Deck 6: The Emergence of the Critical Cultural Trend in North America

Question 1

Harold Innis' idea that communication technology makes the centralization of power inevitable is called ________.

A) the superstructure
B) commodification of power
C) the bias of communication
D) neo-production

Answer 1

C

Question 2

McLuhan said that media were "extensions of man" because they literally extend ___________.

A) patriarchy
B) experiences
C) our senses
D) our knowledge

Answer 2

C

Question 3

The view of the media that sees them as central to the construction and maintenance of the culture, something of a forum where we negotiate our shared meanings, is the ____________ Perspective.

A) Ritual
B) Oligarchical
C) Libertarian
D) Transmissional

Answer 3

A

Question 4

The critical cultural studies perspective argues that social elites work to maintain the status quo by

A) staging national and regional rituals
B) spreading a political ideology
C) propagating a hegemonic culture
D) encouraging conservative social movements

Question 5

One of the key differences between cultural analysis and critical cultural studies is that

A) cultural analysis is more concerned about macroscopic processes.
B) cultural analysis has a more explicit commitment to values.
C) critical cultural studies is more supportive of the status quo.
D) critical cultural studies is often directly linked to social movements.

Question 6

Cultural analysis researchers and critical, cultural studies scholars tend to favor

A) qualitative research methods.
B) quantitative research methods.
C) empirical research methods.
D) communication science methods.

Question 7

Stuart Hall sees media as ___________ where various forces struggle to shape popular notions about social reality.

A) a ritual base
B) an ideological court
C) a public forum
D) the base

Question 8

The Frankfurt School was known for its _________.

A) early support for the Nazis
B) savage criticism of mass media as a vehicle for higher forms of culture
C) development of empirical social research methods in Germany
D) optimism about radio as a means of "civilizing the masses"

Question 9

Stuart Hall views mass media in Western, pluralistic democracies as a "public forum" in which _____.

A) elites and counterelites struggle to define the social world
B) social elites stage rituals to win public support for the status quo
C) a hegemonic ideology is promoted to the exclusion of all else
D) counterelites enjoy important advantages over elites

Question 10

Culture is __________.

A) what television says it is
B) the rules and regulations promulgated by a society's official power
C) the art of theatre and symphony
D) the learned behavior of a given social group

Question 11

Culture imposed from above or outside that serves the interests of those in power is called _________ culture.

A) elite-dominated
B) qualitative
C) grand
D) hegemonic

Question 12

Horace Newcomb argues that ________.

A) media have significant power over individuals' construction of their realities
B) audience members' interpretations of media content are quite diverse
C) media texts tend to be read as their creators intended
D) media are really unimportant because they are just pop culture

Question 13

Highly ambitious, macroscopic, speculative theories that attempt to understand and predict important trends in society are called ________.

A) hegemonic theories
B) Frankfort School theories
C) elite-dominated theories
D) grand social theories

Question 14

Harold Innis argued that as communication media become more powerful and able to more effectively span time and space _____.

A) political power will become more enlarged and centralized
B) global social movements will arise
C) society will become increasingly democratic
D) a global village will be created

Question 15

As mass communication theory embraced the critical cultural trend, researchers were willing to turn their attention from _____ to focus on how media are related to changes in culture, on how shared understandings and social norms change.

A) advertising research
B) issues of media violence
C) specific, measurable effects on individuals
D) political economy theory

Question 16

With the coming of mass media, many forms of folk culture fell into sharp decline.

Question 17

Microscopic interpretive theories focus on how media institutions are structured within capitalist economies.

Question 18

Political economy theory places priority on understanding how economic power provides a basis for ideological and political power.

Question 19

Cultural studies theories are more concerned with the long-term consequences of media for the social order and less concerned with looking at how media affect the lives of groups of people who share a culture.

Question 20

Political economy theory is macroscopic theory, interested in how the social order, as a whole, is affected by mass communication.

Question 21

Some cultural studies and political economy theories are critical theories because their axiology openly espouses specific values and uses them to evaluate and criticize the status quo.

Question 22

Marxism sees elite power residing it control of the superstructure; Neo-Marxists see power residing in control of the base.

Question 23

Given their Neo-Marxist orientation, Frankfurt School scholars welcomed popular culture's challenge to elite control of the media.

Question 24

Political economy theorists study elite control of economic institutions, and then show how this control affects many other social institutions, including the mass media.

Question 25

Critical scholar Sut Jhally argues that the use-value of a cultural commodity stems from the meaning it generates.

Question 26

Cultural theorist James Carey applauded limited-effects researchers' ongoing commitment to the transmissional perspective-the idea that mass communication is the process of transmitting messages at a distance for the purpose of control.

Question 27

Popular culture researchers believe that audience interpretations of content are likely to be quite diverse as some people make interpretations at one level of meaning, whereas others make their interpretations at other levels. This is referred to as multiple points of access.

Question 28

News production researchers have discovered that journalists, by virtue of the nature of their profession, work to remove as much drama from their reporting as possible.

Question 29

The recovery and reappraisal approach to feminist critical scholarship asks, among other things, "How have women managed to express themselves in a male-dominated culture?"

Question 30

Marshall McLuhan used the expression "the medium is the message" to refer to the new forms of social organization that would inevitably emerge electronic media tied the entire world into one great social, political, and cultural system.