Mass Communication 7e by Hanson

Mass Communication 7e by Hanson is the 7th edition of the Mass Communication: Living in a Media World textbook authored by Ralph E. Hanson, University of Nebraska at Kearney, and published by SAGE Publications, Inc., Thousand Oaks, California in 2019.

• Above the fold. A term used to refer to a prominent story; it comes from placement of a news story in a broadsheet newspaper above the fold in the middle of the front page.
• Actual malice. A reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of a published account; this became the standard for libel plaintiffs who were public figures or public officials after the Supreme Court's decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.
• Advertising. Defined by the American Marketing Association as "any paid form of nonpersonal communication about an organization, product, service, or idea by an identified sponsor."
• Advertorial. Advertising materials in magazines designed to look like editorial content rather than paid advertising.
• Advocacy ads. Advertising designed to promote a particular point of view rather than a product or service. Can be sponsored by a government, corporation, trade association, or nonprofit organization.
• Agenda-setting theory. A theory of media effects that says that the media tell the public not what to think but rather what to think about—thus the terms of public discourse are set by what is covered in the media.
• Al Jazeera. The largest and most viewed Arabic-language satellite news channel. It is run out of the country of Qatar and has a regular audience of forty million viewers.
• Alien and Sedition Acts. Laws passed in 1798 that made it a crime to criticize the government of the United States.
• Alphabets. A form of writing in which letters represent individual sounds. Sound-based alphabet writing allows any word to be written using only a few dozen unique symbols.
• Alternative papers. Weekly newspapers that serve specialized audiences such as racial minorities, gays and lesbians, and young people.
• Analog recording. An electromechanical method of recording in which a sound is translated into analogous electrical signals that are then applied to a recording medium. Analog recording media included acetate or vinyl discs and magnetic tape.
• Ancillary, or secondary, markets. Movie revenue sources other than the domestic box office. These include foreign box office, video rights, and television rights, as well as tie-ins and product placements.
• Anonymous audience. An audience the sender does not personally know. These are not anonymous, isolated people who have no connection to anyone else; they simply are anonymous in their audience status.
• ARPAnet. The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network; the first nationwide computer network, which became the first major component of the internet.
• Authoritarian theory. A theory of appropriate press behavior that says the role of the press is to be a servant of the government, not a servant of the citizenry.
• Bay Psalm Book. The first book published in North America by the Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The book went through more than fifty editions and stayed in print for 125 years.
• Big Four networks. The broadcast landscape we know today: the Big Three networks plus the Fox network.
• Big Three networks. The original television broadcast networks NBC, CBS, and ABC.
• Blacklist. A group of people banned from working in the movie industry in the late 1940s and 1950s because they were suspected of being communists or communist sympathizers. Some of them, such as a few screenwriters, were able to work under assumed names, but others never worked again in the industry.
• Block bookings. Requiring a theater owner to take a whole series of movies in order to get a few desirable, headliner films. This system was eventually found to violate antitrust laws.
• Blockbuster era. A period from the late 1970s to the present day in which movie studios make relatively expensive movies that have a large, predefined audience. These movies, usually chock-full of special effects, are packaged with cable deals and marketing tie-ins, and they can be extremely lucrative if they are able to attract large repeat audiences.
• Bloggers. People who post their thoughts, typically with the most recent posts at the top of the page, on a regularly updated website.
• Brand image. The image attached to a brand and the associated product that gives the product a personality or identity that makes it stand out from similar products and stick in the mind of the consumer.
• Brand name. A word or phrase attached to prepackaged consumer goods so that they can be better promoted to the general public through advertising and so that consumers can distinguish a given product from the competition.
• Brick-and-mortar stores. Stores that have a physical presence at which you can shop.
• British invasion. The British take on classic American rock 'n' roll, blues, and R&B transformed rock 'n' roll and became internationally popular in the 1960s with groups such as the Beatles and, later, the Rolling Stones and the Who.
• Broadband service. A high-speed continuous connection to the internet using a cable modem from a cable television provider or a digital subscriber line from a phone company.
• Broadsheet newspapers. Standard-sized newspapers, which are generally 17 by 22 inches.
• Business-to-business ads (trade ads). Advertising that promotes products and services directly to other businesses rather than to the general consumer market.
• Categorical imperative. Kant's idea of a moral obligation that we should act in a way in which we would be willing to have everyone else act; also known as the principle of universality.
• Chains. Corporations that control a significant number of newspapers and other media outlets.
• Channel. The medium used to transmit the encoded message.
• Citizen journalism. Journalism created by people other than professional journalists, often distributed over the internet.
• Clutter. The large number of commercials, advertising, and other nonprogramming messages and interruptions that compete for consumer attention on radio, television, and now the internet.
• Communication. How we socially interact at a number of levels through messages.
• Communist theory. A theory of appropriate press behavior that says the press is to be run by the government to serve the government's own needs.
• Community antenna television (CATV). An early form of cable television used to distribute broadcast channels in communities with poor television reception.
• Community press. Weekly and daily newspapers serving individual communities or suburbs instead of an entire metropolitan area.
• Compact disc (CD). A digital recording medium that came into common use in the early 1980s. CDs can hold approximately seventy minutes of digitally recorded music.
• Computer-generated imagery (CGI). Movie special effects created digitally using computers. Sometimes known as computer animation.
• Concept album. An album by a solo artist or group that contains related songs on a common theme or even a story, rather than a collection of unrelated hits or covers.
• Consumer magazines. Publications targeting an audience of like-minded consumers.
• Cookies. Tiny files that websites create to identify visitors and potentially track their actions on the site and the web.
• Correlation. The process of selecting, evaluating, and interpreting events to give structure to the news. The media assist the process of correlation by persuasive communication through editorials, commentary, advertising, and propaganda and by providing cues that indicate the importance of each news item.
• Country music. Originally referred to as hillbilly or "old-timey" music, this genre evolved out of Irish and Scottish folk music, Mississippi blues, and Christian gospel music and grew in the 1950s and 1960s with the so-called Nashville sound.
• Cover lines. Teaser headlines on magazine covers used to shock, intrigue, or titillate potential buyers.
• Covers. Songs recorded (or covered) by someone other than the original artist. In the 1950s, it was common for white musicians to cover songs originally played by black artists, but now artists commonly cover all genres of music.
• CPM. Cost per thousand exposures to the target audience—a figure used in media planning evaluation.
• Crisis. Any situation that is perceived by the public as being damaging to the reputation or image of an organization. Not all problems develop into crises, but once a situation develops into a crisis, it can be damaging to an organization's reputation.
• Critical theory. A school of thought that grew out of the time period between World War I and World War II that addressed the connection between ideas and values, the context of the development of ideas, and the commodification of culture.
• Cultivation analysis. An approach to analyzing the effects of television viewing that argues that watching significant amounts of television alters the way an individual views the nature of the surrounding world.
• Cutting the cord. Replacing traditional paid video services, such as cable or satellite television, with internet-based streaming video services.
• Decoding. The process of translating a signal from a mass medium into a form that the receiver can understand and then interpreting the meaning of the message itself.
• Demographics. The study of audience members' gender, race, ethnic background, income, education, age, educational attainment, and the like; a method typically used to analyze potential markets for products and programs.
• Development theory. A theory of appropriate press behavior that states that developing nations may need to implement press controls in order to promote industry, national identity, and partnerships with neighboring nations.
• Digital-first strategy. An approach to magazine publishing where online and electronic editions are more important than preserving circulation and revenue from print editions.
• Digital natives. Online media that do not have a traditional legacy media component; online-only media.
• Digital recording. A method of recording sound—for example, that used to create CDs—that involves storing music in a computer-readable format known as binary information.
• Dime novels. Inexpensive paperback books that sold for as little as five cents (despite their name). They were especially popular during the Civil War era.
• Direct-action message. An advertising message designed to get consumers to go to a particular place to do something specific, such as purchasing a product, obtaining a service, or engaging in a behavior.
• Direct-broadcast satellite (DBS). A low-earth-orbit satellite that provides television programming via a small, pizza-sized satellite antenna; DBS is a competitor to cable TV.
• Disco. The name of the heavily produced techno club dance music of the 1970s, which grew out of the urban gay male subculture, with significant black and Latino influences. In many ways, disco defined the look and feel of 1970s pop culture, fashion, and film.
• Domestic novels. Novels written in the nineteenth century by and for women that told the story of women who overcame tremendous problems to end up in prosperous middle-class homes.
• Drive time. The morning and afternoon commutes in urban areas; the captive audience makes this a popular time to advertise on radio.
• E-book reader. A portable device for viewing, and sometimes selling, electronic books and other texts. Among the most popular are the line of Amazon Kindles.
• Economy of abundance. An economy in which there are as many or more goods available as there are people who want to or have the means to buy them.
• Electronic mail (email). A message sent from one computer user to another across a network.
• Embarrassment. Invasion of privacy where a journalist publishes something that is true but embarrassing and not newsworthy about a person.
• Emojis. A word borrowed from Japanese that refers to small icons that are used to express ideas and emotions in SMS and social media messages.
• Encoding. The process of turning the sender's ideas into a message and preparing the message for transmission.
• Engineering consent. The application of the principles of psychology and motivation to influencing public opinion and creating public support for a particular position.
• Entertainment. Media communication intended primarily to amuse the audience.
• Equal time provision. An FCC policy that requires broadcast stations to make equivalent amounts of broadcast time available to all candidates running for public office.
• ESports. Organized video game team competition for an audience on streaming, cable, or broadcast television. Can also be played in front of a live audience.
• Ethics. A rational way of deciding what is good for individuals or society. Ethics provide a way to choose between competing moral principles and help people decide in cases where there is not a clear-cut right or wrong answer.
• Fairness doctrine. A former FCC policy that required television stations to "afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views on issues of public importance."
• False light. Invasion of privacy in which a journalist publishes untrue statements that alter a person's public image in a way that he or she cannot control.
• Feature-length film. A theatrical movie that runs more than one hour.
• Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The federal agency charged with regulating telecommunications, including radio and television broadcasting.
• Font. All the characters of a typeface in a particular size and style. The term font is typically used interchangeably today with the word typeface.
• Format radio. A style of radio programming designed to appeal to a narrow, specific audience. Popular formats include country, contemporary hits, all talk, all sports, and oldies.
• 45-rpm disc. This record format was developed in the late 1940s by RCA. It had high-quality sound but held only about four minutes of music per side. It was the ideal format for marketing popular hit songs to teenagers, though.
• #gamergate. A series of attacks on women in the video game industry that is framed as a critique of video gaming journalism ethics.
• Geographics. The study of where people live; a method typically used to analyze potential markets for products and programs.
• Girl group. A musical group composed of several women singers who harmonize together. Groups such as the Shirelles, the Ronettes, and the Shangri-Las, featuring female harmonies and high production values, were especially popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
• Golden age of radio. A period from the late 1920s until the 1940s, during which radio was the dominant medium for home entertainment.
• Golden mean. Aristotle's notion that ethical behavior comes from hitting a balance, a "just-right point between excess and defect."
• Gramophone. A machine invented by Emile Berliner that could play prerecorded sound on flat discs rather than cylinders.
• Group communication. Communication in which one person is communicating with an audience of two or more people. The roles of communicator and audience can be changing constantly.
• Hacker ethic. A set of values from the early days of interactive computing that holds that users should have absolute control over their computer systems and free access to all information contained on those computers. The hacker ethic shaped much of the development of the internet.
• Halftone. An image produced by a process in which photographs are broken down into a series of dots that appear in shades of gray on the printed page.
• HD radio. Sometimes also referred to as high-definition radio, this technology provides listeners with CD-quality sound and the choice of multiple channels of programming, but it has not achieved a high level of popularity.
• Heterogeneous audience. An audience made up of a mix of people who differ in age, sex, income, education, ethnicity, race, religion, and other characteristics.
• High-definition television (HDTV). A standard for high-quality digital broadcasting that features a high-resolution picture, wide-screen format, and enhanced sound.
• High fidelity (hi-fi). A combination of technologies that allowed recordings to reproduce music more accurately, with higher high notes and deeper bass, than was possible with previous recording technologies.
• Hip-hop. A cultural movement that originated in the 1970s and 1980s that features four main elements: MCing, or rapping over music; DJing, or playing recorded music from multiple sources; B-boying, a style of dancing; and graffiti art.
• Hollywood Ten. A group of ten writers and directors who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee about their political activities. They were among the first people in Hollywood to be blacklisted.
• House Un-American Activities Committee. A congressional committee chaired by Parnell Thomas that held hearings on the influence of communism on Hollywood in 1947. These activities mirrored a wider effort to root out suspected communists in all walks of American life.
• Hypertext. Material in a format containing links that allow the reader to move easily from one section to another and from document to document. The most commonly used hypertext documents are web pages.
• Hypertext markup language (HTML). One of the three major components of the web; the programming language used to create and format web pages.
• Hypertext transfer protocol (http). One of the three major components of the web; a method of sending text, graphics, or anything else over the internet from a server to a web browser.
• Ideograph. An abstract symbol that stands for a word or phrase. The written forms of the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese languages make use of ideographs.
• Inclusive access. Where a textbook publisher licenses textbooks and other course materials to a school so that all students have access to them at a reduced cost.
• Indirect-action message. An advertising message designed to build the image of and demand for a product, without specifically urging that a particular action be taken at a particular time and place.
• Industrialization. The movement from work done by hand using muscle or water power in small shops to mass production of goods in factories that used energy sources such as steam power or electricity.
• Instant messaging (IM). Email systems that allow two or more users to chat with one another in real time, hold virtual meetings that span multiple cities or even countries, and keep track of which of their "buddies" are currently logged on to the system.
• Integrated marketing communication (IMC). An overall communication strategy for reaching key audiences using advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and interactive media.
• Internet. "A diverse set of independent networks, interlinked to provide its users with the appearance of a single, uniform network"; a mass medium like no other, incorporating elements of interpersonal, group, and mass communications.
• Internet of Things. Noncomputer devices that surround our lives that collect data and transmit it over the internet.
• Interpersonal communication. Communication, either intentional or accidental, between two people. It can be verbal or nonverbal.
• Intranets. Computer networks designed to communicate with people within an organization. They are used to improve two-way internal communication and contain tools that allow for direct feedback. They are a tool for communicating with internal publics.
• Intrapersonal communication. Communication you have with yourself. How you assign meaning to the world around you.
• Intrusion. Invasion of privacy by physical trespass into a space surrounding a person's body or onto property under his or her control.
• Jazz journalism. A lively, illustrated style of newspapering popularized by the tabloid papers in the 1920s.
• Kinetoscope. An early peep show–like movie projection system developed by Thomas Edison that could be used only by an individual viewer.
• Legacy media. The traditional media, often owned by large corporations. These may include newspapers, magazines, book publishers, and television networks.
• Libel. A published statement that unjustifiably exposes someone to ridicule or contempt; for a statement to be libel, it must satisfy the three elements of defamation, identification, and publication.
• Libertarian theory. A theory of appropriate press behavior that says the press does not belong to the government but is instead a separate institution that belongs to the people and serves as an independent observer of the government.
• Linotype. A typesetting machine that let an operator type at a keyboard rather than pick each letter out by hand. The Linotype was the standard for typesetting until phototypesetting became common in the 1970s.
• Literary magazines. Publications that focus on serious essays and short fiction.
• Local advertising. Advertising designed to get people to patronize local stores, businesses, or service providers.
• Local cable television systems. The companies that provide cable television service directly to consumers' homes.
• Long-playing record (LP). A record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. The more durable LP could reproduce twenty-three minutes of high-quality music on each of two sides and was a technological improvement over the 78-rpm.
• Long tail. The portion of a distribution curve where a limited number of people are interested in buying a lot of different products.
• Magazine. A periodical that contains articles of lasting interest. Typically, magazines are targeted at a specific audience and derive income from advertising, subscriptions, and newsstand sales.
• Mass communication. When an individual or institution uses technology to send a message to a large, mixed audience, most of whose members are not known to the sender.
• Mass media. The technological tools, or channels, used to transmit the messages of mass communication.
• Mean world syndrome. The perception of many heavy television watchers of violent programs that the world is a more dangerous and violent place than facts and statistics bear out.
• Media literacy. Audience members' understanding of the media industry's operation, the messages delivered by the media, the roles media play in society, and how audience members respond to these media and their messages.
• Media planning. The process central to a successful ad campaign of figuring out which media to use, buying the media at the best rates, and then evaluating how effective the purchase was.
• Media relations. Two-way interactions between PR professionals and members of the press. These can involve press conferences, press releases, video news releases, or interviews. Typically, media relations involve the placement of unpaid messages within the standard programming or news content of the medium.
• Message. The content being transmitted by the sender to the receiver.
• Misappropriation. Invasion of privacy by using a person's name or image for commercial purposes without his or her permission.
• Modernization. The process of change from a society in which people's identities and roles are fixed at birth to a society where people can decide who they want to be, where they want to live, what they want to do, and how they want to present themselves to the world.
• Morals. An individual's code of behavior based on religious or philosophical principles. Morals define right and wrong in ways that may or may not be rational.
• Mosaic. The first easy-to-use graphical web browser, developed by a group of student programmers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• MP3. Short for Moving Picture Experts Group audio layer 3; a standard for compressing music from CDs or other digital recordings into computer files that can be easily exchanged on the internet.
• Muckrakers. Progressive investigative journalists typically publishing in magazines in the early years of the twentieth century.
• Multiplex. A group of movie theaters with anywhere from three to twenty screens that share a common box office and concession stand. Largely a suburban phenomenon at first, the multiplex replaced the old urban Art Deco movie palaces.
• National advertising. Advertising designed to build demand for a nationally available product or service and that is not directing the consumer to local retail or service outlets.
• Native advertising. Advertising materials mixed in with articles and written by staff writers designed to look like editorial content rather than paid advertising.
• Net neutrality. Rules that would require internet service providers to give equal access to all online content providers.
• Network. A company that provides common programming to a large group of broadcast stations.
• Noise. Interference with the transmission of a message. This can take the form of semantic, mechanical, or environmental noise.
• Non-notated music. Music such as a folk song or jazz solo that does not exist in written form.
• Obscenity. Sexually explicit material that is legally prohibited from being published.
• Ombudsman. A representative of a publication's readers who takes the point of view of those who purchase or consume the news; also known as a reader's representative or audience advocate.
• Open contract. An arrangement that allows advertising agencies to sell space in any publication (and eventually on broadcast outlets as well) rather than just a limited few.
• Opinion leaders. Influential community members who invest substantial amounts of time learning about their own area of expertise, such as politics. Less well-informed friends and family members frequently turn to them for advice about the topic.
• Opinion leadership. A two-step process of persuasion that uses respected and influential individuals to deliver messages with the hope of influencing members of a community, rather than just relying on the mass media to deliver the message.
• Packet switching. A method for breaking up long messages into small pieces, or packets, and transmitting them independently across a computer network. Once the packets arrive at their destination, the receiving computer reassembles the message into its original form.
• Paper. A writing material made from cotton rags or wood pulp; invented by the Chinese between 240 BC and 105 BC.
• Papyrus. An early form of paper made from the papyrus reed, developed by the Egyptians around 3100 BC.
• Parchment. An early form of paper made from the skin of goats or sheep, which was more durable than papyrus.
• Penny press. Inexpensive, widely circulated papers that became popular in the nineteenth century. They were the first American media to be supported primarily through advertising revenue.
• Pentagon Papers. A top-secret forty-seven volume report commissioned by the Secretary of Defense to explain how the United States got involved and fought in the Vietnam War.
• People meter. An electronic box used by the ratings company Nielsen Media Research to record which television shows people watch.
• Phonograph. An early sound-recording machine invented by Thomas Edison; the recorded material was played back on a cylinder.
• Phonography. A system of writing in which symbols stand for spoken sounds rather than objects or ideas. Among the most widely used phonographic alphabets are the Latin/Roman alphabet used in English and the Cyrillic alphabet used for writing Russian.
• Photojournalism. The use of photographs to portray the news in print.
• Pictograph. A prehistoric form of writing made up of paintings on rock or cave walls.
• Plus-sized model. A female fashion model who wears an average or larger clothing size.
• Podcast. An audio program produced as an MP3 compressed music file that can be listened to online at the listener's convenience or downloaded to a computer or an MP3 player. Podcasts sometimes contain video content as well.
• Postal Act of 1879. Legislation that allowed magazines to be mailed nationally at a low cost. It was a key factor in the growth of magazine circulation in the late nineteenth century.
• Practical effects. Movie special effects done with sets, miniatures, and stunt performers.
• Press agentry. An early form of public relations that involved sending material from the press agent to the media with little opportunity for interaction and feedback. It often involved conduct that would be considered deceptive and unethical today.
• Principle of utility. John Stuart Mill's principle that ethical behavior arises from that which will provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
• Print on demand. A form of publishing in which the physical book is not printed until it's ordered, or until the distributor of the book prints additional copies in small batches.
• Prior restraint. A judicial order that stops a media organization from publishing or broadcasting a story or image.
• Privilege. A legal defense against libel that holds that statements made in government meetings, in court, or in government documents cannot be used as the basis for a libel suit.
• Producer. The person who puts together the right mix of songs, songwriters, technicians, and performers to create an album; some observers argue that the producer is the key catalyst for a hit album.
• Product integration. The paid integration of a product or service into the central theme of media content. This is most common in television programming or movies, but it can be found in books, magazine articles, web pages, or even songs.
• Production Code. The industry-imposed rules that controlled the content of movies from the 1930s until the current movie ratings system came into use in 1968.
• Proofs. The ready-to-print typeset pages sent to book authors for final corrections.
• Psychographics. A combination of demographics, lifestyle characteristics, and product usage; a method typically used to analyze potential markets for products and programs.
• Public. Any group of people who share a common set of interests and goals. These include internal publics, which are made up of people within the organization, and external publics, which consist of people outside the organization.
• Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). A nonprofit broadcast network that provides a wide range of public service and educational programs. It is funded by government appropriations, private industry underwriting, and viewer support.
• Public relations (PR). "The management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends."
• Public service ads. Advertising designed to promote the messages of nonprofit institutions and government agencies. The messages are typically produced and run without charge by advertising professionals and the media. Many of these ads are produced by the Ad Council.
• Publicity model. A model of the mass communication process that looks at how media attention can make a person, concept, or thing become important, regardless of what is said about it.
• Publishers. The companies that buy manuscripts from authors, turn them into books, and market them to the public.
• Race records. A term used by the recording industry prior to 1949 to refer to recordings by popular black artists. It was later replaced by more racially neutral terms such as R&B, soul, and urban contemporary.
• Radio Music Box memo. David Sarnoff's 1915 plan that outlined how radio could be used as a popular mass medium.
• Rap music. This genre arose out of the hip-hop culture in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s. It emerged from clubs where DJs played and remixed different records and sounds and then spoke (or rapped) over the top.
• Rating point. The percentage of the total potential television audience actually watching a particular show. One rating point indicates an audience of approximately 1.14 million viewers.
• Receiver. The audience for the mass communication message.
• Reception model. A critical theory model of the mass communication process that looks at how audience members derive and create meaning out of media content as they decode the messages.
• Ritual model. A model of the mass communication process that treats media use as an interactive ritual engaged in by audience members. It looks at how and why audience members (receivers) consume media messages.
• Rock 'n' roll. A style of music popularized on radio that combined elements of white hillbilly music and black rhythm and blues.
• Rotary press. A steam-powered press invented in 1814 that could print many times faster than the older, hand-powered flat-bed presses.
• Satellite radio. The radio service provided by digital signal broadcast from a communications satellite. Supported by subscribers, this service covers a wider area than terrestrial radio and offers programming that is different from corporate-owned terrestrial stations. However, it is costly and doesn't provide local coverage, such as traffic and weather reports.
• Scriptoria. Copying rooms in monasteries where monks prepared early hand-copied books.
• Sender Message Channel Receiver model (SMCR or transmission model). A dated model that is still useful in identifying the players in the mass communication process.
• Sensationalism. News coverage that panders to audiences with lurid and highly emotional accounts of crime, sex, violence, or celebrity missteps.
• Serial novels. Novels published and sold in single-chapter installments.
• Service magazines. Magazines that primarily contain articles about how to do things in a better way. These articles cover such topics as health advice, cooking tips, employment help, and fashion guides.
• Share. The percentage of television sets in use that are tuned to a particular show.
• Shield laws. Laws that give journalists special protection from having to testify in court about their stories and sources.
• Shock jock. A radio personality, such as Howard Stern, who attracts listeners by making outrageous and offensive comments on the air.
• Short head. The portion of a distribution curve where a large number of people are interested in buying a limited number of products.
• Small media. Alternative media, such as fax machines, photocopiers, video cameras, and personal websites, which are used to distribute news and information that might be suppressed by the government if published through traditional mass media channels.
• Soap operas. Serialized daytime dramas targeted primarily at women.
• Social justice warriors (SJW). A negative term used within the #gamergate community and elsewhere to describe people who advocate for socially progressive causes, especially women's equality.
• Social learning theory. The process by which individuals learn by observing the behaviors of others and the consequences of those behaviors.
• Social media. Websites that allow users to generate content, comment, tag, and network with friends or other like-minded people.
• Social music. Music that people play and sing for one another in the home or other social settings. In the absence of radio, recordings, and, later, television, this was the means of hearing music most readily available to the largest number of people.
• Social responsibility theory. A theory of appropriate press behavior based on the concern that, although the press may be free from interference from the government, it can still be controlled by corporate interests; an outgrowth of libertarian theory.
• Socialization. The process of educating young people and new members about the values, social norms, and knowledge of a group or society.
• Spiral of silence. A theory that suggests that people want to see themselves as holding a majority opinion and will therefore remain silent if they perceive that they hold a minority opinion. This tends to make the minority opinion appear to be less prevalent than it is.
• Standard digital television. A standard for digital broadcasting that allows six channels to fit in the broadcast frequency space occupied by a single analog signal.
• Status conferral. The process by which media coverage makes an individual gain prominence in the eyes of the public.
• Streaming audio. Audio programming transmitted over the internet.
• Studio system. A factory-like way of producing films that involved having all of the talent, including the actors and directors, working directly for the movie studios. The studios also had almost total control of the distribution system.
• Subliminal advertising. Messages that are allegedly embedded so deeply in an ad that they cannot be perceived consciously. There is no evidence that subliminal advertising is effective.
• Surveillance. How the media help us extend our senses to perceive more of the world surrounding us.
• Sweeps. The four times during the year that Nielsen Media Research measures the size of individual television station audiences.
• Symbolic interactionism. The process by which individuals produce meaning through interaction based on socially agreed-upon symbols.
• Synchronized soundtrack. Sound effects, music, and voices synchronized with the moving images in a movie.
• Synergy. Where the combined strength of two items is greater than the sum of their individual strengths. In the media business, synergy means that a large company can use the strengths of its various divisions to successfully market its content.
• Tabloid laundering or tabloidization. When respectable media report on what the tabloids are reporting as a way of covering sensationalistic stories on which they might not otherwise report.14
• Tabloid newspapers. Newspapers with a half-page (11- by 14-inch) format that usually have a cover rather than a traditional front page like the larger broadsheet papers.
• Talkie. A movie with synchronized sound; these quickly replaced silent films.
• Targeting. The process of trying to make a particular product or service appeal to a narrowly defined group. Groups are often targeted using demographics, geographics, and psychographics.
• TCP/IP. TCP stands for transmission control protocol, which controls how data are sent out on the internet; IP stands for internet protocol, which provides the address for each computer on the internet. These protocols provided common rules and translations so that incompatible computers could communicate with each other.
• Telegraph. The first system for using wires to send messages at a distance; invented by Samuel Morse in 1844.
• Telenovelas. Spanish-language soap operas popular in both Latin America and the United States.
• Television network. A company that provides programs to local stations around the country; the local affiliate stations choose which programs to carry.
• Terrestrial radio. AM and FM broadcast radio stations.
• The big idea. The goal of every advertising campaign—an advertising concept that will grab people's attention and make them take notice, remember, and take action.
• Trade books. General-interest fiction and nonfiction books that are sold in hardback or large-format paperback editions.
• Trade magazines. Magazines published for people who work in a particular industry or business.
• Typemold. A mold in which a printer would pour molten lead to produce multiple, identical copies of a single letter without hand-carving each.
• Uniform resource locator (URL). One of the three major components of the web; the address of content placed on the web.
• University and small presses. Small-scale publishers that issue a limited number of books covering specialized topics. They are often subsidized by a university or an organization.
• Uses and gratifications theory. An approach to studying mass communication that looks at the reasons why audience members choose to spend time with the media in terms of the wants and needs of the audience members that are being fulfilled.
• Veil of ignorance. John Rawls's principle of ethics that says that justice comes from making decisions that maximize liberty for all people and without considering which outcome will give us personally the biggest benefit.
• Vertical integration. Controlling all aspects of a media project, including production, delivery to consumers in multiple formats, and promotion of the product through other media.
• Video on demand (VOD). Television channels that allow consumers to order movies, news, or other programs at any time over fiber-optic lines.
• Videocassette recorder (VCR). A home videotape machine that allows viewers to make permanent copies of television shows and, thus, choose when they want to watch programs.
• Watergate scandal. A burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office and apartment building that was authorized by rogue White House staffers. Its subsequent cover-up led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, two reporters from the Washington Post, covered the Watergate scandal.
• Weblog (blog). A collection of links and commentary in hypertext form on the World Wide Web that can be created and posted on the internet with relatively little effort. Blogs can be public diaries, collections of photos, or commentaries on the news.
• Whitewashing. Casting white actors to play nonwhite characters or rewriting characters who were originally people of color to be white.
• Wireless telegraph. Guglielmo Marconi's name for his point-to-point communication tool that used radio waves to transmit messages.
• World Wide Web. A system developed by Tim Berners-Lee that allows users to view and link documents located anywhere in the world using standard software.
• Yellow journalism. A style of sensationalistic journalism that grew out of the newspaper circulation battle between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.
• Zoned coverage. When a newspaper targets news coverage or advertisements to a specific region of a city or market.