Glossary

acoustic space—
Space that is spherical, discontinuous, resonant, and dynamic.
advertising—
A form of communication and marketing designed to persuade audiences to feel and/or behave a certain way toward a product, service, or corporate brand.
aesthetics—
Those qualities of an artwork that, while asignifying, generate sensual experiences and evoke affective responses from audiences; the meaningfulness of art (and life) as apprehended through the senses; the beauty of art and the sensual enjoyment it engenders.
affect—
An intensity registered directly by the body that operates on a nonrepresentational or asignifying register.
agency—
The capacity of human beings to act purposively and according to their own volitions.
agenda‐setting—
The capacity of the news media to establish what issues and events are considered significant.
aggressor effect—
The hypothesis that repeated exposure to representations of violence increases aggressive behavior on the part of audiences.
American Dream—
The unquestioned assumption that hard work leads to success, and that success is measured in terms of economic wealth.
apparatus theory—
An early psychoanalytic approach to film that claims that the actual environment and machinery of the cinema activates a number of desires within spectators.
assimilation—
The process of “whitewashing” ethnic diversity by de‐historicizing cultural difference.
base (in Marxist theory)—
The underlying economic and material conditions of society.
bystander effect—
The hypothesis that repeated exposure to representations of violence promotes increased callousness about violence directed at others.
camp—
A collection of stylistic elements that, as they happen to converge around and/or within a specific media text, resonate with the experiences of queer individuals living within a heteronormative social system.
carnivalesque—
A characteristic of texts that embrace and embody the subversive spirit of medieval carnival.
catharsis effect—
The hypothesis that repeated exposure to representations of violence functions as an outlet for pent‐up aggressive drives in the individual.
celebrity—
A cultural phenomenon that celebrates famous or well‐known personalities.
closed text—
A text that is structured to elicit a particular, usually singular, response from audiences.
clusters—
The way individual signs are associated and dissociated with one another.
code—
A set of rules that govern the use of visual and linguistic signs within a culture.
code of ethics—
A self‐imposed set of rules that outline the ethical strivings of a particular media outlet.
concentration—
An organizational state in which the ownership and control of an entire industry, such as the mass media, is dominated by just a few companies; an oligopoly.
conglomeration—
The corporate practice of accumulating multiple, though not necessarily media, companies and businesses through startups, mergers, buyouts, and takeovers.
connotation—
The cultural meaning of a text; second‐order signification.
consequences (in regulation)—
The clear effects of a given regulatory action.
conspicuous consumption—
The belief that one can attain the kind of happiness or completeness often conceived of as upper class through the purchase of material goods and services.
content—
The informational component of a message; the specific details, facts, ideas, and opinions communicated through mass media.
contingencies (in regulation)—
The unique contextual and historical factors that influence regulatory action.
conventions—
The norms that govern the technical and creative choices made by workers in the execution of their duties, art, or craft.
convergence—
The tendency of formerly diverse media to share a common, integrated platform.
cool medium—
Low‐definition communication technologies that are high in audience participation or completion (e.g. television, telephone, cartoons).
copyright—
The legal granting of exclusive control of a creative work to that work’s creator.
critical media studies—
An umbrella term used to describe an array of theoretical perspectives on the media, which — though diverse — are united by their skeptical attitude, humanistic approach, political assessment, and commitment to social justice.
cruising—
The interpretive practice of reading with one’s body.
cultural imperialism—
The imposition of one set of cultural values on other cultures; the exporting of cultural values and ideologies around the globe, usually to the detriment of local culture and national sovereignty.
cultural production—
The generation of semiotic, enunciative, and textual materials related to a specific media artifact by fans of that artifact.
Cultural studies—
An interdisciplinary approach to the study of culture that seeks to understand how relations of power are enacted, reified, and challenged.
culture—
The collection of artifacts, practices, and beliefs of a particular group of people at a particular historical moment, supported by symbolic systems and directed by ideology.
culture jamming—
The use of familiar media symbols and channels to reveal and overturn the consumerist, capitalist ideologies they embody.
decoding—
The process of using a code to decipher a message and assess meaning.
denotation—
The literal meaning of a text; first‐order signification.
desire—
The unquenchable yearning for love or recognition that no one else can ever perfectly or absolutely fill.
dialogic text—
A text that stages an unending conversation between Self and Other, and, thus, is perpetually open and unfinished.
difference—
The depiction of others who are subordinate to, but a source of pleasure for, Western tourists and consumers.
digital rights management—
Any software program that media industries employ to control the distribution and use of digital intellectual property.
discursive construction—
A social construction made invisible, natural, normal, and indeed “biological” by its discursive aspects.
doxa—
Cultural knowledge that is accepted as common sense; the realm of the taken‐for‐granted.
dramaturgy—
A microsociological perspective that utilizes the metaphor of theater to explain the character and function of public behavior, especially face‐to‐face interaction.
drives—
Motivating forces that arise when biological needs register within the mind and seek gratification through objects in external reality.
encoding—
The process of creating a meaningful message according to a particular code.
encryption—
The digital scrambling of a message such that it can only be read by using an appropriately correlated decoding program.
enculturation—
The process by which persons internalize the values of an organization or culture.
equipment for living—
The idea that public discourse provides audiences with symbolic resources for confronting the anxieties and difficulties of their own lives.
essentialism—
The belief that cultural distinctions such as masculinity and femininity are inherent, universal, and natural.
ethnography—
A qualitative research method that employs observation to understand cultural phenomena from the perspective of the members of that culture.
exclusion—
The symbolical annihilation of various cultural groups through erasure or under‐representation.
exoticism—
Images of foreign lands and bodies that romanticize or mystify other cultures.
fake news—
A subcategory of propaganda or disinformation that deliberately seeks to mislead consumers by masquerading as legitimate news. Fake news does not refer to legitimate journalistic outlets who report stories that are unpopular or critical of persons in power.
false consciousness—
The belief that the masses are duped into blindly accepting the prevailing ideology.
fandom—
Organized communities or subcultures comprising persons who share a special affinity for or attachment to a media text, which they express through their participation in communal practices (fan fiction, etc.) and events (conventions).
fantasy—
A mental representation of conscious or unconscious wish fulfillment.
feminism—
A political project that explores the diverse ways men and women are socially empowered or disempowered.
fetishism—
The psychic structuring of an object or person as a source of sexual pleasure.
forces of production (in Marxist theory)—
The land, natural resources, and technology needed to produce material goods.
form—
(1) The overall structure or configuration of a message; (2) the creation and satisfaction of desire.
fourth persona—
A projection or impression of the author(s), indicated though textual features, that is only available to select audience members who possess the necessary interpretive codes.
fragmentation—
A splintering of the consuming public into ever more specialized taste cultures.
frame analysis—
The examination of how media organize experience.
frames—
Social constructs that organize our experience and, thus, our understanding of a situation based upon how they name or define it.
gatekeeping—
The ability to control access to the public.
gender—
The culturally constructed differences (tastes, roles, activities, etc.) between men and women.
gender performativity—
The idea that gender, rather than a coherent component of identity incorporated through socialization, is in fact a bodily performance of discourse that exists only because people believe it is significant.
genre—
A class or constellation of messages that share discernible stylistic (syntactic), substantive (semantic), and situational (pragmatic) characteristics.
glass ceiling—
Informal, gendered workplace policies that allow women to progress only so far in promotion.
globalization—
A complex set of social, political, and economic processes in which the physical boundaries and structural policies that previously reinforced the autonomy of the nation state are collapsing in favor of instantaneous and flexible worldwide social relations.
grotesque realism—
An aesthetic of degradation or debasement that emphasizes the lower bodily stratum.
guilt—
The emotional condition that arises when we violate hierarchy.
habit—
Mental “shortcut” or established tendency that directs future thought and action along predictable paths.
hegemony—
Spontaneous consent; the process by which one ideology subverts other competing ideologies and gains cultural dominance.
hermeneutic depth—
The critical recognition of multiple meanings in a text as the source of its overall meaning.
heteronormativity—
A social system that privileges male/female sexual coupling over any other possible arrangement or expression of sexuality.
hierarchy—
The social rules by which we play.
historical materialism—
The underlying method of Marxism; a perspective that regards the character of social life to be a reflection of the material conditions that exist at a particular historical juncture.
historical violence—
Representations of violence that invite self‐reflection and social consciousness.
homogenization—
The reduction or erasure of diversity.
hot medium—
High‐definition communication technologies that are low in audience participation (e.g. radio, photographs, and films).
hyper‐real violence—
Highly stylized representations of violence that are absent of any critical reflexivity.
iconic sign—
A sign that structurally resembles the object for which it stands.
idealism—
A philosophy that holds that ideas, not material conditions, determine social existence.
ideology—
A prison for the mind; a wide‐scale system of ideas that unconsciously shapes and constrains our beliefs and behaviors; the ruling ideas of society.
Imaginary—
A primary developmental space in which the child learns to make demands; the realm of chaotic images and sensory impressions into which the child is born.
impression management—
The art of successfully staging a character or “part,” of enacting a performance that creates the desired impression of the self.
indecency—
Material that is morally unfit for general distribution or broadcast.
indexical sign—
A sign that conveys meaning through cause or association.
informational bias—
The journalistic predisposition that governs how a story is structured and told; four common informational biases are dramatization, personalization, fragmentation, and authority—disorder.
integration—
An ownership pattern in which the subsidiary companies or branches within a corporation are strategically interrelated; integration can be vertical (within a media industry) or horizontal (across media industries).
interpellation—
The process by which individuals are turned into ideological subjects.
interpretive communities—
Groups that interpret texts similarly because they share similar social positions and experiences.
interpretive play—
An improvisational mode of audience—text interaction that ignores dominant interpretive codes in favor of interpretive codes that fulfill personal needs or desires.
intersectionality—
A concern with the ways in which gender intersects with other forms of difference like race, class, sexuality, and ability in the lived experiences of individuals.
intertextuality—
The ways that texts gesture or refer to other texts; three common types of intertextuality are parodic allusion, creative appropriation, and self‐reflexive reference.
ironism—
A commitment to seeing the world in terms of contingent historical descriptions (and not in terms of an unchanging essence).
joint venture—
A business practice in which two or more companies split the costs of a new venture so that no single company has to bear the full financial burden should the venture fail.
jouissance —
A radically disruptive pleasure that destabilizes culture and subjectivity; an elusive and ecstatic pleasure that emerges from an active engagement with the text.
journalistic beats—
The places and institutions where news is regularly expected to occur.
lack—
In psychoanalysis, the unquenchable quality of desire that references the difference between the Imaginary and Symbolic orders.
langue —
A linguistic system.
libel—
Printed statements that falsely impugn or defame a person’s character.
literacy—
The technologies of writing and print.
logic of safety—
A strategy of profit maximization rooted in risk avoidance and the logic of sequels, remakes, and spin‐offs.
male gaze—
The cinema’s frequent positioning of women as objects coded for strong visual and erotic impact.
Marxism—
A theory and social movement rooted in the idea that “society is the history of class struggles.”
mass media—
Communication technologies that have the potential to reach large, distant, and anonymous audiences.
media ecology—
An approach that views communication technologies as environments.
media erotics—
An approach that reflects a concern with the sensuous, transgressive, and productive ways audiences interact with texts.
media frames—
Persistent patterns (either stylistic or substantive) of discourse in media.
media literacy—
Any learning opportunity that increases an individual’s understanding of how the mass media function.
media reform—
Any effort by citizens and citizens’ interest groups to effect change in the structure and operation of mass media industries.
medium—
A particular communication technology through which information is communicated; the term means “middle,” or that which comes between two things.
medium theory—
A research tradition that considers the technology or individual medium of communication to be equally important to, or even more important than, the content of media in understanding our social environment.
meliorism—
The pragmatic belief that people can correct social problems through proper identification and applied effort.
memory—
Audience members’ recollection of their reception histories.
mobility—
The capacity of an object to be moved from place to place with ease.
mortification—
A means of resolving guilt that requires a symbolic act of atonement such as confession or self‐sacrifice.
multinationalism—
A corporate presence in multiple countries, allowing for the production and distribution of media products on a global scale.
myth—
A sacred story or “type of speech” that reaffirms and reproduces ideology in relation to an object.
narrative—
The visual or verbal retelling of a series of events, real or fictitious, that occur in (often chronological) succession.
narrowcasting—
The practice of targeting niche audiences.
news—
The product produced by the organizational structures and practices of journalism.
news agencies—
Corporations that produce and sell stories to other news providers or nonprofit cooperatives, which work with large media companies to generate news centrally and distribute it locally.
objectivity—
The reporting of facts in an impartial manner.
obscenity—
Illegal, sexually explicit material that lacks literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Oedipus complex—
A developmental moment where drives/desires are prohibited, granting a child access to the Symbolic order and/or “normal” subjectivity formation.
open text—
A text that is structured to call for the active participation of audiences in the production of meaning.
orality—
Thought and its verbal expression.
organization—
A system (or network) of ordered relationships and coordinated activities directed toward specific goals.
organizational culture—
The set(s) of norms and customs, artifacts and events, and values and assumptions that emerge as a consequence of organizational members’ communicative practices.
othering—
The process of marginalizing minorities by defining them in relationship to the majority, which is assumed to be the norm.
paradigm shift—
A fundamental transformation in how persons know and perceive the world.
parole —
Individual speech acts or utterances.
participatory media—
Communication technologies that necessitate either direct‐user interaction (DUI) or user‐created content (UCC) in order to function.
patriarchy—
A system of social relationships in which women’s interests are subordinated to those of men.
performance—
Expressive displays that carry symbolic significance in a particular context.
phallocentrism—
A social condition in which images or representations of the penis carry connotations of power and dominance.
plaisir —
A hegemonic pleasure; a comfortable and comforting pleasure that reproduces dominant culture/subjectivity.
planned obsolescence—
A business strategy whereby the obsolescence of a product is built into it from the start.
pleasure principle—
The tendency for motivating drives to seek satisfaction, as well as the effect of this tendency on an individual’s actions.
political bias—
The ideological slant (i.e. liberal or conservative) of a news organization. Political bias does not qualify a news organization or its content as fake news.
polyphony—
The “many‐voicedness” of a text.
polysemy—
The notion that a text has many meanings or is open to multiple interpretations.
polyvalence—
The notion that a text has a relatively unified meaning that is valued differently by different audiences.
postfeminism—
A conceptual shift within the popular understanding of feminism from an emphasis on the systemic oppression of all women to the empowerment of individual women.
postmodernity—
The historical epoch that began to emerge in the 1960s as the economic mode of production in most Western societies slowly shifted from goods‐based manufacturing to information‐based services.
Pragmatism—
A branch of philosophy that assesses truth in terms of effect, outcome, and practicality.
press release—
A strategically prepared written or recorded statement produced for news organizations that announces something which claims to be newsworthy.
product placement—
The (paid) inclusion of a product, service, or brand in a media text.
productive—
Something that is generative of alternative pleasures, meanings, and identities.
profanity—
An utterance that is abusive, irreverent, or vulgar.
professional culture—
The set(s) of norms and customs, artifacts and events, and values and assumptions that emerge as a consequence of formal training (i.e. education, apprenticeships, internships, etc.), membership and participation (i.e. professional associations, conferences, workshops, licenses, etc.), and recognition (i.e. industry awards and honors) within a profession.
professionalization—
The socialization of workers to produce certain kinds of work; the process by which an individual with free will and choice is transformed (i.e. socialized) into an ideological subject (i.e. professional) whose behaviors and actions reaffirm his or her status as a professional.
professionals—
Persons who possess expertise in a particular area or field that allows them to accomplish the distinctive tasks of their position.
profit‐motive—
The continuous desire to increase capital.
propaganda—
Any form of strategic disinformation disseminated with the intent of misleading and manipulating audiences.
pseudo news—
Current‐events programming that features political opinion and commentary, but lacks the rigorous editorial standards and processes typical of serious journalism.
punditry—
News that is pre‐packaged by politicians and their communication consultants (i.e. press advisors and public relations managers) to promote a favorable image of a politician and her or his specific policy initiatives.
queer—
Those elements in daily life that by their very existence reveal the limitations to and artificiality of the sexual norms in a given context.
readerly text—
A text whose meaning is relatively clear and settled, and, therefore, asks very little of the audience.
reality principle—
The constant curbing of drive according to possibility, law, or social convention.
Reception theory—
A diverse body of work that stresses audience interpretation as a primary site of meaning‐making.
relations of production (in Marxist theory)—
Labor practices and ownership (of property, company shares, or the ways goods are distributed).
relativism—
The belief that diverse approaches and theories related to a given subject are all equally correct.
representation—
The manner in which various social and cultural groups are depicted in the media.
repression—
The process of mentally containing drives beneath conscious recognition or expression.
resistance—
Any symbolic or material practice that challenges, subverts, or suspends the cultural codes, rules, or norms that, through their everyday operation, create, sustain, and naturalize the prevailing social structure in a particular space and time.
resistive reading—
The active, audience‐based creation of textual meaning that is contrary to the meaning intended by the text’s author, creator, or producer.
rhetoric—
The ancient art of persuasion; the use of symbols by humans to influence and move other humans.
ritualistic violence—
Representations of violence that are spectacular, gory, exaggerated, hyper‐masculine, and adrenaline‐pumping.
scopophilia—
The pleasure that comes from the process of looking.
semiology—
Ferdinand de Saussure’s approach to the study of signs.
semiotic—
Charles Sanders Peirce’s quasi‐scientific approach to the study of signs.
sex—
The innate, biological differentiation (anatomy, reproduction, hormones, etc.) between men and women.
sexism—
Discrimination based upon a person’s biological sex.
sexuality—
An enduring emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction toward others based upon their gender or sex.
sexual othering—
The process of stigmatizing homosexuality (or, really, any non‐heterosexual practice) as abnormal.
sign—
Something that invites someone to think of something other than itself.
signified—
The mental concept evoked by a signifier.
signifier—
The material form (sound‐image) of a sign as perceived by the senses.
signifying system—
Roland Barthes’ approach to the study of signs.
simulation—
An implosion of the image (i.e. representations) and the real.
slander—
Speech that falsely impugns or defames a person’s character.
socialization—
The process by which persons — both individually and collectively — learn, adopt, and internalize the prevailing cultural beliefs, values, and norms of a society.
soft news—
News that is high in entertainment value but low in educational value.
space‐biased media—
Ephemeral media such as paper and television that are inclined toward secularism, materialism, and rapid social change.
spectacle—
An obsession with the sensational and arresting, scandalous and shocking dimensions of a situation or context.
stereotype—
A misleading and reductionistic representation of a cultural group.
strategic ambiguity—
The intentional decision to craft a vague, semantically rich text that is purposefully open to multiple interpretations.
structuralism—
The view, largely popularized by the anthropologist Claude Lévi‐Strauss, that each element in a cultural system derives its meaning in relation to other elements in that system.
structure—
Any social feature or force that constrains or limits agency.
structure of feeling—
The sum of the subtle and nuanced aspects of a historical culture, those aspects not obviously or completely captured in the artifacts of a society.
superstructure (in Marxist theory)—
Social consciousness, as encoded in institutions such as culture (art and media), religion, education, politics, and the judicial system.
symbol—
A sign that is linked to its corresponding object purely by social convention or agreement.
Symbolic—
The cultural order of meaning maintained through words and symbols.
symbolic action—
The notion that symbol use by humans not only means something, but also does something; the idea that language and images are tools for doing things.
symbolic interactionism—
A theoretical perspective that suggests that the character and conduct of people’s social interactions are powerfully shaped by the symbolic meanings they assign to objects, events, other people, and social contexts.
synergy—
The cross‐development, production, and distribution of a media brand for the purpose of increasing profits.
text—
A set of signs working together to produce a relatively unified effect.
textual wink—
A feature of a text that only “clairvoyants” will find meaningful based upon their similarity to the author.
theory—
An “optic” or way of seeing, explaining, and interpreting; an explanatory and interpretive tool that simultaneously enables and limits our understanding of the particular social product, practice, or process under investigation.
time‐biased media—
Durable media such as stone or clay.
token—
An exception to a social rule that affirms the correctness of an ideology.
transcendence—
A means of resolving or avoiding guilt by appealing to a new hierarchy (or third perspective) in which two conflicting hierarchies cease to be in opposition.
transgression—
An action or artistic practice that breaks with the prevailing cultural codes and conventions of society.
unconscious—
A “mental screen” that shields repressed drives from the conscious mind even as they attempt to make themselves known; aspects of the self that cannot be known or expressed in the Symbolic order.
user‐created content—
Media content that is produced by individuals rather than corporations.
user participation—
An audience—text interaction that requires the audience — through the aid of an interface device — to directly engage with the text in a manner that alters the experience of it.
victimage—
A means of resolving guilt that entails scapegoating or the transfer of the guilt to a third party.
victim effect—
The hypothesis that repeated exposure to representations of violence promotes increased fearfulness of violence.
visibility—
The degree to which various social or cultural groups are present in the media.
visual space—
Space that is linear, continuous, homogenous, and uniform.
voyeurism—
The process of experiencing pleasure by watching a desired object or person from a distance.
whitewashing—
A practice in which white actors assume roles or characters more traditionally associated with racial minorities.
writerly text—
A text whose meaning is relatively unfinished and unsettled, and, thus, invites the audience to co‐create its meaning.
yellow journalism—
A style of news that lacks any sense of social responsibility and privileges sensational and even fabricated stories and photos.
..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset
3.141.8.247