Audience Theories Uses And Reception Exam Prep Chapter 9

Chapter 9 Audience Theories: Uses and Reception

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 1

1) According to uses and gratifications theory, what accounts for most of our use of media?

Feedback: Audiences are active, and their media use is goal-oriented; various audience members bring various levels of activity to their consumption.

Page reference: Revival of the Uses-and-Gratifications Approach

a. Social pressure from other people

b. Inertia; we start using media and can't stop

c. Various communication needs that we consciously know about.

d. Vague emotions that lead us to seek pleasure from media.

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 8, Question 2

2) According to uses and gratifications theory, we stop using media when we ____.

Feedback: The initiative in linking need gratification to a specific media choice rests with the audience member.

Page reference: Revival of the Uses-and-Gratifications Approach

a. observe too many negative role models

b. develop inappropriate social expectations

c. fail to experience the satisfaction that we expect

d. form media inhibitions that produce phobic reactions

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 3

3) Uses and gratifications theory is interested in________.

Feedback: Active-audience theories like uses and gratifications do not attempt to understand what the media do to people; rather, they focus on assessing what people do with media.

Page reference: Revival of the Uses-and-Gratifications Approach

a. what people do with media

b. what media do to people

c. how people play with media

d. the value of news

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 4

4) In the fraction of selection, expectation of reward is divided by ________.________

Feedback: People weigh the level of reward they expect from a given medium or message against how much effort they must make to secure that reward.

Page reference: Revival of the Uses-and-Gratifications Approach

a. gratifications received

b. available alternatives

c. effort required

d. gratifications sought

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 5

5) You regularly watch a certain television program because your friends watch it and you frequently talk about it with them. This example illustrates __________.

Feedback: Social situations can provide realms of expectations of familiarity with media, which must be met to sustain membership in specific social groups.

Page reference: Revival of the Uses-and-Gratifications Approach

a. a homeostatic balance between uses sought and gratifications obtained

b. the operation of a media dependency process in a social environment

c. the way that media functions develop as a result of social pressures

d. how social situations lead individuals to develop specific media uses

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 6

6) In critical theory, the producer-intended meaning of a piece of media content is called the __________.

Feedback: In addition to this dominant reading, it is possible for audience members to make alternate interpretations.

Page reference: Development of Reception Studies: Decoding and Sensemaking

a. preferred reading

b. source-dominated interpretation

c. negotiated meaning

d. oppositionally decoded understanding

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 7

7) Media texts that are fundamentally ambiguous and legitimately open to interpretation in different ways are said to be ________.

Feedback: Many media texts are fundamentally ambiguous and can be legitimately interpreted in several different ways.

Page reference: Development of Reception Studies: Decoding and Sensemaking

a. source-dominated

b. active

c. polysemic

d. neo-Marxist

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 8

8) Surveillance of the environment by journalists is an example of a media ____.

Feedback: Surveillance of the environment refers to the media’s collection and distribution of information.

Page reference: Audience Theories: From Source-Dominated to Active-Audience Perspectives

a. use

b. function

c. gratification

d. norm

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 9

9) Uses-and-gratification researchers are intrigued by computer-mediated-communication’s ______, the ability of the media users to select from a wide menu of content to tailor messages to their needs.

Feedback: Unlike legacy media, new media like the Internet provide selectivity characteristics that allow individuals to tailor messages to their needs.

Page reference: Revival of the Uses-And-Gratifications Approach

a. demassification

Correct/Incorrect

b. ubiquity

Correct/Incorrect

c. asynchroneity

Correct/Incorrect

d. reframing

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 10

10) When active-audience theorists say that audience members are often obstinate, they mean that content consumers are _______.

Feedback: Audience members might not want to be controlled by anyone or anything, even mass media. They actively avoid certain types of media influence.

Page reference: Revival of the Uses-and-Gratifications Approach

a. very knowledgeable

b. bored with much media content

c. open to media influence

d. impervious to influence

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 11

11) When Janice Radway questioned the readers of romance novels, she found that _____.

Feedback: Romance readers rejected the preferred reading and instead engaged in negotiated or oppositional decoding; it was their “declaration of independence.”

Page reference: Development of Reception Studies: Decoding and Sensemaking

a. most had come to accept patriarchal myths embedded in these books

b. most didn't enjoy the books but could find nothing better to do

c. most preferred submissive and emotional female characters

d. most preferred strong but gentle male characters

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 12

12) Entertainment theory is interested in _____.

Feedback: Entertainment theory seeks to understand what entertaining media content does to and for people. Sometimes these effects occur without awareness; other times people may have specific goals in mind and actively match media use to a desired outcome.

Page reference: Entertainment Theory

a. how people play with media

b. what people do with entertainment media content

c. what entertainment media content does to people

d. how people learn from entertainment media

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 13

13) Individuals’ ability to reinvent or subvert media content to oppositionally redefine that content for themselves and others is referred to as _____.

Feedback: This subversion of a content provider’s intended reading is designed to recapture voice in a hypercommercialized culture.

Page reference: Development of Reception Studies: Decoding and Sensemaking

a. reverse targeting

b. semiotic disobedience

c. the digital divide

d. negotiated meaning

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 14

14) _______ is the storage of digital content, including personal information and system-operating software, on distant, third-party servers offering on-demand access.

Feedback: Cloud computing allows instant access, anywhere and anytime, to personally collected content.

Page reference: Overview

a. Cloud computing

b. The World Wide Web

c. Streaming

d. 5G technology

Type: multiple choice question

Title: Chapter 9, Question 15

15) You tune in to Netflix’s Stranger Things simply to be delighted by the situations its characters inevitably find themselves in. Watching is fun. You are enjoying the show for its ______ value.

Feedback: People often have hedonistic motivations for their media choices, intentionally selecting content that maintains and maximizes pleasure and diminishes and minimizes pain.

Page reference: Entertainment Theory

a. eudaimonic

b. oppositional

c. hedonistic

d. preferred

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 16

16) The Internet—with users rather than audiences—is an important factor in the revival of uses-and-gratifications theory.

Feedback: Internet-based media require users to be more active in seeking and consuming content, and therefore will derive unique gratifications from both the content and the process of using these media.

Page reference: Uses and Gratifications and Social Networking

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 17

17) The reception studies approach was consciously developed as a complement to effects-trend notions.

Feedback: Reception studies was developed as a challenge, yet the findings provide an alternate set of insights that add to rather than refute postpositivist findings.

Page reference: Overview

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 18

18) You like to “talk” to characters on the TV screen, often warning them of impending danger. You are engaging in hedonistic consumption.

Feedback: You are engaging in parasocial interaction, “interaction” between you and characters in media content.

Page reference: Entertainment Theory

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 19

19) Mood management theory argues that a predominant motivation for using entertainment media is to moderate or control our moods.

Feedback: By selecting media content, media users can regulate their own mood with regard to arousal levels, wanting to avoid unpleasant degrees of arousal, namely boredom and stress.

Page reference: Entertainment Theory

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 20

20) Some media content has media content has excitatory potential, the ability to direct viewers’ thoughts away from things that induce a negative mood and toward other things that induce positive feelings.

Feedback: This describes content’s absorption potential. Excitatory potential involves the ability of content to arouse or calm emotion.

Page reference: Entertainment Theory

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 21

21) The Selective Exposure Self and Affect Management Model argues that media users select messages to manage and regulate their self-concept along with affective and cognitive states and behaviors.

Feedback: The model suggests that media users often engage in social comparisons with people featured in mediated communication—either for self-consistency, self-improvement, or self-enhancement.

Page reference: Entertainment Theory

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 22

22) According to the Selective Exposure Self and Affect Management Model, when consuming media narratives, the boundaries of our true personal and social selves are expanded to accommodate the story’s realities, assumptions, situations, and characters.

Feedback: This describes the temporarily expanding the boundaries of the self perspective, which explains that we engage media stories, not so much to regulate our self-concepts, but to expand the real-world, everyday constraints on those concepts.

Page reference: Entertainment Theory

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 23

23) When the meaning we make from a piece of content is the same one the producer hoped we would make, we have made a negotiated reading.

Feedback: This would be the preferred reading. A negotiated reading is when your reading differs from the preferred reading in important ways.

Page reference: Development of Reception Studies: Decoding and Sensemaking

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 24

24) A preferred reading and a dominant reading are different names for the same phenomenon.

Feedback: Most popular media content has a preferred reading reinforcing the (dominant) status quo.

Page reference: Development of Reception Studies: Decoding and Sensemaking

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 25

25) Active audience theories ask, “Should people be seeking information or entertainment from media?” and “What are the consequences for society when people routinely choose to use media in certain ways?”

Feedback: These theories concentrate on understanding how audiences routinely use media and are affected by this use. They ask, “Why do people seek entertainment and information from media, and what purposes does this content serve for them? How do they cope with the flow of content from those media?”

Page reference: Overview

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 26

26) In the fraction of selection, the expectation of reward for a given media choice is divided by the effort required to access and enjoy it.

Feedback: People weigh the level of reward they expect from a given medium or message against how much effort they must make to secure that reward.

Page reference: Revival of the Uses-and-Gratifications Approach

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 27

27) The media function, correlation of parts of society, refers to the media’s ability to communicate values, norms, and styles across time and between groups.

Feedback: This is transmission of the social heritage. Correlation of parts of society refers to the media’s interpretive or analytical activities.

Page reference: Audience Theories: From Source-Dominated to Active-Audience Perspectives

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 28

28) A negative media function, for example poorly constructed news reports leading to an ill-informed public, is in reality a dysfunction.

Feedback: A negative function is a dysfunction.

Page reference: Audience Theories: From Source-Dominated to Active-Audience Perspectives

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 29

29) Uses-and-gratification researchers are intrigued by computer-mediated-communication’s asynchroneity, the ability of users to select from a wide menu of content.

Feedback: Asynchroneity refers to the staggering of time between the source’s sending and the audience’s consumption of content.

Page reference: Revival of the Uses-And-Gratifications Approach

a. True

b. False

Type: True or False

Title: Chapter 9, Question 30

30) Audience “activity” can include “utility,” the idea that media have many uses for people, and people can put media to those uses.

Feedback: In addition, “activity” can include intentionality, selectivity, and imperviousness to influence.

Page reference: Revival of the Uses-and-Gratifications Approach

a. True

b. False