Chapter 1
What are the three ways of knowing, as outlined in this class?
Experience, Authority, and Science
- is a systematic way of observing media content, applicable to all types of communication, but particularly to mass media
- is a great starting point for research investigation
- only allows us to observe, no inferences can be made other than the facts presented
Content Analysis
What theory of communication, which is now no longer used, stated that media messages were the same for everyone and that messages directly affected individuals, like a gun shot fired or like a message injected into someone's brains?
Magic Bullet/ Hypodermic Needle Theory
Theory of media we learned about stating that people use the media to fit their different needs and mainly focuses in on individual motivations to use media
Uses and Gratifications theory.
What were the effects of movies like The Doomsday Flight, The Burning Bed, and Fight Club, all an example of?
copy-cat phenomenon
when people imitate the exact behaviors they see in the media
- this can be a huge problem when those acts are illegal, violent, or dangerous
What are the Goals of Science, as outlined in this class?
Prediction, Understanding, Explanation, and Control
What is the main scientific method used to try and establish causation?
Experiments
What was the main scientific contribution of the people's choice study, for media research?
It established the utility and importance of a control group
True of false, different genres of media can have different gratifications for different people?
True
What was the main takeaway from Gerbner's cultivation studies, as we discussed in this chapter?
His studies led to little doubt that there indeed were effects of media violence on people's view of the world
How are these goals of science achieved ?
Through Theory!! (creating it, testing it, making it!)
What are the three necessary steps for causation?
1. Correlation must exist
2. Time order must be established
3. Third variable must be eliminated
What was one of the main reasons the Payne Studies were funded ?
- People saw how prevalent media effects were throughout many points in history and then since movies were such a popular activity, researchers wanted to look at the effects movies had on people
This is the notion that people might deliberately misrepresent their responses because they want to make a good impression on the researchers
Social Desirability Response
What was the main finding of Leonard Eron & Rowell Huesmann's long term study on children under 10, which they later replicated on young adults at 19 and at 30?
TV heavy diet -> higher level of aggression
These findings are consistent today too
It will rain today is a hypothesis, T/F
F.
It needs to be more specific, parameters need to be outlined, and ultimately it can be tested yes, but only once!
Hypothesis – a specific prediction about what will happen under a certain set of well-specified conditions
What are the two main ways to eliminate doubt from results in an experiment?
Replication and Convergence
What was the general aftermath of the Payne Studies?
It established a legacy of fear
What is the biggest criticism of uses and gratifications theory?
It uses self-reports to track the majority of the data, and self reports can often be unreliable
Theory basically states that people can learn to mimic behaviors on TV based off of the reward and punishments characters on the screen receive, the theory that Albert Bandura used to carry out his study
Social learning theory
What is the nature of science?
It is:
~ General
~ Seeks Objective Truth
~ Skeptical
What are the main reasons for using a control group?
- to keep on ruling out other explanations
- to assess impact and accuracy
- Further enhances findings, allows the researcher to isolate the phenomenon they are manipulating
While the limited effects theory is no longer the perspective within our discipline, what was the main contribution from this era of research?
People will expose themselves to messages they agree with already
This is the notion that the increasing amount of time with media, may be taking time away from other things, because people have a limited amount of time to do activities, so something's being taken away or lacking now
The Displacement hypothesis
What are the main principles of Priming theory?
One thing that you think about, reminds you of other things
Media can facilitate your reactions or actions to certain things, by priming reactions in your head