Glossary

Abstract modeling	the means by which people generate new behaviors for new situations using the rules of behavior learned in familiar situations. (See 72)
Adopter categories	the classifications of individuals within a social system on the basis of innovativeness. (See 115)
Advantageous comparison	comparing one's own deplorable actions to more serious or flagrant transgressions of others. (See 74)
Advertising wearout	the idea that prolonged exposure to the same ad causes consumers to feel resentful and sometimes irritated. (See 297)
Agenda building	Lang and Lang's version of agenda setting; a theory that includes the collective influence of and reciprocity between the public and the media in setting the agenda. (See 142)
Agenda-setting	the concept that the media determines the importance placed upon particular issues. (See 140)
Attitudes	the all-important mediators that stand between the acquisition of new persuasive information and subsequent behavioral change. (See 155)
Attribution of blame	transgressors attribute blame to their victims or the situation rather than to themselves. (See 75)
Automatic activation model	behavior follows automatically whenever an attitude comes to mind. (See 163)
Catharsis	audience members witness graphic violence on the screen or read about it in books, thereby purging themselves of their own violent tendencies or inclinations. (See 217)
Central route	In the ELM, the type of persuasion that occurs through cognitive effort. (See 165)
Cognitive strategies	strategies for dealing with fear that require the activation of cognitive processes. (See 225)
Comstock psychological model	describes mental processes that occur while watching television. (See 9)
Consistency theory	viewers wish to maintain a particular mood for the duration of a program, so commercials with tones or moods consistent with those presented in the program are more effective than commercials with tones that differ from the media context. (See 293)
Content analysis	a research method used to determine the amount of violent content in mass media. (See 174)
Critical mass	the point when adoption of an innovation takes off, when the greatest number of people begin to adopt it. (See 114)
Cultivation hypothesis	proposes that, over time, heavy viewers of television develop views of the world that reflect what they see on television. (See 101)
Dehumanization	when a person is divested of human qualities and considered no better than a beast. (See 75)
Desensitization	a process meant to make frightening material less frightening, which involves repeated exposure to frightening matter in a secure and non-threatening atmosphere. (See 182)
Diffusion	the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system. (See 113)
Diffusion model	emphasizes the spread of ideas or practices via interpersonal networks. (See 257)
Diffusion of responsibility	a transgressor acts within a group and therefore does not feel personally responsible for reprehensible behavior. (See 75)
Disregard or distortion of the consequences of action	a person performs an act without thinking about the harm the act may cause, or with the belief that the act will cause only minimal harm. (See 75)
Displacement of responsibility	someone in authority directs a person to act in a reprehensible way and the authority figure accepts responsibility for the actions. (See 75)
Disposition model	outlines formal predictions about audience enjoyment of drama based upon principles such as interesting characterizations, affective dispositions toward the characters, and satisfying resolutions to conflicts. (See 353)
Elaboration Likelihood Model	identifies two separate "routes to persuasion." (See 153)
Entitlement	a stakeholder's right to offer messages, place them on the public's issues agenda and attempt to change the behaviors of audiences. (See 251)
Euphemistic labeling	describing behaviors with positive words in order to disguise or transform their negative aspects. (See 74)
Extended parallel process model	recognizes two separate responses to fear appeals, cognitive and emotional, and encourages a balance between the two. (See 257)
First-party entitlement	a situation in which an aggrieved group of stakeholders is seen by the public to be directly affected by an issue. (See 251)
Four-factor syndrome	when the consumption of pornography causes four major effects: addiction, escalation, desensitization, and the tendency to act out or copy what had been viewed. (See 207)
Four P's of marketing	product, price, place, and promotion. (See 258)
Gatekeeping	control of flow of news information exercised by media professionals. (See 141)
Head count studies	studies conducted to investigate whether minorities are underrepresented on television and whether their numbers on television match their numbers in society. (See 324)
High involvement	when users have a high level of control over a medium and a high level of cognitive processing is required. (See 292)
Innovation	an idea, practice, or object perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption. (See 113)
Innovators	people who are venturesome and ready to try new things. (See 116)
Institutional process analysis	examines the production, management, and distribution of media messages. (See 102)
Intervening variables	variables that, when present, strengthen the cause-effect phenomenon. (See 91)
Low involvement	when users have a low level of control over a medium and a low level of cognitive processing is required. (See 292)
Mainstreaming	heavy television viewers tend to absorb dominant attitudes and beliefs that are presented repetitively. (See 103)
Measures of physiological responses	records of changing heart rate, skin temperature, palmar skin conductance or facial expressions. Used to measure fright reactions. (See 218)
Media system dependency model	focuses on the relationships between a mass media entity (information system) and society itself (social system). (See 11)
Medium	"any transmission vehicle or device through which communication may occur." (See 289)
Message system analysis	the investigation of images in the media content, such as gender roles, portrayal of minorities, and the way certain occupations are depicted. (See 102)
Meta-analyses	when researchers examine a vast body of research studies and use statistical methods to combine their findings and look for an overall indication of effects as well as general trends. (See 177)
Model	a graphic means of explicating, or facilitating the understanding of, an abstract process such as communication. (See 5)
Modeling	the phenomenon of behavior reenactment. (See 70)
Moral justification	whenever a person believes his or her otherwise culpable actions are serving some moral, noble, or higher purpose and are therefore justified. (See 74)
News Flaws	personalization, fragmentation, dramatization and normalization. (See 309)
Noncognitive strategies	strategies fro dealing with fear that do not require the viewer to process verbal information. (See 225)
Obscenity	defined by three criteria: (1) the material appeals to a prurient (shameful, sick, morbid, or lustful) interest in sex; (2) the material is patently offensive or beyond the contemporary community standards regarding depictions of sexual content or activity; and (3) the material as a whole lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." (See 196)
OTA transactional model	separates communication into three distinct processes: message formulation, message interpretation, and message exchange. Emphasizes the interdependencies of the process. (See 8)
Peripheral route	In the ELM, the type of persuasion that occurs by means of simple cues in the context of the message instead of through a cognitive process. (See 165)
Pornography	"the graphic and explicit depictions of sexual activity." (See 195)
Positioning	the "fifth P," the position or location (in the minds of the audience) of the product or service in relation to others in the market. (See 258)
Prevailing tone	the context of sexual material and the context of the person viewing it. (See 203)
Priming	a popular area of media effects research based upon the psychological principles of information processing by means of cognitive components. (See 88)
Pseudo-environment	the reflection of reality the news media creates and news consumers react to. (See 141)
Public communication campaigns	when voluntary organizations and the federal government rely upon mass media to get messages across to the public-messages which offer the public knowledge intended to produce attitude or behavior changes. (See 247)
Reaction of fright or anxiety	an emotional response to media content. (See 214)
Resonance	real-world events supporting the distorted image of reality shown on television. (See 104)
Reasoned action and planned behavior model	people make the decision to behave or not to behave in a certain way based upon two criteria: the person's attitude toward the behavior itself, and the person's perceptions about how others will view the behavior. (See 162)
Salience	the importance of a particular issue. (See 140)
Schramm interactive model	emphasizes the sharing of information between communicators, who give and receive information interactively. (See 8)
Second-party entitlement	circumstances in which stakeholders are not directly impacted by the issue for which they are promoting reform. (See 251)
Selective exposure	the concept that people tend to watch, listen to, and remember media messages that are consistent with their attitudes, interests, or predispositions. (See 291)
Self-efficacy	belief in one's own abilities. (See 118)
Self-reporting measures	subjects are shown frightening or disturbing content, then asked to select words or phrases that best describe their reactions to the content. Used to measure fright reactions. (See 218)
Shannon-Weaver model	mathematical model that describes communication as a linear, one-way process. (See 6)
Social cognitive theory	provides a framework that allows us to analyze the human cognitions (or mental functions) that produce certain behaviors. (See 67)
Social construction of reality	The concept that heavy viewing of television tends to shape or cultivate viewers' perceptions and beliefs so that they are more in line with the world portrayed on television than with that of the real world. (See 76)
Social learning theory	explains behavior by examining how cognitive, behavioral, and environmental factors interact. (See 67)
Stakeholders	the individuals, groups, associations, or organizations that initiate a mass media campaign with the intention of promoting reform. (See 250)
Stimulus generalization	the tendency of viewers to react to frightening scenes on the screen like they would react to frightening situations in real life. (See 222)
Theory of cognitive dissonance	cognitive dissonance occurs when attitude and action become inconsistent with one another. (See 156)
Thorson cognitive processing model	concentrates on the steps taken to process television commercials. (See 10)
"Three E's"	education, engineering, and enforcement are the three basic strategies of social control that change levels of knowledge, attitudes, or behaviors. (See 248)
Transactional mediated communication	a type of communication made possible by new transactional media such as e-mail, video conferencing and voice messaging. (See 364)
Transtheoretical model	identifies five stages in the process of behavior change on the part of audiences: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, or maintenance. (See 257)
Uses and dependency model	theory which proposes that certain elements in a media system cause people to use and depend upon the media. (See 130)
Uses and gratifications	an area of research concerned with the psychological reasons people choose different media. (See 127)
Violence profile	provides an objective appraisal of the amount of violence contained in each televised drama. (See 175)
Westley-MacLean model	sender-receiver model that explains types of communication other than telecommunication, such as interpersonal and mass mediated. (See 7)