Smarts Quizzes (Sp2010)

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Quiz Archive•Spring 2010

WEEK1MediaSmartsQuiz • 1/15/10 FIXT
1/15/10 Quiz1—The Syllabus

Here are my responses to these questions. Future quizzes will be different, but in this case, the goal of this quiz was to see if you had looked at all the intro material I gave you to read last week. Everyone who did the quiz gets credit. Feel free to comment on any of my comments.

1. There are quotes from real people throughout the Smarts syllabus, including the four that lead it. Pick one of the quotes from anywhere in the syllabus that you particularly like, and that you can relate to your idea of why being “media smart” is important. (two pithy sentences +/-).
Pease writes: I like so many of them (obviously), from “Question Authority” to the Tom Stoppard quote about “nudging the world a little” that I use on my email signature. E.B. White, however, is one of my particular heroes. His quote about television, the first time he saw it demonstrated in New York in 1938, was prescient, I think. Can you imagine worrying in such circumstances about how “messages, distant and concocted” would affect how people interacted with each other, and wondering if TV would be a “saving radiance” or a “disturbance of the general peace.” Smart man. Here’s another quote I like, but it’s not on the syllabus: “Don’t take life too serious, Son. It ain’t nohow permanent.” … from an old Pogo comic strip. And how about Pease’s horoscope in the Wednesday (1/20) WORD?

2. Professor Pease claims that, ”We’re being lied to, boys and girls” in (or by) the mass media. That’s (usually) not literally true. So what is Pease saying? Do you agree/disagree? Why?
Pease writes: Perhaps “misled” is a better term than “lied to,” but I think the point needs consideration. As you will read in the media literacy materials, ALL media messages are constructions that are purposive and intentional on the part of their creators: advertising people want viewers to buy soap; political consultants want voters to buy candidates or issues, photographers retouch women to make them seamless and breastier and thinner.... We all see the world differently, based on our own experiences and background (as we’ll discuss in the context of mass communication theories). So all media messages are created with the particular perspective of their author embedded in them, intentionally or not. Is that lying? Not really. Could it be? It’s at least potentially misleading to the unaware and unwary. That’s why we need to become media-smart—a basic literacy of the 21st century.

3. Explain Marshall McLuhan’s concept of the “fish,” and how those of us who now live in the mass media age are like his fish. Does that analogy make sense to you?
Pease writes: Some of you gave up on this, but I think you just didn’t read the syllabus closely, or think about the metaphor very carefully. Just as a fish is immersed in its environment and is generally unaware of it (unless the pond water gets too bad), we humans live in a mass-mediated age in which messages on TV and radio and billboards and magazines and the Internet, etc. etc., are EVERYWHERE. Most of us, like the fish, are generally unaware of how the media content we breathe in and out may change our perspectives on the world, create assumptions about people and things and issues. Our mass media diet is to a large degree unintentional—in that we often suck in stuff that we didn't specially go looking for—just the stuff that surrounds us in the media environment. Most of us—like McLuhan’s fish—don’t think much about how toxic that stuff that we breathe in and out might be. Becoming aware of that environment—that’s being a smart fish!

4. Columnist Erma Bombeck is quoted as saying that, “My children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced on television.” What is she saying, and how does it relate to what we’re studying in this course?
Pease writes: Among the most vulnerable of the “fish” in this mass media pond where we all live in the 21st century are children, who have their preferences and perspectives formed for them by TV more than any other single source. So Bombeck’s kids preferred the stuff that had been sold to them in entertaining ways on TV. They believed what they saw on TV more than they believed stuff they actually experienced. Any of you who have small siblings or cousins or kids of your own know about how important the right (fill in the blank)…clothes, toys, video games, pickup trucks (older kids…) are. Where do they get that? A study released yesterday (1/20) found that kids spend as much as 12 hours a day! with some form of gadget—cell phones, TV, computers, games. Talk about a generation of couch potatoes!

5. What’s your impression of John McManus’s website? (And have you bought “Detecting Bull” yet? If you have, what do you think of it so far?)

6. McManus, on his website, says, “[M]ainstream news is becoming shallower and more commercially biased—more written for advertisers and by publicity agents. Online, new providers are arising. But most don't follow professional principles.” Why might that be a problem?
Pease writes: As per some of the previous items, even as our society becomes more cyber-connected, the actual content of what’s in the pipeline (or electronic IV tube) that fills out days and lives is increasingly trivial. The mass media should be an amazing tool for public education and knowledge. Instead…American Idol, beer ads, Anna Nicole Smith…. The head of the Federal Communications Commission called TV a “vast wasteland” nearly 40 years ago. Has that assessment changed?

7. How confident are you that you know the real story behind the kinds of historical events discussed briefly in the syllabus? Can you identify a specific piece of history you may have “learned” about through a movie or TV show, and that, you now realize, may not be completely accurate?
Pease writes: Be smart fish. Consume media critically, with a large grain of salt. It’s a little scary that so many people—including, maybe, some you the people in this class—“see” and “know” the world and history based on entertainment media. A reader poll in the Logan Herald-Journal some years ago asked readers who killed John F. Kennedy. The majority responded that it was a government conspiracy—the theme of Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK.

8. Speaking of “smart fish,” from his bio, what fish do you think may be one of Professor Pease’s favorites?
Pease writes: If you checked my website(s), you’d see a lot of salmon (yes, that silver thing is a Chinook, or King, salmon).

9. Where did Professor Pease earn his master’s degree?
Pease writes: UMinnesota, 1981

10. You should have watched (and maybe shared with your friends and other lumps of clay) the Stephen Colbert video on the Week1 list. So who is funnier—Professor Pease or Stephen Colbert? Why?
Pease writes: You’re right—a trick question. Clearly, it’s me, because I hold your academic fate in my cyberhands.… and if you believe that we need to talk.

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WEEK2MediaSmartsQuiz • 1/26/10 FIXT

1. In Detecting Bull, John McManus argues that the Web has had a democratizing effect because…
a. Democrats made effective use of the Web during the 2008 presidential campaign.
b. The reliability of news is declining.
c. Now anyone can report news to anyone.
d. Newspapers are dying, anyway.
e. The old news models didn’t work.

2. Why does McManus say the reliability of news is declining?
Because the forms that news takes, who produces it, for what purposes, and the technologies used to deliver it are rapidly changing, it is becoming more difficult to identify reliable news and to separate it from rumor, junk journalism and propaganda.

3. Why does Geneva Overholser, former editor and Washington Post ombudsman, say media literacy is needed?
Media literacy is needed to counter the impact of these trends. “Citizens of a democracy have a responsibility to be informed. Media literacy courses, stronger civic education and other tools can create the environment of vigorous debate in which the press can thrive.”—Geneva Overholser.

4. McManus talks about “neural entanglers” who muddy public debate. Who are they?
The neural entanglers—spinmeisters and propagandists—are becoming more skillful. Pundits and talkmeisters and partisan commentators…. From Amy Goodman (Democracy Now) on the left to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck on the right.

5. In the Pease&Cooper chapter, “Making Sense of the Information Age,” which of the following characterized the change from an Agrarian Society to the Information Age?
a. People no longer grew their own potatoes and other food.
b. A social shift from small community and family units to mass culture.
c. A shift from an individual economy to a mechanized economy.
d. A change from the importance of products to the importance of knowledge.
e. All of the above.

6. FALSE In discussing the impact of TV, E.B. White coined the term “the global village.” It was Canadian sociologist Marshall McLuhan

7. How does instantaneous mass communication create a “global village”? What does that term mean?
We are all more and more interconnected—potentially closer to one another, with more understanding and interaction (ha!).

8. Among the negative consequences that some people fear about the “information age” . . .
a. people know too much
b. people shop at home
c. people have less contact with others
d. people don’t vote
e. none of the above

9. According to Pease&Cooper, how has the information age diminished a sense of community? Various commentators cited in the chapter worry about isolation (electronic shut-ins—Gans), a loss of national identity and the national conversation (Brown), loss of time spent with famility/humans in favor of TV and electronic distractions….etc.

10. In the news: What major media event takes place in Utah, starting this past week? Sundance Film Festival TWENTYTEN!

BTW: Question: What do you think of the controversy over the Sundance release of USU JCOM alumni Reed Cowan’s documentary, 8: The Mormon Proposition?

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WEEK3MediaSmartsQuiz • 2/5/10 FIXT

1. In his “Some Principles of Media Literacy,” David Considine says the old saying, “The camera never lies” isn’t necessarily so. Why?

Dr. Ted sez: As we are learning, there are a number of reasons why the camera does lie. And that’s not just an artifact of the special-effects era of PhotoShop, multimedia manipulation and the rest. During the Civil War, photography was a technology in its infancy, but even then, famed Civil War photo-documentarian Mathew Brady repositioned dead bodies for “artistic” and storytelling reasons. He may have said, “"My greatest aim has been to advance the art of photography and to make it what I think I have, a great and truthful medium of history," but how “truthful” is it? We also have learned that the way information—text, images or whatever—is framed can alter its meaning, just by including and excluding different elements. In “Forest Gump,” Tom Hanks’ character is seen mooning LBJ, and in “Saving Private Ryan,” Hanks is fighting on Utah Beach in Normandy. Does the camera lie? Of course. (See these links: Media Lit. and More Media Lit.)

2. In the media literacy readings, the authors suggest that production techniques like superimposing a reporter onto a green screen of the White House can have what effect?
a. Makes the news more exciting.
b. Misleads viewers.
c. Increases journalistic credibility.
d. Enhances viewer comprehension.
e. All of the above.
Dr. Ted sez: I can argue that all of these is potentially true. If you watch The Daily Show, you will often see Jon Stewart talking to his reporters in the field—but John Oliver and Jason Jones and Co. are actually just standing there in the studio in from of a green screen and footage from Iraq or the White House or wherever. The studio audience laughs, but the TV viewer could be fooled…. Still, it’s better and more effective storytelling, isn’t it?

3. Why do media literacy proponents argue that citizens need both to understand and be able to analyze/evaluate media messages, but also to create media messages themselves?
Dr. Ted sez: Literacy in the 21st century means not only reading, but visual literacy (see No. 1) and capabilities to communicate with multimedia. The pencil has become a much more sophisticated instrument! Effective communication is a tool for everyday life in 2010.
4. Explain each of the following principles of media literacy and provide a brief example to illustrate your understanding. (1 pt each)

a. Media are constructions: All media messages—words to special effects—are products that someone constructs.
b. Media representations create reality (how and to what effect?): Because of what the message creator selects and how s/he arranges the message’s components, the media product may represent reality to varying degrees. When you see Bigfoot in a business meeting, that may not be complete reality (!) Misrepresentations of fact can mislead readers/viewers. We call that “lying.”
c. Audiences negotiate their own meaning: Audiences are not passive recipients of media messages who just soak in the sender’s intended meaning. All of us see the world and interpret is differently. For us Red Sox fans, Derek Jeter is no hero….
d. Media constructions have commercial purposes: Take a broad view of “commercial”—we who communicate want our target audiences to “buy” something: a philosophy, a perception of the world, an idea, a political position, a bottle of shampoo. More crassly, the more eyeballs a media message attracts, the more valuable it is to people who can sell it….
e. Media messages contain values and ideologies: The worldview of the message producer governs the message tone and focus and emphasis. Even if we try to be absolutely “straight” in our reporting of events, we can’t help but have our own ideas of what’s important, why it matters….
f. Media messages have social and political consequences: Media messages can’t tell us what to think, as we know from agenda-setting theory, but they can tell us what to think about. As the public starts to focus on some issues (and ignore others), pressure may grow to “do something.” People who see the world as a dangerous place may pressure lawmakers to create stronger laws and stiffer penalties and to build more prisons. Policy decisions grow from public sentiment.
g. Each medium has its own unique aesthetic form/impact: Communication is an art form, and like all art forms, some media lend themselves to telling certain kinds of stories better than others. A radio report on a tornado has a different impact than video footage of the damage (or did you see the LA mudslides last weekend?)

5. Explain (briefly) the relationship between the rise of mass communication and the industrial age.

Dr. Ted sez: As people moved from the countryside to cities in pursuit of work or marketplaces or whatever, it became easier to communicate to large groups of people—town criers, pamphlets and posters on walls, newspapers that communicated between a single individual editor/printer to many people at once. Gesellschaft

6. Explain what the heck Marshall McLuhan was talking about with his fish analogy.
Dr. Ted sez: One more time: The fish in the pond is unaware of subtle changes in its environment, and may happily swim around, “breathing” in and out an increasingly toxic environment even until it became so toxic it kills him. We are generally as unaware of our daily media “diets”—stuff we absorb from mass media without even thinking about it, until our perceptions of the world may be altered. See Pease’s column.

7. On Teddy TV, Professor Pease talked about how the advent of TV might have changed Fiji. What happened and what might have been the cause? (The same thing was at work with Dr. Ted’s teenage crush on a French woman…)

Dr. Ted sez: Fijian perceptions of the “norm” of the world—what bodies should look like, how people should act—was influenced as this Polynesian culture started seeing American values on TV. Similarly, ma petite amie française had seen too many Al Capone and Bonny & Clyde movies: Chicago was a dark, dangerous place.

8. Critical thinking about media, according to the reading on Key Concepts of Critical Thinking, is NOT … a. finding fault with media performance
b. learning what to think
c. eliminating incorrect media messages and content
d. protecting children from violent images and ideas
e. none of the above Dr. Ted sez: That’s confusing: critical thinking is none of those things…. So what is it????

9. Discuss your responses to the Billy Joel video in the context of the concepts of media literacy and the central question of this class—how do we know what we think we know?
Dr. Ted sez: A picture is worth at least 100 words—maybe 10,000. Images can be linked to popular culture, iconic images that carry with them much more meaning than just the tones and forms of the photograph. JFK’s shooting, Ghandi, Marilyn Monroe.... These images are shorthand for events that changed the world, the culture, people’s lives and perceptions of life and society. Powerful stuff.

10. General knowledge: Who is Samuel Alito and why is he in the news this week?
Dr. Ted sez: Samuel Alito is a Supreme Court associate justice who was seem reacting negatively to President Obama’s State of the Union speech, when Obama criticized the Court for its decision to permit unlimited political contributions by corporations.
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