Sociology

In seventeenth and eighteenth century English, the term ________, which was Latin for "in the middle", meant a connection between two things, or a way of conveying something from one place to another.

Media technologies have accomplished what ________ called the "annihilation of space by time" as the near-instantaneous transmission of messages around the globe makes physical distance less and less of a barrier to communication.

Sociologist, Daniel Bell emphasized the role of the media in creating a "post-industrial society" characterized by an "information explosion". This notion was renamed the _______.

Today, the existence of what is sometimes called a/an ________ sphere, where opinion and discussion can circulate without government interference, is regarded as a central element in liberal democracy.

Speedy, easy-to-use, decentralized means of communication will be technologies of ________ that empower citizens and make despotic top-down state control of media more difficult to maintain.

Sociologists who study the ________ of media look at the social institutions that govern the production, distribution, and consumption of information. They are interested in who controls access to the means of communication, and how that control is used to solidify or subvert social power.

The ________ school originated with British Marxist researchers who were interested in popular culture as an arena where contending cultural codes and agendas were in conflict.

By showing people can respond to and reinterpret media in different ways, ________ theory has made a crucial addition to our understanding of media.

Kilbourne argued that the new advertising encourages girls and young women to see themselves as ________ ________ at even earlier ages.

The ________ maintains that vicariously experiencing aggression provides a substitute for actually expressing it, and acts as a sort of "safety valve."

In his study of the so-called cultivation effect of television on viewers, Grebner reported that heavy viewers were more likely to adopt a homogenous world view called ________, and heavy viewers were more apt than light viewers to believe that the world is a ________ place.

Some analysts see the ever-expanding reach of global media as a weapon of ________ imperialism.

While some suggest that there exists a one-way stream of media messages from the West to the rest, others argue that what is occurring is a two-way process of ________.

Rheingold suggested that within cyberspace people could connect in ________ that to replace the sense of togetherness that is lacking in a society fragmented into malls, freeways and corporate workplaces.

The term media is the plural form of the word ________ meaning in the middle.

Rheingold claimed that easy, always-on communication, such as mobile networks, would promote democracy through the creation of "smart mobs" - ad hoc mobilizations of well-informed, well-connected citizens. An example of this is the practice of ________ journalism using mobile phones to upload digital video reports to the Web. :

The main force driving the shift to the "postindustrial" society was the advance in ________ knowledge.

In North America our lives have become more reliant on a technically sophisticated communication system that conveys, filters, and constructs our experience. Some theorists have referred to this by saying we live in a "mediascape" or a "________".

McLuhan proposed that the media extend our senses. The advent of written media changed societies which had previously depended on oral transmission of ideas partly because once something is written it can be ________ from its original context in a way that the spoken work cannot.

Drawing on the work of earlier theorists, McLuhan proposed three great stages in the development of media. These are: