TEST GUIDE
Core 114

NB:  This information is intended only as a guide to what students should be prepared to address on their tests.   The actual test questions may vary from the questions as formulated below.  Students should also note that tests are often comprised of a single question.  Therefore, adequate test preparation entails being able to fully and effectively answer each and every one of the listed questions.

Test # 1
1.  Arguments - objective questions (T/F; fill in the blank, etc.)
2.  What is a mass image and what are its economic presuppositions?
3.  As developed in the Frontline program, "The Merchants of Cool", discuss the symbiotic relationship that exists between the media and contemporary teens.
4.  Discuss the idea developed by Shenk (Data Smog) and in lecture that with the increase of information there may be a corresponding decrease of knowledge and an increase of faulty beliefs. 
5.  According to C. Wright Mills, who are the power elite and how do they differ from ordinary people?  What is the power elite's relationship with each other?
6.  According to Hinkley ("What is a Corporation?") and the video, The Corporation, what is a corporation? How may corporate law inhibit social responsibility? 
7.  According to Turner ("My Beef With Big Media"), how does the pattern of media ownership impact media content?  Why is this important?
8.  Fundamental to any type of literacy is the development of appropriate knowledge structures. Discuss these and their importance.  Also discuss the various cognitive skills that are used in the construction of knowledge structures.

Test # 2
1.  Media often intentionally give a distorted representation of the world so that they will entertain & sell.  Discuss these distortions.
2.  The video, Behind the Screens, expresses the belief that commercialism has shaped and distorted the ways in which movies are made.  Discuss the evidence presented in support of this conclusion.  With respect to television, what did the Friends episode which we watched in class (#6.11) illustrate in this regard?
3.  Discuss the notion of the news as a construction and tie this with the theoretical impossibility of the news being "objective".  What are some of the major influences determining how the news is constructed and how does this shape the news?
4.  Discuss the idea developed in class that journalists are often simply stenographers for the power elites.
5.  Discuss Postman's related contentions that "embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication" and that television produces "a species of information that might properly be call disinformation." How does the video, Live at 5, illustrate these assertions.
6.  A Pew study found that a majority of American journalists identify themselves as liberals. Why, according to Herman and Chomsky (Myth of the Liberal Media), is this insufficient to give the news a liberal bias?
7.  Contrast "canned news" and "video news releases" (VNRs).

Test # 3
1.  Advertising is pervasive and it is designed to promote the consumption of commodities.  Discuss some of the problems this fosters as developed in the excerpts of the videos, Advertising and the End of the World and The Ad and the Ego, and in lecture.
2.  "Puffery" refers to the practice of puffing up the product without making substantial, objective claims about the qualities or characteristics of the product.  Discuss the tactics that are used to do this. 
3.  How and why does the pharmaceutical industry's advertising medicalize ordinary experience? How does this illustrate the media's power to shape our perception of reality? 
4.  Discuss the use of sex in advertising.
5.  As presented in the videos Toxic Sludge is Good for You and The Century of the Self, discuss the PR industry, what it is, and some of the techniques it employs to achieve its ends.
6.  What is "culture jamming"?  Discuss some of the reasons it is practiced.
7.  The Persuaders reinforces many ideas that have previously been developed in this class.  However, it also deals with aspects of commercial and political advertising that this class had not previously addressed. Discuss these.