MCS FINAL EXAM QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
What is the Media Effects (postpositivist) Research strategy? - Answers - Identify
independent and dependent variable, assess linear causal relationships, find empirical
evidence of causal power of media.
The Critical Cultural Research Strategy - Answers - Focus on audience uses and
experiences, look for changes in quality of experiences that take place over time,
develop theories about changes in experience and consequences of these changes.
Media Effects Trend Criticisms of Critical Cultural Studies - Answers - Postpositivist
Researchers are skeptical of critical or cultural studies theory and research because
they:
Ignore causality and provide speculative explanations of phenomena that can't be
studied using postpositivist methods
Provide explanations that are similar to mass society theory - a theory that was
discredited in the 1950s
Rely on unproven qualitative methods rather than well-established quantitative research
methods
Traditional Approach - Answers - Late 1920s-1930s, propaganda analysis, public
opinion research, social psychology studies, marketing research. Questions asked: Who
says what in which channel, to whom, with what effect. Primary Research Methods:
Scientific and quantitative method, experiments, surveys, content analysis. Focus and
goal: Explain pattern of individual behaviors and predict them.
Critical and Cultural Approach - Answers - 1930s and 1960s. Early research
connection: The Frankfurt School, British Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural
Studies. Questions asked: Who says what to whom, who talks back, why, with what
intention, for what. Primary research methods: Humanities and qualitative method:
textual analysis, audience studies, political economy, ethnography. Focus and goal:
Interpret messsages and meanings and ask why from perspectives of gender, race,
class nation etc.
The Evaluation of the Two Schools - Answers - The traditional approach is probably
more effective in doing research in marketing, advertising, persuasion, polls, etc., and
more commonly used by fellows in departments of economy, management, marketing,
sociology, psychology and political science
The critical and cultural approach is probably more commonly used by fellows in
departments of literature, history, American Studies, film studies, philosophy and
anthropology.
Difference between American Media Studies and British-European Traditions -
Answers - American media studies—originates from social psychology and behavioral
science and favors scientific approaches, serves market research and political polls
, British-European traditions—draws on rich political philosophy of Europe and favors
interpretive methods, examines the ways of media use in maintaining existing social
hierarchies.
The Frankfurt School - Answers - Origin of critical studies in the united states. a group
of European researchers who transplanted from Germany to America after they fled
Nazi persecution in the 1930s.
--leading figures include Max Horkheimer, T.W. Adorno, and Leo Lowenthal
--uses historical and cultural approaches to the long-range processes of the mass
media and their complex relations with audiences and society.
The frankfurt school pointed to three major inadequecies of traditional scientific
approaches which were - Answers - --reduced large cultural questions to measurable
and verifiable categories
--depended on rigidly enforced neutrality
--refused to place the phenomena of modern life in a historical and moral context
The Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) - Answers - --
focuses on the ways that ordinary people make sense of media-use practices; audience
studies
--everyday life and pop culture become the centerpiece of media studies
--leading figures include Raymond Williams, E. P. Thompson, Stuart Hall, etc.
e.g. four meanings of culture—"a whole way of life, material, intellectual and spiritual"
Audience Studies - Answers - Focuses on how people use and interpret media content
e.g. the battles over the meaning of rock and roll in the 1950s and hip-hop in the 1980s
e.g. Why do housewives love romance-novels?
e.g. How do people of other countries perceive American culture?
Two Types of Classical critical theory - Answers - Marxist theory, and Neo-Marxist
theory.
Marxist theory - Answers - Grounded in ideal values = egalitarianism, mass democracy
Elites use media to indoctrinate masses with ideologies that are inconsistent with their
interests
Change is only possible with a revolution that takes media away from elites and gives
them to the masses
Neo-Marxist Theory - Answers - Revolution is not always necessary to achieve useful
social change
It is possible to challenge and overcome elite efforts to indoctrinate masses
Elite ideology can be countered with populist (communist) ideology
Elite misuse of media can be exposed and criticized
Media literacy can teach masses to criticize elite misuse of media
Political Economy - Answers - Draws on classic critique Das Kapital of Karl Marx
What is the Media Effects (postpositivist) Research strategy? - Answers - Identify
independent and dependent variable, assess linear causal relationships, find empirical
evidence of causal power of media.
The Critical Cultural Research Strategy - Answers - Focus on audience uses and
experiences, look for changes in quality of experiences that take place over time,
develop theories about changes in experience and consequences of these changes.
Media Effects Trend Criticisms of Critical Cultural Studies - Answers - Postpositivist
Researchers are skeptical of critical or cultural studies theory and research because
they:
Ignore causality and provide speculative explanations of phenomena that can't be
studied using postpositivist methods
Provide explanations that are similar to mass society theory - a theory that was
discredited in the 1950s
Rely on unproven qualitative methods rather than well-established quantitative research
methods
Traditional Approach - Answers - Late 1920s-1930s, propaganda analysis, public
opinion research, social psychology studies, marketing research. Questions asked: Who
says what in which channel, to whom, with what effect. Primary Research Methods:
Scientific and quantitative method, experiments, surveys, content analysis. Focus and
goal: Explain pattern of individual behaviors and predict them.
Critical and Cultural Approach - Answers - 1930s and 1960s. Early research
connection: The Frankfurt School, British Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural
Studies. Questions asked: Who says what to whom, who talks back, why, with what
intention, for what. Primary research methods: Humanities and qualitative method:
textual analysis, audience studies, political economy, ethnography. Focus and goal:
Interpret messsages and meanings and ask why from perspectives of gender, race,
class nation etc.
The Evaluation of the Two Schools - Answers - The traditional approach is probably
more effective in doing research in marketing, advertising, persuasion, polls, etc., and
more commonly used by fellows in departments of economy, management, marketing,
sociology, psychology and political science
The critical and cultural approach is probably more commonly used by fellows in
departments of literature, history, American Studies, film studies, philosophy and
anthropology.
Difference between American Media Studies and British-European Traditions -
Answers - American media studies—originates from social psychology and behavioral
science and favors scientific approaches, serves market research and political polls
, British-European traditions—draws on rich political philosophy of Europe and favors
interpretive methods, examines the ways of media use in maintaining existing social
hierarchies.
The Frankfurt School - Answers - Origin of critical studies in the united states. a group
of European researchers who transplanted from Germany to America after they fled
Nazi persecution in the 1930s.
--leading figures include Max Horkheimer, T.W. Adorno, and Leo Lowenthal
--uses historical and cultural approaches to the long-range processes of the mass
media and their complex relations with audiences and society.
The frankfurt school pointed to three major inadequecies of traditional scientific
approaches which were - Answers - --reduced large cultural questions to measurable
and verifiable categories
--depended on rigidly enforced neutrality
--refused to place the phenomena of modern life in a historical and moral context
The Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) - Answers - --
focuses on the ways that ordinary people make sense of media-use practices; audience
studies
--everyday life and pop culture become the centerpiece of media studies
--leading figures include Raymond Williams, E. P. Thompson, Stuart Hall, etc.
e.g. four meanings of culture—"a whole way of life, material, intellectual and spiritual"
Audience Studies - Answers - Focuses on how people use and interpret media content
e.g. the battles over the meaning of rock and roll in the 1950s and hip-hop in the 1980s
e.g. Why do housewives love romance-novels?
e.g. How do people of other countries perceive American culture?
Two Types of Classical critical theory - Answers - Marxist theory, and Neo-Marxist
theory.
Marxist theory - Answers - Grounded in ideal values = egalitarianism, mass democracy
Elites use media to indoctrinate masses with ideologies that are inconsistent with their
interests
Change is only possible with a revolution that takes media away from elites and gives
them to the masses
Neo-Marxist Theory - Answers - Revolution is not always necessary to achieve useful
social change
It is possible to challenge and overcome elite efforts to indoctrinate masses
Elite ideology can be countered with populist (communist) ideology
Elite misuse of media can be exposed and criticized
Media literacy can teach masses to criticize elite misuse of media
Political Economy - Answers - Draws on classic critique Das Kapital of Karl Marx
