Theory and Methods
C. Wright Mills defined this as the ability to see the connection between "personal troubles" and these.
What is the sociological imagination?
These are anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture, ranging from a whistle or a graffiti tag to a flashing red light.
What are symbols?
For most people, this is the first and most influential agent of socialization.
What is family?
This is a small social group whose members share personal and lasting relationships.
What is primary group?
This is the uneven access to technology and the internet among different socioeconomic or geographic groups.
These factors establish a causal relationship between two variables.
These are unwritten rules of behavior.
What are social norms?
Prisons and military boot camps are examples of this kind of setting, where every aspect of life is controlled.
This often happens in a triad, when it falls into a dyad and an isolate.
When a company like Disney owns movie studios, theme parks, and news networks, it is an example of this.
What is media conglomerate?
This research method involves joining a group to observe their behavior from an "insider" perspective.
What is participant observation (or ethnography)?
This is the practice of judging another culture by its own standards rather than your own.
This is a social position that a person holds, such as "student" or "daughter."
What is status?
Max Weber identified this as a highly rationalized, hierarchical organizational model.
What is bureaucracy?
This term describes how the ruling class uses media and culture to manipulate the value system of society so that their view becomes the "worldview" through pervasive and excessive influence.
This macro-level theory, influenced by Karl Marx, sees society as an arena of inequality that generates change.
What is Conflict Theory?
These are collective conceptions of what is considered good, desirable, and proper—or bad, undesirable, and improper—in a culture which shape your specifc beliefs.
What are values?
These are the expected behaviors that go along with a given status.
What is role?
This is the tendency to attribute out-group member behavior to internal factors and in-group member to external "situational" factors.
What is attribution theory?
This occurs when a media company owns different stages of production and distribution, such as a movie studio also owning the theaters or streaming service where the film is shown.
This theoretical perspective views society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability.
What is Functionalism?
This is the practice of judging another culture by the standards of one’s own, often leading to a sense of cultural superiority.
What is ethnocentrism?
Erving Goffman’s approach to social interaction, which compares life to a theatrical performance, is called this.
This term describes the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant—efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control—are coming to dominate more sectors of society.
This term refers to the collection of personal data by corporations and governments through our online activity, often used for targeted advertising or social control.
What is surveillance capitalism?