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45 Cards in this Set

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The “Scoop”
the bias in favor of getting news that is the newest and hardest to get
Symbolic violence
the violence perpetrated against TV viewers through sensationalized news (sex, crime, scandal). News meant to only engage the viewer’s attention but not move to deeper, systematic issues
Framing
the movement away from intentional bias, but the acceptance that every narrative account of reality necessarily presents some things and not others. It involves what to include of exclude, gets us away from the idea of manipulation of words
Bias
the journalists’ view has a built in sway in a direction. Objectivity: non opinionated, the difference: going into detail of content vs. viewing the content as a whole
Event-centered news
a type of distortion that stems from professionalization in the news in which news focuses on specific people and events, losing complex social policies and replacing them with morality tales.
Negative news
a type of distortion that stems from professionalization in the news in which news focuses on the exceptions rather than the rules, and the things that occur outside of the norm
Remediation
the representation [and refashioning] of one medium in another. This is not a linear process, and older media can also remediate newer ones. Provides a space for conceptualizing the relation between the public sphere and public screen. Ex: computer games remediate photography and film or web sites remediate television. Tied to hypermediacy- representations are windows that open to other representations or other media.
Anti-narrative structure
Lewis’ theory on the structure of television programming, in which things are not unfolding in a logical way, so as to keep the viewer’s attention. Most people will be entertained by this non-sequential, non-chronological format, but won’t be able to process it well.
Hermeneutic code or code of sequence
way of organizing a story that doesn’t necessarily do it in terms of chronology. Starts out by posing an enigma so you offer a kind of a question. (Rather than usual immediate gratification). Slow unfurling of information so they can start answering the enigma. Resolution. In newspaper, able to skip around, choose what parts. So pack the beginning with information. TV is more like a painting- looking from different angles. Then you can reassemble parts.
Distribution/hierarchy of power
who is given a lot of power in a story, often through their opportunity to speak. Experts”- government officials, corporate leaders. Elite of society or academics/scholars.
First main action image
First action sequence of a story catches the viewer’s eye. Often, you’re viewing it in a distracted state so that’s what people latch onto to make sense as a whole.
Why DeLuca and Peeples express more hope about the role TV news may play in a democratic society
a. Public Screen- They see the public screen as an act infused by hope, as they are trying to go back to the notion of public sphere, but this no longer exists because little face to face discourse. Images as powerful. People gravitate to action images, symbolic violence
b. Rise of Pull Media- for those who want more information they form alternative communities like blogs or online journals
The primary reason for Bourdieu’s concern about television being a “threat to democracy”
a. Formation of the audience that watches the show.
b. The pre-scripted scenario- arrangements agreed upon prior with the participants, creating a sort of screenplay.
c. “Good guests” and the democratic debate’s language game- The conflicts must happen, but they must be masked by formal, intellectual language. The professionals comply with each other
d. The moderator’s unconscious- people have preconceived notions in mind or will only answer certain things
Modleski’s conception of the soap opera audience
a. The audiences’ anxieties about the pain they go through are repressed in everyday life, so they identify with soap opera characters and it serves as an emotional release for them.
b. These shows offer symbolic satisfaction instead of the real satisfactions that might arise if social change were enacted and gender inequities were abolished.
Scodari claims these could influence a viewer’s interpretation and response to popular culture texts like soap operas:
a. Type of Reading
i. Preferred reading of a text: fitting, matching up with the meaning that was intended by producer or writer of that text. Ex: healthy good parents talking to kids about sex
ii. Negotiated reading of a text: understand what it’s saying, and feel like parts of it make sense for you, but other parts not so much. Ex: agree with their openness, but think waiting is a good thing.
iii. Oppositional reading: you disagree. Nothing you agree with in reading. Ex: parents are very irresponsible, encouraging teenagers to have sex.
iv. Resisitive reading: plays more with the ambiguities of the text. Enters into text more, recognizes the specifics of the text that may be especially problematic or noteworthy. Ex: hyper-sexuality of people of color. “Othering” of blacks in this culture.
b. Relationship of text and larger culture
i. Hegemonic: fits into culture at large. Ex: Reinforces traditional notions of gender
ii. Counter hegemonic: out of sync with the culture that produced it. A little at odds with the social norms that surround it.
Close-ups and mind-reading
a common technique in soap operas in which the audience sees close-ups of the characters’ expressions, which are complex and intricately coded. This provides the spectator with training in reading other people’s feelings without them speaking it.
Interruptions and distractions
common problem housewives face, in which they must balance many tasks at once and cope with any conflicts that arise. This habit also occurs in daytime televisions, in which shifts in television occur and so do revelations, interruptions, and general events that are unexpected. They are both annoying and pleasurable, and keep the viewer interested in many event at once while denying total absorption. Commercials are also another type of interruption.
Ideal mother
the subject/spectator of soap operas who possesses greater wisdom than her children and whose sympathy is large enough to identify with each family member, even if their individual claims conflict. She has no demands of her own. This convinces women that their highest goal is to see their families united and happy
Good mother
the character who temporarily soothes and sits by as her children’s lives disintegrate, her primary function is to be sympathetic and to tolerate others’ problems.
Villainess
the negative image of the spectator’s ideal self, who is often at the fault at surplus suffering. She makes things happen and controls things, and is able to transform traditional feminine weaknesses into the sources of her strength. Viewers take extreme delight in hating her.
Interpretive communities
certain groups of people could make similar or the same meaning in a text because of their shared experience. Our response/interpretation is shaped by the forces we bring to the page. Whatever autonomy we have is constrained by larger limiting social forces.
Polysemy vs. polyvalence
i. Polysemy: There are many meanings available in a text, and viewers take pleasure in creating this meaning.
ii. Polyvalence: (Condet) There is a kind of intended meaning embedded in the text, and as a viewer, you understand that intended message and at most, you have liberty to agree or disagree with it.
Preferred vs. negotiated reading
Way that an individual may respond to and interpret a text
i. Preferred reading of a text: fitting, matching up with the meaning that was intended by producer or writer of that text. Ex: healthy good parents talking to kids about sex
ii. Negotiated reading of a text: understand what it’s saying, and feel like parts of it make sense for you, but other parts not so much. Ex: agree with their openness, but think waiting is a good thing.
Preferred vs. oppositional reading
i. Preferred reading of a text: fitting, matching up with the meaning that was intended by producer or writer of that text. Ex: healthy good parents talking to kids about sex
ii. Oppositional reading: you disagree. Nothing you agree with in reading. Ex: parents are very irresponsible, encouraging teenagers to have sex.
Hegemonic vs. counter-hegemonic texts
Relationship between the text itself and the larger culture
i. Hegemonic: fits into culture at large. Ex: Reinforces traditional notions of gender
ii. Counter hegemonic: out of sync with the culture that produced it. A little at odds with the social norms that surround it.
Idolatry
Intention is squarely on the product. Have a veneration of the product. Shown because the product is larger than life. All emphasis on the cookie. Depicted as being important, a source of awe. Focus on the product- cliche’ radiant beams, “halo” effect around the product, etc. Ex: light bulb’s only potential rival is the sun; angels bringing down a corset to waiting women; “If you’re going to have a cookie, have a cookie” a big cookie as extraordinarily special.
Iconology
stage between the commodity itself and the worship of meaning. Caught between the two, haven’t escaped the worshiping of the product, but try and add meaning to the product. Abstract representations of social values-products mean something. attention on both the product and consumer- what does product do/say to you as a person? (product tells you how you feel about yourself) Ex: Pen “Is that you?” Gives consumer goods but also implies that it is about you as a person. Kotex as: charming, immaculate, exquisite.” As much visual attention on consumer as product itself. Split. Terms could equally well describe the consumer as the commodity, and our attention is asked to be on both of them; MotoSlvr phone- women as slim. Watch compared to Tiger Woods “What are you made of?”
Narcissism
Product reflects the desires of the individuals. Advertisement shows how the product can transform the individual. Will change your life, who you are. Will make you more interesting/desirable. If used correctly, will help you undergo some kind of physical transformation and will make you enticing to others. Ex: “Be utterly Irresistible.” Future promise that is only possible if you consume the right good. Can show who you are through your products. Tabu-the product makes so enticing that once we put it on, we just blame the product for it. Male/Female fantasies worked out in ads.
Totem
easiest to recognize. A sign of group affiliation. The product is promising you entry into a world, belongingness. through consumption one has access to and participates in a very specific consumption community A group of likeminded individuals whom you can identify with and belong to. Ex: Verizon ads, “Are you in?” Toyota ad-“you have to be pretty well built to carry 2 million people,” band wagon effect of purchasing to be part of select group. Showing a group of young attractive people and a brand name- Tommy Hilfiger.
Materialism
Williams’ view that we are not a materialist culture because we don’t have grounding in the material origins of the commodities that we associate ourselves with. How does it work? What parts? What labor went into it? All hidden. If we really were materialist we would know the answers. We don’t really want to know about the factory conditions
Psychological warfare
3rd stage of advertising, ads that make people feel unsecure about themselves—and how others may perceive them (i.e. body odor, bad breath, yellow teeth), the product can fix it—usually physical
"mimed celebration of other people’s decisions”
how advertisers make corporate decisions that feel like ‘consumer’ choices, use of professional actors to create a feeling that furthers the corporate agendas, started out as puffing up a product or lying, but evolved into tying of people’s emotion to products
parity products
products where there is no meaningful difference between any of the brands-like soaps, beers, perfumes and pain relievers. These products need the most advertising because they all the same, and its how you feel about product.
Wheeler-Lea Amendment
“Increased glamour and indirect assertion”: 1938 act. rather than make claims about the product, it shifts attention and has more attention to increased glamour. How you will feel emotionally if you are purchasing this product. Indirectly ended up helping advertisers spin out of control in some ways.
Magic and technology
advertising’s presentation that when the commodity world interacts with the human world it performs magical feat of transformation and bewitchment. The modern defining relationship is with technology, for it invades the body of the commodity and supplies the basis for the belief in its power.
“feeling good theory”
advertising’s message that consumer goods will make you happy and fill any emotional voids. the real function of advertising is not to five people information but to make them feel good-concentrate of creating pleasurable experiences. “feeling” replaces information. not enough time to collect info to make rational decision about buying product-rely on justification given by advertising.
hidden origin of commodity goods
Marx’s theory that in capitalism, the origins of gods are hidden in that the work process is subdivided and specialized so workers only work on part of a product, and there is a separation between the mental labor of planning the good and the physical labor of producing the good. Most people get goods from the marketplace so get little information, and the real meaning of goods is emptied out of them in capitalist production and consumption.
commodity fetishism
the appearance of things in the marketplace masks the story of those who made them and under what conditions they made them.
theft and re-appropriation of meaning
The power of advertising depends on this relationships, in which commodities are first emptied of meaning, hiding the real social relations of human labor, and then imaginary and symbolic relationships are injected in.
Stylin’
the way African Americans are presented in ads as stylish and are chosen to be models for really trendy clothing, appearing in high style, “cleaned up” and festooned with sparkling jewelry, is not a sign of effeminacy, but potency and social standing
“rocks” vs. “leaners” or face-off masculinity
i. Rocks: male models who pose as “rocks” stare coldly at the viewer, seem powerful, armored. body and genitals are hard as rock.
ii. Leaners: the lean is when body is reclining, leaning against or propped up against something. young men and boys tend to be leaners. Once a certain maturity line is crossed, the challenging stares, the “face-off” postures are the norm. Depiction of strength and power even in a leaner position.
iii. face-off masculinity: to never reveal weakness. strength comes from staring another down, not averting eyes, holding a strong gaze. moments of “facing up”, “facing off”, “staring down” are a test of macho. African American models are almost always posed facing off. Using the male body as spectacle. Scrutiny of the female body. Nobody’s body is off limits to that intense scrutiny
muscle dysmorphia or “bigorexia
a body dysmorphic disorder which affects men who feel they do not have enough muscle development
food as metaphor (love, sexuality, desire, or transgression)
advertisements can violate deeply sedimented expectations, and can be taken as disgusting and transgressive. when women are positively depicted as sensuously voracious bout food, their hunger for food is employed solely as a metaphor for their sexual appetite. Women are permitted to lust for food itself only when they re pregnant or when it is clear they have been near starvation. We also frequently find sexual appetite operating as a metaphor for eating pleasure (ex. eating cake is sexy, sensual, described as arousing). Food can be constructed as a sexual object of desire. Women who give into low-calorie desserts: transgression beyond such limits is sexualized, as an act of “cheating”.
men act and women appear
a woman’s appearance has been socially determined to be of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. women exist to be seen, and they know it. women are show looking in mirrors, stroking their own bodies, exhibiting themselves for an assumed spectator, asking to be admired for their beauty. A man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies, what he is capable of doing to you or for you. represent men by showing them in action, immersed in whatever they are doing, seemingly unaware of anyone who might be looking at them. they never fondle their won bodies narcissistically, display themselves purely as “sights” or gaze at themselves in the mirror. men are portrayed as oblivious to their beauty, intent only on getting the job done.
men eat and women prepare
ideal portrayed in advertising in which men strive, compete and exert themselves in the public sphere while women are cocooned in the domestic sphere. notion that women are most gratified by feeding and nourishing others, not themselves. ideal mother stand before her husband as he eats. woman’s passion is to give food and man’s is to eat it. rare or “special occasion” for men to be the cook in advertisements.