Chapter 16. Media and Popular Culture
Chapter 16 Resources and Activities
William Little and Ron McGivern
Key Terms
algorithmic society: A global society in which digital platforms and their proprietary algorithms organize the social distribution of attention and information.
audience reception: The process by which an audience receives and decodes media messages.
authenticity: A quality of charismatic authority based on the percieved sincerity, “realness” or truth of their messages.
bias of communication: The influence of a form of communication on the organization of society.
code: A set of instructions for how to assemble signifying elements into a message that communicates meaning and makes sense to an audience.
cognitive mapping: The ability to locate oneself within a meaningful whole or mental map of the social world.
collective conscience: The shared beliefs, morals, attitudes or mental life of a society.
collective representations: The meanings, symbols, concepts, categories, and images shared by a social collectivity.
culture industry: The collection of media corporations and commercial enterprises that produce standardized cultural goods — films, radio programmes, TV, pop music, magazines, etc. — that are used to transform audiences into a mass of passive consumers.
decoding: The process whereby an audience actively interprets or deciphers the meaning of a media text or representation.
digital divide: The uneven access to technology around race, class, and geographic lines.
digital media: Computer mediated communication networks.
dominant‐hegemonic position: The standpoint of a media audience member who interprets a media text in terms of the dominant or preferred meanings of society.
echo chamber: A social media environment in which a person only see beliefs or opinions that align with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced or uncritically confirmed back to them and exposure to alternative ideas is inhibited.
encoding: The process whereby events or raw reality depicted in a representation are turned into messages that convey specific cultural meanings.
filter bubble: A social media condition created by algorithms that personalize or filter an individual’s online experience in which users encounter only information and opinions that align with and confirm their existing beliefs.
fourth estate: The watchdog role of the professional news media that monitors the government of society by exposing excesses and corruption, and holding those in power accountable.
fragmentation of knowledge: The condtion in which members of a society no longer share a single, unified universe of meaning and understanding.
gatekeeping: The sorting process by which thousands of possible messages are shaped into a mass media — appropriate form and reduced to a manageable amount.
grand narratives: Overarching narratives of that give order, meaning and direction to a society.
ideology: A set of ideas that conceal, distort, or justify power relations i