Media Theory Foundations
This is the belief that the medium itself — not its content — is the primary driver of social change
What is media determinism?
This term refers to a system of ideas and beliefs that naturalizes and legitimizes existing power structures
What is ideology?
This early model of media effects assumed audiences passively absorbed and were directly influenced by media messages
What is the hypodermic needle (or magic bullet) model?
Goffman compared everyday social life to this art form, arguing we are always managing impressions in front of others.
What is theatre (dramaturgy)?
This school of game studies argues that games should be understood on their own terms as rule-based play systems.
What is ludology?
This view argues that society and culture shape how media develop and are used, rather than the reverse.
What is cultural determinism?
Gramsci used this concept to describe how dominant groups maintain power through consent rather than coercion
What is hegemony?
This model shifted focus to what audiences do with media, arguing that people seek out content to fulfill personal needs
What is the uses and gratifications model?
In Goffman's framework, this is the space where individuals can 'drop the act' and behave outside their public performance.
What is the back stage?
This competing school of game studies emphasizes story, character, and narrative as central to understanding games.
What is narratology?
This term describes the intellectual error of explaining a complex phenomenon by reducing it to a single cause
What is reductionism?
Althusser's term for institutions like schools, religion, and media that reproduce ruling-class ideology
What are Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs)?
Stuart Hall identified these three positions an audience member can take when decoding a media message.
What are dominant/preferred, negotiated, and oppositional readings?
Kenneth Burke coined this term for the idea that symbolic forms — like stories and jokes — help people manage social tensions and anxieties.
What is 'equipment for living'?
This is the term for texts that require non-trivial effort from the reader to traverse, such as video games and hypertext fiction.
What is ergodic media?
McLuhan's famous phrase captures the idea that the form of communication matters more than any particular message it carries.
What is 'the medium is the message'?
This Althusserian process describes how ideology 'hails' individuals, turning them into subjects who recognize themselves within a dominant worldview
What is interpellation?
Hall's encoding/decoding model challenges earlier audience theories by emphasizing this quality of audiences.
What is being active (active audiences)?
This concept, associated with Judith Butler, argues that identity categories like gender are not innate but constituted through repeated acts.
What is performativity?
This is the key distinction that separates video games from other forms of interactive media, according to the course.
What is the presence of rules and/or a win/lose condition (or defined game mechanics)?
This is the term for an explanation that only describes one factor in a situation
Althusser's ISAs are contrasted with this other category of institution he identified, which operates through direct force
What are Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs)?
A viewer watching a news broadcast who agrees with its framing completely is occupying this position in Hall's model.
What is the dominant or preferred reading position?
Goffman explains why the same event can be understood in radically different ways depending on this.
What is the interpretive framework (or 'frame') applied to make sense of it?
This is the term for when a video game's story resonates well with its gameplay