Exam 5: The Consolidation of the Media Effects Trend

One function of the news is to keep people informed. This is its latent function.

Most postpositivist researchers welcomed systems theory because it identified important causal links between system components.

One of the strengths of applying systems models to communication is the ease with which they allow claims of causality.

An important concept in systems theory is that systems consists of a set of parts that ______________.

The most important limitation of information-flow theory is that it is a simplistic, linear, _______ theory.

A latent function is __________.

Empirical social researchers confident in their assessment that media had limited effects found support in the work of earlier advocates of mass society and propaganda theories.

Information-flow research found that most people learned quite a bit from hard news.

Harold Lasswell's model of communication is a good example of the transmissional view of communication because it accepts the power of feedback.

You've read everything there is to read about corruption in the state legislature. You're up-to-date, but there really isn't anything you can do about it. This is media's ___________.

Social scientists willingly accept the ________, the idea that every answer produces new questions.

According to Klapper's phenoministic theory, if the media have any effect at all, it is ___________.

One advantage of explaining media influence using middle-range theories is that they do not remain separate but can be consolidated into wider networks of theory.

The classic four functions of the media include surveillance of the environment, correlation of the parts of society, transmission of the social heritage, and _______.

Information-flow researchers differentiated between "hard" and "soft" news. Hard news typically included news about politics, science, world events, and community organizations.

In two-step flow theory, opinion leaders and those who followed their opinions often shared the same social status.

You go online to check the weather to see if you need to bring an umbrella to class. This is an example of which of the classic four functions?

According to functionalists, practices that are disruptive to the group, society, or system are ______.

During the 1950s, 1960s, and into the 1970s, the limited effects perspective dominated American mass communication research.

One of the reasons Klapper's phenoministic theory still holds up today is that it accounted for changes in the mass communication process brought about by the coming of television.