Media Literacy: Chapter 11 and Chapter 12

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...) different niche for each, usually use two or more to appeal to broader base audience.

Four standards to evaluate news and make a judgment that there is something wrong (identify fake news)

-By type of producer -News Criteria -By Accuracy -News Perspective

Nine steps in the design process:

1.) An idea is conceived and sketched out in a demo 2.) Designers decide what players will do in the game 3.) Artist render environments and characters. 4.) Programmers write the digital code to make the game work as envisioned by designers and artists 5.) When code is written, alpha version of game is tested 6.) Corrections are made to fix bugs 7.) Beta version is tested by making available to more players 8.) Game "goes gold" and released to publisher 9.) Publisher designs box and disk and distributes them to retail outlets.

(Why are people attracted?) Digital Games satisfy two main needs:

1.) Emotional Need: Games can arouse emotions in players both when they are winning or losing. These emotions can be more intense than those triggered in real life. 2.) Cognitive Needs: Cognitive needs, such as the need for control, are often satisfied by digital games. In routine lives, people may feel that there is no progress, a feeling referred to as the Sisyphus problem. But by playing, people can feel more successful.

Six design rules that apply to all games to attract and condition players:

1.) Must have some reward (only goes to good players, bad players punished fairly) 2.) Should be relatively easy to learn. Don't reveal complexity to player at the beginning 3.) Game should be predictable (follow logical rules so player can predict the outcome of their actions) 4.) Should be consistent (outcome of action should be the same) 5.) Fair degree of familiarity 6.) Should be challenging

Many perspective on what constitutes as news:

1.) Political Philosophy Perspective 2.) Professional Journalism Perspective 3.) Economic Perspective 4.) Marketing Perspective

Game designers must make 3 fundamental decisions about the game they want to design:

1.) category of play 2.) formality of play 3.) Affective tone

Formality of play

1.A game can have a range of number of rules. 2.Informal games have very few rule and rituals (spontaneous expression of animalistic impulse to play). Formal games have many rules and rituals and require players to follow discipline.

Be analytical

1.Analyzing a story can help you figure out the reason why it is making you uncomfortable. 2.Ask certain questions during your news exposure. 3.Red flag the story if you have difficulty answering those questions. 4.Check the fact in the story as well as the way they have been presented.

Affective Tone

1.The kinds of emotions designers want the game to trigger in players. 2.Games can trigger a range of emotions, such as aggression, mystery, or suspense.

The complicated task of designing a new digital game requires teamwork to blend many types of skills. A design team is typically

12 to 20 people strong, each with specialized skills of their own. The development, creation, and testing of each game takes about 15 to 18 months. Some team members must have marketing skills to identify potential niche audiences. Some members must understand human psychology in order to attract targeted players, pull them in, and condition them with the gaming experience. Some members offer artistic skills to develop a compelling look, feel, and sound of the game. There must be skilled computer programmers to write the code.

Average player is _____________________

30 years old. 46% are women with women over 18 being the fastest growing market. All ages player. Is a gender difference in the type of games played.

Shorter news stories

Attention span is decreasing. Therefore, news stories are getting shorter which relates to the degree in which stories report issues in depth.

Multimedia stories

Attracts traffic better than plain-vanilla news as it includes interactive elements and graphics. ex: Slideshows, videos, audio all included in an article

Digital games also provied:

Challenges can motivate us and the experience of meeting those challenges can make us feel successful. With digital games, players experience a series of gradually increasing challenges, the completion of which provide a feeling of satisfaction. Games also provide way to socialize by working in groups.

Deviance

Degree to which an event is out of the ordinary. (Ex: Man bites dog). Comes to be the norm which does not keep us informed as it makes these instances seem more common than they are.

Fake news

Deliberate spread of misinformation. Trying to mislead people. Primary reason is to be shocking and get clicks (to profit off of it). With the rise of the internet, it is easier for fake news to spread as anyone can post information to a mass audience. Not just that a journalist got something wrong as everyone makes mistakes.

More immeidate

Digital news sources provide quicker access. Also allows for user-contributed content explaining why news is more immediate on digital platforms.

Evaluate the news storys

Evaluate the news story: 1.Ask if the journalist provides facts or provide a context. 2.It is difficult to confirm the journalist's intention. 3.Discount a story if you have confirmed it is faulty in some way. 4.This can be done by analyzing other stories written by the journalist. 5.Determine if the problem is specific to the news worker or systemic to the entire news organization.

Economic Perspective

Focus on how the news organization allocate their resources as they manufacture their product-----news stories. The commercial nature of news business is a strong influence on how they manufacture and distribute the news. Must attract viewers who are willing to pay and advertisers

By news perspective

From a political philosophy perspective, news has been criticized for being trivial, superficial, biased, and too commercial. However, these criticisms don't make sense from the economic or marketing perspectives. Boczkowski and Mitchelstein (2013), in their two-year study involving dozens of news editors and content analysis of 40,000 news stories, found an increasingly large gap between the supply of public affairs stories and public demand for non-public affairs. Shift to marketing perspective: 1.News organizations decide what news to produce and disseminate based on the recognition that different people have different news needs. 2.News is becoming more hyper-local, fragmenting to provide specialized news to meet the different needs of each niche audience. In this perspective, news providers are doing a good job by keeping up with the varied needs of many different kinds of people.

By type of producer

If a producer is a professional journalist, then the story is news, but if the producer is not, then the story cannot be news------that is, it is fake news. Deceptivly simply as it raises a serious question about who is considered a journalist. There is no license a person must receive to become a journalist. So how do we determine if a story is presented by a true journalist or not.

quality matters

If we don't periodically evaluate the quality of our news sources, we run the risk of believing that we are well informed when we are not. Quality refers to accuracy, credibility, and scope of news stories. Selective exposure pushes people towards stories that confirm their existing beliefs.

Professional Journalism Perspective

Journalist conception of news is reflected in seven criteria that journalists use as a guideline about what should be covered as news each day. timeliness, significance, proximity, prominence, conflict, human interest, and deviance

exposure matters

Now with the rise of nontraditional news, we have many alternative sources of news. Thus, the control of what we are exposed to shifts to us. The news is limited by your desire to know what is happening to people with whom you have a personal relationship.

Selective Exposure

One of the widespread needs in any population is the need for information that confirms one's belief rather than challenges them. People seek out information that conforms to their existing belief system and avoid information that challenges beliefs.

Flow

People getting lost in tasks. Deeply immerse themselves in a task so that they lose all track of time and place. Become so immersed in the game that other needs become secondary. The expectation of completing the next game objective is the focus while everything else is forgotten.

Big News

Post-American Civil War, needs for news was changing. (19th century) Some entrepreneurs saw this as a chance to develop newspapers with very large circulations in the growing population centers. So, in order to grow their subscriber base as large as possible, newspapers shifted away from presenting stories with a political bias. The growth of these vastly circulating newspapers ushered in an era of Big News. Editors of these newspapers assumed the role of expert gate keepers.

Telescoping

Refers to the way digital game players focus on the steps within the process of moving through a game. 1.At any given point in a digital game, players are focused on an immediate objective. 2. This is called foreground, while all other objectives are pushed into the background. Once the immediate objective is met, players are immediately motivated to meet their next objective.

Marketing Perspective

Related to economic perspective. Begins with the premise that news organizations are businesses that need to generate enough revenue to stay in business so they must attract large audience.

Based on the marketing perspective, which types of news stories should journalists emphasize most?

Soft News. Demonstrates need for short, easy-to-digest stories that conform to what they already know and trigger emotions of delight (from good news) and vicarious horror (from bad news) rather than stories that require more work to read and understand, then the news organizations would provide those products. Explains why news stories have been getting shorter and simpler

Be skeptical

Stay alter to the possibility that any news story can be faulty in several ways. News radar: 1.One must set a proper level of sensitivity to their news radar. 2.False or misleading stories may go undetected on a radar that is not sensitive enough. 3.On the other hand, a radar that is too sensitive will make you compulsive and you will waste time being concerned about good news stories. 4.You can attain a proper level of sensitivity through experience with particular news organizations and journalists.

More local

The closer an event is to us, the more we find it interesting or newsworthy. Digital platforms can satisfy this need for local news better, explaining the switch. The focus of most traditional news organizations is on the aggregate level (stories are collected to appeal to the mass) The digital media are able to present news that is hyper-local, which means they are able to personalize news stories to satisfy the practical needs of each niche audience.

Political Philosophy Perspective

The daily flow of info from expert journalist to the general public for the purpose of educating the population so they can make well-informed choices in a democracy. Editors determine what the most important event or issues are. News stories should be constructed from accurate facts rather than journalists opinions so that people can become educated about what is really happening and make up their own minds about what positions to take on issues.

Significance

The magnitude of the consequences of an event

Agenda setting theory:

The media are selective in what they present as news and what they emphasize as being the most important news.

Evaluate facts

The next step is to confirm that you feelings that something is wrong with the story are legitimate. This simplest way is to check the accuracy of the facts.

How similar are the political philosophy perspective and the professional journalistic perspective on the news?

They both discuss newsworthiness.

By News Criteria

Use the news criteria of timeliness, significance, proximity, prominence, conflict, human interest, and deviance.

By Accuracy

Whether a fact reported in a news story is accurate requires that the fact be compared to a truth standard. There may be more than one truth standard for fact. Example: The rate of unemployment is one example of a fact that has many truth standards. To determine if figures reported in the news are accurate, we need to be careful about understanding what the turth standard really is.

Games force players to pay ____________________________

a heightened attention to the message instead of simply absorbing. Must continually make decisions and are sucked further in as the consequences of decision unfold. Participation give sense of power to player

The biggest concern about digital games is their ___________________

addictive nature. 90% of people under 18 in America play. 8% of players are addicted. Fear of addiction has been most seen with MMORPG (hard to sleep at night when you know members of your guild are playing)

The desire to compete is a fundamental part of _____________________________________

being human. Makes our culture and civilization possible.

Criticism of economic perspective is the idea that when news decisions are guided more by profit for the news provider rather than the education of the general public, then only business ___________________

benefit. Also tends to change the content in ways that harms the public. Ex: less on government affairs and more on sports which attracts larger audience resulting in higher profit.

Idea of big news reached a peak in the 1980s, then _______________________________

circulation began declining for newspapers and audiences began eroding for radio and television news. Increased rapidly with the arrival of the internet.

Digital games are similar to all other forms of mass media because games are ________________________________

commercial products that have been created in a manner that is highly attractive to a particular niche audience and the games themselves are constructed to condition habitual use. But they are different as they don't present a traditional story in the conventional narrative sense. Instead, games offer the potential for players to construct their own stories.

News is not a simple reflection of actual events; instead, it is a ___________________________________________________________

construction by news workers who are subjected to many influences and constraints.

Judging the accuracy of a news story is more complex than simply judging the accuracy of individual facts because the way those facts are reported in a story creates a _____________________________________________________

context that can either lead viewers to a complete, unbiased understanding or an inaccurate understanding because of the facts left out or because the tone or structure of the story.

The problem with applying these criteria is that each suggest a _________________________

continuum whereas decisions require a categorization. Translating something from a continuum to a category requires us to consider a question: How much of the characteristics needs to be extended in order for it to be considered news. the criteria are more like suggestions.

While journalist often monitor content on twitter to get leads for stories and sources of information, journalists have also used the internet in a more proactive way with ___________________________________

crowdsourcing, which is a technique that journalist use to generate leads and information.

Conflict

degree to which the parties in an event disagree

____________________________________ are not good indicators of the digital gaming market

demographics. Markets have moved beyond demographics to use psychographics.

As people's need for news has been changing, the digital media have responded by _________________________________

developing a different model for the content of news that users find very attractive. It is more immediate, local, shorter, and multi-media

The news media only reporting on plane crashes when thousands of planes fly safely every day, thus creating an impression that plane crashes are a common event, is an example of the ___________________________ becoming the norm.

deviant

As cultures get fragmented into smaller interest groups, people within each group have __________________________________________________________

different news needs. The common experience is vanishing, diminishing the shared knowledge base. There is now a diversity of beliefs and attitudes. A likely commonality, however, is the culture of fear. Because fear is an easy emotion to trigger, news outlets focus on deviance that threaten the wellbeing and lifestyle of people.

all these games have in common __________________________

digital codes that govern game appearance, visual and audio features that attract users to the game, and input devices that players use to communicate with the digital code while playing.

The News industry has undergone significant changes over the past few decades with the rise of the__________________________________

digital media and their various platforms for presenting news. This changes have stimulated critics to have a pessimistic perspective on the future of news.

Each MMORPG cyberworld has its own internal ___________________________________________________________

economy in which players are given opportunities to perform work-like tasks and earn currency. Players satisfy their game-playing needs and gradually amass wealth within the game. The boundary between cyberworlds and the real world has also been breached in the realm of the economy.

Audiences for early newspapers were _______________________

elites

Timeliness

event has to be current to be news

With the innovation of computers, the competitive platform _________________________________

expanded. People can play against computers and receive immediate feedback on their performance. With the rise of the internet, individuals can now play against anyone around the world, so geography is no longer a limitation. Also, the can compete with very large numbers of players, such as with massive multiplayer online role-playing games. Can also take experience anywhere with proliferation of mobile devices.

One such psychographics scheme identifies four types of players:

explorers (want to experience everything in a world), socializers (communicate and work with others), achievers (want to build something), and controllers (want to dominate others)

Fans pay to watch their

favorite digital game players. There are dedicated websites for fans who want to pay to watch their favorite gamers play. In 2018 viewers spent 8.4 billion hours watching gamers being live-streamed on Twitch.

Two terms for the gaming experience:

flow and telescoping. Experiencing these is rewarding which draws players back

Because people vary so widely on their emotional attachment to any given topic, the news audience is ___________________________________

fragmenting, and traditional news organization cannot satisfy the range of needs for news across any large group of diverse people.

Good judgments about the accuracy of news stories is not an easy task. The criteria are _________________ with limited ability to provide a clear standard of judgment.

fuzzy

Proximity

how close the event is to the news audience

Human interest

how strongly the event would appeal to human emotions

The gradual accumulation of information from news shapes our beliefs about _____________________________________

how things work as well as how they should work. These beliefs are the standards against which we evaluate people, events, and places. It is a fundamentally unavoidable process of constructing knowledge structures, beliefs, and attitudes. The process can be controlled more if we think about our media exposure patterns and their implications.

Prominence

how well-known people and institutions are in the event being considered newsworthy.

News organizations that emphasize the use of audience metric data publish fewer ____________________________________

in-depth stories but also that the use of metrics influences the selection of events that get covered. Some organizations are being guided in their selection of news much more by audience metrics than by journalist expertise to determine what gets covered as news.

News was originally mainly transmitted through ______________________________

interpersonal conversations

Ornebring (2010) suggested that journalism could use three general criteria of professionalism:

knowledge, organization, and autonomy. Knowledge is composed of a cognitive base and particular skills, although their specifics are not defined. 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." Example of professional organizations for journalists include the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), both of which follow a code of ethics. The SPJ lays down four principles for an ethical journalist to act with integrity. 1.Seek truth and report it. 2.Minimize harm. 3.Act independently. 4.Be accountable and transparent. Autonomy refers to how professionals do their jobs with a great deal of individual discretion and how external influence over the work process itself should be non-existent or minimal. Professional organizations may encourage journalists to adhere to certain guidelines, although they have no power to enforce compliance.

Online distribution services such as steam make a ____________________________________________

large variety of games easily available.

Despite the importance of contextual material, many stories present __________________________

little context. This trend continues with the shortening of news stories today. Example: Reported crime stories are limited to the facts of the crime, rarely with a context. It takes journalistic talent and experience to unearth relevant contextual information. Also, while constructing context of stories, journalists wield a lot of power to define the meaning of the event for the readers.

Humans have always had an interest in the events around them. News was personal and ________________

local; that is, people were most concerned about events that impacted their daily lives (weather, regulations in the area, etc.) as well as the lives of their family and friends.

There were safeguards in place to ensure news is coming from professionals. But with the rise of the internet, these safeguards are _________________

lowered. Anyone can post anything to many people. Bots are also used to retweet post and help it spread faster.

Digital gaming has grown in popularity to become a

major sport. Digital game players are recruited by colleges and are even offered athletic scholarships worth up to $19,000 per year. Professional leagues of video gamers are regularly televised on major cable channels.

Readers have more information, with context, to interpret the ______________________________________________

meaning of a story. However, news stories often reveal the personal biases of news workers. Many critics complain of the liberal or conservative news biases of news providers. According to Gallup public opinion data, more than half of Americans felt that the media were influenced by advertisers, business corporations, Democrats, the federal government, liberals, the military, and Republicans (Becker, Kosicki, & Jones, 1992). These biases stem from in-group/out-group differences. While conservatives feel there is a liberal bias in the media, liberals view the media as conservative.

Telescoping is different than _____________________________________

multitasking which is handling a chaotic stream of task that are unrelated. Telescoping focuses more on a sequence of order objectives in a hierarchy of priority and moving through them in a logical sequence.

The more neighborhoods that generate curiosity in you, the more broad your exposure will be. Media literacy warns against a _________________________ (Media literacy is reflected in the scope of a person's perspective.).

narrow focus. If we limit ourselves to a narrow perspective that focuses only on our personal social networks, then we become blind to how government work, the shape of the economy, and what is happening to other parts of the world.

Many news organizations take a marketing approach in which they first identify what the

needs of their potential readers are and then manufacture the kinds of stories that will satisfy those needs.

What qualifies someone as a professional journalist who produces legitimate news?

no agreed upon definition or qualification

Interactivity with news: 1.Interactivity draws people into news, through features that make the news more useful for them. 2.However, interactive features also require considerable cognitive and emotional costs. 3.Our involvement with interactive news may give out the impression of accuracy of the news, which might ____________________________

not always be the case.

While games are typically marketed to players, game developers also market their game code to ________________________

other game developers. (Middle-ware market). Would-be game designers, who lack the depth of programming skills, buy game engines to construct the specifics of their games from the basic code.

Newspapers did not begin until the 16th century, when a group of men in Italy collected information and sold it to their clients in news ______________________________

pamphlets. By the 17th century, these pamphlets evolved into daily newspaper which presented a simple listing of facts, which made them hard to read because the facts were not presented as a story with any context or flow.

This shift from traditional news sources to online sources illustrates that _________________________________________

people's need for news has been changing. -First, it indicates that Americans want more efficient access to news. (Don't have to wait for the paper to be delivered or broadcast tv to air news). Want continuous access. -People are indicating that they prefer news stories that are much more local, in the sense that those stories are about what their friends are doing or the things that users---not journalist---- think are the most important.

Becoming more media literate involves the ______________________

periodic assessment of exposure and quality as well as maintaining a skeptical relationship with the news.

Within each colony, entrepreneurs created newspapers, each with a different _________________________________

political POV. Primarily motivated by a desire to express their personal opinions and to report news in a way that supported those opinions.

The political philosophy perspective believes that the press should be free from __________________________

political and economic pressures so that it can present the public with an objective representation of major events everyday.

1.In a study conducted by Castranova, 57% of users of digital games said they would

quit their real-world job and work in the cyberworld if they could make enough money there to support themselves.

Video game industry is healthy, but it is also ________________________

risky due to the high cost of production

Massively Multiplayer online Role-Playing Games

role-playing games set in virtual fantasy worlds that require users to play through an avatar WoW was the most successful online video game in the world. But as other MMORPG games grew popularity, the intense competition reduced the number of regular players. All players begin at level zero and must build themselves up to the next level. As a player advances, the challenges become more difficult and rewards more substantial. Experience involve completion of quests, discovery of new territories etc.

The loss of circulation of daily newspapers should not be interpreted as people losing interest in local news, because many of those "lost" subscribers ________________________________

shifted to online sources of news. Their need for news is being satisfied better by digital sources.

Starting early 2000s, resources from game worlds were being

sold by players in the real world for real world currency. Example: As of 2004, eBay was hosting about $30 million of annual trade for goods that only exist in synthetic worlds. Many games have developed their own sites for the exchange of virtual goods leading to the creation of cryptocurrencies, such as platinum pieces in EverQuest and Linder Dollars in Second Life.

Humans invented card and board games to compete against one or several people. Over time, game playing has incorporated each new __________________________

technology, especially with the recent development of digital innovations

Women play more _____________________

traditional games (don't require special set of skills). Men want "core" games (RPG, fantast, not casual, physical enhancement.) Reason: video games provide opportunities for boys to meet social needs for inclusions and affection but not for young girl.

Journalist have been _____________________________

trivializing the news in order to satisfy what the news industry perceives as what the public now wants.

Context in a story helps audiences _____________________________________

understand the meaning of the event in the news story. According to Bagdikian (1992), when a journalistic story is reported without context, it becomes the most serious form of journalistic bias. "Objective reporting" should be devoid of an opinion.

Digital Media provide gaming platforms to attract audiences who _________________________________________________________

want to create their own media experience to satisfy their need for competition.