COMM 375 Exam 3

COMM 375 Exam 3 What are two defining characteristics of reality TV? - ✔✔Real people serve as "characters" and the content is unscripted What is audience activity? - ✔✔Represents how selective people are when they ap ...

COMM 375 Exam 3 What are two defining characteristics of reality TV? - ✔✔Real people serve as "characters" and the content is unscripted What is audience activity? - ✔✔Represents how selective people are when they approach media use and how involved they are with the content How does audience activity function in uses and gratifications theory? - ✔✔Audiences are active because they select media context that they believe will provide the gratification that they are seeking. What are the two general types of TV viewing identified by Rubin? - ✔✔Ritualistic viewer (watches television out of habit to pass time; for companionship, relaxation, arousal, and escape. Focuses more on using television as a medium and less on the specific program content) Instrumental viewing (reflects selective and purposive exposure to specific television content. More active and involving viewing experience) What two dominant aspects of reality TV are examined in this study? - ✔✔Real people acting out their real lives encourages audience interest & identification What are the four contexts included in Street's ecological model? - ✔✔Media Context Organizational Context Cultural Context Political-legal Context How have doctors generally been portrayed on TV? - ✔✔omnipotent healers who represented the authority within the hospital What is the definition of cultivation theory? - ✔✔Examines the long-term effects of television What is a major criticism of cultivation theory related to its approach to TV messages? - ✔✔Television messages are a cumulative masses with consistent story lines. How did Quick seek to extend cultivation theory in his study? - ✔✔He looked at the cultivation theory using one single show What kind of effect did Quick find between viewing the show, perceptions of doctors' courageousness, and perceived credibility of the show? - ✔✔Indirect What are the three challenges facing audience research today? - ✔✔Technological, social/spatial and experimential What are the three stages in the history of the audience developed by Abercrombie and Longhurst? - ✔✔1) The 'simple audience' for theater and books before the media age (classroom) 2) The 'mass audience' for the newspapers, radio, films and television of the late nineteenth and early to mid twentieth centuries (movie theater... not live) 3) The contemporary 'diffused audience' that is almost permanently connected to one electronic medium or another, across almost every activity of social and private life. What is media culture? - ✔✔In which audience activity takes place and through which its wider meanings are inscribed. What is symbolic power? - ✔✔The capacity to intervene in the course of events, to influence the actions of others and indeed to create events by means of the production and transmission of symbolic form. What are audiences looking for when they watch reality TV? - ✔✔Some sense of reality of the social world. We what to think what we see is real. What is the commodification of self? - ✔✔A willingness to offer a view of one's private life in return for financial reward What is a parasocial relationship? - ✔✔A set of feelings viewers develop toward media characters that allow viewers to think and feel toward characters as if they know and have a special connection with them. Most common with celebrities, sports teams or television stars What impact do parasocial relationships have on viewer's other relationships? - ✔✔Relationships with television characters do not replace relationships with friends, but rather complement social relationships. How do feelings develop in a parasocial relationship? - ✔✔Such relationships originate from repeated viewing of characters that stimulate social interaction, and they develop and strengthen over time What is a parasocial breakup? - ✔✔A situation where a character with whom a viewer has developed a PSR goes off air How do parasocial breakups compare with breakups of close relationships? - ✔✔Less stressful than that of close relationships but it follows some similar patterns. How does attractiveness (popularity) of a media character relate to parasocial breakups? - ✔✔Likely to increase the desirability of the relationship and the distress at its dissolution. What are the popularity rankings for Friends characters among the participants? - ✔✔Favorite characters: 31% said Rachel 20% said Chandler 20% said Joey 14% said Phoebe 7% said Ross 5% said Monica What are taste cultures? - ✔✔The distincti