two worlds very fuzzy.

What is the inverted pyramid formula?

tells the journalist to put the most important information at the beginning of the story, then add the next most important set of information.

info

tells us something of value about our world

what sets news apart from rumor/opinion/gossip/tabloids?

that it is documentable and verifiable

In terms of electronic games, formality of play refers to ______.

the # of rules a game has

Telescoping

the way electronic game players focus on the steps within the process of moving through a game

Telescoping

the way electronic game players keep the big picture of the overall game in mind while focusing on the immediate objectives that face them at any one point in the game

leadership

there are high expectations for leaders; those who are found to be weak, dishonest, or immoral are investigated

adult discount

where children begin thinking like adults and are more skeptical of the reality of the messages (fully incorporated by 12)

1. Difference between real world and media world is blurry 2. memories are interalces

why is "Reality" complex in a way?

resource limits

there are never enough resources to be able to cover all the events that happen a given day and assignment editors must decide which stories get covered and which will not

altruistic democracy

there is a democratic ideal of efficient govt. and participation by all citizens; deviations from this are news

responsible capitalism

there should be fair competition w/o unreasonable profits or exploiting workers

Viacom, which owned television stations in Philadelphia, Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Miami, added significant VERTICAL integration through its ownership of Paramount Pictures.

true

Once a media organization has chosen a specific niche audience, what must this organization do next?

try to appeal to existing interests

Does the plot of the story make people beleive that the sequence of actions is believable?

what is "Narrative Consistency"?

produced by same people who made the original show

what is a spin off?

1. technique of counting the occurrence of various things 2. harder to obtain representative sample of all TV shows 3. futire is more specialized in segments of media environment

what is content analysis?

criticism

Advertising manipulates us into buying things we don't need Many levels of needs Define for yourself what is a necessity

The players: Media employees

-bring time, skills and talent to the game - goal is increased pay and benefits for hours worked - below and above the line workers

emotional knowledge regarding entertainment messages

recall from personal experiences how it would feel to be in the situation depicted in the story

The key to knowledge is that it is complicated.

False

The media cannot tell us what is important and what is not.

False

The profile of women on prime-time television has significantly changed over the past 50 years.

False

what does the CEO of CBS say about news?

- " there's a way to fix news, just as there was a way to fix primetime" - Les Moonves - means getting people to watch

Psychology of Playing Electronic Games (2 components)

1) Flow 2) Telescoping

Actual Bias

A journalist willfully distorts a news story

Outrage fatigue (Crockett)

Constant exposure to outrageous news could diminish the overall intensity of outrage experiences, or cause people to experience outrage more selectively to reduce emotional & attentional demands On the other hand, studies have shown that venting anger begets more anger *More research is necessary to resolve these possibilities*

Story Formulas are guides that help producers and audiences.

Creators use formula to create successful product Consumers use formula to recognize elements of story General Formula Entertainment that follows this formula begins with a problem for at least one character, followed by heightened conflict, and the climax where the conflict is resolved.

How criticisms towards advertising being irresponsible is justified?

Criticisms towards advertising being irresponsible is justified by the fact that advertisers job is to make money for their company and the owners. These advertisers have a economic responsibility and when faced with both economic and social responsibility advertisers will choose economic responsibility

advertising is excessive

Culture is saturated Evaluative judgment You must decide

Automatic state

Exposed but not aware of the message

MMORPGs

massively multiplayer online role-playing games

Amorphous Infobits

the idea that we all share and a single creator is passee - the idea of copyleft

Advantages & Disadvantages of Automatic Routines

*Advantages:* -efficiency -> filtering software of the mind is running automatically; makes thousands of decisions for us subconsciously *Disadvantage:* -start to experience message fatigue -> when we are overwhelmed with media messages, we start to narrow our focus & filter out even more messages -we end up exposing ourselves to the same types of message over & over

Exposure States

*Automatic:* message elements are physically perceived but processed active, but they may not be thinking about what they are doing -> Most media exposure happens in the automatic state *Attentional:* refers to people being aware of the messages & actively interacting with the elements in the messages *Transported:* audience members lose their sense of separateness from the message; concentration is so high that we lose touch w/ our real-world environment *Self-Reflexive:* people are hyperaware of the message & of their processing of the message; the fullest degree of awareness

Below-the-line vs Above-the-line employees

*Below-the-line employees:* clerical people who apply common skills in the performance of their jobs; can be learned by many people & improved with practice (i.e. lighting technician, ticket taker, receptionist, etc.) *Above-the-line employees:* creative types; these jobs require talent much more than training or effort (although those are important too) (i.e. writers, producers, directors, actors, singers, etc.)

What does entertainment mean?

*Brings enjoyment:* immediate, positive, pleasant (AKA hedonic/a pleasant sensation) *Brings appreciation:* longer, contemplative, meaningful (AKA eudaimonic/living life in pursuit of human excellence)

Central vs Peripheral Processing

*Central:* careful conscious evaluation *Peripheral:* heuristic or unconscious processing

4 kinds of treatments parents use to expose their children to media:

*Co-viewing:* parent & child watch TV together; when parents are in the room, kids will avoid harmful content *Active mediation:* conversations that parents/other adults have w/ children about TV use *Positive mediation:* pointing out good things in TV messages & encouraging children to emulate those good things *Negative mediation:* pointing out the bad behaviors of characters & being critical of what is portrayed

Four dimensions of media literacy:

*Cognitive:* focuses our attention on factual info (i.e. names, dates, etc.) *Emotional:* how we perceive the feelings of people in media messages & how we read our own feelings *Aesthetic:* focuses on the art & craft exhibited in the production of media messages (i.e. editing, lighting, etc.) *Moral:* focuses our attention on values

Three types of interactive media:

*Competitive, Cooperative, & Acquisition* The boundaries between these "types" are fuzzy

Applying Marr's Tri-Level Framework

*Computation* (why) -> share info w/ a conversational partner *Algorithm* (what) -> interaction partner stands too close, expectation violation *Implementation* (how) -> expectation violation is neurally encoded, & results in the speaker taking a step backward

A Theory of Fun (Raph Koster)

*Core idea:* games hijack our cognitive system -*Pattern recognition:* incremental increases in difficulty -*Learning:* good games TEACH -*Learning to learn:* making failure OK -*Cognitive chunking:* novel puzzles -*Cognitive flexibility:* multiple solutions to the same problem *Simplified?* It is fun to exercise your brain!

Audiences: Perceptual Exposure

*Definition:* exposure that is received thru visual or auditory senses -Perception is mediated by physical constraints -*Just Noticeable Difference (JND):* the moment where we can perceive a difference between two objects (or sounds)

Audiences: Physical Exposure

*Definition:* the things in our midst that we COULD be exposed to -Physical exposure (visual, auditory) is a necessary but not sufficient condition for media exposure *Just b/c we are physically exposed to a message does NOT mean we process the message*

Seven baseline factors that influence media effects:

*Developmental maturities:* as we get older, we mature cognitively, emotionally, & morally -> makes it easier for us to control how media affects us *Cognitive abilities:* not everyone who has the same developmental potential will exhibit the same level of cognitive ability *Knowledge structures:* people with the largest knowledge structures learn the most from media *Sociological factors:* the degree of socialization is related to the amount of influence the media will have *Lifestyle:* people who have active lifestyles (i.e. those who interact w/ many people & institutions) are less affected by the media *Personal Locus:* the combination of an individual's goals & drives for media exposures *Media Exposure Habits:* exposure habits that focus our attention on certain media & certain types of media messages

3 emotional abilities to increase media literacy:

*Emotional intelligence:* ability to understand & control our emotions, understand empathy, & handle the emotional demands of relationships *Tolerance for ambiguity:* if one has a low tolerance for ambiguity, they will likely choose to ignore the messages that do not meet their expectations *Nonimpulsiveness:* refers to how quickly people make decisions about messages; nonimpulsive people are those who take time to consider things from many perspectives

LC4MP Process:

*Encoding:* taking the info in & holding it in the mind (short-term/working memory) *Storage:* storing the info for later use (long-term memory) *Retrieval:* retrieving the info from your long-term memory

Criteria for Determining Reality of Media Messages:

*Factuality:* is it factual? *Perceptual persuasiveness:* does the message present characters/settings that we perceive as real? *Social utility:* does the message portray social lessons that can be used by people in everyday life? *Identity:* do the characters lead people to believe they are like the people in one's everyday life, so that they develop attachments to those characters? *Emotional involvement:* does the message engage people's feelings? *Plausibility:* is this actually something that COULD happen? *Typicality:* is this something that USUALLY happens? *Narrative consistency:* is the plot believable?

Disposition Theory of Morality (Zillmann)

*We like it when...* good things happen to good people & bad things happen to bad people *We dislike it when...* good things happen to bad people & bad things happen to good people

Four natural abilities most related to media literacy:

*Field independency:* a person's natural ability to distinguish between noise & the signal in any message (filtering for important info) *Crystalline intelligence:* the ability to memorize facts (i.e. vocabulary) -> gives us the facility to absorb the images, defintions, opinions, & agendas of others *Fluid intelligence:* the ability to be creative, make leaps of insight, & perceive things in a fresh & novel manner -> gives us the facility to to challenge what we see on the surface & recognize new patterns *Conceptual differentiation:* how people group & classify things; when encountering a new message, we must categorize it using either leveling or sharpening strategies

5 types of segmentation of niche audiences:

*Geographic:* explains why neighborhoods tend to be homogeneous; most important for local news/local radio (can also apply on a national level) *Demographic:* media focuses on targeting characteristics of people (e.g. certain genders, ethnicities, ages, incomes, etc.) *Social class:* a mixture of characteristics, including income, but also considers people's worldviews (i.e. a college student w/ low income doesn't mean they are low class) *Geodemographic:* a blend of geographic & demographic segmentation; based on the assumption that the same types of people tend to cluster together in neighborhoods *Psychographic:* uses demographics, lifestyle, & product usage variables; looks at multiple characteristics of a person's lifestyle to develop segmentations

"Hardware" vs "Software" of the brain

*Hardware:* -Biological organ of communication -Computation is processed in gray matter -> e.g. how info is processed in the brain -Info is transmitted via white matter *Software:* -The brain gives rise to the mind -Some programs are innate (e.g. capacity for language) -Some are learned (e.g. English language) *There is a deep physical connection between the brain & the mind*

Immediate effects of exposure to media violence:

*Imitation:* exposure to media violence can trigger aggressive behaviors that mimic the media portrayals *Disinhibition:* exposure to media violence can reduce viewers' normal inhibitions that prevent them from behaving in a violent manner *Attraction:* many people are attracted to violence & the arousing nature of the portrayal

Leveling & Sharpening Strategies of Conceptual Differentiation

*Leveling:* look for similarities between the new message & previous messages we have stored away as examples in our categories *Sharpening:* focuses on differences & tries to maintain a high degree of separation between the new message & older messages

Three media strategies that help them win the economic game:

*Maximizing profits:* mass media businesses are run to make as large a profit as possible *Constructing Audiences:* media companies construct desirable audiences then rent them out to advertisers; this is done using one of two strategies: *quantity audience strategy* (i.e. try to attract as large a general audience as possible) OR *quality audience strategy* (i.e. try to attract a certain kind of niche audience) *Reducing Risk:* Media companies reduce the risk of not attracting a large enough audience by using the *marketing concept* -> media businesses begin with audience needs then construct messages to meet those needs

Scientific Challenges of Learning Morality from Media

*Media's impact on morality is studied indirectly* -We often don't manipulate the moral content in a message -We study moral judgements as an "effect" or outcome of media *Media & morality research is based on a "rationalist" framework* -Underplays the role of intuition & emotion *Newer "intuitionist" theories overcome these limitations

Key Finding of Blumer's study:

*Movies produced unwanted influences on social mores* Children: -Retained info from movies -Changed attitudes based on movies -Had "simulated emotions" by movies -Imitated behaviors seen in movies

Long-term effects of exposure to media violence:

*Narcotization:* people continue to crave the strong arousal that violent content brings *Desensitization:* portrayals are presented so often that we can no longer treat them w/ wonder or awe (becomes common) *Cultivation:* repeated exposure to violent messages leads people to believe that the world is a violent place

Standards for Evaluating News

*Objectivity:* we must view news objectively *Accuracy:* evaluating the factuality of news -> measured by the story's completeness & context *Neutrality:* the news must be free from journalistic bias or editorializing *Lack of bias:* refers to the truthfulness of the news story *Balance:* must present all sides of a story equally

Social Cognitive Theory & Morality (Bandura)

*Observational Learning:* -Morality is learned by watching others -Rewards/punishments for social/moral behavior *Self-Regulation:* -Core moral process -Self-sanctions keep conduct in line with internal standards -Morality is rooted in self-regulation rather than abstract reasoning *Moral Competence:* -*Ability* to behave *Moral Performance:* -*Willingness* to behave

Echo Chambers (Garrett, 2009)

*Selection:* People are likely to select news stories they think will reinforce pre-existing beliefs; people are SLIGHTLY less likely to select news stories they think will challenge pre-existing beliefs *Exposure:* once people start reading a news article, they do not stop, even if it challenges their pre-existing beliefs

"Interactivity" defined thru different disciplines:

*Sociology:* a form of social action guided by the real or imagined presence of others *Computer science:* a process between computers & humans *Communication:* an interface between the end user & the medium

Four-Dimensional Analysis of Media Effects

*Timing:* determining whether something has an immediate or long-term effect *Valence:* determining whether something has a positive, neutral, or negative impact (depends on from what POV too) *Intentionality:* determining the intentionality of the media messages we seek *Type:* determining what "type" of media effect is occurring

Major Issues of Morality & Media:

*Violence:* From 1967-85 the proportion of cartoons containing violence was not under 90% *Sex:* In 1993, 24-36 channels offered "Adult Programming" in America *Stereotyping:* Brand (1995): Counter-stereotyped content reduces traditional stereotypes

Theories of Media Entertainment

*We are hardwired for stories* -> humans can learn thru stories; does not need to be literally true *We gain info from individual experiences* -> our cognitive systems are evolved to learn from experience *Relatable information is better processed* -> we understand info better when it resembles personal experiences

Media effects can be either:

*immediate* or *long-term* Immediate effects occur during one's exposure to a media message (e.g. change in emotion) Long-term effects show up only after many exposures -> no single exposure is responsible for the effect

The multiple perspectives on the news:

*normative:* what news "should" do *descriptive:* what the news "does"

Movies and Conduct (Herbert Blumer, 1933)

- 1600 personal "movie autobiographies" - gave 1200 questionaries to grade school aged children - Measured: information acquisition, attitude change, emotion stimulation, and health behavior - Key finding: Movies produced unwanted influences on social mores - Children: retained info from movies, changed attitudes based on movies, had "simulated emotions" by movies, and imitate behaviors seen in movies

what percent of characters on primetime shown as physically disable? how are they portrayed?

- 2% - appear older/less positively present and more likely to be victimized - almost none on children's shows

what percent of perps were portrayed as attractive? what percent of acts were shown as being justified?

- 37% attractive - 44% of acts shown as being justified

Moral Foundations Theory

- 5 different types of morality are built into human nature; extent to which we emphasize or de-emphasize these judgements depends on culture 1) Care/Harm (compassion, peace) 2) Fairness/Cheating (equality, justice) 3) Loyalty/Betrayal (patriotism, solidarity) 4) Authority/Subversion (obedience, duty) 5) Sanctity/Degradation (chastity, wholesomeness)

what percent of people said they would quit real world jobs and work in a cyberworld? and w/ what condition?

- 57% said they would quit real-world job and work in cyberworld - only if they could make enough money to support themselves

what percent of major characters on tv are portrayed as having had injuries or illnesses that require treatment?

- 6-7% - everyday normal health maladies rarely shown - primetime characters are not shown w/ any kind of physical impairments

what percent of players said they wish they could spend all their time in the cyberworld of their game?

- 75%

what percent of top rated shows among teens contain sexual portrayals? the rate?

- 85% - 3 scenes per hour

copyleft

- A program that no one person owns and is shared openly with everyone - Free Software Foundation in 1985 - Creation keeps evolving as each subsequent creator tinkers with it

Meta-analyses

- A statistical analysis of all the empirical evidence in a given field - Provides information that summarizes the results from a large number of studies → answers how strong is the effect

Fluid intelligence

- Ability to be creative, make leaps of insight, perceive things in a fresh + novel manner - Lateral thinking - Jumping to a new position when presented with a problem, then working backwards to construct a logical path between this and the starting point

Field independency

- Ability to distinguish between the noise and signal in any message - Noise = chaos of symbols and images - Signal = info that emerges from the chaos - Field - dependent people are more likely to remember trivial info rather than the main part of the story - Value of field independency grows as our culture becomes more media cluttered

Crystalline intelligence

- Ability to memorize facts - Highly developed CI gives us the facility to absorb images, definitions, opinions, and agendas of others - Usually increases throughout life - People strong in CI are good at critical thinking

Emotional Intelligence

- Ability to understand + control our emotions - Empathy, the ability to be aware of your own emotions, harnessing and managing one's own emotions productively and handling emotional demands of relationships

How do children began to analyze reality in TV regarding their age?

- Age 5, begin to develop adult discount (skepticism about reality of media messages) - Completed by 12 years

How do programmers meet the needs of the audience?

- Anchor message in real world, but tell stories that are bigger than life - Remove audience from reality one step at a time; formula with farce

Appetitive vs Aversive systems

- Appetitive = approach things that we like/want - Aversive = Avoid things that might hurt us - Positivity offset = at rest, the appetitive system is more active (encourages us to leave the nest and venture into the world) - Appetitive system is slow, while aversive is very quick (fight or flight)

Disposition Theory Applied to Suspense genre

- Arousal: Arousal + then relief from suspense is liked - Excitation Transfer: Great distress intensifies the enjoyment we experience from a happy ending

Uses and Gratification Theory

- Asks: What do people do with media (rather than what does media do to people) - Assumes that people seek different gratifications from media: (Diversification, Knowledge, Enjoyment, Escape, Socialization) - Functional theory: - Must understand the medium in order to understand why people use it - People use media to solve perceived problems + in order to maintain equilibrium + personal stability

Selective Exposure Theory

- Assumes that people make entertainment choices based on personal preferences + needs - Selection is usually impulsive + done to satisfy different needs (determined by mood) - Example: Excitement or relaxation - People select media to relieve their discomfort or extend pleasure --> Media that are absorbing or inconsistent with one's current mood can distract from/alter that mood; Programs that are consistent with one's current mood can maintain focus + extend mood

What are major historical milestones of the issue or piracy?

- Audio Home Recording Act - 1992 - Federal Copyright law that requires all digital recording devices to incorporate a Serial Copy Management System - Mp3 files - 1999, users were downloading 17 million MP3 files per day - Napster - Music industry fought back though the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)

Automatic routines

- Automaticity refers too a mental state where our minds operate without and conscious effort from us - We encounter almost all media messages in this state

Geodemographic

- Based on the assumption that the same types of people tend to cluster together in neighborhoods - Neighbors tend to be homogenous on important characteristics, which are different across neighborhoods

What does an fMRI actually measure?

- Blood oxygen levels - Deoxygenated hemoglobin has a lower magnetic field

Stroke

- Blood supply to part of the brain is interrupted - Leads to speech/motor deficits - Takeaway = some psychological processes can be localized - Very few brain regions are "for" one specific psychological process - Higher-order processes require distributed network of brain structures

In what way is the mind + brain like a computer? How is it different?

- Brain is more flexible with damage - Computer has to be programmed to do things → Even AI

What are the three primary fundamental decisions that producers need to make about the game design? Define and explain each

- Category of play: there are six types as determined by the objective of the game. These six types are Agon (a struggle or contest), alea (game of chance), mimicry (pole playing), Ilinx (vertigo, fairground rides), Exploration (discovery, new places, new experiences), social play (making friends, communities) - Formality of play: there is a range in the number of rules that a game can have. At the informal end of this range are games with very few rules, at the formal end of the range are games with man rules that require discipline to follow; players who learn the rules best and who are capable of using these rules to their advantage succeed the most. - Affective tone: designers must think about what they want their players to feel as they interact with the game. One feeling is aggression as players fight a series of stronger opponents. Another feeling is mystery or suspense where players must figure out what is happening before something bad happens to them.

Media is also believed to portray deceptive health patterns. Please consider portrayals of deceptive health habits.

- Characters not shown having healthy habits, but shown as thin, fit, and healthy - High degree of violence, little suffering - Everyday health maladies rarely shown - Mental health portrayed stereotypically - Doctors over-represented

What is "magic window"? Please define

- Children but not limited to them, view TV as simple, unvarnished truth of what Is happening in the real world

Personal Locus

- Combination of individual's goals and drives for media exposure - Determines person's media exposure habits - Strong locus means more awareness of the effects process

Telling an entertainment story present a different challenge as you move from one medium to another. What are these challenges? Consider commercial TV, web, and movies.

- Commercial television is one of the most challenging media for telling stories, this is because there is significant amount of competition for audiences. And producers must keep audiences engaged, so they do not change the channel during commercial breaks. - Entertainment on the web face a great deal more competition. So breaking through in the cluster of content is difficult - Hollywood movies are also very challenging because they cost so much to produce, and the risk of failure is so great with more than 90% of all Hollywood films failing to earn back their basic production costs at the box office.

Telling an entertaining story presents a different challenge as you move from one medium to another. What are these challenges? Consider commercial TV, web, and movies.

- Commercial television is one of the most challenging media for telling stories. - Entertainment messages on the web also intense competition. - Hollywood films also face challenges as many films fail in the box office.

Competitive Experiences

- Compete against themselves, a computer, or other players - All games have digital game codes that govern game appearance + play, visual, and audio features that attract users into the game

What is the difference between white and grey matter?

- Computation happens in gray matter - Information is transmitted via white matter

Conditions for casualty (with media violence)

- Concomitant variation (correlation → ex: there has to be evidence that as you play more violent video games, your own violent behavior goes up as well) - Time order (cause has to come before effect; example: if someone starts smoking after they get lung cancer, they cannot blame their cancer on smoking) - Relationship is Not Spurious (cannot be some other alternate explanation

new legislation

- Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act - Requires all new digital media devices to be encoded with security technology to prevent unauthorized copying of copyrighted works

Character patterns on TV do not match real world demographic patterns, how so?

- Content analyses of the television landscape in the 70's and 90's showed that producers of stories were featuring patterns of characters that were very different from the patterns of people in the real world. The patterns of gender, ethnicity, age, marital status, socioeconomic status, and occupations have been very different in the television world compared to the real world over the years. There are far more medical workers, police man, lawyers, forensic specialists, then in the real world. There are only less salespeople, and managers/executives in the TV world compared to the real world.

What is content analysis?

- Content analysis: is a scientific technique of counting occurrences of various things (characters, gender, age, ethnicity, occupations, etc.) that relies on analyzing samples that are representative of the total population of things being analyzed.

A Theory of Fun

- Core idea = Games hijack our cognitive system - Pattern recognition = incremental increases in difficulty - Learning = good games teach - Cognitive chunking = novel puzzles - Cognitive flexibility = multiple solutions to the same problem - Simplified = "It's fun to exercise your brain"

A Theory of Fun

- Core idea = games hijack our cognitive system - Cognitive Chunking = taking individual pieces of info and grouping them into larger units - Cognitive Flexibility = Taking a lot of solutions to solve one issue

Criticism of Cultivation Theory

- Correlational, not Causal - Most research is survey-based and lacks an experimental manipulation - What constitutes "heavy" TV viewership changes with each study - Cultivation effect is an artifact that disappears when the proper statistical controls are put into place - Gerbner counters --> subgroup analyses are important

Abstracting (Media Literacy)

- Creating a brief, clear, and accurate description capturing the essence of a message in a significantly smaller # of words than the message itself

Sociological Factors (baseline factors effecting Media Effects)

- Degree of socialization is related to the amount of influence the media will have - People who have been socialized in a certain way for a long time will be more resistant to change

sociological factors

- Degree of socialization relates to amount of influence media will have - Socialization with consistent norms over long periods mean more resistance to media influences and vice-versa - Important to have a wide, diverse social network - People who have the ability to express themselves are less susceptible to media's impact

content of messages

- Depending on what you expose yourself to, you may move closer to farther away from the manifestation level

Emotional Type Effect

- Desensitization = long-term emotional effect

Economies of Scope

- Develop multiple revenue streams to increase overall revenue - Ex: DVD/Blue-Ray, Streaming, Merch, Books, etc.

Developing Skepticism (In the Stages of Development of Media Literacy)

- Discount claims made in ads • Sharpen differences between likes and dislikes for shows, characters, and actions • Make fun of certain characters even though those characters are not presented as foils in their shows

How should one phrase their questions about media message reality?

- Do not ask, "How real are media messages?" - Ask, "Which elements in this message reflect reality and which elements are removed from reality in some way?

Conventional Stage

- Early adolescence - Children begin to develop their own conscious and can internalize right from wrong

What do we mean when we say that news has a dynamic nature? - How has the nature of news and its transmission changed over time? Pay attention to historic periods and timeline. In what stage of development are the news markets now? What are the characteristics of this stage for the news industry?

- Early new was shared through interpersonal communication, newspapers did not begin until the 16th century in Italy. Following the civil war, there was increased literacy in the US and this was seen as an opportunity to develop newspapers with large circulations. - The era of big news lasted from increased newspaper readership through the penetration of the radio in the 1930s to the 70s when it reached its peak and circulation of newspapers began to decline - Traditional news markets have been losing their audience, they are failing to attract young people, and they face increased competition from alternative news outlets on the internet.

How has the nature of news and its transmission changed over time? Pay attention to historic periods and timeline.

- Early news was shared through interpersonal communication (gossip.rumors) - Newspapers did not begin until the 16th century in Italy. - Following the Civil War, there was increased literacy in the U.S. This was seen as an opportunity to develop newspapers with large circulations. - The era of big news was lasted from increased newspaper readership through the penetration of the radio in the 1920s to the 1970s when it reached its peak.

Payne Fund Studies

- Effects of movie behavior on children and adolescents - analyzed: info processing; attitudes; sleep disruption; and meaning making

anti-piracy technology

- Encoded electronic impediments on commercial CDs - Prevents disk from playing on any device that is not a simple CD player - Digital rights management companies developing solutions

Psychological Exposure

- Encoding: Short-term memory - Storage: long-term memory - Retrieve: When we draw on a memory for further processing

What does entertainment mean?

- Enjoyment (Immediate, positive, pleasant --> aka: hedonic) - Appreciation (longer, contemplative, meaningful, aka: eudaemonic)

Human information capacity is limited (LC4MP)

- Every individual has a fixed amount of cognitive resources - Can be split into two pools: 1) Visual Information 2) Auditory information - Possible to exhaust resources cognitive resources in one pool but have more in the other (example: you can drive a car and pay attention to the road while talking to someone) - since cognitive resources are capacity limited, we can only attend to a small amount of info at a time - Cognitive resources are split into three subprocesses: 1) encoding (working memory) 2) storage (long term memory) 3) Retrieval (Accessed information stored in long-term memory)

Forward Inference

- Experimentally manipulate task and observe corresponding brain activation - Ex: having 2 video games, one that induces flow and one that doesn't → comparing the difference between these two regions

Cultivation Theory

- Explores TV's independent contribution to viewers conceptions of social reality - Exposure to TV content in general → no specific content; TV as a system; total exposure - People who watch a lot of TV are more likely to perceive the real world in ways that are more like the real world - Volume over type of info - Cultivation = expected to be stronger in heavy viewers

Cultivation Theory (Gerbner)

- Explores TVs independent contribution to viewers' conceptions of social reality -*Core idea:* exposure to TV changes viewer attitudes, & the change in these attitudes should differ depending on how much TV is consumed -*Core hypothesis:* those who spend more time watching TV are more likely to perceive the real world in ways that reflect the most common & recurrent messages of the TV world

marketing perspective of news

- news is what the audience demands - not always the most useful (human interest stories/PR/marketing)

Perceptual Exposure

- Exposed to something near you → not necessarily taking in this information - Exposure that is received through visual or auditory senses - Mediated by physical constraints - Just noticeable difference - The moment where we can perceive a difference between two objects (or sounds) - Laurel or Yanny example - Acoustically ambiguous → works bc it messes w/ our perception - Primary information in the message is weak or degraded

How can we become more media literate with news?

- Exposure Matters: Our exposure decisions are likely to be shaped by what we consider to be news. Media literacy warns against a narrow focus. - Quality Matters: If we don't periodically evaluate the quality of our news sources, we run the risk of believing we are well informed when in reality we are not.

How can we become more media literate with news?

- Exposure matters: our exposure decisions are likely to be shaped by what we consider to be news - Media literacy warns against a narrow focus - Quality matter: if we don't periodically evaluate the quality of our news sources, we run the risk of believing we are well informed when in reality we are not.

Fluctuation Factors (6)

- Factors that will move you off your baseline and create a fluctuation effect: 1) Content of the Messages 2) Context of Portrayals 3) Cognitive Complexity of Context 4) Motivations 5) States (a temporary drive or emotional reaction that occurs in response to some stimuli) 6) Degree of Identification

What are some of the criterion people use to assess reality/fiction?

- Factuality, perceptual persuasiveness, social utility, identity, emotional involvement, plausibility, typicality, and narrative consistency

Mainstreaming

- Fear of crime is dependent on demographic factors - Most low-income said yes (fear) regardless of TV viewership - High-income heavy TV viewers believed crime is a serious personal problem

What makes electronic games attractive? Consider all three major reasons

- First: Video games offer players a way to satisfy their emotional and cognitive needs. Games arouse people and trigger emotions. Completing challenges gives players a sense of competence - Second: Despite living complicated lives, games may help people feel in control - Third: electronic video games may offer opportunities for socialization with others on common tasks.

Media is also believed to portray deceptive health patterns. Please consider portrayals of healthy habits, consequences of injuries, physical health, mental health, health care professionals. Pay attention to described patterns, statistics, and stereotypes.

- First: although most characters are not shown having healthy habits most characters appear healthy. 65% of Americans are overweight, but on television only %6 of males are and %2 of women are. And character do not gain weight from their high caloric diets. - Second: although there is a degree of violence on many shows, few characters are portrayed as suffering any harm. Only 6-7% of major characters are portrayed as having injuries or illnesses that require treatment. Prime time characters are not only healthy but safe from accidents. - Third: everyday normal health maladies are rarely shown. Most health problems that are portrayed are serious and life threatening. Hardly anyone dies a natural death on television. - Fourth: mental health is portrayed in a dangerously stereotypical manner. In real life, mentally ill people are usually passive and withdrawn, frightened, and avoidant. But on television, mentally ill characters were found to be 10 times more likely to be violent criminals than non-mentally ill television characters. - Fifth: Doctors are greatly overrepresented on television compared to their numbers in real life. They are five times their number in real life proportionally

What are the primary characteristics of the process of designing electronic game platforms?

- First: an idea is conceived and sketched out in a demo - Second: a team of designers determines what a player will do while playing the game - Third: artist render the environments and characters - Fourth: programmers take the instructions from the designers and artists and write the digital code - Fifth: when enough code is written, an alpha version is tested - Sixth: where the alpha test reveals design flaws, corrections are made. - Seventh: a beta version is made available for wider testing - Eight: when management is satisfied with the beta testing the game "goes gold" and is released to the public - Ninth: The publisher designs the box, reproduces the game disks and distributes them.

Flow Theory

- Flow = Focused attention, altered sense of time, loss of self awareness, not taxing, intrinsically rewarding - Some everyday things are enjoyable = "in the zone"

Consider psychology of playing electronic games: what is flow? What is telescoping?

- Flow refers to losing track of space and time - Telescoping refers to focusing on steps within the process of moving through a game. These characteristics can be intense and rewarding, these characteristics continually draw players back for repeat experiences

Media Exposure Habits

- Focuses attention on certain media - Focuses attention on certain types of messages

Telescoping

- Focuses on a sequence of ordered objectives in a hierarchy of priority then moving through them in the correct sequence

Developmental Maturities (baseline factors effecting Media Effects)

- For emotional reactions, people at lower levels of maturity are limited in their capacity to control their emotions and behavior

How are electronic game experiences different from board game experiences?

- For millennia humans competed against themselves to solve puzzles and mysteries, humans invented card games and board games to compete against one person or several other people. With the invention of the computer. With games on a computerized platform expanded the competitive platform. We can play, pause, take as much time as we want.

Video example = Broca's Aphasia

- Implicates speech production - Can comprehend conversation + can speak, but speech production is impaired - Why can he count? 1) Different part of the brain 2) Associates counting with different motor movements (counting with fingers) - This is an example of neuroplasticity

What are we to make of MAC's?

- MAC's promote moral deliberation in audiences (moral deliberation allows for greater appreciation for narrative) - MAC's allow audiences to "transcend their own limitations and boundaries" ( = identification with character) - MAC's may introduce uncertainty into the narrative (leads to suspense)

What are the formulas that journalists use to construct news stories? Make sure you know all four types and can provide examples

- Formulas: - For gathering information on a story, journalists follow the formula of asking six questions, who, what, where, when, why, and how? - The inverted pyramid formula tells the journalist to put the most important information at the beginning of the story, then add the next most important set of information - Another formula is to use a narrative to tell a story in an entertainment format. Journalists who use this will begin the story with a heated conflict to grab the reader's attention in an emotional manner. - Simplified extended conflict (SEC): is a formula which journalists look for an angle of conflict that appears very simple but can be played out over a period of time.

Ignoring context (for violence in media)

- Frequency of violence is secondary to context → it is the way violence is portrayed in the media that signals to audiences what the meaning of violence is - The context in the way the violence is portrayed increases the probability of negative effects

What are some forms of cooperative experiences satisfied by interactive media? Provide examples for each type.

- Friendship: The most prevalent platform for friendship is the social networking sites. SNS offers a sense of community. There are relaxed geographic limitations. Popular SNS's include Myspace, and Facebook. - Dating: there are SNS's specifically designed for partner seeking, Skout is an app that uses GPS to help singles find local dates - Living: Contact with friends is virtual and people generally do not interact in real life, second life is a virtual world launched in 2003, where individual create and maintain avatars. - Opinion sharing: People can share their opinion through blogs. There is the possibility for an unlimited size audience. Tumblr has 220 million blogs, Twitter has 555 million users.

What are the additional criteria for accuracy?

- Full set of Facts: Presenting only a partial story is a type of distortion that is not usually regarded as bias. One form of partial story is when a major story stops getting covered, even though important events continue to occur. Another type of partial story is when a journalist tells a story from a single point of view. - Context: what helps audiences understand the meaning of the event in the news stories.

Accuracy as a criterion for news involves truthfulness and neutrality but there is more. What are the additional criteria for accuracy?

- Full set of facts: presenting only a partial story is a type of distortion that is not usually regarded as bias because there does not seem to be an intention by the journalist to mislead the audience. One form of partial story is when a major story stops getting covered, even though important events continue to occur. Another type of partial story is when a journalist tells a story from a single point of view - Context: is what helps audiences understand the meaning of the event in the news stories.

David Marr's Tri-Level Framework

- Fully understanding any behavior requires explanation at three levels: - Computation: Why does a behavior exist? - Algorithm: What rules govern the behavior? - Implementation: How is the behavior physically implemented?

Demographic Segmentation

- Gender, ethnicity, etc. - Like geographic, use of this one has been diminishing

What are the major steps in general formula that entertainment follows?

- General formula: entertainment that follows this formula begins with a problem for at least one character, followed by heightened conflict, and the climax where the conflict is resolved.

Mother of all Demos + Homebrew Computer Club

- Goal = developing tech that helps improve human capabilities (develop + augment) - Bootstrapping = using what one builds to boost one's own effectiveness

Whole Earth Catalog

- Goal = give people the tools and tech to change the world - Subtext = Buying these things will help you change the world

Personal Locus

- Goals and drives --> shape the info processing tasks by determine what gets filtered in and what gets ignored - The stronger your drives for info are, the more effort you will expend to attain your goals - Weak locus = defaulting to media control where you allow the media to exercise a high degree of control over exposure/info processing

Client Side

- Has specific research question - Usually major entertainment or media company - What movie trailer will best entice customers to go to the theater while also staying on brand?

Post Civil War = Big News

- High cost of production - Largely newspaper based - Economic factors dictated large audience - Focus on developing appeal content → objective - Peaked in 1980's, maybe in decline

Motivated Processing (in relation to LC4MP)

- How motivational systems are involved in communication processes - Four types of people: risk takers, risk avoiders, inactive, and co-actives (different baseline rates of appetitive (ASA) and aversive (DSA) activation) Risk takers = High ADA and Low DSA Risk Avoiders = Low ASA and High DSA Inactives = Low ADA and Low DSA Coactives = High ASA and High DSA - Messages with positive/negatively valenced arousal will elicit resource allocation - Too much arousal leads to disengagement - This is particularly true for negatively valenced arousal

Conceptual differentiation

- How people group and classify things - People who classify things into a large # of mutually exclusive categories = a high degree of conceptual differentiations

How can media literacy help with understanding/ dealing with next step reality phenomenon? (Answer this question) - you should ask, which elements in this message reflect reality and which elements are removed from reality in some way?

- How should one phrase their questions about media message reality? - Ask "which elements in this message reflect reality and which elements are removed from reality in some way? - What does it mean to be flexible and aware from the media literacy perspective? - Being flexible means being willing to traverse the entire spectrum of messages and being willing to enjoy the full range of messages - Being aware means thinking about where you are in the spectrum and knowing the different standards of appreciation to apply to different places on the spectrum of reality.

degree of identification

- Identification with particular characters - People will pay more attention to those characters which whom they identify

bias in ignoring important stories

- news organizations cover only a fraction of occurrences in a given day - biased towards particular political views

Social Cognitive Theory and Violence

- Important features of violence that reinforce the chance that it is modeled and repeated - Is the violence: Justified; rewarded; glamorized; sanitized; realistic; trivialized; salient; attractive; easily modeled --> Answering yes (according to SCT) to these makes it more likely that someone will repeat violent behavior that is modeled in the media - More likely to do this if we like the person doing it, if it is justified, and if they are rewarded

Geographic Segmentation

- Important to newspapers + radio and local TV

Social Class Segmentation

- Includes/combines income level and outlook on life - Lower class = stuck - Upper class = more control of resources

Economies of Scope

- Increasing the number of different channels for extracting money from consumers -Achieved thru multi-product production -e.g. DVD/Blu-Ray/Digital Downloads; Licensed Merchandise; Streaming Services, etc.

Induction (Media Literacy)

- Inferring a pattern across a small number of elements, then generalizing the pattern to all elements in the larger set - Example --> public opinion polls → if the surveyors use people that are a good representation of the entire population, then this will be successful, but if not then bad

Physical Exposure

- Info in environment - Necessary but insufficient for media exposure

Acquisition Experience

- Information + Physical goods - Music, video, shopping

What are some forms of acquisition experiences satisfied by interactive media? Provide examples for each type

- Information: Wikis are online databases; Wikipedia began in 2001 - Music: Napster was a social network for sharing music; it was founded in 2009 and was shut down by the RIAA in 2001 - Video: YouTube was created in 2005, in 2015 there was over one billion unique visitors each month. More than 100 hours of new video are uploaded every minute - Shopping: E-Commerce is relatively new but accounts for 6.4% of all retail sales in the US. Amazon and Ebay are popular E-commerce sites.

Intentionality of Effects (Four Dimensional Analytic Scheme)

- Intended vs unintended effect - Unintentional effects can be both long term and immediate

legal action against piracy

- Investigations - Legal victories against file-sharing sites - SOPA and PIPA

Reality Programming as a Genre a. When did reality programming become a recognizable as genre? What are the major characteristics of this genre? b. This of the Survivor show. How is it made? Can you explain how it speaks to the audience's and producer/programmers' perspective on next step reality?

- It became recognized as a genre in 2000 when three popular shows survivor, American idol and Big Brother came out. - They were unscripted series using real people, instead of professional performers. - Survivor take 16 real people and puts them in a wilderness setting where the individuals depend on each other for survival. These 16 applicants are chosen from thousands of people based on their attractiveness of getting audiences to watch the show. - The audience only sees 2% of what is actually filmed. - It speaks to the audience's perspective on next step reality because it gives them messages they cannot get in real life, because most people will not go to a deserted island to compete for free. And to get those messages in real life it would cost too much. The show also presents it to be realistic and possible, and gives people a little more than they would get in their everyday lives. - The show in the programmer's perspective, removes the audience from reality one step at a time.

Traditional Journalistic Perspective

- Journalists believe that their purpose is to inform the public, rather than persuade the public. - This is a normative not descriptive perspective.

c. What are knock-off and spin offs? d. What are the sub-genres of reality programming? Define each and provide an example

- Knock off series is produced by different people who are copying the formula used by other people who produced the successful television series on which the knock off is based on. - Spin off series is produced by the same people who produced the previously successful television series on which the spin-off is based on - Documentary style: camera record what happens in everyday life ex: undercover boss, keeping up with the Kardashians - Reality legal: people's behavior is recorded as they deal with legal problems ex: court shows - Reality competition/games shows: people compete for some prize as one or more contestants are eliminated each episode ex: American Idol, Dancing with the stars - Self-improvement/Makeover: viewers are amazed as a real world person or object is drastically improved ex: the biggest loser, pimp my ride - Social experiment: people are put in unusual situations and a camera records their reactions ex: wife swap, secret millionaire - Hidden camera: people's actions are recorded without their awareness ex: what would you do? - Supernatural: people are put in frightening situations that are involve paranormal forces ex: ghost hunters - Hoax: people are fooled to believe something false and their reactions are recorded ex" Punk'd

Knowledge:

- Knowledge is composed of a cognitive base and particular skills. - There is no agreed upon set of facts that journalists must share, nor is it possible to think what such a set of facts might be given the wide variety of stories that journalists cover daily.

What is neutrality? Address both the lack of bias and balance principles.

- Lack of Bias: Bias is a willful distortion on the part of a journalist, but it is difficult for audiences to recognize when this is occurring. - Balance: Fairness requires that journalists present both sides and try to do so with equal weight.

Acquiring Fundamentals (In the Stages of Development of Media Literacy)

- Learn that there are human beings + other physical things apart from oneself - Learn the meaning of facial expression + natural sounds - Recognize shapes, form, size, color - Rudimentary concept of time (patterns)

What is copyright?

- Legal establishment of ownership - Creation is static once created

Early News (pre-19th century)

- Listing of facts - Focus on accuracy - Affluent readers - Focus on small scale, local news - Goal = help public make business decisions

Evaluation (Media Literacy)

- Making a judgement about the value of an element - Judgement is made by comparing a message element to some standard - Forming our own opinions about a message by comparing things to our own standards

Manifested vs Process Effects

- Manifested = Effects we can easily observe - Process Effects = The media are constantly in a process of influencing how we think, feel, and act, whether we manifest these things or not

What do our stories tell us about our current culture?

- Mass media messages are carriers of cultural messages - Television themes studied by Comstock (1989) and Walsh (1994) - Examples: materialism, instant gratification - Parents as fools; certifying teens as autonomous culture

Cognitive Type Effect

- Maybe most prevalent media effect - Media can affect what we know by planting ideas + info into our minds - Social + cognitive learning from the media

context of portrayals

- Meaning of the messages arises from the way they are portrayed, especially social lessons

Tamborini, 2010

- Media and Morality Study - Had contestants watch a soap opera, and on the 8th week of watching they responded to disposition theory and morality items - Specifically looked at moral judgement of characters and moral dilemmas)

Attitudinal Type Effect

- Media can influence our standards so that when we make our own judgements, we end up using their standards - Media influence has been found to be stronger on people's attitudes at a more general level (opinions about society) rather than a specific level (opinions about friends or oneself)

Behavioral Type Effect

- Media can trigger actions - Going out to buy something after seeing an ad for it

McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message"

- Media effects + how the medium can have more of an effect than the actual message - How the channel itself influences people - 4) Questions for understanding media effects: 1) What does the medium enhance? 2) Retrieve 3) Obsolesces 4) Reverses - Example with Radio - Amplifies news + music via sound - Reduces importance of print - Returned the importance of spoken word + storytelling - Radio flips into TV to add visuals

Macro Type Effect

- Media influencing larger units such as organizations, institutions, and society - Example → Media has helped change the institution of marriage + family

Communication is dynamic and happens over time

- Messages can have various trajectory shifts (negative to positive, or positive to negative) - Self-report scores can look the same for different trajectories

Post-Conventional Stage

- Middle adolescence - Think about concerns beyond themselves - Morality

Hydrocephalus

- Missing white matter is replaced by fluid - Congenital disease - Many patients lead healthy normal lives - Takeaway = mind/brain is remarkably robust

Observational learning (in relation to media and morality)

- Morality is learned by watching others - rewards/punishments for social/moral behavior

Communication is an interactive exchange of information

- Most of the models we have considered so far assume one-to-many models of communication - But humans control a lot of facets of communication: 1) Attentional state 2) Changing the channel 3) Many forms of new media are many-to-many

Blind Spot on Harm

- Most people believe that other people are at risk but think they are free from risk → third-person effect - Reason for this → few people behave aggressively after watching violence, but they have ample evidence that others are influenced to behave aggressively

Now consider controversial content elements such as violence. How does media address this issues? Is it successful? What is still problematic?

- Most studied form of media content - 60-80% of all entertainment programs - Prevalent in movies - Physical and verbal aggression - Sanitized and glamorous - Level of violence higher than in real world

What is reality?

- Multiple dimensions of reality - While the beginning point of judging reality is usually with an assessment of whether a portrayal actually happened, people frequently use more criteria to judge reality.

Political News Perspective

- News = reporting (daily) of accurate facts; help individuals make accurate + informed choices

Echo Chambers

- People tend to expose themselves to media that aligns with their views - Social media let viewers expose themselves to sympathetic info and audiences (selective exposure) - People are self-selecting info that corresponds with their current world view - People can select what they want to read/view, but they can also be exposed to other views too (people can pick what they expose themselves to, but not necessarily what they are exposed to)

Lifestyle (baseline factors effecting Media Effects)

- People who have active lifestyle where they interact with many people and institutions are generally less affected by the media

Lack of Experience (In relation to treating children as a special audience)

- People with lower real-world experience = greater difficulty processing media messages - Children can thus be more easily mislead into believing the media world is an accurate reflection of the real world - People who argue that higher negative effects result from lack of experience typically try to restrict children's exposure to media messages in an effort to protect them - Limits exposure and keeps kids in a condition of vulnerability

Knowledge Structures (baseline factors effecting Media Effects)

- People with the largest amount of knowledge learn most from media - With many topics, we have to rely heavily on media information because we don't have experience in the areas - Example: not many people are professional athletes; reality shows, etc.

Decline

- Period of audience loss - Usually when one medium is being replaced by something else - For example, TV shows displaced radio shows

How can media literacy help with interactive messages? Consider both personal and broader implications.

- Personal implications: need to make clear distinction between opportunity and addiction. When you use interactive platforms, keep your personal goals in mind - Broader implications: interactive media platforms affect the economy. Brick and mortar cannot compete with online retailers. When people spend their money in virtual worlds, it does not get spent in the real world.

Now consider controversial content elements such as sex. How does media address this issues? Is it successful? What is still problematic?

- Prevalent on TV, especially teen TV - 2/3 of network TV shows contain talk about sex or sexual behavior (5 scenes/hour) - Rates change in cyclical pattern - Consequences: - Topics related to safe sex, responsibilities, and risks increasingly included - Infrequent overall

What is reality? Why do we say that judgements about reality (realism) are complex?

- Psychologists have been focused on the fundamental problem of how the human mind encounters the world and seeks to make sense of what is real - Factuality: Does the message show what actually happened? This is the idea of magic window which asks, is the media message an accurate, unadorned view through a window on actual events and people - Perceptual persuasiveness: does the media message present characters and setting that look real? - Social utility: does the message portray social lessons that can be used b people in their everyday lives - Identity: does the way characters are portrayed in media messages lead people to believe that those characters are very much like people in their everyday lives? - Emotional involvement: does the media message engage people's feelings so they are pulled into the action and feel it is really happening? - Plausibility: does the media message portray something that could happen? - Typicality: does the media message portray something that usually happens? - Narrative consistency: Does the plot of the story make people believe that the sequence of actions is believable

Equating Violence with Graphicness

- Public is not complaining about amount of violence, but rather the graphic portrayals - People continue to tolerate violent portrayals until it gets too graphic and offends them - Public's perception of media violence is limited to physical violence that is depicted in a serious manner and that results in severe physical harm to the victims that is presented graphically - Audiences tolerate sanitized violence - Also consider how humor can be a camouflage - Humor seems to remove the threat of violence in viewers' minds - Public is also not concerned about acts of aggression + violence that result in non-physical harm (verbal aggression)

Language Acquisition (In the Stages of Development of Media Literacy)

- Recognize language sounds - Able to reproduce speech sounds - Orient to visual + audio media - Have emotional + behavioral responses to music and sounds - Recognize certain characters in visual media + follow their media

What one has to consider before blaming media for negative effects? Is media always to blame for the negative effects?

- Recognize there are multiple influences - Don't allow any one influence to be absolved simply because it wasn't the only influence

What are the six design rules that help condition players for repeat playing?

- Rewards - Easy to learn - Predictable - Consistent - Familiar - Challenging

What is content analysis?

- Scientific technique of counting the occurrence of various things - Representative sample from population - With fragmentation and internet videos, more difficult to obtain representative sample of all televisions shows - Future: more specialized segments of media environment

Knowledge Structures

- Sets of organized information in your memory - Information = essential ingredient - Composed of facts - Knowledge requires structure to provide context and thereby exhibit meaning - Messages are composed of: factual and social info

Now consider controversial content elements such as sex, homosexuality, violence, and offensive language use. For each element, how does media address this issues? Is it successful? What is still problematic?

- Sex: prevalent on television, especially teen TV. Two thirds of network TV shows contain talk about sex or sexual behavior. Rates change in cyclical pattern. Topic related to safe sex, responsibilities, and risks are increasingly included. Infrequent overall - Homosexuality: US television has a long history of marginalizing, ignoring, and stereotyping homosexuals. Recent analysis shows that non-heterosexuals account for 15% of television programs. So it is not necessarily any more progressive then it was - Violence: this is the most studied form of media content, and violence has been found in 60-80% of entertainment programs. Violence is prevalent in movies. This level of violence is higher than in the real world. - Offensive language: Obscenity is regulated by the FCC; the FCC takes context into consideration also. The greatest increase in profanity came during so called "family hour" Racial slurs and gender slurs are also included with obscenities

There is a huge risk in selecting stories to present on television. What types of risks are out there in entertainment business? How can these risks be minimized?

- Shows that are too formulaic may bore audiences, but if shows deviate from the norm too much, they may offend audiences. - Television producers tend to approach this issue in a conservative manner. - Because the financial risk in producing television programs is high, producers need to attract large audiences.

There is huge risk in selecting stories to present on television. What type of risks are out there in entertainment business? How can these risks be minimized?

- Shows that are too formulaic may bore audiences, but if shows deviate from the norm too much, they may offend audiences. - Because the financial risk in producing television programs is high, producers need to attract large audiences. Because the larger audience that you have the more money you make. - Television programmers are usually very conservative with risk and typically force other to share the risk with them. For example, major television networks have developed payment conventions that force producers to attract large audiences if they want to make money by paying only 80% of production costs for new shows

Bandura Bobo Doll Experiment

- Social Cognitive Theory - Looking at how watching other people's activities affect us - Looking specifically at aggression - 3-5 year olds w/ giant inflatable doll → adult suddenly starts attacking doll Child does exactly what they see the adult doing (especially when same sex) - The mind has the capacity to learn by observing others - Mediated others (watching business in media) - This is the basis for media effects research

Cooperative Experience

- Social networking sites - Friendship-Driven and interest-driven

reality progamming as a genre

- began in 2000 - popular w/ programmers b/c less expensive to produce - what these shows have in common is that each takes a handful of real people and puts them in a competitive situation - audience begins to identify w/ certain players

What is the primary function of story formulas?

- Story formulas help designers of entertainment messages attract audience attention and condition audiences for repeat exposure. They are also guides that help producers navigate the process of making decisions as they select story elements and structure those selections in a meaningful sequence. They help audiences quickly process their ideas about characters and efficiently follow the unfolding action.

Daalmans, 2011

- Study looking at Morally Ambiguous Characters (MAC's) - Analyzed 25 years of prime time TV - 90% of moral transgressions were committed by characters that were not either good or bad - Heroes faced no consequences for moral violations, while villains and MAC's were punished for moral violations 75% of the time

Convergence (3 types)

- Technological Convergence: Taking two tech. That used to be separate and morphing them together - Psychological Convergence: People taking something that already exists, changing it, and creating something new Example: hip hop sampling, memes, etc. - Marketing: When multiple mediums are used to broadcast a marketing message

How are teenagers presented by television industry? Why is this portrayal problematic?

- Teenagers are presented as being on their own, with no need to listen to their parents who know little anyways. This helps the TV industry certify teenagers as an autonomous culture with its own set of ethics and consumption patterns.

How are electronic games marketed? Consider demographics, audience characteristics (four types), and current trends.

- The average player is 35 years old, 44% of gamers are women, with 67% of households play electronic games - Explorers: players who are curious and want to wander inside the game world to discover all its territories - Socializers: players who like to interact with other players - Achievers: players who are attracted to the games in order to build something - Controllers: players who want to dominate others - There has been a shift from selling games on disc to selling internet subscriptions.

Analysis (Media Literacy)

- The breaking down of a message into meaningful elements - When we encounter messages, we can either ignore them/look at them only on the surface level or we can dive deeper

Grouping (Media Literacy)

- The determining of which elements are alike in some way, the determining how a group of elements are different from other groups of elements

What is objectivity?

- The idea of objectivity is a very general philosophical concept. - It means a separateness from the object being observed so that the object is perceived accurately and that the perception is not distorted by human limitations.

What is the "Magic Window?"

- The idea that media holds a window to the real world when it covers real events and people - News and info = real, everything else = fantasy - Usually applied to children under 3 - Children base perception of reality not on accuracy of portrayals but online (?) probability that something could occur

Storytelling formulas must evolve as public tastes change overtime. How did stories adapt to these changes? Consider variety of examples including sexual and violent portrayals, views on minorities, women, gender roles, etc...

- The line of acceptability has changed over time - On television, sexual portrayals and violence that offended people in the 1980s would not faze people today. - With music the basic formula for popular songs is a story about love or sex, but the songs have become much more explicit overtime.

Storytelling formulas must evolve as public tastes change overtime. How did stories adapt to these changes. Consider variety of examples including sexual and violent portrayals, views on minorities, women, gender roles , etc...

- The line of acceptability has changed over time. - On television, sexual portrayals and violence that offended people in the 1980s would not faze people today. - With music, the basic formula for popular songs is a story about love or sex, but the songs have become much more explicit overtime.

What do we mean when we state that advertising is pervasive (spreading widely in an area)? In which way?

- The united states is saturated with advertising. With about 8% of the world population we absorb almost half of the world advertising expenditures. Estimates range from 247 to over 5000 for the number of ads the average person is exposed to per day.

Media at the same time is credited for some responsible health patterns. What are these?

- The use of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs has dramatically declined over the years on television. Smoking was a frequent activity until the mid 80's until it almost completely disappeared except for reruns of old movies. Alcohol is presented now with negative consequences. Movie characters still frequently abuse drugs and alcohol without worrying about consequences.

What do our stories tell us about our current culture? Make sure you are aware of Comstock's list and Walsh's list

- Themes deal with material consumption. Comstock is not referring to the ads in the stories but referring to the fact that characters have material objects that are beyond their means. Walsh thinks that the values of the marketplace or the people are happiness equals wealth, instant gratification, and me first. - Comstock's list: Material consumption is very satisfying, the world is a mean and risky place. The TV world has turned the social pyramid upside down by showing most characters as wealthy and powerful and very few as working class - Walsh's list: Happiness is found in having things, get all you can for yourself, get it all as quickly as you can, win at all costs, violence is entertaining, always seep pleasure an avoid boredom.

Commercial television is one of the most challenging media for telling stories because

- There is a significant amount of competition for audiences. - Producers must keep audiences engaged, so they do not change the channel during commercial breaks.

What makes MMORPGs special? Consider both psychological and economic aspects. Provide examples.

- They are designed to attract certain kinds of audience then to condition that audience to play continually. They have been very successful at conditioning players to the point where players believe that the cyber world of the game is more important to players than the real world. - In World of Warcraft players paid 19.99 to download the game and 14.99 a month to play online. - In Ever quest, individuals in poor counties can make 3.50 per hour performing basic tasks in the cyber world. As of 2004 ebay was hosting about $30 million of annual trade for goods that only exist in synthetic worlds

1. The book suggests that judgements of reality can vary widely even among people of the same age and experience, How so? Consider Voort study. What can the incident with Gilligan's island described in the book suggest about this issue?

- This is because not every child of the same age is making the same judgements about reality, Voort reports that perceptions of reality and the degree of identification with characters vary substantially at any given age. His research found that some children became absorbed in watching violent videos and judged the violence to be realistic, which led to a stronger emotional reaction, which led to a belief that violence was bad, which did not lead to aggressive behaviors in real life. It suggests that people's perception of reality varies.

lifestyle

- Those with active lifestyles are less likely to be affected by the media and vice-versa - Lower SES people, ethnic minorities, and the elderly are susceptible to media influence

1. Consider drama genre. What are the three basic subgenres of drama? Define major characteristics of all three provide examples

- Three basic subgenres of drama: Tragedy, mystery, and action/horror. - Tragedy: must have characters that are perceived as noble and good by the audience ex: Titanic - Mystery: the mystery genre must have an element of the plot that is missing ex: crime shows like castle - Action/horror: this formula is a plot driven good and evil fight it out in ever deepening conflict. Ex: the shining

What are the seven criteria an event must have in order to be considered newsworthy? Explain each

- Timeliness: An event has to be current in order to be considered news. - Significance: refers to the magnitude of the consequences of an event - Proximity: refers to how close the events is to the news audience - Prominence: refers to how well known people and institutions are in the event being considered as news worthy - Conflict: refers to the degree to which the parties in an event disagree - human interest: refers to how strongly the event would appeal to human emotions - deviance: refers to the degree to which an event is out of the ordinary

How do you become more media literate with advertising? What do you need to analyze? How can you evaluate ads?

- To increase your media literacy, you need to construct a good knowledge structure about advertising then use that knowledge structure periodically to check the advertising aimed at you. - Analyze your personal needs: the more aware you are of your needs, the more you can use advertising to control your life. If you are not aware of your needs, the constant flood of advertising messages will create and shape your needs often without you knowing it. - Analyze ads: there are too many ads in your environment to analyze them all. Make this manageable by making a list of the advertised products you buy most often then find some ads for those products and analyze them. - To evaluate ads you, you are making value judgements about how well the advertiser understands your real needs and how well they present their products as the best way of satisfying those needs. If you found a lost match between your personal needs and the advertising appeals for the product you buy, then you can conclude that advertising is exerting a positive influence in your life.

Baseline

- Typical degree of risk that continues over time

How big is the piracy problem when it comes to film?

- U.S. industry claims losses of $6.1 billion in 2005

Now consider controversial content elements such as homosexuality. How does media address this issues? Is it successful? What is still problematic?

- US television has long history of marginalizing, ignoring, and stereotyping - Late 1990s, first lesbian and gay lead characters: Ellen, Will & Grace - Recent analysis: non-heterosexuals in 15% of television programs - Not necessarily more progressive

What is the role of media literacy in understanding media effects process?

- Understand how effects work - Understand what factors most influence those workings - Think beyond breakthrough fluctuations - Consider process effects - Understand baseline are even more important than fluctuations

3) Narrative Acquisition (In the Stages of Development of Media Literacy)

- Understanding differences between fiction and non-fiction - Understand how to connect plot elements: - By time sequencing - By motive - action - consequence

The Marketing Concept

- Understanding the audience's needs and create products based on that - Franchise Films are a good example - Problem is you don't always know what will meet the audiences needs

Who qualifies as a journalist? Pay close attention to the three-part definition of profession. Be prepared to identify and explain each part. How do people try to draw a distinction between journalists and non-journalists?

- Until recently a solid criterion was: "journalists were reporters and editors working for newspapers, the broadcast media or wire services." Another criterion that could be used to answer this questions is to determine whether a person is a valid member of the journalism profession - Professionalism: in general, is traceable to three qualities, knowledge, organization, and autonomy - Knowledge: is composed of a cognitive base and particular skills, there is no agreed upon set of facts journalist must share, nor is it possible to think what such a set of facts might be given the side variety of stories that journalists cover daily - Organization: refers to "how a profession may require membership of professional associations that legitimately represent the profession as a how practitioners must be able to earn a living from engaging full time in their profession and how formal codes of ethics organize the profession." Journalists do have professional organizations and a kind of cannon of ethics. - Autonomy: refers to how professionals are able to do their jobs with a great deal of individual discretion and that external influence over the work process itself should be non-existent or minimal. Journalists have always sought to be independent from outside pressures in a quest to report the news accurately.

Media at the same time is credited for some responsible health patterns. What are these?

- Use of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs has dramatically declined over the years on television - Movies characters still frequently abuse drugs and alcohol without worrying about consequences

News-working Perspective

- Use of sources - Although news workers are aware of normative news perspectives that tell them what they should do, they frequently cannot achieve the prescribed standards because of unavoidable constraints - Over time, journalists develop the "news perspective."

who qualifies as a journalist?

- no pro. certification - no educational/degree requirements

Why the news workers fail to achieve the prescribed standards of newsworthiness? What types of constrains they have to deal with at work.

- Use of sources: although news workers are aware of normative news perspectives that tell them what they should do, they frequently cannot achieve the prescribed standards because of unavoidable constraints, such as deadlines, limited access to sources, and limited financial resources.

Self Determination Theory

- Used to explain human behaviors - General idea = people desire 1) automaticity; 2) competence; 3) relatedness - Why are these features of interactive media?

Competitive Media

- Users compete with themselves, against a computer, or other people (video games)

Cooperative Media

- Users interact with others, socialize, share personal info, and work toward shared goals (social networking, dating app, virtual worlds)

Uses and Gratification Theory vs. Selective Exposure

- Uses + Gratification: - Gratifications sought (what I wanted from the media) vs Gratifications obtained (what I actually got from the media) - Mainly focuses on the medium itself - Media compete with other resources for need satisfaction - Audiences can link specific gratification with a specific medium - Selective Exposure: - More about what kind of content we will chose (rather than the specific media)

Deduction (Media Literacy)

- Using general principles to explain particulars, typically with the use of syllogistic reasoning - Example = people think that media has negative effects, but the majority of people are not violent, lazy, etc. (no extreme effects)

Baseline effects

- Usual amount of existing effects - Example: usual amount of stress

Agency Side

- Usually a large international/national firm specializing in market research - Helps companies answer their research question - Which scenes from a movie make the best trailer

How do media producers use scholarly research? What research findings are (can be) useful for them?

- Violence is a story element that attracts audiences, but it is the arousing nature of violent portrayals that is the active element - They also said that humor is a desirable element to put into media stories. However, there are many different types of humor and because humor is personal, not all audience members "get" all types of humor - Suspense has been found to be a useful characteristic but not all audience members enjoys suspense the same way. - Research that can be useful for them: while disgust repels and offends us, it has functionally evolved over time to compel our attention to core disgusts and socio moral violations.

How do media producers use scholarly research? What research findings are (can be) useful for them?

- Violence is a story element that attracts audiences, but it is the arousing nature of violent portrayals that is the active element. - Humor is popular but not universal. - Suspense has been found to be a useful characteristic but not all audience members enjoy suspense the same way.

3 Major issues (related to media and morality)

- Violence, Sex and Stereotyping

Messages are continuing streams of information in multiple modalities (LC4MP)

- We get info in a variety of different sources - Across visual and auditory channels, info can be: 1) concordant (matching across modalities) 2) Discordant (conflicting across modalities) - Assumes that we process mediated information in the same way as non-mediated information (example: horror movies)

Disposition Theory Applied to Comedy genre

- We laugh at the misfortunes of disliked others

Disposition Theory of Morality

- We like like seeing good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people - We dislike seeing good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people

Tolerance for Ambiguity

- What we do when we encounter new situations where our expectations aren't met depends on this - Low tolerance = likely to chose to ignore those messages that don't meet our expectations - If we are willing to follow/workout new messages, then we have a high tolerance for ambiguity - Confusion motivates us to search harder for clarity People with low tolerance encounter media messages only on the surface

Adaptation

- When a medium begins to redefine its position in the marketplace - Think about how TV + movie stations are entering the streaming business

Penetration

- When a tech begins to gain mass acceptance - Media displacement: Use of one medium comes at a cost to the use of another - Media growth: When a new medium grows out total media use

Timing of Effects (Four Dimensional Analytic Scheme)

- When evidence of effect starts to show up more so than on how long the effect lasts - Immediate effect = one that occurs during your exposure to a media message - Long term effect = shows up only after many exposures

Asymmetric Influences

- When one factor influences another but not the other way around - For example: in autumn, the temperature drop influences the color of the leaves, but the color of the leaves does not influence the temperature

Why do we say that privacy is an issue on-line? What is at the essence of this issue?

- When sensitive information was stored on paper files could be locked away and kept secret. But now all information is digitized as electronic blips that flow continuously everywhere throughout the internet. - The issue is that all this kind of information is frequently illegally accessed by hackers and even legally by marketers as well as people working in a variety of governmental agencies

The Global Village

- When tech connects the world, making new culture + info available to people - Asymmetric and asynchronous media experiences would become new normal - Asymmetric = one to one - Asynchronous (ex: live shows have asynchronous feedback between audience and products) - Media makes global expression of culture + views easier = increases audience size - Power is democratized

how are doctors portrayed on tv compared to real life?

- greatly overrepresented on tv compared to real life #s - show more time devoting to individuals than in real life occupation

What are the four states of exposure?

1) Automatic 2) Attentional 3) Transported 4) Self-reflexive

Innovation

- When tech is first introduced - Makes message transmission in a given channel possible Example: Film - First movies were silent films - Difficulty synchronizing video and audio tracks → innovation in other areas (live music, smells); Followed by Talkies - Characterized by at least two types of innovation: - Marketing: A way to identify audiences + their needs with the goal of attracting audiences to a given message - Technological: Engineering innovation that creates a new way to transmit messages

Economies of Scale

- When the marginal cost of producing another unit of a good is cheaper than the average cost - Said differently, when the cost of production can be spread across many units - Example: the Force Awakens - Also consider where the money is coming from → Disney buying star wars and re-making the amount quickly

What is middle-ware market?

- While games are typically marketed to players, game developers also market their game code to other game developers. This is called the middle-ware market

Problem for Disposition Theory

- Why do we like morally ambiguous characters? --> Research = we seem to enjoy, but not appreciate, morally ambiguous characters

What are strategies that can help one become media literate with entertainment messages? Consider both challenges and solutions

- With patterns, the challenge for media literacy is considerably higher. Patterns are insidious because we typically process each portrayal individually then unconsciously infer patterns often based on a few instances or faulty samples. Thus after watching a small number of movies or television shows we infer patterns about the real world these inferences often result in unrealistic beliefs about attractiveness, romance, success, health, family and so on. - Strengthen knowledge structures regarding content patterns, discrepancies form the real world and formulas. Separate reality from fantasy, be entertained by fantasy, avoid being guided by unrealistic expectations. Ask, questions, be skeptical, and stay active during consumption.

cognitive skills regarding news

- ability to analyze a news story to identify key points of info - ability to compare and contrast key points of info in the news story with facts in your knowledge structure - ability to evaluate veracity of info in a story - ability to evaluate if a story presents a balanced presentation of the news issue/event

cognitive skills to dealing w/ entertainment messages

- ability to analyze entertainment content and to identify key plot points/types of characters and themes - ability to see entertainment formulas - ability to compare and contrast plot points/characters/themes across vehicle and media

aesthetic skills regarding entertainment messages

- ability to analyze the craft and artistic elements in the story - ability to compare and contrast the artistry used to tell the story w/ that used to tell other stories

aesthetic skills regarding news

- ability to analyze the craft and artistic elements in the story - ability to compare and contrast the artistry used to tell this story w/ that used to tell other stories

emotional skills regarding news

- ability to analyze the feelings of people in the news story - ability to put oneself in the position of diff. people in the story - ability to extend empathy other people contiguous to the news story

moral skill regarding entertainment messages

- ability to analyze the moral elements as evidenced by decisions made by characters/implications of those decisions revealed by the plot and underlying theme - ability to compare and contrast ethical decisions presented in this story w/ other stories - ability to evaluate the ethical responsibilities of the producers and programmers

moral skills regarding news

- ability to analyze the moral elements in a story - ability to compare and contrast this story w/ other stories - ability to evaluate the ethical responsibilities of the journalists on the story

physiological media effects

- activation of our bodies' automatic response systems - psychophysiological arousal: fight or flight response - sexual arousal and porno (body knows what to do w/o thinking about it - if you have to stop and think, you lose response in the real world - desensitization can happen if you watch enough of any one thing

general story formula/plot sequence

- all begin w/ a problem of conflict - conflict is heightened throughout the story - main characters try to solve the problem - during climactic scene, problem is solved and conflict is eliminated or at least significantly reduced - not only used by the creators of the media messages, but also by us - the audience - to help us easily recognize the good and bad characters and quickly find where we are in the story

what is the nature of electronic games

- allows them to provide immediate feedback to players on their performance so they are continually rewarded for each step of success, and this serves to reinforce their playing

process of designing a game

- an idea is conceived and sketched out in a demo team of designers determines what a player will do while playing the game - artists render the environment and characters - programmers take the instructions from the designers and artists and write the digital code - when enough code is written, an Alpha version is tested - where the alpha version reveals design flaws, corrections are made - beta version made available for wider testing: goal is to get community of insiders hooked on the game, so they make it available on downloads for free during trial period - when management is satisfied w/ the beta testing, the game "goes gold" and is released to the publisher - publisher designs the box, reproduces the game disks, and distributes them to wholesale and retail outlets

mystery

- an important element of the plot is missing - serious crime usually triggers the story and someone must use the info available to figure out who committed the crime - suspense is in solving the puzzle -> audiences drawn in trying to figure it out for themselves

what are massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) designed to do?

- attract a certain kind of audience - massively condition that audience into continual play, even to the point of making the cyberworlds of games more important to players than their real worlds - evidence of addiction; games create a cyberworld that often takes place of a player's real world

What do we mean when we say that news have dynamic nature?

People have always had a desire for news.

romance

- begins w/ a person experiencing loneliness from a lack of a relationship, or a relationship that is bad due to betrayal/jealousy/fear - we are made up to identify w/ and feel her pain - full of hope for what seems like an unattainable goal - through hard work and virtue she gets closer to attaining her goal - even though she experiences frequent heart-rendering setbacks - until the story climaxes w/ the fulfillment of the goal, which transmits intense emotions to the audience - among all paperbacks 1/2 are romance

what are wire services and why are they necessary?

- buying stories - necessary b/c no one news company can have reporters everywhere and can SAVE THAT MONEY!

critiques of Potter's critiques of critiques

- buying things we don't need - tell us what to buy and to buy more - makes a too materialistic - more exposure the more we believe happiness and well-being depends on stuff - feel close to people = happy - experiences w/ people = happiness - use the stuff/money for diff. experiences - willing to wait a year to watch w/o ads (Netflix) - there's a lot we don't process (top 6 google results are ads) - product placement

web 2.0

- catchall phrase for a generation of internet companies such as google/MS/Youtube to distinguish them from older internet companies such as Yahoo/AOL/Netscape - also refers to companies that use the web as a platform - that is they built programs to run on operating systems such as microsoft windows - is a perspective about the internet that fosters a social dynamic where people have the the freedom to share their work through all sorts of open websites

behavioral media effects

- changes in what we do - we buy stuff that's advertised - violence: throwing things at partner; self-report (become more aggressive/tied to criminal stuff later on if watch a lot of violent media during mid-adolescence

attitudinal media effects

- changing opinion/beliefs/values - the more gay characters seen on tv, the more people approve of gay message - crime stories on news and evaluations of the president: the more crime stories, the more consistently people are aware of what the president's stance is and what he's doing relative to crime

cognitive media effects

- changing what we know, what we think we know - simple learning effects - learning social info

From the economic perspective, how does commercialism and marketing affect the content and quality of the news stories?

- commercialism: news organizations are in the business of constructing large audiences so they can rent those audiences to advertisers. News organizations present the kinds of stories that audiences want most - Marketing: news decisions are made by marketers instead of journalists, it tends to change the content of news in a way that is somehow harmful to the public. Journalists under this perspective are more likely to present stories that grab the attention of large audiences by highlighting the unusual so as to shock people.

vertical integration

- company that owns platform and also develops game and distributes it - small independents usually bought up by the larger companies thus increasing this

Make sure you are aware of Comstock's (1989) list and Walsh's (1994) list.

- concerned with materialism - Comstock: material consumption is very satisfying. The world is a mean and risky place. Tv has tuned social pyramid upside down by showing most characters as wealthy and very few of them in working class. - Walsh: happiness is found in having things. Get all you can for yourself. Get all as quickly as you can. Violence is entertaining. Aways see pleasure and avoid boredom.

Commercial products (traditional)

- created by artists that is packaged and marketed by media businesses - to establish ownership rights they rely on copyrights

Why the news workers fail to achieve the prescribed standards of newsworthiness? What types of constrains they have to deal with at work?

- deadlines - limited access to sources - limited financial resources

context

- deepest level; the idea of objectivity occurs when we consider the nature of context - is the concern over how much background info is needed for it to make sense

frequency of violence on tv

- depending on definition used, violence has been found in 57% of all entertainment programs - 1/3 of programs - 1967-85: hourly rate fluctuated from about 4-7 acts w/ peaks occurring about every 4 hours

problems w/ balance

- determining how many sides there are - selection of sources info; some sources more credible than others

How is drinking alcohol portrayed on tv as compared to other drinks? What percent of characters are portrayed as having a drinking problem?

- drinking shown twice as much as coffee and tea - 14 times that of soft drinks - 15 times that of water - 1% of characters shown to have a drinking problem despite high rates of consumption on tv

geographical focus

- each news organization is focused on covering the events in its own locale so it can report those stories to its local audience - also refers to the condition that, even outside of a news organization's local area, there appears to be a belief that certain parts of the world are more newsworthy than others

emotional media effects

- emotional states are involved or induced by what we see or hear - adults and early fright: almost all adults can remember at least one incident where the media made them really scared (scary movie = nightmares) - can have long-term effects

interaction btwn ads and entertainment

- entertainment makes us feel inadequate - ads offer solutions

How do you determine the values of a culture and why?

- examining the arts w/in a culture - b/c previously, art glorified the individual and his/her unique way of looking at the world and constructing meaning

what are the two strong attractions that interactive media offer?

- friendship-driven participation - interest-driven participation

middleware market

- game developers starting to market their code to other game developers

what makes some games useful tools?

- games that are used by people as opportunities to expand their experience, challenge the limits of their lives, and give people a deeper understanding of who they are

Autonomy

- how professionals are able to do their jobs with a great deal of individual discretion and that external influence over the work process itself should be non-existent or minimal. - Journalists have always sought to be independent from outside pressures in a quest to report the news accurately.

2 reasons by people are motivated to get certain messages but go to media

- impossible to get messages in real life - costs of getting media message are much lower than costs of getting it in real life

how does tv portray the mentally ill compared to real life?

- in a dangerously stereotypical way - real life: usually passive and withdrawn/frightened/avoidant tv: 10 times more likely to be violent criminal than non-mentally ill characters - shown to be active/confused/aggressive/dangerous/unpredictable on tv

creative commons

- is a means by which individuals can band together w/ like-minded souls and express a sovereignty of their own - internet designed for great deal of sharing of resources for the common good - provides an upward spiral of innovation b/c of its open networking structure - it allows all kinds of people to gather around an incredibly wide range of interests

content analysis method

- is a scientific technique of counting occurrences of various things, such as the gender of characters that relies on analyzing samples that are representative of total population - take a sample of entertainment programs and analyze the gender of characters in only those programs in their sample and then generalize their findings to all entertainment programming, which is their population interest deriving

is too much news good or bad and why?

- is irrelevant and bad; explains why people are increasing their avoidance of news - not enough = avoiding news limits one's experience

what is the most salient characteristic that distinguishes electronic games from other forms of entertainment offered by the media?

- is that games don't take players through a story in the conventional narrative sense; games offer the potential for players to construct their own stories as they move through the game

news

- is that which is "new" in some sense - is useful public info - is documentable or verifiable - may include context/history/etc (things that help w/ understanding what's useful and documentable)

asking journalists to build more context into their stories presents 2 problems:

- journalists vary widely in talent and it takes a very talented and experienced one to be able to dig-out a great deal of relevant contextual info on deadline - when journalists have the responsibility of constructing the context, they may be manifesting a lot of power to define the meaning of the event for the readers

general employment trends

- media employ small percent of the workforce - less than 2 million people (less than 1% of adults in US) - general rate of employment is expected to be about 8% across all industries in this country, this decade - media expected to grow 10% - largest employer w/in media = newspapers and film and video production - demand for journalists (broadcast and print) is expected to decline - salary range for each occupation is large

Next-Step Reality

- message is presented as reality to resonate with viewer, but message is also "sweetened" by an extra added ingredient that takes it one step outside of the audience's everyday existence

audiences search for messages w/ 2 general characteristics

- messages must appear real - messages must present a little more than everyday reality; w/o something extra, no reason to search out the media message b/c the person is already getting the message in his/her real life - (they want messages that show what is possible and what make it seem probable and even actual

comedy

- minor conflict situations flare up and set the action in motion - conflict is heightened verbally, usually through deceit or insults - characters are developed through their unusual foibles and quick wit - action really resolved at the end of the show and all the main characters end up happy b/c their problems have been eliminated

The players: Consumers

- money, time and attention - largest group - we can alter the game by increasing the value of info. and entertainment in return for our money and time - can play the game well by keeping track of resources and better negotiate exchanges of resources

deceptive health patterns on tv

- most characters not shown having particularly health habits (eating responsibly/regularly exercising/getting medical checkups to prevent illness), but most appear healthy/fit/thin -

consequences of sex on tv

- most depictions of sexual behavior aren't presented responsibly from a health point of view - American children and teens view an average of more than 14,000 sexual references and innuendos on tv each year - fewer than 150 of those references refer to the use of birth control, so rate of unprotected sex is very high, yet this is a very low incidence of STDs or pregnancies depicted in these stories - fewer than one in every 6 shows that present sexual content will have any mention of the possible risk or responsibilities of sexual activity or any reference to contraception/protection/safer sex - US has history of ignoring/stereotyping/marginalizing homosexuality

what is the powerful draw of electronic games

- moving through progressively stronger challenges along the way w/ the success of meeting each challenge

How do FBI figures on crime compare to figures from tv?

- murder rape/robbery/aggravated assault were 13.2% - 87% on tv - 18% of crimes cleared - 61.5% on tv

6 rules that apply to all successful games

- must be some reward to the player and rewards must only go to the good players; bad players punished but not for uncontrollable circumstances - should be relatively easy to learn; complexity revealed step-by-step as the player moves through the game - game should be predictable; should follow logical rules so that players can predict outcomes of their actions - must be consistent: outcome of a particular action must always be the same - should be a fair degree of familiarity; designers should consider what players bring to the game and use it - game should be challenging

tragedy

- must have character that are perceived by the audience as noble and good - bad things happen to them b/c of fatal flaw - what audiences enjoy is the opportunity to compare themselves w/ tragic characters and feel better off than those unfortunate characters

moral knowledge regarding entertainment messages

- of what moral systems say about diff. decisions as well as knowledge of the moral implications of your decisions - of other stories that have portrayed this topic, both good and bad - of values of people in the media industries

negative effect of stereotypical portrayals in entertainment

- often inadequate as well as biased, often serve as obstacles to rational assessment, and are resistant to social change - harmful when they lead audiences to believe that all people of a given type share certain negative characteristics

cognitive knowledge regarding news

- on topics from many sources (media and world)

From the consumer personal perspective, how do people see out information? What is selective exposure?

- people are seeking out information strategically that benefits them. As the audience for news fragments, news vehicles are getting more and more specialized, which Is known as hyper-localism - Selective exposure is a psychological concept that says people seek out information that conforms to their existing belief systems and avoid information that challenges those beliefs

socializers

- players who like to interact w/ other players

action/horror

- primarily plot driven as good and evil fight it out in ever deepening conflict - characters are stereotypes or comic book-types (static and don's change) - plot relies on fast paced action that maximized arousal - primary emotions evoked are fear/suspense/vengeance - violence is a staple in almost all these stories - formula of violence tells us that it is okay for criminals to behave violently throughout a program as long as they are caught at the end, which restores sense of peace - at least until the commercials are over and the next show begins - also feel it is permissible for police officers/private eyes/and good guy vigilantes to break the law and use violence as long as it is used successfully against the bad guys

what is news NOT? and why not?

- propaganda or opinion - objective reality - an impartial/representative sample of objective reality - b/c news is chosen/shaped into stories/presented

formality of play

- range in # of rules a game can have - players who learn the rules best and who are capable of using those rules best and who are capable of using those rules to their advantage succeed the most

emotional knowledge regarding news

- recall from personal experience how it would feel to be in the situation in the story

technological convergence

- refers to the way that recent technological developments, particularly digitization of messages, have made it possible for content to move seamlessly across channels of cmn, such that all channels have converged in their ability to present the same content - the key technological innovation that has been driving convergence is not the computer per se, but the software code that runs computers - amount of info and speed has increased thousands of times over the past few decades -> lead to availability of 2-way cmn

what makes a song successful?

- repetitiveness

VNR and example

- script that leads into story - video where reporters all end up using the same exact line about gifts

values of a healthy society

- self esteem comes from w/in - tolerance - moderation - understanding - social responsiblity

Political Philosophy Perspective

- specifies what news should be. - This is a normative not descriptive perspective. - News should focus on the most important events and people in a society in order to keep people up to date about what is most significant. - constructed from facts, not opinions - should not be pressured by politics or economics

'evergreen'

- stories that can be broadcast of put in media at any time/good for whenever you need them - a lot of humanistic stories - no urgency about airing these

flow

- term coined by social psychologist Csikszentmihaly - observed people getting lost in tasks so that they lose all track of time and place

telescoping

- term used by social psychologist Johnson - used term to refer to the way electronic game players focus the steps w/ in the process of moving through a game - not the same as multitasking - focuses more on structure, that is ordering objectives in a hierarchy of priority and then moving through them in the correct sequence

macro media effects

- the collective impact on systems of individual effects, including indirect effects - got the idea of what an ideal body is from media (Marylin Monroe -> thin/pretty/blonde; size 3 or smaller; girls and women try to get skinner)

above-the-line workers

- the creative types (producers, actors, writers, etc.) - talent is considered the ability to attract the largest audience - paid much more - media managers

character comedy/comedy of manners

- the humor arises out of characters quirks that illuminate the craziness of everyday situations - the absurdity of certain social conventions makes us laugh

Stealing ones identity

- the more internet we use the more identity theft there is - 85% of victims find out through adverse situation, 15% through positive action - combat this w/ credit monitoring, regular credit score checks and identity theft insurance - victims find out faster but it is taking longer than ever to recover (sometimes up to a decade)

balance

- the recognition that when an event has more than one side to it, journalists should present those viewpoints

What is truthfulness?

- the story contains no lies, either by the sources used or by the journalist. - requires that journalists not make up facts to fill in the gaps of their stories or to "sweeten" their stories

how has song formula changed?

- the way the theme is treated: love used to be treated as an emotion, and the lyrics were symbolic; that is, the words suggested action, but left it up to the listeners to imagine - now love is treated as a physical act, and the lyrics are much more explicit in describing those acts, so listeners don't need to use imagination as much

dynamic nature of news

People have always had a desire for news.

what kinds of games are people playing that are learning the value of prosocial behaviors and what does this help them develop?

- they play games that teach business principles/leadership/interpersonal interaction - are developing prosocial skills

why does media content exist?

- to attract attention either for money or to ads (for money) - advertisers willing to pay to put ads out b/c they WORK; they change our attitudes/behaviors - > media makes money off of us

What qualifies as news?

- traditional definitions: typically emphasize that it is the reporting of events that are significant/timely/proximate to the readers

bootlegging

- unauthorized recording and distribution of live delivery of a message

Spamming

- unsolicited/unwanted messages that are designed to het you to buy a service or product via media - spammers main concern is to maximize coverage

What is the Entertainment Formula?

- use a narrative to tell a story - more emotion - uses a hook

What should be the standard of quality for news?

- usefulness: utility means that you need info to reinforce your existing beliefs - accuracy: you would have to check every line on the proposed budget yourself so you could establish a standard for truth, then you would need to compare the stories of all journalists to see who reported the most truth closely credibility: most practical of the three; what you believe about the accuracy of each journalist; a judgment about credibility is much easier to achieve than one of accuracy

frequencies of sex on tv

- when definition is limited to visual depictions of intercourse: the rate fluctuates around one or two acts per hours of primetime - expand definition to include all visual depictions of sexual activity, such as kissing/petting/homosexuality/prostitution and rape: the hourly rate goes up about 3 acts on primetime and 37 acts per hour on soap operas - further expanded to talk about sex as well as sexual imagery the rate climbs to 16 instances per hour on primetime

Writers working in hollywood dominated by?

- white males - males outnumber females 3.6 to 1 in creative personnel (includes producers/directors/writers)

Audiences: Psychological Exposure

-*Encoding:* think short-term memory -*Storage:* think long-term memory -*Retrieval:* when we draw on a memory for further processing

Reducing risk

-*marketing concept* -- begin with audience needs, then construct message to meet them 1. research then development

Flow Theory

-A motivational theory -Flow is: focused attention, altered sense of time, loss of self awareness, not taxing, intrinsically rewarding -Flow happens: when *task challenge* & *individual skill* are both HIGH

*Memory:* Encoding

-A perception & info selection process wherein stimuli from the environment are developed into a coherent mental representation -Related to "resource allocation" -Key finding: as resource allocation increases, so does encoding

Patterns of Development: Decline

-A period of audience loss (usually displaced by a competing technology) -e.g. TV shows displaced radio shows: Lone Ranger, Adventures of Superman, etc.

Uses & gratifications (Rosengreen, 1947)

-A theory of media selection -> U&G asks: what do people do with media? -Assumes that people seek different "gratifications" from media: diversion, knowledge, enjoyment, escape, socialization, etc.

LC4MP: *Messages are continuing streams of info in multiple modalities*

-Across visual & auditory modalities, info can be: *concordant* (matching across modalities -> i.e. correct subtitles of audio) OR *discordant* (conflicting across modalities -> i.e. incorrect subtitles) -Assumes we process mediated info in the same way that we process non-mediated info -The human brain has not yet developed mechanisms to quickly discriminate between mediated & non-mediated stimuli

LC4MP: *Communication is dynamic & happens over time*

-Asking about a message at its end is not helpful -Messages can have various trajectory shifts -> neg. to pos. & pos. to neg. -Self-report scores can look the same for different trajectories, but the behavioral outcomes differ

Mainstreaming

-Asks participants if they feel that crime is a personal problem of theirs -> heavy viewers said yes as well as low-income participants regardless of viewership

Selective Exposure Theory

-Assumes that people make entertainment choices based on personal preferences & needs, to relieve discomfort & extend pleasure -Selection is usually impulsive -Determined by one's mood (& can distract from or alter one's mood)

How does Huskey evaluate Crockett's argument that social media constitute echo chambers & that exposure to moral content in social media contributes to polarization?

-Audience fragmentation is lesser than audience duplication & this finding is true across multiple nations & platforms -If social media contribute to polarization, then the most polarized audiences should use social media the most -> but this is not the case

Core assumptions of uses & gratifications:

-Audience is active & its media use is goal-oriented -Audiences can link a specific gratification w/ a specific medium -Media compete w/ other resources for need satisfaction

Next-Step Reality: Audience's Perspective

-Audiences seek out messages that appear real & present something more than everyday reality -However, people want messages that are similar to their lives, but provide something they cannot get in everyday life *(next-step reality)*

Morally Ambiguous Characters (MACs)

-Characters we can't characterize as good or bad; characters whose ends we can't predict -Daalmans (2011) analyzed 25 years of prime time TV -> 90% of moral transgressions were committed by MACs -MACs were punished for moral violations 75% of the time

What do we know about *Memory*?

-Cognitive overload is associated w/ reduced storage -Moderately arousing messages are best encoded -Negatively valenced messages lead to decreased encoding -Arousal is a double-edged sword: increases storage for positive, but decreases storage for negative messages

LC4MP: *Human info capacity is limited*

-Cognitive resources are in a pool w/ a fixed size -Can be split into two pools: *visuospatial sketchpad* (visual info) & *phonological loop* (auditory info) -Since cognitive resources are capacity limited, we can only attend to a small amount of info at any given time -> these resources are split into 3 sub-processes: *encoding, storage, & retrieval*

Growth in Online News

-Desire for: more efficient access & more "targeted" content -2018: 45% of Americans get their news from FB

LC4MP: *Two motivational systems: appetitive & aversive*

-Developed over evolutionary time to facilitate survival behavior -*Appetitive:* to approach (i.e. find food, mates, etc.) -*Aversive:* to avoid (i.e. predators, pathogens, etc.) -At rest, the appetitive system is more active than the aversive system -> however, the appetitive system operates slowly & shows roughly linear increases in approach -The aversive system operates quickly, & negative info quickly results in high levels of avoidance -> this is a fight or flight response

What do we know about *Motivated Processing*?

-Different ASA/DSA combinations lead to different message processing outcomes -Experience w/ the topic shape processing, particularly when it comes to anti-drug messages -Messages which contain appetitive or aversive content elicit -> more resources allocation to encoding & storage processes AND leads to greater recognition & recall for these messages -If the message is too aversive, disengagement occurs -Moderately arousing messages are best remembered -Risk-takers seek more arousing media, are attracted to more risky portrayals, & are more resistant to persuasion -Messages w/ positive/negatively valenced arousal will elicit resources allocation -Too much arousal leads to disengagement -Particularly true for negatively valenced arousal

*Memory:* Storage

-Encoded info is stored into long-term memory for later use -Key finding: increased appetitive system activation leads to increased encoding; increased aversive system activation leads to decreased encoding -Key finding: when messages are difficult to process (e.g. complex), providing graphics (e.g. infographics) helps w/ storage

"Big" News (post-Civil War)

-High cost of production; largely newspaper based -Economic factors dictated a large audience -Focused on developing content w/ mass appeal -> important to appear "objective" -Followed by *massive declines in daily newspapers*

The Long Tail (Anderson)

-His book revolutionized the way we think about media & the entertainment industry -Historically, media content were produced w/ goal of reaching the largest audience (CBS, NBC, ABC) -Anderson's Thesis: the Internet expands the type of programming that content producers can offer

3 Research Domains of LC4MP: *Memory*

-How message features interact w/ individual differences to shape memory -At its core, LC4MP is focused on understanding how cognitive load & motivation shape: encoding, storage, & retrieval

3 Research Domains of LC4MP: *Motivated Processing*

-How motivational systems are involved in communication processes of encoding, storage, & retrieval -People differ in their motivated processing -Different baseline rates of appetitive (ASA) & aversive (DSA) activation -Four types of people: *risk-takers* (high ASA, low DSA); *risk-avoiders* (low ASA, high DSA); *inactives* (low ASA, low DSA); *coactives* (high ASA, high DSA)

Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP): Five assumptions

-Human info capacity is limited -Two motivational systems: appetitive (to approach) & aversive (to avoid) -Messages are continuing streams of info in multiple modalities (e.g. visual, auditory) -Communication is dynamic & happens over time -Communication is an interactive exchange of info

Media at the very beginning?

-Humans have evolved psychological programs for creating media (e.g. cave paintings, oral histories, etc.)

How does digital media limit the potential social benefits of moral outrage? (Crockett)

-Ideological segregation online prevents the targets of outrage from receiving messages that could induce them to change their behavior (echo chambers) -By lowering the threshold for outrage expression, digital media may degrade the ability of outrage to distinguish the truly heinous from the merely disagreeable -Expressing outrage online may result in less meaningful involvement in social causes -> i.e. thru volunteering or donating -Serious risk that moral outrage in the digital age will deepen social divides

Echo Chambers (Fletcher & Nielsen, 2017)

-In traditional & new media contexts, audience fragmentation is lesser than audience duplication (i.e. audience are exposed to multiple news sources) -This pattern is true not only in the USA, but among international audiences

What do we know about *Cognitive Load*?

-Increased motivational relevant &/or structural features increase resource allocation to a message -Messages which are more complex require more cognitive resources -Messages that are too complex are not well remembered

Patterns of Development (Potter)

-Innovation -Penetration -Peak -Decline -Adaptation

What are we to make of MACs?

-MACs promote moral deliberation in audiences -> i.e. greater appreciation for narrative -MACs allow audiences to "transcend their own limitations & boundaries" -> i.e. identifying with the character -MACs may introduce uncertainty into the narrative -> uncertainty leads to suspense

MACs in Soap Operas:

-MACs were liked almost as much as good characters -Had less positive outcomes -Were more enjoyed than appreciated

Media Literacy of Interactive Media: Personal Implications

-Make sure you have a clear distinction between opportunity & addiction -> must know how to control your time with them

Payne Fund Studies

-Measured effects of movie behavior on children & adolescents -13 specific studies from 1929-1932 -*Analyzed:* information processing, attitudes, sleep disruption, & meaning making

Oral Traditions: Storytelling

-Mechanism for transmitting history & culture -Serves two functions: transmits a lesson & entertains audiences

What does Huskey add to Crockett's argument that individuals show moral outrage when exposed to social media & this outrage is consistent w/ an individual's moral subculture?

-Moral subcultures emerge in response to media use & the moral profiles of these subcultures shape the evaluation of moral actions -Crockett's model should specify: message, source, & receiver characteristics that explain intensity of & variation in moral emotions

LC4MP: *Communication is an interactive exchange of info*

-Most of the models we have considered so far assume one-to-many models of communication -But humans control so many facets of communication: attentional state, changing the channel, & many forms of new media are many-to-many

Rewards of Moral Outrage (Crockett)

-Outrage expression provides reputational rewards -> outrage signals moral quality to others -Can also benefit society by holding bad actors accountable & sending a message to others that such behavior is socially unacceptable

"Functional" theory of media:

-People use media to solve perceived problems & in order to maintain equilibrium & personal stability -We must understand the medium in order to understand why people use it

How does *social cognitive theory* apply to violence?

-People were asked about media violence -They were asked: is the violence justified, rewarded, glamorized, realistic, etc.? -According to SCT, if they answered "yes" to these questions, it is more likely that someone will repeat violent behavior modeled in the media

3 Research Domains of LC4MP: *Cognitive Load*

-Primarily concerned w/ capacity limitations in the human info processing system -> how messages load the system & how different load levels impact message processing -Resources can be split into four parts: -> *Resources required:* messages can be more/less complex, which requires more/less resources -> *Resources allocated:* how many cognitive resources we give to a message -> *Resources available:* allocated minus required -> *Resources remaining:* total minus allocated

Next-Step Reality: Programmer's Perspective

-Producers try to make media that is a tad more dramatic than ordinary life -*Next-step reality* is used to persuade people into the "ease" of a product -> i.e. by not showing the true process of the product -Uses whatever will get the audience's attention (i.e. violent crimes rather than simple crimes -> rarer)

Costs of Moral Outrage (Crockett)

-Retaliating online reduces the risks of expressing moral outrage -Empathic distress -> online settings reduce this by representing other people as 2-D icons whose suffering is not readily visible

Why people use interactive media? *Social Determination Theory*

-SDT is a general motivational theory -> used to explain human behavior, generally -Therefore, it can also explain interactive media use -*General idea:* people desire autonomy, competence, & relatedness

Twin studies show that media use is heritable, especially in:

-Social media use -Political talk (FtF, online) -Computer use -Hours of TV watched -News consumption

What does Huskey say about Crockett's argument that exposure to moral content evokes stronger moral outrage in social media compared with in person?

-The hypothesis that social media increase moral outrage over other channels requires additional evidence

*Memory:* Retrieval

-The process by which info that has previously been stored in the brain is activated for reuse -New area of research, findings still preliminary -Key finding: emotional messages are better remembered than calm or neutral messages

Critiques of Cultivation Theory

-The theory is correlational not causal -> most cultivation research is survey-based & lacks an experimental manipulation (causal would mean finding children who had never experienced TV) -What constitutes "heavy" viewership is just a few hours a week & other times it is many more hours -The Cultivation effect disappears when the proper statistical controls are in place -> idea known as "mainstreaming"

Media Literacy of Interactive Media: Broader Implications

-Their growing popularity is changing economies & societies -Generates new forms of money (i.e. cryptocurrency) -Changes the way people can socialize (i.e. virtual interactions)

What can we say about immoral acts encountered *online*?

-There is evidence that immoral acts encountered online incite *stronger moral outrage* than immoral acts encountered in-person/thru other forms of media -The architecture of the attention economy creates a steady flow of 'clickbait' that people can access at any time

Patterns of Development: Innovation

-This is when a technology is first introduced -e.g. silent films -> "Talkies" -> etc. Characterized by two types of innovation: *Marketing:* a way to identify audiences & their needs w/ the goal of attracting audiences to a given message *Technological:* engineering innovation that creates a new way to transmit messages

How did Herbert Blumer measure movie effects? (1933)

-Used 1600 personal "movie autobiographies" & 1200 questionnaires to grade school aged children -*Analyzed:* info acquisition, attitude change, emotion stimulation, & health behavior

Patterns of Development: Adaptation

-When a medium begins to redefine its position in the marketplace -Think: how TV & movie studios are entering the streaming business (e.g. Twitch)

Patterns of Development: Penetration

-When a tech innovation begins to gain mass acceptance (e.g. Diffusion of Innovations Model -> Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards) -This causes: *media displacement:* use of one medium comes at the cost to the use of another *media growth:* when a new medium grows our total media use, either thru multitasking or displacement from other non-media activities

Patterns of Development: Peak

-When a tech innovation has reached peak market saturation (e.g. Broadcast TV -> Cable TV -> Internet [hasn't even peaked yet, 90% of U.S. adults had used in 2018; continues to grow])

Economic perspectives criticisms:

-When news decisions are made by marketers instead of journalists, the news coverage is confounded w/ advertising -Tends to change the content of the news in a way that is somehow harmful to the public

motivations

-When people have a conscious need for a particular kind of information, they will actively seek out this type of information in the media, and the chance of them learning from this experience is high.

The players: Media companies

-brings money, messages, and audiences to the game 1. talent market; bringing the best talent 2. audience market; to attract the greatest # of people, maximizing revenue 3. advertising market: construction of niche audiences valuable to advertisers

below-the-line workers

-clerical, fairly common skills can be learned and practiced by most, relatively low pay

Cognitive Load (in relation to LC4MP)

-cognitive resources can be split in a pie model (full pie = someone's complete cognitive resources) 1) Resources required: message complexity requires more or less complexity 2) Resources allocated: how many cognitive resources we can give to a message 3) Resources available = allocated - required 4) Resources remaining = total - allocated - Motivation-relevant = increased resource allocation to a message - Complex messages require more cognitive resources - Highly complex messages are not well-absorbed

Digital convergence

-digitization has lead to the ability to anyone the opportunity to create and disseminate material

Spyware

-downloaded from email attachment in which begins collecting info. w/ out your knowledge

what are the arguments for efficiency?

-economy strengthens as individual companies become stronger -w/deeper pockets they can meet the needs of more people

media literacy strategy

-expect higher return on resources they expend -we want more than minimal satisfaction -relies on the strength of personal locus

how has news perspective changed over time

-from socially responsible to marketing perspective b/c of the business constraints -used to be guided by the criteria of significance, proximity, and timeliness -criteria has changed to focus more on conflict, appeal to emotions, and visualization

Problem - determining a message unit

-how much transformation is necessary to alter a media message before it can/should be regarded as a different message

The importance of valuing resources

-how well the resources will achieve a goal and considering supply and demand -the more skill in those areas, the better you are at valuing resources

what were the criticisms of CBDTPA

-impossible task -not feasible to protect once in public domain -violated individuals rights to post-purchase flexible use of copyrighted material -far worse than piracy (speed bump for pirates and a road block for avg. buyer)

How was radio and the electromagnetic spectrum first regulated

-individuals had to apply to the FCC for broadcast frequency (am only allowed 117 frequencies) - FCC divided country into local markets and awarded some frequencies to each market (chose this method to be able to diversify the marketplace) (same method of local marketing was applied to TV originally in the 1940's)

Destroying information

-viruses: string of viral code hides itself w/ normal code until activation in which it begins destroying/erasing lines of existing data and file addresses, or by reformatting large sections of memory # of viruses continues to grow

1. Media messages are carriers of cultural messages 2. we are materialist and want instant gratification (themes studies by comstock and walsh)

. What do our stories tell us about our current culture?

In the development of Media Literacy, what are the 8 different stages?

1) Acquiring Fundamentals 2) Language Acquisition 3) Narrative Acquisition 4) Developing Skepticism 5) Intense Development 6) Experiential Exploring 7) Critical Appreciation 8) Social Responsibility

What are the seven specific skills (Media literacy)?

1) Analysis 2) Evaluation 3) Grouping 4) Induction 5) Deduction 6) Synthesis 7) Abstracting

Core Assumptions of the Uses and Gratifications Theory

1) Audience is active + media use is goal oriented 2) Audiences can link a specific gratification with a specific medium 3) Media compete with other resources for need satisfaction

What are the four exposure states?

1) Automatic 2) Attentional 3) Transported 4) Self-Reflexive

With children lack of maturity in relation to treating them as a special audience, what types of development do we need to keep in mind?

1) Cognitive Development - Jean Piaget's stages by age (sensorimotor, concrete, etc.) 2) Emotional Development - As we gain experience with emotions, we are able to make finer discriminations - Ex: anger vs fury, hatred, hospitality, etc. - Children have a hard time following plots and instead focus on individual elements - Emotional intelligence interacts with IQ - Emotional development is tied to cognitive development 3) Moral Development - Kohlberg's 3 Levels: Pre-Conventional Conventional, Post-Conventional

Type of Media Effects

1) Cognitive Type Effect 2) Belief Type Effect 3) Attitudinal Type Effect 4) Emotional Type Effect 5) Physiological Type Effect 6) Behavioral Type Effect 7) Macro Type Effect

What are the three types of Interactive Media?

1) Competitive Experience 2) Cooperative Experience 3) Acquisition Experience

According to Barbara Wilson, what are the three types of violent depictions? (+ what is the takeaway from this?)

1) Credible threats 2) Behavioral Acts 3) Outcomes of violence - Takeaway: Behavior (both seen and implied), threats, and outcomes against human/non-humans all count as violence

What are the 7 baseline factors effecting Media Effects?

1) Developmental Maturities 2) Cognitive Abilities 3) Knowledge Structures 4) Sociological Factors 5) Lifestyle 6) Personal Locus 7) Media Exposure Habits

What are the three natural emotional abilities?

1) Emotional Intelligence 2) Tolerance for Ambiguity 3) Non-impulsiveness

Info-Processing Tasks

1) Encounter message → decide to process or ignore (filter in vs out) 2) If processing, reorganize symbols + attach meaning to them 3) Construct meaning of the message

What are the Public's Faulty Perceptions when thinking about media violence? (three)

1) Equating Violence with Graphicness 2) Ignoring Context 3) Having a blind spot when it comes to harm from exposure to media violence

What are the four psychographic niches that Marketers have identified for players of electronic games?

1) Explorers → players who are curious + want to wander around inside the game world 2) Socializers → Players who interact with other players 3) Achievers → Attracted to the games in order to build something 4) Controllers → Want to dominate other players

What are the 4 natural cognitive abilities related to media literacy?

1) Field independency 2) Crystalline intelligence 3) Fluid intelligence 4) Conceptual differentiation

3 Essential Guidelines for Stories

1) Generate Conflict 2) Told from protagonist's POV 3) Trigger emotions in audience

What are the 5 types of niches?

1) Geographic Segmentation 2) Demographic Segmentation 3) Social Class Segmentation 4) Geodemographic 5) Psychographic

Five Assumptions of the LC4MP Theory

1) Human information capacity is limited 2) Two motivational systems: appetitive and aversive (approach vs avoidance) 3) Messages are continuing streams of information in multiple modalities 4) Communication is dynamic and happens over time 5) Communication is an interactive exchange of information

Levels of media literacy depend on how well you have developed knowledge structures in four areas:

1) Media industries 2) Media audiences 3) Media content 4) Media Effects

Scientific challenges with media and morality

1) Media's impact on morality is studied indirectly (we often don't manipulate the moral content in a message; and we study moral judgements as an effect or outcome of media) 2) Media and morality research is based on rationalists framework (underplays the role of intuition and emotion) 3) Newer intuitionist theories overcome these limitations (example with incest --> we know this is wrong but we can't really explain why --> moral judgments don't always have a logical/explainable reason)

When creating a campaign strategy, what are the three things that must be kept in mind?

1) Need to realize that advertising is both a science as well as an art 2) Planners must realize that advertising is a risky endeavor 3) The role of advertising has changed with the growing popularity of newer media along with the fragmentation of the population

What are the 5 News Perspectives?

1) Political 2) Traditional Journalism 3) News Working Perspective 4) Economic Perspective 5) Consumer Perspective

Three Stages of Moral Development

1) Pre-conventional stage: 2-7 2) Conventional Stage 3) Post-Conventional Stage

What are the four main themes when thinking about Media Violence?

1) Problematic Content 2) Controversy or No Controversy 3) What theories explain the effects of violent content on aggressions? 4) What should researchers do?

Four developmental milestones for children

1) Sensorimotor stage: 0-2 2) Pre-operational: 2-7 3) Concrete: 7-11 4) Formal Operational Stage: 12+

What are the three building blocks of media literacy?

1) Skills 2) Knowledge Structures 3) Personal Locus

Four dimensional analysis applied to internet addiction

1) Timing Long-term effect 2) Valence Positive for the media business 3) Intentionality People intentionally seek pleasure from the media, but not addiction 4) Type Internet Addiction can be considered a physiological, emotional, behavioral and belief effect

To build knowledge structures, you need:

1) Tools (skills) 2) Raw material (info from the media and the real world) 3) Willingness = personal locus

What 2 functions do oral traditions serve?

1) Transmit lessons 2) Entertain audiences

What are the five questions that one must answer in order to complete a campaign strategy? How can one answer them?

1) Who should be the target of the advertising campaign? 2) What is my primary advertising campaign objective? 3) How do my targets make their purchase decisions? 4) What is the key benefit I want to sell? 5) Should I use a product spokesman in my campaign?

what countries are the main centers of digital game development and production?

US UK Japan

What are the 3 advantages of developing a higher level of media literacy?

1) Your appetite for a wider variety of media messages will grow. 2) You learn more about how to program your own mental codes 3) You are able to exercise more control over the media

Four steps to social media wellness

1) recognize the problem 2) audit social media diet 3) create a better online experience 4) model good behavior

People can criticize ads based on their personal values. What are some of these claims against ads? Make sure you know all three and can provide examples.

1. Advertising is excessive: - Culture is saturated with advertising. - evaluative judgement, means that you must have a standard for what is an acceptable amount. If you have a high standard for excessiveness, then you will likely conclude that the amount of advertising has not yet reached that level, and therefore advertising is not excessive. - You must decide for yourself whether you think advertising is excessive or not. when you are making this decision, consider what your standard is for an acceptable amount of advertising 2. Advertising manipulates us into buying things we don't need: - Hierarchy of needs: - Humans most basic level of needs are those required for survival (food, water, shelter) - The next level is are the safety needs (freedom from attack from predators and disease) - Next is the social level of needs (friendship, family, and belonging to groups) - self-esteem level of needs (achievement, confidence, respect from others) - The highest level of need is self-actualization (fulfilling one's self through creativity and morality) 3. Advertising makes us too materialistic: - Americans say that they are dissatisfied with materialism despite all the abundance. Most Americans agree (80%) that most of us buy and consume far more than we need. - we keep asking for more products to consume, even when we believe that we are too materialistic.

a. Advertising Potentially Harmful Products b. Invading Protected Groups

1. Advertising potentially harmful products: - there are products that are potentially harmful to individuals, especially people do not use them properly. They are legally available, and the job of the marketer is to find new users as well as push existing users to buy more of the product. - Consumption of liquor, beer, and pharmaceutical products are all legal, and each can be used responsibly. However, the aggressive expansion of persuasive messages in the mass media to encourage people to use more of these products is likely to risk greater harm to society. 2. invading protected groups: - Psychologists, parents, and social critics are concerned about protecting children from a barrage of advertising, especially from inappropriate products. Children are not sophisticated in making decisions about how to spend their money

What are the three fundamental decisions that producers need to make about the game design? Define and explain each. Provide examples.

1. Category of Play 2. Formality of Play 3. Affective tone

Types of Comedies:

1. Character comedy: involves humor, which arises out of character quirks that illuminate the craziness of everyday situations 2. Put-down comedy: involves certain characters that have power over other characters and exercise that power in humorous ways.

What are the sub-genres of reality programming?

1. Documentary style 2. Reality-Legal 3. Reality Competition/ Game Show 4. Self-improvement/ makeover 5. Social Experiments 6. Hidden Camera 7. Supernatural/Paranormal 8. Hoax

audience characteristics for marketing games (four types)

1. Explorers; who are curious and want to wander around 2. Socializers; like to interact with other players 3. achievers; attracted to the game in order to build something; city/empire/wealth 4. Controllers; want to dominate others

What are the additional criteria that people may use while judging how realistic something is?

1. Factuality 2. Perceptual persuasiveness 3. Social utility 4. Identity 5. Emotional involvement 6. Plausibility 7. Typicality 8. Narrative consistency

What are the two reasons given for why traditional news outlets have been losing their audiences?

1. Failure to attract younger people 2. competition from alternative news outlets on the internet

What are some forms of cooperative experiences satisfied by interactive media?

1. Friendship (SNS; Facebook, Myspace) 2. Dating (Christian Mingle/tinder) 3. Living (Second Life) 4. Opinion Sharing (Tumblr, Twitter)

What makes electronic games attractive? Consider all three major reasons.

1. Games satisfy emotional and cognitive needs by providing challenges and triggering emotions 2. give a sense of control 3. opportunity to socialize with others

General Story Formula

1. Generate conflict 2. Told through the point of view of a character. 3. Trigger emotions

Controlling

1. Guiding us to certain products and away from others -claim its a benefit to us (more efficient) -much of the guidance is through advertisers who pay sites for directed attention ex. google - paid placement 2. Through past history (this is a problem b/c we are exposed to the same things) -tailoring our interests leads to narrowed exposure

What are some forms of acquisition experiences satisfied by interactive media?

1. Information (Search like Google) 2. Music (Napster, Lime Wire) 3. Video (youtube) 4. Shopping (Amazon)

Story Formulas

A key part of the news perspectives. The procedures that journalist learn as shortcuts to help them quickly select and write stories.

What is next step reality?

1. Next step reality is embedded in how media messages get produced and why certain messages attract large audiences whereas other messages do not. - Consider audience's perspective on the next-step reality. Why do people expose themselves to the media according to this perspective? - People find messages that they cannot get in real life, impossible to get messages in real life, and high cost to get message in real life. - From this perspective, what are the audiences looking for in the messages? Consider both factors? Are they in conflict with each other? How do they meet the needs of the audience? Consider fiction, persuasive messages, and news. - They also search for messages that have two general characteristics, first the messages must appear real, and the messages must present a little more than everyday reality; one step removed as in one step outside of the audience's everyday existence

What are the 5 major perspectives on news

1. Political Philosophy Perspective 2. Traditional Journalistic Perspective 3. News-working Perspective 4. Economic Perspective 5. Consumer Personal Perspective

What are the three major perspectives on news? Identify and explain each?

1. Political philosophy perspective: This is a normative not a descriptive perspective. The political philosophy perspective specifies what news should be. People who take this perspective on the news argue that news should focus on the most important events and people in a society in order to keep people up to date about what is most significant. 2. Traditional journalistic perspective: Journalists believe their purpose is to inform the public, rather than persuade the public. This is a normative not descriptive perspective

The book suggests that judgments of reality can vary widely even among people of the same age and experience. How so? Consider Voort study.

1. Some children become absorbed in watching violent videos >> judged violence to be realistic >> stronger emotional reaction >>belief that violence is bad 2. Other children who were absorbed in viewing violence >> believed it to be realistic >> had an uncritical attitude toward program violence>> less emotionally involved>>more aggressive behavior in real life.

changing public taste

1. Storytelling formulas must evolve as public tastes change overtime. The line of acceptability has changed over time. On television, sexual portrayals and violence that offended people in the 1980s would not faze people today. With music, the basic formula for popular songs is a story about love or sex, but the songs have become much more explicit overtime.

Four characteristics of the economic game of mass media:

1. The importance of valuing resources well 2. The complex interdependency among players 3. Digital convergence 4. The nature of competition

Four characteristics of the economic game of mass media:

1. The importance of valuing resources well 2. The complex interdependency among players 3. Digital convergence The nature of competition

From the journalists' perspective, what are the seven criteria an event must have in order to be considered newsworthy? Explain each.

1. Timeliness (current/relevant) 2. significance (magnitude of consequences of event) 3. proximity (how close event is to audience) 4. prominence (how well known people/institution is) 5. conflict (degree to which their is disagreement) 6. human interest (how strongly it appeal to emotions) 7. deviance (how out of the ordinary an event is)

Public opinion

1. american users want privacy when they go online 2. many users don't know the basics of how their online activities are observed and don't use available tolls to protect themselves

Piracy takes 3 forms

1. bootlegging (unauthorized recording of live delivery --> subsequent distribution) 2. counterfeiting (duplicating copyright messages along w/ packaging and selling it as the authorized product) 3. sharing copyright messages w/ out paying for the access

Hijacking

1. bot network activity - when someone takes control of your computer and links it up w/ others, using your networks IP address to send out messages (botnet: network of infected computers remotely controlled by hackers) 2. take over homepage w/ browser or implant search engine (done by advertisers) - directs you only to certain advertised websites

3 factors that make the violation possible:

1. digitization and high-speed transmission allows all kinds of people to gather and store information 2. regulations and laws favor businesses 3. level of public awareness is very low (very few people get the extent to which private information is lost)

Walsh's 1994 list of values

1. happiness is found in having things 2. get all you can for yourself 3. get it all as quickly as possible 4. win at all costs 5. violence is entertaining 6. always seek pleasure and avoid boredom - unmistakeable message is that kids are on their own w/ no need to listen to parents , who know little or nothing anyway; helps tv industry certify teenagerts as autonmous culutre w/ its own set of ethics and consumption patterns

Complex interdependency

1. highly dynamic and interrelated 2. decision makers experience cross-purpose (ex. working for a large newspaper company and buying stock in that company) 3. media vehicles compete in different markets

What points are the evidence of harm?

1. increased barriers to entry 2. reduced level of competition 3. reduced # of public voices 4. Reduced range of content

Privacy is characterized by 4 ideas:

1. individuals don't want to share all information about themselves w/ everyone 2. Privacy is a variable condition; share w/ some and not w/ others 3. We own our personal information and should be able to control it 4. We expect those who know our secrets to respect our boundaries

What are the two reasons why people are motivated to het certain messages but go to the media rather than get those messages in real life?

1. it's impossible for them to get those messages in real life 2. the costs of getting those messages in the media are far lower then cost required in real life

New market model

1. market smaller units of messages 2. media message marketers to regard their messages as both advertising and commercial investment

Comstock's 1989 List of values

1. material consumption is very satisfying 2. the world is a mean and risky place/there is a great deal of violence and crime throughout the tv world 3. tv world has turned the social pyramid upside down by showing most characters as wealthy and powerful, and very few of them as working class 4. males are more powerful than females in terms of income/job status/decision making; this is slowly changing, but we are still far from a balance of power 5. occupational status is highly valued; pro occupations are depicted as worthwhile, whereas manual work is uninteresting; people attain this status through quick and painless upward mobility from middle class -> accomplished through self-confidence and toughness; goodness of character alone is not enough 6. there are a few privileged professions in which the people are almost always shown as doing good and helping others, however most business people are shady: frequently portrayed as taking advantage of the gullible public and abusing their power 7. law enforcers are overrepresented as being successful/strong/justified; private eyes are almost always shown as better than police 8. there is a belief in the occult/life on other planets/life after death/hidden malevolent purposes behind the inexplicable 9. a person's self interest is very important; people are motivated to get what they want regardless of the feelings of others 10. there are often truly heroic acts portrayed where there are daring rescues/selflessness/loyalty to others/the struggle against difficult odds to do the right thing

From this perspective, what are two general characteristics are the audiences looking for in the messages?

1. messages must appear real 2. messages must present a little more than everyday reality, one-step removed

Some legal action

1. music industry injunction on napster - however other companies took napsters place (later sued mp3.com) 2. 2001 suit against streamcast 3. 2007 viacom suing youtube and google 4. 2011 media companies taking more aggressive attacks against individuals (find piraters and get ISP's to cut internet service)

How can we make judgments about quality of news?

1. objectivity 2. truthfulness 3. Neutrality 4. Accuracy as a criterion for news involves truthfulness and neutrality but there is more. 5. context

Privacy Strategy

1. remove private info. 2. correct inaccuracies 3. continually monitor threats 4. download protection software 5. set-up browsers to disallow cookies

What are the formulas that journalists use to construct news stories? Make sure you know all three types and can provide examples.

1. the inverted pyramid formula 2. Entertainment Formula 3. Simplified extended conflict (SEC) most popular formula!!

development of multiple revenue streams

1. try to appeal to more than one audience 2. try several ways to generate revenue from the same audience (movie, leasing to airlines, toys, etc.); conglomerates quickly create revenue streams for one message

what is the fraction of working female journalists?

1/3 working journalists are women

How many broadcast frequencies did the FCC have?

117

Today we have an estimated ______ book titles in existence.

140 million

how much time does an average teen spend texting compared to reading newspapers

19 times more time texting

According to the textbook, the radio was at its peak in ______.

1920s and 1930s

In which decade the first lead homosexual characters first appeared on television?

1990s

c. Invading Privacy d. Altering Needs

3. Invading privacy: - In their pursuit of their economic goals, advertisers continually invade your privacy by monitoring your economic transactions, and by invading your day to day lives with messages designed to alter your behavior. Advertisers collect information on every product you buy, they monitor your interests on blogs and social networking sites. Online retailers know that 98% of visitors in online shopping leave without purchasing anything. So they collect data on each of these people and send them messages to lure them back to what they visited, this is called retargeting. 4. Altering needs: - advertising alters our beliefs about needs in several ways, one way is that it has shifted our beliefs in needs from public goods to private goods. - Public goods are those that are owned by society and are open for sharing for free or for a modest fee. Beaches, city streets, bridges, public transportation system. - Private goods are those that you buy, own, and control (your clothing, car, furniture, phone) - Advertising has also conditioned us to believe that we have more and more need. It does this by subtly and gradually shaping our standards about success, romance, and beauty. Then it leads us to believe that we are not living up to those standards.

There are currently over ______ Internet users in the world.

3.2 billion

Age patterns in the television world

3/4 of all television characters were between the ages of 20 and 50, but in the real world, only 1/3 of the population is between these ages.

general story formula PERCENTAGES and which two movies are perfect according to this?

30% action 17% comedy 13% good versus evil 10% plot 12% love/sex/romance 10% special effects 8% music - Titanic - Toy Story 2

A single company now can own as many TV stations as it wants so long as coverage of that set of stations is less than or equal too...

39.5% of viewers

According to the textbook, the peak stage for broadcast television lasted for ______.

40 years

what percent of women work in motion pictures

40%

What percentage of adults get news online, and what percentage of these adults are over 65?

43%; 67%

what percent of women are the labor force

45%

what percent of news stories were one sided, that is a second side was not covered at all?

48%

at what age can children distinguish btwn. fictional programs and news or documentaries

5

The Developing Skepticism stage occurs from about ages _________, and the Intensive Development stage is ________

5-9; shortly after

what percent of news stories are the same

56%

Violence

57% of all programs analyzed had some form of physical violence and 1/3 of programs presented nine or more physical violent interactions. Verbal violence is even more prevalent on television than is physical violence.

Moral Foundations Theory (MFT)

6 moral foundations: *Care/Harm* *Fairness/Cheating* *Loyalty/Betrayal* *Authority/Subversion* *Sanctity/Degradation*

Ethnicity Patterns in the television world

80% of all characters were White Americans. African Americans were only 2% until late 1960s when they jumped to 10%, 1990s they accounted for about 16% of main and minor roles. Hispanics made up 2% of T.V. characters.

what percent of the production sector are men and women?

90% men 10% women

self improvement/ makeover

: Viewers are amazed as a real world person or object is drastically improved. (Extreme Makeover, Pimp My Ride)

Sex

A large number of people in the American culture are offended by sexual portrayals and nudity on television.

Perceptual exposure

A human's ability to receive appropriate sensory input thru visual & auditory senses

public opinion

A Lou Harris poll found that the percentage of Americans concerned about their privacy rights grew from 34% in 1970 to 90% in 1998. A survey by the Pew Research Center found that people are becoming more aware of threats to their privacy. 54% of mobile users decided not to install an app after learning about the amount of information it would collect. 30% of mobile users uninstalled an app after discovering that it was collecting personal information that they did not want to share.

copy platform

A copy platform is structured by six questions. What message strategy should be used? There are basically seven options: generic, buy our burger it costs 99 cents; preemptive, our burger is the cheapest; Unique Selling Point It's the only one with secret ingredient; brand image, Because it's a McDonalds burger; positioning, High quality like ... and inexpensive like... ;affective, and Triggers emotion ;resonance. Evooke pleasant memory

Displacement

A less life-threatening, but more widespread, effect of playing MMORPGs.

Automaticity

A mental state where our minds operate without the perception of conscious effort

What are knock-offs?Example?

A new TV series where producers try to copt the formula of a successful tv series from other producers. Hardcore Pawn is a knock-off series of Pawn Stars.

What are spin-offs? Examples?

A new tv series that is a direct extension of a successful TV series by the same producers. The Real Housewives Series, started with Orange County and then branched off to more cities.

What is "Magic Window"? Please define.

A perspective that regards media messages as a window on the world that resents the actual occurrences from the real world un an undistorted manner.

Moral outrage (Crockett)

A powerful emotion that motivates people to shame & punish wrongdoers -> can have a good & a bad side

Selective Exposure

A psychological concept that says people seek out information that conforms to their existing belief systems and avoid information that challenges those beliefs.

romance

A romance story begins with a person experiencing either loneliness from a lack of a relationship or a relationship that is bad due to betrayal, jealousy, or fear.

Content Analysis

A scientific technique of counting occurrences of various things.

What is media literacy?

A set of perspectives that we actively use to expose ourselves to the mass media to process and interpret the meanings of the messages we encounter

Fluctuation Effects (of Media)

A temporary change to the baseline effects of media -> usually temporary, after a brief period of time & then the risk level returns to the base level

destroying information

A virus is a small string of code that inserts itself to a normal software program and then begins to destroy your stored information. Computer viruses are highly contagious. In 2011, Symantec Corporation that markets Norton Utilities computer software estimated that there are over one million viruses.

"Mean World Syndrome"

A worldview that with exaggerated sense of victimization, apprehension, insecurity, anxiety, and mistrust.

A) What are the two reasons why people are motivated to get certain messages through the media rather than real life? B) What are the two characteristics of messages that these people would search for?

A) 1) Impossible to get certain messages/experiences irl 2) Costs of getting messages from media are less than IRL B) Must appear real and must present something more than everyday reality

What can you do? Consider the following: a. Information Assessment b. Threat Assessment c. Privacy Strategy

A. Information assessment: - take an inventory about what information is publicly available to you. - Map your information by privacy levels. B. Threat assessment: - use your desired privacy map as the standards for what should be shared when compare your desired privacy levels to what websites are doing to protect or invade your privacy. - To protect their privacy a small number of users are devising their own opt in policies and deciding some websites are not worthy o their personal information. C. Privacy strategy: - Remove private information - Be vigilant, search for yourself on people finder sites every few months, to make sure data collectors have not added you back again - download software to protect your computer from threats to your privacy - Set up your internet browsers to disallow cookies as the default.

Four types of players in media's economic game:

A. The consumer (contribute resources -> money, time, attention) B. The advertisers (contribute money for time & space in media) C. The media companies (contribute money, messages, & audiences to the game) D. The employees of media companies (contribute time, skills, & talent to the game)

Consider criminal threats to our privacy: a. What are the different ways in which our private information can be stolen? b. What are the dangers of the identity theft? c. What is hijacking?

A. What are different ways in which our private information can be stolen? - Spyware is a small program that you inadvertently download into your computer, which records keystrokes, sites visited, and even personal information such as credit card numbers, email address, passwords etc. - Phishing: is a technique used to acquire sensitive information from unaware users by seemingly trustworthy message senders. - hacking is a set of computer techniques used to break through "secure" databases B. What are the dangers of identity theft: - If someone gains access to you name, date of birth, and social security number they can steal your identity - Identity thieves ruin individual's credit - 85% of victims of identity theft found out about the crime due to an adverse situation - Criminals can now buy verified credit card numbers for as little as $1 and full identities for about $14 - Every year in the united states 10 million people become victims of identity theft. - On average victims lose between $851 and $1378 out of pocket trying to resolve identity theft. C. Hijacking: - Another invasion of privacy is when your computer is hijacked and used by hackers without your permission and often without your knowledge - Hijackers use bot network activity is a network of infected computers (bots) that is remotely controlled by hackers who put these computers into round the clock service sending spam, fishing for credit card numbers, spying on internet traffic. Some of these bot nets have been found to send 30 billion spam emails per day. - Another form of hijacking, is done by advertisers, is to take over your homepage with a browser or to implant a search engine in your computer.

What are the non-criminal threats to your privacy? a. Who can and is monitoring you? How? b. Who can sell your information?

A. Who can and is monitoring you? how? - Every time you use your computer, your activities are being monitored. ISP's track your internet activity. ISP's (internet service providers) collect information on which websites you visit and for how long. - Facebook, Google, and other sites monitor your activity using cookies. Cookies are tiny computer files that are planted on your hard drive when you access many websites. These were created to allow online retailers to keep track of items shoppers put in their "shopping cart" Netscape created cookies telling people it would make their experiences with internet sites easier.

Concern: cultural imperialism (Global nature of ownership)

An equal relationship, favoring more powerful culture, characterized by cultural shift and conflict

Media literacy stimulates us to _________

Adapt to our changing world rather than to ignore those changes or deny them

What can the incident with Gilligan's Island described in the book suggest about this issue?

Adults vary in a degree of sophistication of their reality judgments and many overestimate degree of reality on reality TV and news. So some people saw Gilligan's Island as reality, so much to the point where they made it their business to try and get them help.

advertising makes us too ___________

Advertising makes us too materialistic Dissatisfaction with materialism Keep asking for more products to consume

character patterns: stereotypes

African Americans Gender Occupations Families Elderly characters Body image Sexual Orientation make characters recognizable to viewers, but can be harmful

category of play

Agon a struggle or contest (competition is the focus; competition is the source of enjoyment) Alea risk , uncertainty Games of chance Mimicry imitate, copy role playing, make believe Ilinx whirlpool vertigo, fairground rides Exploration Discovery, new places, new experiences Social play Making friends, communities, clans etc...

This of the Survivor show. How is it made? Can you explain how it speaks to the audience's and producer/programmers' perspective on next step reality?

Although the characters are real, non-scripted people, they are more attractive and more prone to conflict than ordinary people. The audience sees only 2% of what is actually filmed.

Mystery in drama

An important element is missing in the plot. The 'who did it" element.

analyze your personal

Analyze Your Personal Needs The more you are aware of your needs, the more you can use advertising to control your life. Ask yourself, "How aware am I of my needs?" One of the biggest dangers concerning the manipulation of our natural needs is with prescription drugs. In 2008, the average person was exposed to 16 hours of ads for prescription drugs, which is more time than they spent with their primary care doctors. Analyze Your Personal Needs The more you are aware of your needs, the more you can use advertising to control your life. Ask yourself, "How aware am I of my needs?" One of the biggest dangers concerning the manipulation of our natural needs is with prescription drugs. In 2008, the average person was exposed to 16 hours of ads for prescription drugs, which is more time than they spent with their primary care doctors.

programmers

Anchor message in real world, but tell stories that are bigger than life Remove audience from reality one step at a time; formula with farce

hijacking

Another invasion of privacy is when your computer is hijacked and used by hackers without your permission and often without your knowledge. Hijackers use botnets to allow spammers to send out messages under your IP address. Another form of hijacking, which is done by advertisers, is to take over your homepage with a browser or to implant a search engine in your compute

Language

Another study found that profanity on network T.V, increased 69% form 2005 to 2010 and that the greatest increases were during the so-called family hour from 8pm to 9pm.

Misperceptions of reality

As we age we do not automatically learn how to differentiate between reality and fantasy Believing that we do, is a fantasy

big data

Big Data means, in essence, that everything we do, both on and offline, leaves digital traces. Every purchase we make with our cards, every search we type into Google, every movement we make when our mobile phone is in our pocket, every "like" is stored. Especially every "like." For a long time, it was not entirely clear what use this data could have—except, perhaps, that we might find ads for high blood pressure remedies just after we've Googled "reduce blood pressure.

organizing principle

Audience exposure decisions guided by desire for it It also guides decisions from programmers' perspective

professionalism part 3

Autonomy refers to how professionals are able to do their jobs with a great deal of individual discretion and that external influence over the work process itself should be non-existent or minimal. Journalists have always sought to be independent from outside pressures in a quest to report the news accurately.

Action/Horror

Driven by good and evil. Characters are stereotypes or comic book types. Characters are static. Violence is a staple.

Define and describe Manifest and Process Effects

Manifest effects - can be observed Process effects - always going on in our minds to influence us

Trend towards concentration

Bagdikian (ownership in the hands of 50 in 1983, 23 by 1992, shrunk to 5 by 2004) -mergers continue to increase -globalization has been working both ways; american companies market entertainment services worldwide

How can the concept of "magic window" be used to explain negative effects of TV on children?

Based on the television that children watch, their perceptions of reality can be very skewed.

Behavior Change vs Information Processing

Behavior Change: - messages composed around what gets people to change their mind (organized around understanding the routes to behavior change) - answers questions about routes to behavior intention and change - Guides the selection of routes and beliefs to target Information Processing: - What is going on when people are actually being exposed to a media message in the first place - Answers questions about psychological processes and context

What does it mean to be aware from the media literacy perspective?

Being aware means thinking about where you are in the spectrum and knowing the different standards of appreciation to apply to different places on the spectrum of reality

the key to media literacy is to be flexible and aware

Being flexible means being willing to traverse the entire spectrum of messages and being willing to enjoy the full range of messages. Being aware means thinking about where you are in the spectrum and knowing the different standards of appreciation to apply to different places on the spectrum of reality

What is deregulation?

Belief that strong vertical integration will drive away competition and exploit the consumer

"Modern" Entertainment

Beyond survival, humans have gained the capacity to redirect energy toward art, culture, storytelling, music, ceremony, etc.

lack of Bias

Bias is a willful distortion on the part of a journalist, but it is difficult for audiences to recognize when this is occurring. Difference between perceived bias and actual bias

Commercialism

Businesses are shooting to reach a large audience in order to rent them to advertisers; must make sure not to offend those audiences

How are electronic game experiences different from board game experiences?

By playing a game on a computerized platform, we have a greater variety of games available; we can start the game at any time we want and pause the game for however long we want; we can take as much time as we need; we can receive immediate feedback on our performance; We can take the game anywhere we want

In 1999, Viacom announced a merger with which television business?

CBS

documentary styles

Cameras record what happens in everyday life. (Big Brother, Jersey Shore)

Psychological exposure

Can be both central (conscious) & peripheral (subconscious) In order for this exposure to happen, there must be some trace element in a person's mind already (i.e. an image, sound, emotion, etc.)

Designing Electronic Game Platforms

Can be organized into 9 steps Teams of about 12 to 20 people, each with different specialized skills, work on developing each game, which takes about 15 to 18 months to create and test.

Marketing convergence

Changed the way media programmers regard audiences & how they develop their messages; tech changes have forced media businesses to move away from a certain medium & focus much more on the messages & the audiences

Psychological convergence

Changes in people's perceptions about barriers that previously existed that are now breaking down or totally eliminated due to recent changes in the media

reality programming became a recognizable genre in 2000

Characteristics of reality programming include real, non-scripted people in unordinary situations

health: deceptive health patterns

Characters not shown having healthy habits, but shown as thin, fit, and healthy High degree of violence, little suffering Everyday health maladies rarely shown Mental health portrayed stereotypically Doctors over-represented

Pre-conventional stage

Child depends on authority External conscious

How can the concept of "Magic Window" be used to explain negative effects of TV on children?

Children initially viewed that all of TV was a magic window that showed literal reality and that until children learned how to tell the difference between reality and fantasy, they were vulnerable to many negative effects.

Macro effects

Cognitive, belief, attitudinal, emotional, physiological, behavioral (media can also influence organizations)

Types of Media Effects

Cognitive: plants ideas & info into our minds (can be factual & social) Belief: shows us values used by people in the news & characters in fictional stories Attitudinal: evaluative judgements about things -> we compare media messages to our standard Emotional: media that makes us feel things Physiological: influences our automatic bodily systems Behavioral: media messages that trigger our actions (e.g. ordering a product we saw an ad for) Macro: media's influence on larger units -> i.e. organizations, institutions, society, etc.

Disposition Theory of Comedy

Comedy: drama containing cues that it should not be taken seriously Theory applied to comedy -> suggests we should laugh at the misfortunes of disliked others

evaluate ads

Compare your personal needs to what the ads are telling you. Does advertising have a positive or negative influence on your life?

Three types of interactive media platforms

Competitive experience, cooperative experience, acquisition experience

What is interactive media? (Potter)

Competitive, cooperative, acquisition

Cognitive Abilities (baseline factors effecting Media Effects)

Each of the four cognitive abilities → field dependency, type of intelligence, type of thinking, and conceptual differentiation → has a influence on establishing a person's baseline for media effects

d. What are the potential dangers of a database security breach? Consider timeline issue 6.1 in the book as you are preparing for this question. e. What are the threats of a computer virus? f. What is hacktivism? Consider international level cybercrime

D. What are the potential dangers of a database security breach? - Database security is becoming more difficult because of the "cloud" The cloud is a really large network of computers and storage devices for information. So you are able to access your information from different devices. - Cloud services generated $41 billion in 2010. - The federal government is encouraging the digitization of heal information, this comes at the risk of invasion of privacy by hackers. - with many databases containing highly sensitive and personal information all existing on the same network, this becomes an enormously attractive target for hackers. E. What are the threats of a computer virus? - A virus is a string of code that inserts itself to a normal software program and then begins to destroy your stored information. Computer viruses are highly contagious - Because most viruses remain hidden most users have no idea they are passing around the virus until it is too late. - In 2011 Symantec corporation that markets Norton Utilities software estimated that there are over one million viruses. F. What is hacktivism, consider international level crime. - Hacktivism is the use of hackers' techniques to break into organizations' secure databases for the purpose of either damaging those databases or using the information to publicly embarrass the organization. - Foreign governments are engaging in cybercrime against US businesses, individuals, and even the US government agencies - The North Korean government hacked Sony's database after the film company promoted the movie the interview - the most serious cybercrime comes from China, which accounts for 43% of all attacks against businesses, government agencies and officials.

Media Exposure Habits (baseline factors effecting Media Effects)

Each of us has a set of media exposure habits that focuses out attention on certain media and certain types of messages presented by those media

Mixed Outlook of TV News

Decline in local news; viewership of network news went up from 2008 to 2016

Desensitization

Decreased physiological, emotional, and cognitive responses to real world violence

When people get their news online, what are they usually looking for?

Desire for targeted content and efficiency

Paradigms of uses & gratifications research:

Distinguishing between: -*Gratifications sought* (what I wanted from the media) -*Gratifications obtained* (what I actually got from the media)

next step reality is fundamental to media literacy

Do not ask, "How real are media messages?" Ask, "Which elements in this message reflect reality and which elements are removed from reality in some way?"

emotional involvement

Does the media message engage people's feelings so they are pulled into the action and feel it is really happening?

Emotional Involvement

Does the media message engage people's feelings so they are pulled into the action and feel it is really happening?

social utility

Does the media message portray social lessons that can be used by people in their everyday lives?

Social Utility

Does the media message portray social lessons that can be used by people in their everyday lives?

plausibility

Does the media message portray something that could happen?

Plausibility

Does the media message portray something that could happen?

typicality

Does the media message portray something that usually happens?

Typicality

Does the media message portray something that usually happens?

perceptual persuasiveness

Does the media message present characters and settings that look real?

Perceptual Persuasiveness

Does the media message present characters and settings that look real?

Factuality

Does the message show what actually happened? This is the idea of magic window which asks: Is the media message an accurate, unadorned view through a window on actual events and people?

factuality

Does the message show what actually happened? This is the idea of magic window which asks: Is the media message an accurate, unadorned view through a window on actual events and people?

narrative consistency

Does the plot of the story make people believe that the sequence of actions is believable?

Narrative Consistency

Does the plot of the story make people believe that the sequence of actions is believable?

Identity

Does the way characters are portrayed in media messages lead people to believe that those characters are very much like people in their everyday lives?

identity

Does the way characters are portrayed in media messages lead people to believe that those characters are very much like people in their everyday lives?

Controversies

Does using violent media because aggression and violence in real life? What is causality and how do we establish it? What do we know from research? Is this research high-quality?

Disposition Theory of Drama

Drama: a series of events involving intense conflict *Elements:* conflict, interesting characters, satisfying resolution, etc. Theory applied to drama -> usually a strong like/dislike for characters increases involvement; favorable ending for the liked person leads to viewer enjoyment

shopping

E-commerce is relatively new but accounts for 6.4% of all retail sales in the U.S. Amazon and Ebay are popular e-commerce sites.

the nature f news and its transmission has changed over time

Early news was shared through interpersonal communication. Newspapers did not begin until the 16th century in Italy. Following the Civil War, there was increased literacy in the U.S. This was seen as an opportunity to develop newspapers with large circulations. The era of big news was lasted from increased newspaper readership through the penetration of the radio in the 1920s to the 1970s when it reached its peak.

Economic vs Consumer Perspective

Economic doesn't always match what consumers need → just wants to maximize revenue and minimize expenses

Rise and Fall of "Big News"

Editors of these newspapers regarded the population as hungry for news but needed to be told what was most important.

attraction to electronic games

Electronic games allow players to satisfy emotional and cognitive needs. Games arouse people and trigger emotions. Completing challenges gives players a sense of competence. Despite living complicated lives, games may help people feel in control. Electronic games may offer opportunities for socialization.

In the 17th century daily newspapers, who were the audience?

Elites, people who could read and who could pay for info. Merchants had a keen value for accurate info. Early journalists were concerned with accuracy so they worked to gain the Merchant's approval and credibility.

How do media organizations appeal to existing needs & interests?

Employs two tactics: 1. Try to appeal to your existing needs & interests 2. Use cross-media & cross-vehicle promotion to attract your attention

Memory (in relation to LC4MP)

Encoding: - A perception and information selection process wherein stimuli from the environment are developed into a coherent mental representation - As resource allocation increases, so does encoding Storage: - Increased appetitive system activation leads to increased encoding - Messages that are too difficult to process benefit from concordant information Retrieval: - Process by which info that has previously been store in the brain is activated for reuse - Emotional messages are better remembered than calm or neutral messages

Mass Media Economy: Nature of Competition

Existence of monopolistic AND competitive markets Monopolistic competition: each firm is large relative to the size of the market for its products & firms in an industry compete aggressively for resources; every company can enter the market & compete for audiences, but only a few companies are very skilled at doing so

noncriminal threats 1. monitoring

Every time you use your computer, your activities are being monitored. ISPs track your Internet activity. Facebook makes a copy of everything all users post through its service; this includes photos, text, audio, video, links, and personal information. Facebook, Google, and other sites monitor your activity using cookies. Cookies are tiny computer files that are planted on your hard drive when you access many websites. Cookies were created to allow online retailers to keep track of items shoppers put in their "shopping carts." Netscape created cookies. Companies for means other than online shopping can use cookies. Pharmatrak, Inc., a Boston technology firm, acknowledged tracking consumers' activities on health- related sites without informing the public. Your phone company has data on where you travel each day and whom you make calls to. Beware of free apps; when you download them, the app provider can access your private data and information. With the Internet and cell phones, employers have a much easier task with monitoring the activities of their employees.

Applying Implementation (How)?

Expectation violation is neurally encoded, and results in the speaker taking a step backward

Applying David Marr's Tri-Level Framework to Communication

Expectation violation theory 1) Computation (Why): Share information with a conversational partner Expectation: interpersonal conversations take place with 1- 4 feet between speakers Violation: conversational partner enters speaker's personal space (less than one goot 2) Algorithm (What): interaction partner stands too close, expectation violation Violation: function of reward value of the initiator, the direction of deviation from expectations, and the amount of deviation Translated: violation is modulated by initiator 3) Implementation (How): Expectation violation is neurally encoded, and results in the speaker taking a step backward Expectation violation is neurally encoded, and results in the speaker taking a step backward Violation: maps onto a neural process where one brain structure computer expectation, and another computes actuality

1. Obscenity: -altered by FCC -depends on context -more during "Family Hour" 2. has racial and gender slurs

Explain "Language" in controversial content

1. most studied form of media content 2. 60-80% of all entertainment programs 3. mostly in movies 4. includes physical and verbal aggression 5. violence level higher in real world

Explain "violence" in controversial content

1. Frequency: -mostly in teen TV -2/3 of network shows contain sex related content (5 scenes/hour) 2. Consequences -topics about safe sex, responsibilities, and risk are increasingly included -but not much overall

Explain the 2 aspects in "sex" in controversial content

Cultivation Theory

Exposure to TV changes viewer attitudes, and the change in these attitudes should differ depending on how much TV is consumed.

Media literacy increases when information consumption increases.

False

Most depictions of sexual behavior are presented responsibly from a health point of view.

False

Tragedy and mystery are comedy subgenres.

False

We can avoid using automatic routines.

False

We should never seek to understand fantasy in the media.

False

With the comedy formula, major conflict situations flare up.

False

You should not necessarily seek to have your opinions consistent with your behaviors.

False

What are the primary characteristics of the process of designing electronic game platforms?

First, an idea is conceived and sketched out in a demo Second, a team of designers determines what a player will do while playing the game Third, artists render the environments and characters Fourth, programmers take the instructions from designers/artists and write the code Fifth, when enough code is written, an alpha version is tested sixth, where the alpha test reveals design flaws, corrections are made seventh, a beta version is made available for wider testing. The goal of the beta is get people hooked eighth, when management is satisfied with beta testing, the game "goes gold" and is released to the publisher ninth, the publisher designs the box, reproduces the game disks, and distributes them to wholesale and retail outlets

What are the six design rules that help condition players for repeat playing?

First, there must be some reward to the player, and the reward must go only to the good players second, the game should be easy to learn third, the game should be predictable fourth, the game should be consistent; the outcome of action should always be the same fifth, there should be a fair degree of familiarity; designers should consider what players bring to the game and use it sixth, the game should be challenging

Economic Perspectives

Focuses on how news organizations operate as businesses in the way they allocate their resources in order to achieve their primary business goal, which is to increase profits by maximizing revenue and minimizing expenses.

Consumers' Strategies: Default Strategy

Follows our unconscious, preprogrammed habits b/c these default strategies require little effort & delivers familiar satisfactions (i.e. getting on Facebook every morning)

formulas

For gathering information on a story, journalists follow the formula of asking six questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? The inverted pyramid formula tells the journalist to put the most important information at the beginning of the story, then add the next most important set of information. Another popular formula is to use a narrative to tell a story in an entertainment format. Simplified extended conflict (SEC) is a formula in which journalists look for an angle of conflict that appears very simple but can be played out over a period of time.

Accuracy as a criterion for news involves truthfulness and neutrality but there is more.

Full set of Facts Presenting only a partial story is a type of distortion that is not usually regarded as bias. One form of partial story is when a major story stops getting covered, even though important events continue to occur. Another type of partial story is when a journalist tells a story from a single point of view. Context Context is what helps audiences understand the meaning of the event in the news stories.

character patterns: demographics

Gender (more male) Ethnicity (more white) Age (more mid age) Marital status (more women are married) Socioeconomic status (more rich) Occupations (more doctors and detectives)

"Mainstreaming"

Gerbner countered: subgroup analyses are important. They change the outcome/results.

"News Perspective"

Grows naturally out of their everyday practices.

Why is advertising so important to our economy?

Grows our economy; makes it possible for new goods to enter markets & lets us know immediately that they are available

General Entertainment Storytelling Formulas

Guidelines about how to attract any audience. How to hold that audience's attention while the story unfolds. How to resolve the action with a satisfying conclusion.

hacktivism

Hactivism is the use of hackers' techniques to break into organizations' secure databases for the purposes of either damaging those databases or using the information to publically embarrass the organization. Foreign governments are engaging in cybercrime against US businesses, individuals, and even the US government agencies. The North Korean government hacked Sony's database after the film company promoted the movie The Interview. The most serious cybercrimes come from China, which account for 43% of all attacks.

Takeaway of Cultivation Theory

Heavy TV viewers see the world as more dangerous than light TV viewers *"Mean World Syndrome":* a worldview that with exaggerated sense of victimization, apprehension, insecurity, anxiety, & mistrust due to heavy TV viewing

Cultivation Theory (Takeaways)

Heavy TV viewers see the world as more dangerous than light TV viewers.

What is the takeaway of Cultivation Theory?

Heavy viewers see the world as more dangerous than light viewers

Context

Helps audiences understand the meaning of the event in the news stories. -w/o context, the story has ambiguous meaning.

Companies manipulate us through subliminal advertising

Hoax Unconscious impact Alter our perceptions of what is real Layers of meaning

Body Image

Hollywood movies are also a target of critics of the media's obsession with a certain type of body image.

1. media messages come to us first 2. cuts the time to distinguish whats reality or fantasy

How can media literacy help with understanding/dealing with next-step reality?

analyze ads

How do advertisers construct the campaign strategy and copy platform? Very little of the advertising are designed to convince people to buy products. Most ads are aimed at target groups of people who already use the product. Reinforcement is the powerful effect of advertising.`

1. use research to understand what audiences want 2. violence is a popular genra, but the arousing narture of violence is the active element 3. humor is popular, but not universal 4. suspense varies for evryone

How do media producers use scholarly research and provide examples?

a. Advertising Potentially Harmful Products b. Invading Protected Groups c. Invading Privacy d. Altering Needs

How does criticisms towards advertising being irresponsible is justified?

affective tone

How does the designer want the player to feel?

Technological convergence

How innovations about storing & transmitting info have brought about changes to the mass media industries

What is Implementation?

How is the behavior physically implemented?

1. Don't ask "how real are media messages" - Ask, "Which elements in this message reflect reality and which elements are removed from reality in some way?" calls for the questions of distinguishing elements that reality posses

How should one phrase their questions about media message reality?

Takeaway from Media Entertainment

Humans have evolved the capacity to learn from stories

Monitoring

ISP's collect information on which sites you frequent and how long you stay on those sites

Simplified extended conflict

If the story can be played out over several days, or longer, so much the better. ex. Political elections

Dealing with Risk

If they choose stories that are too standard and formulaic, they risk boring viewers who will not return, however, if they break with the formulas too much, they risk confusing viewers or offending them.

quality matters

If we don't periodically evaluate the quality of our news sources, we run the risk of believing we are well informed when in reality we are not.

Quality Matters

If we don't periodically evaluate the quality of our news sources, we run the risk of believing we are well informed when in reality we are not. Due to selective exposure, we are likely to gravitate to stories that confirm our existing beliefs.

Twin studies show that media use _______

Is heritable - Socialized into media preferences - Social media use - Computer use - Hours TV watching - News consumption - Media usage (20-50%)/behaviors are genetically based

Immediate effect

Is one that occurs during your exposure to a media message, and the evidence of that effect is observable during the exposure or immediately after.

Children's treatment from media regulators

In 1970s, regulators would reserve an hour of family time on TV & also created requirement to keep a clear separation between program content & commercial content on TV

In 2004 what were the 5 companies owned by the US media properties?

In 2004, five companies owned most US media properties: Bertelsmann, Disney, News Corp., Time Warner, and Viacom

Attention

In order for attention to occur, one must clear all three exposures described above (physical, perceptual, psychological) -> while also having a conscious awareness of the media message

Action/Horror in Drama

Is primarily plot driven as good and evil fight it out in ever-deepening conflict.

privacy is the secluding of personal information by individuals about themselves

Individuals do not want to share all information about himself or herself with everyone. A person might want to share some bits of information with some people but not with others. Individuals own their personal information and should be able to control it. When we set boundaries around our personal information, we expect people to respect those boundaries.

Which of the following skills allows you to determine whether there is a pattern and then make a generalization based on that pattern?

Induction

Disposition Theory

Instead of being focused on why we select different media, disposition theory is about why we enjoy media

Globalization

Integration of world markets and systems, utopia or dystopia? What does it look like?

In developing media literacy, many people stay in the _________ stage for most of their life.

Intensive Development

Applying Algorithm (What)?

Interaction partner stands too close, expectation violation

interactive media

Interactive mass media are platforms that attract audiences who want to create their own media experiences either for purposes of competition or cooperation

broader implications

Interactive media platforms affect the economy. Brick and mortar stores cannot compete with online retailers. When people spend their money in virtual worlds, it does not get spent in the real world.

A key step in increasing your media literacy

Is text band your perspective about what is a media effect

McLuhan: The Medium is the Message

It is not the content of the message that is influential to us, but the medium in which we view that content If we don't understand the medium, we won't understand the message

Marketing perspective

Journalists are more likely to present stories that grab the attention of large audiences by highlighting the unusual that will shock people -> typically a market-driven organization selecting target markets for its products

Which of the following statements about context is true?

Journalists have more often sought to be independent from political pressures than from economic pressures.

Simplified extended conflict

Journalists look for some angle of conflict that is very simple -> news cannot have no conflict or conflict too complex or the audience will become uninterested

How are teenagers presented by television industry? Why is this portrayal problematic?

Kids are on their own, with no need to listen to parents, who know little or nothing anyway. This helps TV industry certify teenagers as an autonomous culture with its won set of ethics and consumption patterns.

What are the two values of in regards to the concentration of ownership in the media?

LOCALISM EFFCIENCY

neutrality

Lack of Bias Bias is a willful distortion on the part of a journalist, but it is difficult for audiences to recognize when this is occurring. Balance Fairness requires that journalists present both sides and try to do so with equal weight.

Information Processing Tasks: Filtering

Making decisions about which messages to filter out (ignore) & which to filter in (pay attention to) -> goal is to only attend to the messages that have some kind of usefulness for the person

Social Play

Making friends, communities, clans etc...

advertising perpetuates stereotypes

Limitation of medium (time and space constrains) More about negative or positive portrayals

REAL WORLD VS. MEDIA WORLD

Line between real world and media world is increasingly blurry Memories are interlaced Attaining higher media literacy means being able to distinguish between the two

Gender Patterns in the television World

Males used to outnumber females three to one in the television world. Men were more likely to be shown as working and in a wider variety of jobs than were women, who were typically portrayed as stay-at-home moms or working at low status jobs.

Why are teens prone to risky behaviors?

Lower perceived danger compared to other age groups, perceived invulnerability

Zillman, 2000 (Media and Morality)

Moral intuitionist perspective tells us that people make judgements quickly, and people differ in their moral progresses (what they think is morally wrong or right) - tells use why some people like certain media while others do not

how do my targets make their purchasing decisions

More Thinking or Feeling Thinking decisions: facts and logical comparisons. Feeling decisions: emotions. Degree of involvement Refers to how important the purchasing decision is to us.

importance of media literacy

More often media bring messages into our world; do not wait for us to cross over into their world Avoid trap of debating which shows are real and which are fantasy Next-step reality principle asks: Which elements reflect reality and which are removed from reality in some way?

What was the 1996 telecommunications act?

More relaxed rules Same company to own radio and TV stations in the same market Triggered mergers

What percentage of Americans believe that the news is biased?

More than 50%

Deceptive Health Patterns

Most characters seem are not shown having particularly healthy habits, however, they appear health.

Critiques of Cultivation Theory

Most cultivation research is survey-based and lacks an experimental manipulation. Sometimes "heavy" viewership is just a few hours/week, other times it is many hours/week.

Gerbner, 1980 (Mainstreaming)

Most low-income participants said yes regardless of TV viewing. High income heavy (but not light) TV viewers believed crime is a serious personal problem.

selling information

Most of the information that is collected about you is compiled into databases and sold. When Toysmart.com went bankrupt and was sold in 2000, the information on its users was also sold.

controversial content elements: violence

Most studied form of media content 60-80% of all entertainment programs Prevalent in movies Physical and verbal aggression Sanitized and glamorous Level of violence higher than in real worl

Tragedy in Drama

Must have characters that are perceived by the audience as noble and good, with bad things happening to them.

personal implications

Need to make a clear distinction between opportunity and addiction. When you use interactive platforms, keep your personal goals in mind.

Traditional Journalism Perspective

News is that which is reported by journalists who are professional because of their knowledge, their membership in professional journalism organizations, and their autonomy from outside influences.

Consumer Personal Perspective

News is that which people seek out and expose themselves to in order to keep up to date about the events and issues they regard as being most important to them.

Political Philosophy Perspective

News is the daily reporting of the key, accurate facts about most significant events of the day in order to inform the public so that individuals have enough information to make rational, informed choices.

News-working Perspective

News is the flow of stories produced by news workers who learn how to be successful (get their stories published and read) through a continuing process of socialization within news organizations.

News Perspectives: News-working perspective

News is the flow of stories produced by newsworkers who learn how to be successful (get published & read) thru a continuing process of socialization w/in news organizations -Frequently cannot achieve standards b/c of unavoidable constraints* -Most popular formula for telling stories in the news is called *simplified extended conflict (SEC)*

commercialism

News organizations are in the business of constructing large audiences so they can rent those audiences to advertisers. News organizations present the kinds of stories that audiences want most.

Dynamic Nature of News

News was personal and local; people were most concerned about events that impacted their daily lives as well as the lives of friends and family.

News Perspectives: Consumer personal perspective

News which people expose themselves to in order to keep up to date about events & issues they regard as being the most important

Net Neutrality?

No Blocking No Throttling No paid prioritization

Regulating Ownership of Media Outlets ( FCC reviews rules every four years)

No TV or radio and newspaper in One market, one TV station per market unless top 20 market, mergers among NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox forbidden

Can Interactive Media be flow experiences?

No because they are low difficulty

but they are not like other media becasue

No conventional narrative Players construct their own stories Force players to be in highly attentive state Demands decisions to be made continually Creates heightened sense of power and sense of wonder

Do social media contribute to political polarization?

Not true. The most polarized individuals are the people who use social media the least *Conclusion:* the evidence for echo chambers is very mixed (still an ongoing area of research)

controversial content elements: language

Obscenity Regulated by FCC Depends on context Recent increase on network TV, especially during "family hour" Racial and gender slurs

Marital Status Patterns in the Television World

Obvious with 80% of the women and 45% of the men. More than 50% of the women were married, and less than 1/3 of the men were married.

Changing Public Taste

People get bored with too much repetition and look for something slightly different. Storytelling formulas must evolve as public tastes change over time.

Flow

People getting lost in tasks. In order to achieve this, people must deeply immerse themselves in a task so that they lose all track of time and place.

Story Formulas

On the surface, media presents a wide variety of entertainment messages. But when analyzed, those messages all follow standard design.

Contingent Influences/Effect

One that shows up under certain conditions but not others → for example, age and gender are typically found to suggest contingent effects, where particular effects may occur with younger children but not older children and some effects occur with males and not females

Cathedral vs. Bazaar

Open source software to interact and build upon one another. Vs Cathedral where it is enclosed and not many people can get involved

autonomy

Operating independently

Media effects can either be immediate

Or long term

professionalism part 2

Organization refers to "how a profession may require membership of professional associations that legitimately represent the profession as a how practitioners must be able to earn a living from engaging full-time in their profession, and how formal codes of ethics organize the profession." Journalists do have professional organizations and a kind of cannon of ethics.

exposure matters

Our exposure decisions are likely to be shaped by what we consider to be news. Media literacy warns against a narrow focus.

Unavoidable Constraints

Part of the News-Working Perspective ex. deadlines, limited access to sources, and limited financial resources.

Genre Formula

Patterned approach to content creation, specific to each individual genre or combination of genres

Is public concerned with this issue? Are people aware of the problems? Are they willing to address it? How do they address it?

People are aware of the issue, and people feel like the self regulatory environment is insufficient to protect their privacy.

hoax sub-genre

People are fooled to believe something false and their reactions are recorded. (Hell Date, Punk'd)

Hoax

People are fooled to believe something false and their reactions are recorded. (Hell Date, Punk'd)

Self-reflexive state

People are hyper aware of the message and of their processing of the message

supernatural/paranormal

People are put in frightening situations that purported involve paranormal forces. (Scariest Places on Earth, Ghost Hunters)

Supernatural/Paranormal

People are put in frightening situations that purported involve paranormal forces. (Scariest Places on Earth, Ghost Hunters)

social experiment

People are put in unusual situations and a camera records their reactions. (Wife Swap, Secret Millionaire)

Social Experiments

People are put in unusual situations and a camera records their reactions. (Wife Swap, Secret Millionaire)

consumer personal perspective

People are seeking out information strategically that benefits them. As the audience for news fragments, news vehicles are getting more and more specialized, which is known as hyper-localism. Selective exposure is a psychological concept that says people seek out information that conforms to their existing belief systems and avoid information that challenges those beliefs.

Consumer Personal Perspective

People aren't waiting for "authorities" to tell them what's important, they already have a good idea of their interests and they seek out information that satisfies their personal needs for information they can use. Shows up in two trends: Hyper-localism and Selective Exposure

opinion sharing

People can share their opinions through blogs. There is the possibility for an unlimited size audience. Tumblr has over 220 million blogs. Twitter has 555 million users.

reality competition/ game show

People compete for some prize as one or more contestants are eliminated each episode. (The Bachelor, Top Chef)

Reality Competition/ Game Show

People compete for some prize as one or more contestants are eliminated each episode. (The Bachelor, Top Chef)

programming as a genre

Popular with audiences Appeals to voyeuristic interest Liked by programmers Less expensive to produce

demographics

Population of characters on television very different from real-world population Research on patterns across all television genres rare now; so much fragmentation

Teenagers reported that

Porn was their primary source for information about sex.

Valence of Effects (Four Dimensional Analytic Scheme)

Positive, Negative, or Neutral

Mass communication

Presenting media to certain types of audiences instead of focusing on the size of the audience & grouping everyone together

Completeness

Presenting only a partial story is a type of distortion that is not usually regarded as bias because there does not seem to be an intention by the journalist to mislead the audience. -One form of a partial story is when a major story stops getting covered, even though important events continue to occur. -Another type is when a journalist tells a story form a single point of view.

What is privacy? What are the assumptions that we make when we expect privacy?

Privacy: is the secluding of personal information by individuals about themselves. Characterized by four ideas 1. individuals do not want to share all information about themselves with everyone. 2. Privacy is a variable condition, that is a person might want to share some bits of information with some people but not with others. 3. Individuals own their personal information and should be able to control it. 4. When we share some private information with another person and set boundaries on sharing that information, we expect that person to respect our boundaries.

Considerations (in media?)

Problematic content (violence, sexual, etc), controversies (does violent media cause aggression?), think about macro effects

Interactive Media

Professional designers create platforms, rather than content, to attract audiences.

professionalism part 1

Professionalism in general is traceable to three qualities: knowledge, organization, and autonomy. Knowledge is composed of a cognitive base and particular skills. There is no agreed upon set of facts that journalists must share, nor is it possible to think what such a set of facts might be given the wide variety of stories that journalists cover daily.

Cross-media promotion

Promoting different versions/aspects of the same product (i.e. Oprah promoting her book, but also her magazine & website)

Cross-vehicle promotion

Promoting the same product on many different media platforms (i.e. a media company promoting the same product on their website, TV, newspaper, etc.)

What makes MMORPGs special?

Psych - the cyberworlds offer experiences they cannot get in the real world Econ - Players can obtain virtual currency and sell them on eBay to other players (fifaUT)

Psychology of Playing Electronic Games

Psychologist who study how people play electronic games have come up with two terms to describe key characteristics of the game-playing experience: flow and telescoping.

more on psychometrics

Psychometrics Centre, one of the oldest institutions of this kind worldwide. Kosinski joined fellow student David Stillwell about a year after Stillwell had launched a little Facebook application. Their MyPersonality app enabled users to fill out different psychometric questionnaires, including a handful of psychological questions from the Big Five personality questionnaire ("I panic easily," "I contradict others"). Based on the evaluation, users received a "personality profile"—individual Big Five values—and could opt-in to share their Facebook profile data with the researchers. Kosinski had expected a few dozen college friends to fill in the questionnaire, but before long, hundreds, thousands, then millions of people had revealed their innermost convictions. Suddenly, the two doctoral candidates owned the largest dataset combining psychometric scores with Facebook profiles ever to be collected.

Transported State

Pulled into the message so strongly that they lose awareness of being part of the message (they are swept away, lose track of their own social world surroundings)

Which media was different from all other media in the 1920s because it used an electromagnetic spectrum?

RADIO

Mainstreaming

Re-analyzing data with an eye toward specifying when and where the cultivation relationships might be stronger

What are some notes on realistic media?

Realistic media messages may follow some of the criteria but not others & STILL be considered realistic AND not every viewer will have the same reactions/responses to the criteria

what we have established so far

Reality judgments are multi-dimensional Children are less capable than adults in making reality judgments They become better at it with age Adults vary in a degree of sophistication of their reality judgments. Many overestimate degree of reality on reality TV and news

Cultivation Relationships are __________ when multiple controls are applied.

Reduced or Eliminated

Non-impulsiveness

Refers to how quickly people make decisions about messages

Anderson's rules for the long tail economy:

Rule 1: make everything available -> there is money to be made even in the most niche content Rule 2: cut the price in half, now lower it -> a song for 99 cents is cheap from an industry perspective, but expensive compared to free alternatives (online) Rule 3: help me find it -> use algorithms, recommendation engines, & user generated content to help consumers find niche media

A type of formula used to simplify news writing and emphasize conflict is called ______.

SEC

content analysis method

Scientific technique of counting the occurrence of various things Representative sample from population With fragmentation and internet videos, more difficult to obtain representative sample of all televisions shows Future: more specialized segments of media environment

Coactives

Score in the middle between risk-takers & risk-avoiders

Accuracy

Seems to be a good criterion for judging the quality of news.

Who owns what?

Seismic shift, expansion, tech changes geographic reach, tech and population facilitate specialization

What is selective exposure? From the consumer personal perspective, how do people seek information?

Selective exposure is a psychological concept that says people seek out information that conforms to their existing belief systems and avoid information that challenges those beliefs.

Automatic Routines

Sequences of learned behaviors that are enacted with little effort

What are we learning about on television?

Sexual content appears in 64% of all TV programs, programs with sexual content average 4.4 scenes with sexually related material per hour, talk about sex is found in 61% of all programs, one and seven programs include a portrayal of sexual intercourse (depicted or strongly implied)

Applying Computation (why)?

Share information with a conversational partner

c. How can our behavior be controlled? Who can control it? Consider Kosinski's discovery that we discussed in class. How can it be used for good? How can it be abused? d. What are the dangers of spamming?

Sites like Google, are controlling our shopping by using information they have about us to guide us to certain products and away from others. - Paid placement is a method developed by Google as part of its algorithm. Our internet searches are also affected by our past search history. - The big five OCEAN that Kosinski came up with can be used to incite riots, but it can also be used to benefit people. Spamming can shut down businesses, Internet service providers are wary of spammers because a sudden inundation of hundreds of thousands of messages can slow down their systems.

______________ is one of the most popular reality television shows.

Survivor Although the characters are real, non-scripted people, they are more attractive and more prone to conflict than ordinary people. The audience sees only 2% of what is actually filmed.

Category of Play

Six types as determined by objective of game 1. Agon; (competition is primary focus; enjoyment derives from competing 2.Alea (games of chance) 3. Mimicry (Role Play; play involving make believe; players take on a new identity) 4. ilinx (players seek vertigo, which is fairground rides) 5. Explorations (fun is experienced exploring new places and discovering) 6. Social Play (contact with others by joining special clans)

Different Perspectives on News

Some of these perspectives are complementary and work together, while others are in conflict with one another.

stealing private information

Spyware is a small program that you inadvertently download into your computer, which records keystrokes, sites visited, and even personal information such as credit card numbers, e-mail address, passwords, etc. Phishing is a technique used to acquire sensitive information from unaware users by seemingly trustworthy message senders. Hacking is a set of computer programming techniques used to break through "secure" databases

privacy strategy

Start with the threats you have identified up to this point; then make a list of the things you can do to reduce - and even eliminate if possible - those threats. Remove private information. Be vigilant; search for yourself on people-finder sites every few months to make sure data collectors have not added you back again. Correct inaccuracies. Continually monitor threats. Download software to protect your computer from threats to your privacy. Set up your Internet browsers to disallow cookies as the default.

Adult discount

Starts at about 5 years Completed by 12 years, But not always Accuracy vs. probability that the event may occur in real life

Romance

Story begins with a person experiencing either loneliness from a lack of a relationship or a relationship that is bad due to betrayal, jealousy, or fear.

entertainment content

Story formulas help designers of entertainment messages attract audience attention and condition audiences for repeat exposures

Changing Public Taste

Storytelling formulas must evolve as public tastes change over time.

becoming media literate

Strengthen knowledge structures regarding content patterns, discrepancies from real world, formulas Separate reality from fantasy Be entertained by fantasy Avoid being guided by unrealistic expectations Ask questions; be skeptical Stay active during consumption

Electronic games can make people feel more ___ and ____

Successful; In control

Fluctuation

Sudden (temporary) change in stress

what are your necessities

Survival level Safety Social Self-esteem Self-actualization

Disposition Theory of Suspense

Suspense: narrative where we are unsure of the final outcome Two explanations of the theory: -*Arousal:* arousal & then relief from suspense is liked -*Excitation transfer:* great distress intensifies the enjoyment we experience from a happy ending

Controversial Content Elements

T.V. and all the entertainment media must avoid being dull, so they titillate audiences by playing around with the line of acceptability on controversial topics such as sex, homosexuality, violence, and language.

Larger companies are able to operate more efficiently than smaller companies because of the scope and scale? T/F

TRUE

information assessment

Take an inventory about what information is publically available on you. Map your information by privacy levels.

medium related challenges

Telling an entertaining story presents a different challenge as you move from one medium to another. Commercial television is one of the most challenging media for telling stories. There is a significant amount of competition for audiences. Producers must keep audiences engaged, so they do not change the channel during commercial breaks. Entertainment messages on the web also intense competition. Hollywood films also face challenges as many films fail in the box office.

Different Media

Telling an entertaining story presents a different challenge as you move from one medium to another. ex. song/only ears ex. novel/only eyes

Agenda-setting Theory

The Theory that the media are selective in what they present as news and what they emphasize as being the most important news.

hyper-localism

The audience for news fragments, news vehicles are getting more and more specialized. -the smaller and smaller number of people who care about exposing themselves to news messages have more and more options, beyond newspaper and networks news programs.

Marketing Electronic Games

The average electronic game player is 30 years old and has been playing for an average of 12 years. Marketers of electronic games have moved to psycho graphic descriptors to identify niches of game players, and they typically identify four types of audiences: explorers, socializes, achievers, and controllers.

Media convergence

The blending together of previously separated channels of communication such that the characteristics that have divided those channels into distinctly different media have been eroding

privacy issue

The changes in media technologies have made it easier for marketers, governments, and criminals to invade your privacy.

marketing electronic games

The demographics of electronic game players help marketers. Average player is 30 years old. 47% of gamers are women. 67% of households play electronic games.

designing electronic game platforms

The designing of a new electronic game is a very risky business. The process of electronic game design involves nine steps. There are three fundamental decisions about the game design. Category of play Formality of play Affective tone

Relatedness

The desire to interact or connect with others

Media literacy is determined by:

The formation of knowledge structures in four areas: *media industries, media audiences, media content, & media effects*

psychology of playing electronic games

The game playing experience can be described by two characteristics. Flow refers to losing track of space and time. Telescoping refers to focusing on steps within the process of moving through a game. These characteristics can be intense and rewarding. These characteristics continually draw players back for repeat experience.

Which of the following statements is true in regard to levels of violence?

The level of violence in the media is far higher than real-world levels of violence.

Knowledge Structures

The organizations of what you have learned & stored in your memory; the patterns in our minds by which we organize & retrieve information

Genres

The overall entertainment story formula is elaborated in different ways across different genres of entertainment. The "branches" of the tree ( when thinking of the "tree structure") Each of these major branches has its own sub-branches.

Character Patterns

The patterns have been very different in the television world compared to the real world over the years.

What is campaign strategy?

The planning document that companies or advertising agencies develop to sell a product of service

political philosophy perspective

The political philosophy perspective specifies what news should be. This is a normative not descriptive perspective. News should focus on the most important events and people in a society in order to keep people up to date about what is most significant.

should i use a product spokesperson in my campaign

The product spokesperson needs to be credible, trustworthy, and attractive. Credibility refers to expertise. Trustworthiness refers to the belief that the person is telling the truth. Attractiveness can refer to physical appeal or other qualities that make audiences want to watch ads

Knock-offs and spin-offs are responsible for the growing number of reality programs.

The spin-off series is produced by the same people who produced the previously successful television series on which the spin-off is based. The knock-off series is produced by different people who are copying the formula used by other people who produced the successful television series on which the knock-off is based.

The issue of privacy is essentially the competition between threats and protections.

The threats come from criminals (hackers, identity thieves, and virus disseminators). The protections come from consumer groups that push legislators to enact laws protecting privacy.

What are some criticism of ads that are considered to be faulty? Name and explain all three

The three popular criticisms of advertising is 1. Advertising is deceptive: Puffery is a promotional statement that presents subjective claims that cannot be tested for truth although they convey the impression that they are truthful in saying that their product is superior or valuable. - Pseudo claims ( X fights cavities) - comparison with unidentified other (x has better cleaning action) - comparison of product to its earlier form (new and improved) Pseudo survey (4 out of 5 dentists recommend this) Juxtaposition (happy faces next to a product) 2. Companies manipulate us using subliminal advertising: - The idea of subliminal advertising having an effect on us is also a hoax. - Unconscious impact: is a powerful effect that advertisers rely on, advertisers do not want their audience to pay high attention to their ads, instead they want images and jingles to flow into your mind unconsciously. In doing so it alters our perceptions of what is real, our perceptions of needs, advertising does by showing us that we can change our attractiveness, body image, whiteness of smile etc. - Layers of meaning: for instance for a toothpaste commercial, the deeper level, the ad is a message about the importance of health, the ad tells you that you need to buy something to clean your teeth. 3. Advertising perpetuates stereotypes - almost all advertisers must use stereotypes, this is because a 30 second ad cannot develop a character, this is the limitation of the medium (time and space constrains) - It is more about negative or positive portrayals, if an entire class of people is portrayed with negative characteristics then it is reasonable to argue that this is bad, this is offensive to many people. Even when people are portrayed as attractive and smart this is a stereotype even if people would not be offended by this.

Exposure Matters

The traditional news media cover the same events and present their stories in a very similar way. (You are exposed to the same stories) This pattern led scholars to observe that the traditional media set the agenda each day by deciding what to cover and what to ignore. With the rise of nontraditional news media, we now have many alternative sources of news. (The control of what we are exposed to shifts to us.)

spamming

The using of the media to invade your privacy with unsolicited and unwanted messages that are designed to get you to buy a product or service is called spamming. Spamming can be considered an invasion of our privacy because we regard our e-mail accounts as a place where we communicate with people we know. By 2011, Pingdom estimated that 300 billion e-mails were being sent each day and that 89.1% of them were spam. Spammers are only concerned with maximizing their coverage. Skilled spammers can each send out 30 million e-mails a day. Spammers can buy 100 million e-mail addresses for as little as $2,000. ISPs are especially wary of spammers because a sudden inundation of hundreds of thousands of messages can slow their systems down. Another form of spamming is with the use of adware, which is advertising-supported software.

breaching "secure" databases

There have been many breaches of secure databases (Timeline Issue 6.1). Keeping databases secure is becoming more difficult because of the "cloud." The cloud is really a large network of computers and storage devices for information. In 2010, cloud services generated $41 billion. The federal government is encouraging the digitization of health information. This comes at the risk of invasion of privacy by hackers.

massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGS)

These games are very popular and very addicting. World of Warcraft (WOW) is a popular MMORPG. In 2009, there were 11.5 million players worldwide. People must pay $19.99 to download the software, then pay $14.99 a month to play online. EverQuest has a real world economy. Individuals in poor countries can make $3.50 per hour performing basic tasks in the cyberworld. As of 2004, eBay was hosting about $30 million of annual trade for goods that only exist in synthetic worlds. There are profound effects of playing these games. The cyber world can take place of the real world for some players.

traditional news markets have been losing their audience

They are failing to attract younger people. They face increased competition from alternative news outlets on the Internet.

Are regulations of internet activities effective? Why or why not?

They are not effective, because if you ban spammers in the US, then people outside of the US can still send spam mail. - And federal agencies tasked with this have so much trouble with enforcement.

Children learn from anthropomorphic TV programming, but _______

They cannot apply the facts learned to the real world.

Why do we treat children as a special audience?

They have not lived long enough to have real-world experiences *(lack of experience)* They have not matured enough to be able to process elements in particular media messages *(lack of maturation)*

Fluctuation factors

Things that can change

Blindspot and consequences

Third person effect, repeated exposure to violent content relates to real world desensitization

what is my primary advertising campaign objective

This involves one of four types of objectives: awareness, conviction, action, and reinforcement.

News Perspectives: Political philosophy perspective

This is what news SHOULD be -> daily reporting of the key, accurate facts about most significant events to inform the public, giving individuals enough to make rational, informed choices (builds off the 1st Amendment)

True of false: There is not a huge gap between a child's to perceive reality accurately and an adult's ability. Adults are as vulnerable as children.

True

True or False: If a message is perceived as highly realistic on one criterion, the person may or may not perceive the message as being realistic on the other criteria.

True

When a message requires more effort than we expect, we might stop exposure to it.

True

With media literacy we can take more control over programming our own mental codes.

True

truthfulness

Truthfulness means that the story contains no lies, either by the sources used or by the journalist. Truthfulness also requires that journalists not make up facts to fill in the gaps of their stories or to "sweeten" their stories.

What Is Piracy?

Two Value systems - Media personalities and commercial businesses vs. members of the public - Copyright vs. Copyleft - Piracy is the unauthorized use of copyrighted material. bootlegging counterfeiting sharing copyrighted messages w/o paying for access

News Perspectives: Traditional journalism perspective

This perspective focuses on seven criteria to specify the characteristics an event must have to be considered newsworthy -> *timeliness, significance, proximity, prominence, conflict, human interest, & deviance*

The four dimensions of media effects

Time, valence, intentionality, type of effect

Consider audience's perspective on the next-step reality. Why do people expose themselves to the media according to this perspective?

To find messages that they cannot get in real life.

FCC's mission

To secure access to information at reasonable cost to all (does integration facilitate or hinder ownership, or being heard?)

three types of drama

Tragedy Tragedy must have characters that are perceived by the audience as noble and good Mystery The mystery genre must have an element of plot that is missing. Action/horror Driven by good and evil

Tragedy

Tragedy must have characters that are perceived by the audience as noble and good. Bad things happen to them either because they have a fatal flaw or because fate has conspired against them. Audiences enjoy comparing themselves with the tragic characters and feel better off than them.

Shift to Online Sources of News

Trend: News exposure away from traditional media to online media was initially driven by younger people. Indicates that Americans want more efficient access to news.

An example of a personal acting with a low-level media literacy would be one who spends a lot of time on Facebook monitoring the growing list of friends and sending them all short, superficial messages to maintain contact.

True

Each genre builds off the general story formula but still must conform to the basic requirements of that formula.

True

Hollywood movies are a target of critics of the media's obsession with a certain type of body image.

True

If you do not occasionally explore the range of media messages, you default to narrower media habits.

True

If you have sought out media messages that best meet a personal need, then you have maximized your media exposures.

True

Our mental programs are like computer programs.

True

People continue to complain about bad language on television.

True

controversial content elements: homosexuality

US television has long history of marginalizing, ignoring, and stereotyping Late 1990s, first lesbian and gay lead characters: Ellen, Will & Grace Recent analysis: non-heterosexuals in 15% of television programs Not necessarily more progressive

What is piracy?

Unauthorized use of things owned by other people

Marketing Perspective

Under the economic perspective and is a criticism of the economic perspective. Journalists operating under this perspective are more likely to present stories that grab the attention of large audiences by highlighting the unusual so as to shock people.

The Marketing Concept

Understand audience needs, & develop messages to meet those needs

What does the mind/brain have to do with mass communication?

Understanding how our minds process media gives us insight into the consequences (good & bad) of media use

who qualifies as a journalist

Until recently, a solid criterion was: "journalists were reporters and editors working for newspapers, the broadcast media or wires services."

electronic games are part of mass media because they all

Use digital codes govern media play, appearance, and other features in order to attract users Have input devices that the player uses to communicate with digital codes Games are constructed to attract niche audiences And to condition those audiences for habitual use

threat assessment

Use your desired privacy map as the standards for what should be shared then compare your desired privacy levels to what websites are doing to protect - or invade - your privacy. To protect their privacy, a relatively small number of savvy users are devising their own "opt-in" policies and deciding that some Web sites are not worthy of getting their personal information.

Competitive (Interactive media)

Users compete w/ themselves, others, against a computer, or against many other people (i.e. video games)

competitive (Interactive media)

Users compete with themselves, others, against a computer, or against many other people. (Ex. Video games.)

Cooperative (interactive media)

Users interact with others, socialize, share personal information, and work toward shared goals (ex. Social media)

Acquisition Media

Users seek out + find goods and services + other resources (think search engines, wikipedia, video/music sharing, shopping)

Information Processing Tasks: Meaning Matching

Using basic competencies to recognize referents & locate previously learned meanings efficiently Includes recognizing *denoted meanings* (e.g. recognizing your phone text tone) Develops *competencies* (e.g. ability to recognize referents & recall the memorized denoted meanings for those referents

Information Processing Tasks: Meaning Construction

Using skills in order to move beyond meaning matching & to construct meaning for oneself in order to personalize & get more out of a message Relies on *skill ability* -> unlike competencies, skills have a wide range of ability; if personal locus is strong in skill development, those skills have a much higher chance of heightening

Self-improvement/ makeover

Viewers are amazed as a real world person or object is drastically improved. (Extreme Makeover, Pimp My Ride)

What does the BBC documentary about violent video games tell us?

Violent video games have 2 schools of thought: 1. violence desensitizes real-life violence vs. 2. violence benefits people's minds

Core ideas of disposition theory

We enjoy seeing → Good things happen to people we like Bad things happening to people we don't like We hate seeing → Opposite happening

social cognitive theory

We learn through observation. Actions followed by positive consequences are more likely to be modeled compared to actions followed by negative consequences.

Mass Media Economy: Complex Interdependency Among Players

When negotiations are involved & complex, one company's decision may affect many other companies (e.g. increasing TV ad time example); sometimes decision makers are conflicted b/c they experience cross-purposes (e.g. when a decision maker might be part of more than one group -> each with a different economic goal)

Peak

When the innovation has reached market saturation

Multiple dimensions of reality

While the beginning point of judging reality is usually with an assessment of whether a portrayal actually happened, people frequently use more criteria to judge reality.

(Shark Tank) Seven KEY questions of venture capital:

Who is the audience? What is the technology? When will it come to market? Where will it launch? Why will it work? How big is the market (estimate)? How much will it cost consumers?

Five questions must be answer in order to complete a campaign strategy. question 1

Who should be the target of the advertising campaign? Begins with an analysis of who is currently using the product. Secondary targets are people who are either using the competitor's brand and need to be converted or who have a need for the product and are unaware of it. In identifying targets, advertisers have typically used geographic as well as demographic indicators

1. They find messages in media that can't in real life 2. Hard to obtain message in reality 3. high cost to obtain

Why do people expose themselves to media according to "audience perspective"?

Problem of Disposition Theory

Why do we like morally ambiguous characters? Research says: we seem to enjoy, but not appreciate them

What is computation?

Why does a behavior exist?

programmers

With fiction, producers take ordinary settings and typical plots and slowly deviate from normal situations one step at a time, so the audience does not get lost. Next-step reality also works for persuasive messages because programs use typical problems and take a step of faith into the solution. With information-type messages, the next-step reality comes from journalists carefully selecting what gets reported and what gets ignored.

Consider both factors? Are they in conflict with each other?

You need to find a balance between the two, people want messages that are one step removed from real life; they want messages that show what is easily possible and make it seem probable and even actual.

video

YouTube was created in 2005. In 2015, there are over one billion unique visitors each month. More than 100 hours of new video are uploaded every minute

Magic Window

Young children see media (television) as window to the world Skepticism increases with age; "adult discount" About probability, rather than accuracy Not just children

Flow

a completely involved, focused state of consciousness, with diminished awareness of self and time, resulting from optimal engagement of one's skills

News is not a reflection of actual events, but...

a construction by news workers who are subjected to many influences and constraints

Automaticity

a mental state where our minds operate without the perception of conscious effort -Habits are formed -> habits are automatically reactivated when needed

Economies of Scale

a proportionate saving in costs gained by an increased level of production (e.g. sell more box office tickets)

flow

a psychological state of effortlessness, in which you become completely absorbed in what you're doing and time seems to pass quickly

Electronic Spectrum

a range of frequencies that are used for broadcasting messages without wires; in the United States, the FCC is in charge of assigning frequencies to individuals and businesses for transmission of radio, television, and cell phone signals

How can we make judgements about quality of news?

a. What is objectivity? - It means a separateness from the object being observed so that the object is perceived accurately and that the perception is not distorted by human limitations b. What is truthfulness? - Truthfulness means that the story contains no lies, either by the sources used or by the journalist. Truthfulness also requires that journalists not make up facts to fill in the gaps of their stories or to "sweeten" their stories. c. What is neutrality? Address both the lack of bias and balance principles - Neutrality means that the story is free from journalistic bias or editorializing. This means that the journalist does not slant the story to convince the audience to think a certain way. Journalist focuses on informing and not persuading. - Lack of bias: bias is a willful distortion on the part of a journalist, but it is difficult for audiences to recognize when this is occurring - Balance principles: fairness requires that journalists present both sides and try to do so with equal weight.

Now think about multiple dimensions of reality (NOT ANSWERED)

a. What is the beginning point of judgement reality? What question do we usually start with when someone asks us if what is reported/presented/written is real? - The beginning point of judgement reality is usually an assessment of whether a portrayal actually happened. b. What are the additional criteria that people may use while judging how realistic something is? Please know all six. Define them and think of example.

When I create a brief, clear, and accurate description capturing the essence of a message, I am using my ______ skill.

abstracting

Children base their perceptions of reality not on the _________ of portrayal or informations but on the _______ that something could occur in their lives.

accuracy / probability

economics of scope

achieved through multi-product production -digitizing has made economies of scope more attractive

Phishing

acquire information through seemingly trustworthy message senders

According to the textbook, which of the following is a main function of interactive media?

acquiring

What technique below will help you improve your media literacy?

acquiring a broad base of useful knowledge, examining your mental codes and opinions

A medium beginning to be challenged by a new medium typically enters what stage of development?

adaptation

In what stage of development are the news markets now?

adaptation

persuasive messages

advertiser invites audience to take the step of faith into a solution, that is to buy and use the advertised product on the promise that it will solve the problem better than any other solution (more quickly/completely/cheaply/more emotionally satisfying)

Adware

advertiser-supported software -main goal is to generate revenue

FCC Federal communications commissions

agency established by the U.S. Congress in the 1920s to regulate the new broadcasting industry and later the developing telecommunication industry; focuses primarily on establishing national standards for developing information technologies as well as regulating ownership of broadcasting and telecommunication businesses

CBDTPA

all new digital devices encoded w/ a copyright security - languished several years unpassed

The move toward the marketing perspective within the news industry has resulted in ______.

an attempt for news to be more entertaining

seek to elaborate existing knowledge structures by using 5 strategies

analyze the news perspective search for context develop alternative sources of info be skeptical of public opinion expose yourself to more news

When journalists select what gets reported, they are not as interested in typical event as as they are in the __________ events. Example?

anomalous; If a dog bites a man that isn't news. But, if a man bites a dog, that's news. Violent crimes are more newsworthy than are property crimes because they are more rare in the real world.

What are some ways in which one can fight piracy?

anti-piracy technology new legislation legal action

what do all electronic gaming platforms have in common?

are digital game codes that govern game appearance and play, visual and audio features that attract users into the game, and input devices that the player uses to communicate w/ the digital code in playing the game

How did broadcasters fight against regulation?

arguing unfairly limited in their rights to own multiple businesses by showing that when businesses are more consolidated they are more efficient -Comcast sued FCC for relaxation and won

The media frequently alter our psychological states. Perhaps the most important of these states is ______.

arousal

hyperlocalism

as audience for news fragments, news vehicles are getting more and more specialized

For meaning construction, you can ______.

ask yourself if you are simply accepting that information as is or are you transforming it to fit into your needs and goals

If you cannot explain why you like the characters in a show, you are ______.

at a low level of media literacy

individualism

audiences like to hear about people who do things their own way, even against powerful odds

In this exposure state, message elements are physically perceived but processed in an unconscious manner.

automatic

Sequences of behaviors that we learn from experience and then apply them again with little effort are called ______.

automatic routines

If we want to control the effects of the media, we should ______.

become more media literate, understand the various ways in which media affect us, and understand that media effects are constantly occurring

flexibility in media literacy

being willing to traverse the entire spectrum of messages and enjoy the full range of messages

With information-type messages, the next-step reality comes from journalists...

carefully selecting what gets reported and what gets ignored.

what are the three fundamental decisions game developers must make?

category of play formality of play affective tone

fluctuation effects

changes in initial core identity

Which of the following is a factor that influences our baseline levels?

knowledge structures

______ is/are organized information in a person's memory.

knowledge structures

As audience slivers increase,,,

level of revenue generated per audience decreases, thus leading to the development of multiple revenue streams

Your friend thinks the newest romantic-comedy film is just another goofy love story. However, you think it is distinct in a way that it is an amusing examination of the complexities of dating in the digital age. Your friend is using a ______ strategy.

leveling

what media industry has highest percentage of women employed?

magazines and books at more than 50%

Automaticity is useful because it allows us to ______.

make more efficient choices

economics of scale

marginal costs are lower than average costs -seek the lowest average total cost (fixed + variable) -there are no variable costs w/ broadcast/radio

The process of recognizing elements in the message and accessing our memory to find the meanings we have memorized for those elements is called ______.

meaning matching

marketing convergence

media businesses have moved away from distinctions by channel of distribution and focused more on the messages and audiences

cognitive priming

media cause some thoughts to become temporarily more accessible

Delineating the issue of media piracy

media messages as commercial products (traditional) vs. media messages as amorphous entities that make up the flow of information

Which of the following is NOT one of the three building blocks of media literacy?

message

Copyright

method to register ownership of intellectual property

Comedy is characterized by...

minor conflict situations, which flare up and set up the action in motion

Which of the following is a factor that moves you off your baseline and creates a fluctuation effect?

motivations

People were not simply making judgements about the reality of media messages, but that they used....

multiple criteria for judging the reality of media messages.

commercialism

news organizations are in the business of constructing large audiences to sell to advertisers

marketing perspective of news

news workers pay careful attention to what kinds of stories and presentation formats generate the largest audience

Today, media programmers are in the business of constructing ______.

niche audiences

People who take a long time to make decisions and consider things from many perspectives are ______.

non-impulsive

cost of developing a TOP quality game

now more than $20 million

A large number of people in the American culture are offended by ______.

nudity on TV

cognitive knowledge regarding entertainment messages

of elements in entertainment formula

larger companies are able to operate more efficiently b/c...

of scope and scale

psychometrics

ometimes also called psychographics, focuses on measuring psychological traits, such as personality. In the 1980s, two teams of psychologists developed a model that sought to assess human beings based on five personality traits, known as the "Big Five." These are: openness (how open you are to new experiences?), conscientiousness (how much of a perfectionist are you?), extroversion (how sociable are you?), agreeableness (how considerate and cooperative you are?) and neuroticism (are you easily upset?). Based on these dimensions—they are also known as OCEAN, an acronym for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism—we can make a relatively accurate assessment of the kind of person in front of us. This includes their needs and fears, and how they are likely to behave. The "Big Five" has become the standard technique of psychometrics. But for a long time, the problem with this approach was data collection, because it involved filling out a complicated, highly personal questionnaire. Then came the Internet. And Facebook. And Kosinski.

Horizontal Merger

one company buys another company of the same type news paper buying another newspaper

Vertical Merger

one company buys suppliers and/or distributors to create integration in the production and distribution of products/services newspaper buying paper supply (to produce) and bookstore (to distribute)

vertical merger

one media company buys suppliers and or distributors to create integration in the production and distribution of messages ex. book publisher buying paper supply company (production) and bookstores (distribution)

what percent of the news is about conflict/crime/suffering?

over 50%

definition of violence on tv according to Gerbner and associates

overt expression of physical force (w/ or w/o a weapon) against self or others compelling action against one's will on pain of being hurt killed, or actually hurting or killing

social cognition

overtime, we learn what we see modeled and rewarded

Why is copyright w/ books fuzzy

own the physical copy of the book - not the intellectual property of the words inside (piracy would be to take the words as your own)

Creative commons

ownership is not limited to anyone individual or company -copyrights are barriers to wide spread creativity -prefer copylefts

indirect support

payments of time; this time gets sold to advertisers (subsidizing advertisers indirectly supports the media company)

social order

peace and order are valued; people who deviate from this are labeled as wrong doers

______ refers to a human's sensory bandwidth or the ability to receive appropriate sensory input through the visual and auditory senses.

perceptual exposure

mimicry

play involving make-believe; players take on new identity

Ilinx

players seek vertigo, which is the temporary destabilization of the perceptual system, such as fairground rides

achievers

players who come to game to build something, like a city, an empire, great personal wealth, or the like

In which stage of moral development do adolescents try to move beyond the conventional norm about what is right and wrong as they encounter moral dilemmas?

postconventional

deadlines

prevent journalists from gathering all facts and presenting a complete and accurate story about the event

If we are to regard media influence from a media literacy perspective, we need to think more in terms of ______.

process effects

Next-step reality also works for persuasive messages because...

programs use typical problems and take a step of faith into the solution

Personal Locus

provides mental energy & direction; composed of goals & drives If personal locus is weak, you do not have the goals & drives for comprehending certain media -> allowing the media to exercise a high degree of control

If I am targeted by a media business because I am well educated and enjoy sports, which type of audience segmentation is being used?

psychographic segmentation

fair use

quoting portions of a work for purposes of news, reporting, criticism, and teaching however boundaries are often fuzzy

The real world is _____ and the media world is ______.

real / fantasy

Desensitization

reduction in emotion-related physiological reactivity in response to a stimulus, one of the long term emotional effects of media

psychological convergence

refers to changes in people's perceptions about barriers that previously existed that are now breaking down or totally eliminated due to recent changes in the media

long-tail marketing

refers to finding out what the special needs are for each of the many small niche audiences that form the long tail

perceptual persuasiveness

refers to how real images look

Which of the following are techniques used by parents to help children process media messages and/or protect them from harmful ones?

restrictive mediation, active mediation, and coviewing

default strategy

runs continuously in unconscious mind -follow pre-programmed habits b/c it requires little effort -determined by the low cost

analyzing the news perspective

search for context develop alternative sources of info be skeptical about public opinion expose yourself to more news

Being hyperaware of the message and of your processing of the message refers to what exposure state?

self-reflective

public has a preference for what kind of news stories

sensational stories that feature acts of sex and violence and are easy to explain

Automatic routines

sequences of learned behaviors that are enacted with little effort

With fiction, producers take ordinary settings and typical plots and do what?

slowly deviate from normal situations one step at a time, so the audience does not get lost.

responsibilities of advertising

social and economic

The meaning of messages arises from the way they are portrayed, especially in the case of ______.

social lessons

Stuart is playing a violent video game with his friend, Rebecca. He finds the game exciting and fun, but can't help but consider whether the game might harm others by promoting the message that violence is an effective way to solve problems. Stuart is likely in which stage of media literacy?

social responsibility

Localism

society is better when power is spread out - all voices can be heard -populist value -when gov. is necessary it should be decentralized

Internet companies vs. spammers

spam can slow down/crash ISP's

Piracy

the unauthorized use of things owned by other people -intellectual property is harder to determine who own what

Efficiency

the belief that power in the government and the economy should be concentrated in the hands of a few people or businesses so that decisions can be made more quickly and enacted more smoothly

Localism

the belief that power in the government and the economy should be spread out over as many people as possible so that everyone has a voice as well as an influence on every decision society is better when power is spread out among as many ppl as possible

third person effect

the common attitude that others are influenced by media messages, but we are not

Third-person effect

the common attitude that others are influenced by media messages, but we are not (pertaining to violence specifically)

Copyright

the exclusive legal right, given to an originator or an assignee to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, and to authorize others to do the same. -establishing ownership w/ the library of congress

partial stories

the idea that journalists are not objective b/c they are telling us only part of the story

next step reality

the idea that media messages must be based on real-world elements (recognizable characters, situations, etc.) so that audiences can relate to what happens in those messages but then the messages must also take a step away from pure reality by adding fantasy elements in order to capture and hold the audience's attention

middle-ware market

the making available of programming packages, guidelines, and game engines to people who want to design electronic games but lack the programming skill to create them from scratch

attitudinal type effect

the media-influenced effect that is manifested as the acquisition of a new attitude or the triggering, alteration, or reinforcement of existing attitudes

Physiological type effect

the media-influenced effect that is manifested as the triggering of an automatic bodily function, such as increasing blood pressure or heart rate

the more skillful the one step remove transforms reality...

the more interesting the message will be and the more likely it will attract and hold people's attention

cultivation

the more time you spend w/ tv, the more you think the tv has the attributes of the world

knowledge gap hypothesis

the more you know, the greater your ability is to acquire more information over time

The peak of a medium is usually determined by ______.

the most important medium to the greatest number of people

fabrication

the most surface layer meaning for objectivity is making up news stories that have no basis in fact

Magic Window

the notion that young children believe that the media is a window into reality

story formula

the procedures journalists learn as shortcuts to help them quickly select and write stories

separation-individuation

the process of acquiring a distinct identity; separating from fusion with the mother/parents

Attaining higher media literacy means being able to distinguish between...

the real world and the media world.

copyleft?

the removing of restrictions so that the media messages are free and all users have the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work; based on the values of openness and common ownership

emotional type effect

the type of media-influenced effect that is manifested as the triggering of an emotional reaction or the altering of emotional patterns over time

why is accuracy not a workable standard for many stories?

too involved a task for news audiences

In order for the psychological criterion of media exposure to be met, there must be some ______ created in a person's mind.

trace element

Today your media exposures are ______.

tracked in meticulous detail

drama genre has three basic sub-genres that illuminate 3 types of drama entertainment

tragedy mystery action/horror

When people are so pulled into a message that they lose track of their own social world surroundings, they are in which state?

transported

Although the brain has an enormous capacity for processing information, it can only pay attention to a relatively small number of stimuli at any given moment.

true

Big news reached a peak in the 1980s.

true

During media exposures, people with a low tolerance encounter messages on the surface.

true

Fluctuation effects are usually temporary.

true

Grouping is the skill related to classification and comparison.

true

If we know which VALS typology value group someone belongs to, we can predict a great deal about the products that person wants.

true

In the past, media companies used to define themselves by channels.

true

Journalists move down their list of information, ranked according to importance until all the information is in the story.

true

MMORPG cyber worlds have their own internal economies. According to the textbook, this raises a serious concern for real-world economies.

true

Media programmers must find potential members of their audience in other audiences.

true

People who are at low levels of literacy will believe the media exert no influence or that media influence only leads to effects in other people.

true

People who can "read" emotions in others and themselves usually have empathy and self-awareness.

true

Players become so focused on the pleasure of the game that other needs (such as sleep, hunger, and thirst) become secondary.

true

Sixty eight percent of all electronic game players are 18 years old and older.

true

Technology by itself is not enough to create a mass medium. Marketing innovations are also essential in the emergence of a mass medium.

true

The goal of meaning matching is to access previously learned meanings effectively.

true

The more the media businesses examined audience needs, the more they realized that those needs are fragmented.

true

The popular games usually combine two or more of these features in a single game to appeal to a broader base of players.

true

The purpose of media literacy is to empower individuals to make more of their own decisions about which messages to expose themselves to.

true

There are many examples where a blogger has done a better job of uncovering a news story or writing about an issue in more depth than can be found in traditional news media.

true

There is a limit to the amount of time devoted to advertising during children's programs.

true

what are the 3 components of digital gaming?

tv console handheld devices personal computers

bias

uncovering bias requires interpretation and this makes it a more difficult violation of objectivity to spot

usa consumption vs rest of world

usa has 8% of world population and consumes 30% of resources whereas rest of world has 92% of population and consumes 70% of resources

What is competitive?

users compete with themselves, others, against a computer, or against many other people

Cooperative (Interactive media)

users interact w/ others, socialize, share personal info, & work toward shared goals (i.e. social networking sites, dating apps, virtual worlds)

What is cooperative?

users interact with others, socialize, share personal information, and work toward shared goals

Acquisition (Interactive media)

users seek out & find info, goods, services, & other resources (i.e. search engines, Wikipedia, video/music streaming, shopping)

What is acquisition?

users seek out and find information, goods, services, and other resources

Hactivism

using of hackers techniques into organizations secure databases to either damage them or use info. to publicly embarrass them ex. North Korea - the interview

3 basic constraints that limit what is presented in news stories

usually regarded as being outside the ability to control them: - deadlines - resource limits - geographical focus

imiation

we do what we see others do

Factuality

what actually happened

factuality

what actually happened

1. Demographics 2. stereotypes TV portrayal is not accurate in real world.

what are 2 character patterns?

1. Companies manipulate us through subliminal advertising 2. Advertising is excessive 3. Advertising perpetuates stereotypes

what are 3 criticisms with ads?

1. Messages appear real 2. Presents a little more then everyday reality -one step removed

what are the 2 characteristics in "audience perspective"?

1.Character comedy/Comedy of manners (character is naturally funny lighten situations) 2. put down comedy (Uses comedy to exert power over others)

what are the 2 types of comedy?

1. Advertising manipulates us into buying things we don't need 2.Advertising makes us too materialistic 3. Advertising is deceptive

what are the 3 issues of advertising?

1. Factuality 2. Perceptual persuasiveness 3. Social Utility 4. Identity 5. Emotional involvement 6. plausibility 7. typicality 8. narrative consistency

what are the 8 multi dimensions of reality when used as criteria in judging content?

1. Shows that are too formulaic may bore audiences, but if shows deviate from the norm too much, they may offend audiences 2. producers approach issue in conservative manner 3. financial risk in TV is high, must attract large audience

what are the risk when selecting stories to present on TV and how do you tackle it?

plausibility

what could happen most often used conceptualization employed by people to determine the degree of reality in a media message

help designers of entertainment messages attract audience attention and condition audiences for repeat exposure - also are guides that help producer and audiences

what do story formulas do?

programs use typical problems and take a step of faith into the solution.

what is " persuasive messages" in next step reality?

1. Commercial TV is hardest to tell story 2. lots of competition 3. producers must keep audience engaged or else they'll change during commercial break

why is it harder to tell an entertaining story from each platform?

1. Popular with audiences -appeals to sexual interest 2. Liked by programmers -inexpensive to produce

why is reality programming a genre?

One advantage of becoming more media literate is that you ______.

widen the variety of media messages you seek out

Critical Appreciation (In the Stages of Development of Media Literacy)

• Accept messages on their own terms then evaluate them within that sphere • Develop very broad and detailed understanding of the historical, economic, political, and artistic contexts of message systems • Have the ability to make subtle comparisons and contrasts among many different message elements simultaneously • Have the ability to construct a summary judgment about the overall strengths and weaknesses of a message

Intense Development (In the Stages of Development of Media Literacy)

• Have strong motivation to seek out information on certain topics • Develop a detailed set of information on particular topics (sports, politics, etc.) • Develop high awareness of utility of information and quick facility in processing information judged to be useful

Experiential Exploring (In the Stages of Development of Media Literacy)

• Seek out different forms of content and narratives • Focus on searching for surprises and new emotional, moral, and aesthetic reactions

Social Responsibility (In the Stages of Development of Media Literacy)

• Take a moral stand that certain messages are more constructive for society than others; this is a multidimensional perspective based on a thorough analysis of the media landscape • Recognize that one's own individual decisions impact society, no matter how minutely • Recognize that there are some actions an individual can take to make a constructive impact on society

What are the six questions that help construct it?

□ What message strategy should be used? □ What should be the tone of the ad? □ How much information should be put into the ad? □What type of story should be used? □Who should be cast in the ad? □What should the setting be?

What is a copy platform? How do you structure it?

○ Advertisers plan for each individual ad in its campaign strategy - A copy platform is structured by six questions.

What is my primary advertising campaign objective?

○ Awareness: objective of campaigns when a product is new ○ Conviction: refers to attitudes developed around product, positive ○ Action: get consumers to buy or at least try the product ○ Reinforcement: campaigns are aimed at exiting customers to make them feel good about their rebuying habits so that they will continue to buy and consume the product (most focused upon element)

Who should be the target of the advertising campaign?

○ Begins with an analysis of who is currently using the product. ○ Secondary targets are people who are either using the competitor's brand and need to be converted or who have a need for the product and are unaware of it. ○ In identifying targets, advertisers have typically used geographic as well as demographic indicators.

Differences between campaign strategy and copy platform?

○ CS translates a company's business goals and its marketing objectives into a plan about how to go about getting its message out to a target marketing the most effective and efficient manner possible. ○ CP translates a companies campaign strategy into a set of guidelines that can be used for designing the individual advertising messages.

How are electronic games marketed? Consider demographics, audience characteristics (four types), and current trends.

○ Explorers ○ Socializers ○ Achievers Controllers

How do my targets make their purchase decisions?

○ More Thinking or Feeling - Thinking decisions: facts and logical comparisons to choose products - Feeling decisions: emotions, choose products that makes us feel the best

What are the six design rules that help condition players for repeat playing?

○ Rewards ○ Easy to learn ○ Predictable ○ Consistent ○ Familiar Challenging

How do you becoming more media literate with advertising? What do you need to analyze? How can you evaluate ads?

○ The more you are aware of your needs, the more you can use advertising to control your life. ○ Analyze ads - How do advertisers construct the campaign strategy and copy platform?

Should I use s product spokesman in my campaign?

○ The product spokesperson needs to be credible, trustworthy, and attractive. ◊ Credibility refers to expertise. ◊ Trustworthiness refers to the belief that the person is telling the truth. ◊ Attractiveness can refer to physical appeal or other qualities that make audiences want to watch ads.

What is the key benefit I want to sell?

○ There are three choices: Physical features, functional features, and characterization features. § Physical features refer to the actual components of the product itself. § Functional features refer to the way consumers can use the product. - Characterization features refer to how consumers feel when using the product.