The Role of Media

Absolute neutrality or objectivity is impossible to achieve.

• True

• False

These are two key points that affect how we process information:

• The quality of online news and information we consume.

• When our focus and attention are limited, we miss important things.

• Most people have a tendency to seek evidence that affirms their existing ideas and beliefs and to avoid or ignore information that contradicts them.

How do commercial news sources make money?

• Selling time or space to advertisers.

• Making the news as exciting and fast paced as possible.

• Reporting news that affects the most number of people.

• All of the above.

Media do not present simple reflections of external reality; they present productions, which have specific purposes.

• True

• False

Why do media have 'commercial implications'?

• Producers use marketing tecniques that cost them a lot of money and time to increase customer satisfaction.

• Media production is a business and must make a profit.

• Media content makes viewers targets for advertisers and organizes them into marketable groups.

Images have more power than the accompanying text, rendering the decisions that news organizations must make about images.

• True

• False

"Audiences negotiate meaning" means that ...

• Audiences should take away same meanings from the same product.

• Individual factors, such as age, gender, race and social status do not affect our interpretations of media.

• We all bring our own experience to media we encounter.

Media have great influence on politics and on forming social change because ...

• Producers use the Internet and social media for surveillance and propaganda and to distract voters from politics.

• They convey ideological messages that may be the result of unconscious biases and unquestioned assumptions.

• They hide potentially harmful information.

When you hear the phrase "the media," usually it is referring to ...

• The sources of our news and information about current events.

• A method of communicating information, entertainment, or other messages.

• The plural form of the word medium.

In its role as gatekeeper, the media decides ...

• The way to stay informed about what our government is doing.

• The methods of communicating with other people.

• Which stories and issues are important enough to receive public attention and which aren't.