Deck 13: Media and Culture Theories: Meaning Making in the Social World

Question 1

Both symbolic interaction and social construction assume that it is ___ that allows the construction, maintenance, and efficient operation of culture.

A) typification schemes
B) symbolic override
C) shared meaning
D) restricted elaborated codes

Answer 1

C

Question 2

According to Erving Goffman, we are constantly ______.

A) using media to compare our own situation to that of other people
B) moving from fantasy to reality as we go from TV to the real world
C) shifting between various social worlds as we move through daily life
D) making framing mistakes that we experience as frightening and unreal

Answer 2

C

Question 3

In Gender Advertisements, Goffman argues that advertising routinely shows women to be __________ than men.

A) less serious
B) less athletic
C) more authoritative
D) more knowledgeable

Answer 3

A

Question 4

Advertising strategies that encourage people to attach certain symbolic meanings to products and to experience them as real attributes of those products are making an effort to _______.

A) engage in negative advertising
B) inform consumers about the merits of products
C) position a product
D) promote an ideal image

Question 5

In frame analysis, ________ is the real world in which people and events obey certain conventional and widely accepted rules.

A) objective reality
B) down-shifted reality
C) up-shifted reality
D) primary reality

Question 6

According to social construction of reality, ________ are objects expressly designed to impart subjective meaning.

A) signs
B) natural signs
C) symbols
D) typification schemes

Question 7

Goffman's frame analysis argues that although people have the capacity to reframe their experience on an ongoing basis, we maintain the impression that our experiences are constant and routine. We do this by _______.

A) committing ourselves to live in the primary reality
B) ignoring the cues around us
C) losing ourselves in the mass media
D) reframing the experiences of other people as our own

Question 8

Specific sets of expectations that people use to make sense of social situations at given points in time are called ______.

A) upshifts
B) frames
C) downshifts
D) remakings

Question 9

Mead used the example of a baseball team to illustrate how people routinely learn _______.

A) social roles
B) how to use media
C) athletic skills
D) how to have fun

Question 10

The _______ model describes the framing hierarchy in public discourse.

A) upshifting
B) elaboration likelihood
C) downshifting
D) cascading activation

Question 11

Alfred Schutz, originator of the concept of typifications, encouraged his students to ______.

A) ignore ideas popularized by the Chicago School
B) see the similarities in a broad range of cultural experiences
C) make better use of mass media
D) explore the mysteries of everyday experience

Question 12

Social constructionism is a theory that argues that ____.

A) people consciously construct the social world
B) the social world is constructed and maintained by social institutions
C) we are free to construct the social world any way that we want
D) churches and schools don't do much to construct the social world

Question 13

______ is a philosophical school of theory emphasizing the practical function of knowledge as an instrument for adapting to reality and controlling it.

A) Social semiotics
B) Postmodernism
C) Mediation theory
D) Pragmatism

Question 14

When framing theorists assess the way journalists frame news about science they are _________.

A) pessimistic because the frames are likely to produce incorrect interpretations
B) optimistic that the frames usually provide a good basis for interpreting the events
C) optimistic because frames tend to encourage interest in and respect for science
D) neutral because there is no clear conclusion about the way science is framed

Question 15

Liberal linguist George Lakoff advised the Occupy Wall Street Movement, advice that research suggests all social movements should heed, to __________.

A) designate the most articulate people as leaders
B) avoid talk of class warfare
C) frame yourself before others frame you
D) take advantage of social media to control framing

Question 16

Advocates of media effects perspectives claim their theories are more scientific that cultural theories because they are based on highly structured empirical observations and are falsifiable.

Question 17

Social behaviorists accept traditional conceptualizations of stimulus-response conditioning.

Question 18

Symbolic interactionism argues that society functions well because people consciously reflect on and analyze their actions.

Question 19

Symbolic interactionism is based on the idea that unlike animals conditioned to respond to stimuli in a predetermined manner, humans are socialized in ways that permit more or less conscious interpretation of stimuli and planned responses.

Question 20

In Mead's Mind, Self, and Society, "self" refers to our experience of consciousness.

Question 21

Both behaviorism and idealism rejected the possibility of human agency, the idea that individuals could consciously control their thoughts and actions in some meaningful and useful way.

Question 22

Social constructionism argues that people maintain significant control over their cultures.

Question 23

Almost all culture-centered theories share the underlying assumption that our experience of reality is an ongoing social construction in which we have some responsibility, not something that is sent, delivered, or otherwise transmitted by some authority or elite.

Question 24

According to social constructionism, artificial signs enable us to quickly classify objects and actions we observe and then quickly and routinely structure our own actions in response.

Question 25

Sociologist Erving Goffman developed symbolic interactionism to provide a systematic account of how we develop and use expectations to make sense of everyday life situations and the people in them.

Question 26

According to frame analysis, when your playful wrestling with your sibling turns serious, you have downshifted your frame of the situation.

Question 27

According to frame analysis, Goffman people work so hard maintaining their sense of continuity in their experience that they rarely make framing mistakes.

Question 28

According to Irving Goffman, advertising offers hyperritualized representations of social action.

Question 29

Journalists, because of the power of mass media, sit atop the framing hierarchy in the cascading activation model of framing.

Question 30

Both postpositivist and critical cultural framing research provide a pessimistic assessment of news and the role journalism plays in society.