COMM 1233 Exam Study Guide with Key Terms Concepts The exam tests your knowledge and understanding of key concepts terms and main ideas from class readings and lecture notes The idea is to ensure that you accurately comprehend the concepts before you to apply them in other projects for the class To prepare for the exam collect and study the definitions and main ideas behind each item on the list below I identified textbook chapters and lecture numbers to help you locate material Remember to also utilize indexes in both books and the glossary in Potter Dill Ch 1 Sleeper effect the persuasion through fictional narratives increases over time as the source of info becomes remote Transportation the theory explaining why people are persuaded by information in fictional stories getting caught up in a fictional story Cognitive dissonance the idea that mental inconsistencies cause discomfort that we are motivated to change often through rationalization Third person effect people believe others are affected by exposure to media but they Social comparison theory naturally comparing ourselves to something in social media personally aren t affiliated TV shows ads books etc Mirror neurons these complexes of feeling thinking and doing help us imitate actions help us empathize empathy Imitating a behavior seen Fantasy vs Reality knowing what is real and what is fiction i e the TV show Friends is fiction but show reality in ways Dill Ch 2 life Attentional problems too much TV at a young age can cause attention problems later in Social construction of culture culture is defined as shared reality created and maintained through common experiences and through communication i e a swastika symbol originally used for something else other than the Nazis but we see it in America as evil Multiple levels of messages cognitive emotional aesthetic moral also see Potter o Cognitive we have info that is being shared an expression of concern for a friend and some reasons for that concern o Emotional we interpret a variety of feeling felt by the communicator including worry and anxiety o Aesthetic includes judgments about the communicator s artistry from her strength as orator to judging whether what she says is genuine o Moral relates to values what judgment is the speaker making about the kind of behavior that is proper for a friend Dill Ch 6 Behaviorism people and animals learn through observable principles such as by associating one experience with another or by learning through consequences of actions Pavlov s dogs Product placements send subtle social messages i e this movie star that I love smokes therefore smoking is cool Audience vulnerabilities cognitive biological social o Cognitive we think something is nice if socially acceptable o Biological if someone in your family has something o Social fitting in not sure about audience vulnerabilities Dill Ch 7 Imaginal confirmations applies to mass media imagery seeing fantasy images will tend to cause imaginal confirmation feeling like we ve seen real people who are fantasy causing negative stereotypes Parasocial relationships one party knows a great deal about the other but the other doesn t celebrities and fans Potter Ch 1 Automaticity our minds automatically filter out almost all message options our minds operate without any conscious effort Information overload and production information production is quick produced all the time With all this info we cannot use it all in a lifetime and overload is overwhelming Potter Ch 2 Personal locus composed of goals and drives goals shape info processing tasks by filtering and ignoring info stronger the drives the more effort you will expend to attain goals Knowledge structures sets of organized info in a person s memory aren t spontaneous must be built with care and precision help us see patterns Building blocks and goals of media literacy building blocks personal locus knowledge structures skills the tools Media literacy skills analysis evaluation grouping synthesis abstracting o Analysis breaking down of a message into meaningful elements o Evaluation making judgment about the value of an element o Grouping determining which elements are alike in some way and then determining how a group of elements is different from other groups of elements o Synthesis assembling of elements into a new structure o Abstracting creating a brief clear and accurate description capturing the essence of a message in a significantly smaller number of words than the message itself paraphrasing Potter Ch 3 Four states of media exposure automatic attentional transported self reflective o Autonomic people are in environments where they are exposed to media messages but not aware of those messages unconscious act o Attentional people being aware of messages and actively interacting with the elements in the messages o Transported when people are in the attentional state but pulled into the message so strongly that they lose awareness of being apart from the message o Self reflective people are hyperaware of the message and of their processing of the message Filtering and meaning matching processes o Filtering filtering important interesting messages o Meaning matching process if you memorize something that later is proved wrong and you still hold on to that memory it could stray you away from goals Potter Ch 4 Mass and niche audiences broadcasting and narrowcasting o Mass audience has 4 parts 1 Audience is heterogeneous people of all kinds 2 Audience members are anonymous 3 No interaction among members in audience 4 Mass audience has no social organization no body of tradition or custom o Niche audience audience where an ad is pertinent i e a person interested in golf likes golf ads o Broadcasting media to anyone and everyone o Narrowcasting media to a narrow audience specific Television viewing patterns usually select media by our interests or towards popular media Audience measurement strategies and processes e g demographics psychographics Audience conditioning media trying to get you to repeat the exposure to that media Potter Ch 5 Strategies and qualities of media literate people o Cognitive development minds need to develop to comprehend media o Emotional development o Moral development o Maturation series of gates along the path to higher media literacy Potter Ch 6 Technology development pattern innovation growth peak decline adaptation o Innovation technological innovation that makes a channel of transmission possible film and