Deck 2: Establishing the Terms of the Debate Over Media: The First Trend in Mass Communication Theorymass Society and Propaganda Theories

Question 1

Behaviorism assumes that ____________.

A) it is useful to study how people mentally experience stimuli
B) most people learn attitudes that control their actions
C) most people react similarly to powerful environmental stimuli
D) most people have their own unique way of behaving

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Successful propaganda depends on ______.

A) an engaged audience and repetition
B) the Big Lie and a good economy
C) simplification and repetition
D) external force

Answer 2

C

Question 3

John Dewey advocated public education as a means of ____.

A) limiting the disruptive influence of propaganda
B) limiting the disruptive influence of immigrants
C) overcoming hysteria
D) helping people learn how to avoid mass entertainment

Answer 3

A

Question 4

The first extensive use of mass media to disseminate propaganda occurred ______.

A) during the Middle Ages
B) during the yellow journalism era
C) during World War II
D) during the Cold War

Question 5

Human action is a conditioned response to external, environmental stimuli. This statement summarizes which theory?

A) mentalist theory
B) Freudianism
C) magic bullet theory
D) behaviorism

Question 6

Propaganda theorists like Harold Lasswell were generally ____.

A) quite pessimistic about average people's ability to resist manipulation
B) quite optimistic about average people's ability to resist manipulation
C) neither optimistic nor pessimistic about resistance to manipulation
D) unconcerned about average people's ability to resist manipulation

Question 7

Freudianism suggests that propagandists target people _______ for maximum effect.

A) id
B) superego
C) ego
D) memory

Question 8

If media were evaluated and controlled by a national board of industry practitioners, government officials, academicians, and members of the public this would be an example of ______.

A) the best operation of the First Amendment
B) technocratic control
C) educating of the public
D) regulation as it now exists

Question 9

Ferdinand Tönnies distinguished between earlier forms of social organization and European society as it existed in the late nineteenth century. He labeled those bound by strong ties of family, by tradition, and by rigid social roles ________.

A) gemeinschaft
B) gesellschaft
C) organic solidarity
D) mechanical solidarity

Question 10

Émile Durkheim compared traditional folk communities to machines in which people were little more than cogs. As such, he said they were ____________.

A) bound by gemeinschaft
B) bound by gesellschaft
C) bound by organic solidarity
D) bound by mechanical solidarity

Question 11

Today 4 companies control 90% of the media content consumed by Americans, a dramatic example of ___________.

A) magic bullet theory
B) mechanical propaganda
C) manufacturing of consent
D) concentration of ownership

Question 12

Harold Lasswell's propaganda theory is __________.

A) a simple, magic bullet theory
B) a combination of behaviorism and Freudian theory
C) a complex mass society theory
D) quite similar to Goebbels' theory

Question 13

Mass society theorists believed that media could act independently of all the other things influencing people in their daily lives. This is the _________ assumption.

A) scientific-effects
B) latent-effects
C) mass-culture
D) direct-effects

Question 14

_________ propaganda seeks not only the eradication of objective truth, but the erosion of the ideals that truth purports to uphold.

A) Undermining
B) Grey
C) White
D) Consent

Question 15

Critical theorists rebut the charge that because most journalists are liberal the media themselves must also be liberal by pointing to the fact that ___________.

A) surveys show that a majority of working journalists are actually conservative
B) it is impossible for media to be liberal in a politically divided nation
C) the large majority of media outlet managers and owners tend to be conservative
D) most journalists are educated in state universities

Question 16

Propaganda commanded the attention of early media theorists because it threatened to undermine the foundation of the U.S. political system and of democratic governments everywhere.

Question 17

The First Amendment to the Constitution protects the expression of media industries because it is assumed to have influence.

Question 18

Grey propaganda is a top-down communication strategy that used propaganda techniques to fight "bad" propaganda and promote objectives elites considered good.

Question 19

Mass society theorists argued that media must be brought under elite control.

Question 20

Mass society theorists saw average people as susceptible to media influence because they clustered into narrow, interest-based communities.

Question 21

Because one essential argument of mass society theory was that media subvert and disrupt the existing social order, fierce debate broke out over who should be trusted control media.

Question 22

Mass society theory is actually many different theories sharing some common assumptions about the role of media and society.

Question 23

Mass society theorists believed that the social chaos initiated by media would best be resolved by establishment of serious study of media effects.

Question 24

Ferdinand Tönnies' name for modern industrial society is gemeinschaft.

Question 25

Émile Durkheim believed that traditional folk communities were bound by organic solidarity.

Question 26

Eventually discredited, mass society theory no longer holds influence today.

Question 27

Grey propaganda is the spreading of false information about opposition groups and their objectives, often concealing its source so it can't be traced to the propagandist.

Question 28

Fake news is any news that an elite disagrees with, regardless of its accuracy.

Question 29

Propagandists typically hold elitist and paternalistic views about their audiences.

Question 30

When propaganda theory was originally developed, its beneficial use was known as the engineering of consent.