Terminology

     Suffice it to say, it has been a total disaster over what has happened to the media over the past twenty to thirty years.Our attention spans are getting shorter. Witness the shrinking sound bite of television campaign coverage. The average length of time that presidential candidates are shown speaking without interruption on newscasts went from roughly forty-two seconds in 1968 to less than ten seconds in 2008.
     In this post, I will discuss some of the terms from our media lecture in Soc. 150. The first appellation is framing, which is placing a news story into a pre-existing frame of reference to the public. The next important term is agenda setting, defined as the process of selecting and screening topics. Another crucial concept is from Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci, who popularized the term cultural hegemony. Gramsci was a victim of a truly totalitarian state. His concept of hegemony helps to illustrate how the dominant culture/group in society enforces their ideas on the marginalized in society. A narrow layer of individuals disseminated the ideas of the ruling class into society as a whole.

"I'm Not A Terrorist" by Jennifer Camper. Comic originally published in Fall 2005 issue of Bitch magazine.

     One media manipulation technique is known as false balance. In this method, the media presents, for example, an evolutionary biologist debating with a proponent of creationism/intelligent design. Or a climatologist argues with an anthropogenic "climate change" denier.
      Lastly, there is the subject of euphemisms in political media. In his supernal essay, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell examined this linguistic shift. A few contemporary abuses of English would be the trend from "global warming" to the more nebulous "climate change" or the reframing of "torture" as "enhanced interrogation techniques." Another example is "extraordinary rendition," where an individual is taken to a country where the rights of due process do not apply.