CMU 200 Winter 2000
These questions are designed to help you focus on the most important points of the readings for Week 9. They are also designed to assist you in reviewing the readings for the final exam.
All reading are from Iyengar & Reeves, Do the Media Govern?
Kim Fridkin Kahn & Edie E. Goldberg, The Media: Obstacle or Ally of Feminists? (Chapter 21).
- What were some of the factors that contributed to poor press coverage of the women's movement in the 1960s and 1970s?
- The authors identify some important differences between media coverage of male and female political candidates. What are these?
- The authors suggest four strategies to help produce more favorable evaluations of female candidates. What are these? What is the reasoning behind each one?
- What do the authors mean by the term "gender gap"?
John R. Petrocik, Campaigning and the Press: The Influence of Candidates (Chapter 24)
- From the point of view of a candidate for office, what is major role of the media in a political campaign?
- On page 182, Petrocik states that Bush "reframed" the drug issue. What does he mean by this? What advantages did Bush gain by reframing this issue?
- What does Petrocik mean when he says that campaigns are "agenda setting struggles"? (p. 190)
- Why do political candidates "try to avoid textbook debates in which each addresses points raised by their opponent"? (p. 191)
Shanto Iyengar, Framing Responsibility for Political Issues: The Case of Poverty (Chapter 32)
- Define "episodic framing" and "thematic framing."
- Iyengar talks about "societal responsibility" and "individual difference" frames. Which of these is episodic? Which is thematic?
- Which type of framing is more common in network news stories in the United States?
- What implications does type of frame (episodic or thematic) have for the ways in which viewers assign responsibility for the problem of poverty?
- Do demographic factors (race, gender, age, marital status, etc.) make any differences in the ways in which viewers assign responsibility for the problem of poverty?
Robert E. Entman, Modern Racism and Images of Blacks in Local Television News (Chapter 33).
- Entman states that "Several aspects of crime reporting combined to suggest that blacks were more dangerous than whites." What are these aspects?
- How might the class bias of local TV stations "spur modern racism?" (p. 284)
- Entman uses the case of a violent dispute between four white girls and two black girls on a bus as an example. What are some of the differences in the coverage of the white girls and black girls discussed by Entman?
- Entman says that the "high priority that local television grants white victimization by blacks, and crime in generally--a priority that can stimulate modern racism--appears to be based in commercial realities" (p. 285). What are these realities?
Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., Shanto Iyengar, Adam Simon, and Oliver White, Crime in Black and White: The Violent, Scary World of Local News (Chapter 34).
- Do changes in public concern about crime accurately reflect changes in the frequency of criminal activity in the United States?
- The authors claim that "the typical television story consists of two "scripts": crime is violent, and criminals are non-white" (p. 288). How well do these scripts match reality?
- Why do the authors believe that "it is race and not violence that is the more important element of crime coverage"? (p. 294)
- Is most crime coverage on local TV news episodic or thematic? What are implications of this?
- What does "anomic" mean? (Page 288)