| above the fold | Term used to refer to a prominent story; comes from placement of a newspaper story above the fold in the middle of the front page.
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| actual malice | A reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of a published account.
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| advertising | According to the American Marketing Association, "any paid form of nonpersonal communication about an organization, product, service, or idea by an identified sponsor."
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| advertorials | Advertising material in magazines designed to look like editorial content rather than paid advertising.
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| advocacy ads | Advertising designed to promote a particular point of view rather than a product.
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| agenda-setting theory | A theory that holds that issues portrayed as important in the news media become important to the public--that is, that the media set the agenda for public debate.
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| Alien and Sedition Acts | Laws passed in 1798 that made it a crime to criticize the government of the United States.
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| alphabets | A form of writing in which letters represent individual sounds. Sound-based alphabet writing allows any word to be written using only a couple of dozen unique symbols.
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| alternative papers | Weekly newspapers that serve specialized audiences ranging from racial minorities, to gays and lesbians, to young people.
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| analog recordings | An electro-mechanical method of recording in which a sound is translated into analogous electrical signals that are then applied to a recording medium. Early analog recording media included acetate or vinyl discs and magnetic tape.
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| ancillary, or secondary, markets | Movie revenue sources other than the domestic box office. These include foreign box office, video rights, and television rights.
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| anonymous audience | An audience the sender does not personally know. These are not anonymous, isolated people who have no connection to anyone else; they simply are anonymous in their audience status.
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| ARPAnet | The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network; the first nationwide computer network, it would become that first major component of the Internet.
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| ASCAP | The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, the original organization that collects royalties on musical recordings, performances, publications, and airplay.
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| authoritarian theory | A theory of appropriate press behavior that says the role of the press is to be a servant of the government, not a servant of the citizenry.
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| Bay Psalm Book | The first book published in North America by the Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The book went through more than 50 editions and stayed in print for 125 years.
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| Big Four networks | The Big Three networks plus the Fox Network.
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| big idea | An advertising concept that will grab people's attention, make them take notice, make them remember, and spur them to take action.
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| Big Three networks | The original television broadcast networks: NBC, CBS, and ABC.
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| blacklist | In the history of movies, a list of people banned from working in the movie industry in the late 1940s and 1950s because they were suspected of being communists or communist sympathizers.
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| block bookings | Requiring a theater owner to book a whole series of movies in order to get a few desirable films.
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| blockbuster era | A period from the late 1970s to the present day when movie studios make relatively expensive movies that have large, predefined audiences. These movies are packaged with cable deals and tie-ins.
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| blue screen process | Filming actors in front of a blue-colored screen. The blue background is then replaced in the photo lab with separate background images.
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| BMI | Broadcast Music, Inc., a competitor of ASCAP that has generally licensed new composers and artists who had not been represented by ASCAP, including a lot of what was known as minority music--blues, country, Latin, and unpublished jazz compositions.
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| brand image | The image attached to a brand and the associated product; a personality or identity that will make it stand out from similar products.
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| brand name | A word or phrase attached to prepackaged consumer goods so that they can be better promoted to the general public through advertising.
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| breaking news | A ongoing news story that requires frequent updating.
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| British invasion | A movement beginning in 1964 when British bands such as the Beatles, Dusty Springfield, the Hollies, the Who, and the Rolling Stones brought a rougher edge to American rock and roll.
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| broadband service | A high-speed continuous connection to the Internet using a cable modem from a cable television provider or a digital subscriber line from a phone company. Broadband service is also available in many offices through Ethernet lines. Broadband connections are typically 10 times or more faster than dial-up narrowband service.
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| broadsheet newspaper | A standard-sized newspaper, generally 17 by 22 inches.
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| business-to-business (trade) ads | Advertising that promotes products directly to other businesses rather than the general consumer market.
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| categorical imperative | Immanuel Kant's idea of a moral obligation that can be summarized as follows: "Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature."
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| chains | Corporations that control a significant number of newspapers and other media outlets.
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| channel | In the SMCR model, the actual medium used to transmit the message.
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| clutter | The large number of commercials and other nonprogramming messages that compete for consumer attention on radio and television.
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| communication | Social interaction through messages.
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| communist theory | A theory of appropriate press behavior that says the press is to be run by the government to serve the government's own needs.
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| community antenna television (CATV) | An early form of cable television used to distribute broadcast channels in communities with poor television reception.
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| community press | Weekly and daily newspapers serving individual communities or suburbs instead of an entire metropolitan area.
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| compact disc (CD) | A digital recording medium that came into common use in the early 1980s. CDs can hold approximately 70 minutes of digitally recorded music.
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| competitive model | A model of political campaign effects that looks at the campaign as a competition for the hearts and minds of voters.
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| concept album | A rock album that brings together a group of related songs on common themes. The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is considered one of the first concept albums.
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| consumer magazines | Publications targeted at an audience of like-minded consumers.
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| cookies | Tiny files that websites create to identify visitors and potentially track their actions on the site and the Web.
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| correlation | The selection, evaluation, and interpretation of events. It helps impose structure on the news, and is accomplished by persuasive communication through editorializing, commentary, advertising, and propaganda.
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| coverlines | Teaser headlines on magazine covers used to shock, intrigue, or titillate potential buyers.
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| covers | Songs recorded (or covered) by someone other than the original artist. In the 1950s it was common for white musicians to cover songs originally played by black artists.
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| CPM | Cost per thousand exposures to the target audience.
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| crisis | An event that is perceived by the public as being damaging to the reputation or image of an organization.
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| decoding | The process of translating a signal from a mass medium into a form that the receiver can understand.
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| demographics | The measurable characteristics of the audience such as age, income, sex, and marital status.
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| development theory | A theory of appropriate press behavior that states that developing nations may need to implement press controls in order to promote industry, national identity, and partnerships with neighboring nations.
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| digital recording | A method of recording sound that involves storing music in a computer-readable format known as binary information.
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| dime novels | Inexpensive paperback books that sold (despite their name) for as little as five cents and were popular during the Civil War era.
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| direct broadcast satellite (DBS) | A low-earth-orbit satellite that provides television programming via a small, pizza-sized satellite antenna; DBS is a competitor to cable TV.
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| disco | A style of heavily produced dance music that came out of the gay male subculture in New York in the 1970s.
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| domestic novels | Novels written in the 19th century by and for women that told the story of women who overcame tremendous problems to end up in prosperous middle-class homes.
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| drive time | The morning and afternoon commute in urban areas; a popular time to advertise on the radio.
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| economy of abundance | An economy in which there are as many goods available as people want to buy.
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| electronic mail (e-mail) | A message sent from one computer user to another across a network.
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| encoding | The process of turning the sender's ideas into a message and preparing the message for transmission.
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| entertainment | Communication designed primarily to amuse, even if it serves other functions as well.
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| equal time provision | An FCC policy that requires broadcast stations to make equivalent amounts of broadcast time available to all candidates running for public office.
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| ethics | A rational way of deciding what is good for individuals or society. Ethics provide a way of making choices between competing moral principles.
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| exit polls | Surveys of voters leaving the polling places on election day.
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| fairness doctrine | A former FCC policy that required television stations to "afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views on issues of public importance."
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| false light | Invasion of privacy in which a journalist publishes untrue statements that alter a person's public image in a way that he or she cannot control.
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| feature-length film | A theatrical movie that runs more than one hour.
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| Federal Communications Commission (FCC) | The federal agency charged with regulating telecommunications, including radio and television broadcasting.
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| font | All the characters of a typeface in a particular size and style. The term font is typically used interchangeably today with the word typeface.
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| format radio | A style of radio programming designed to appeal to a narrow, specific audience. Popular formats include country, black music, all talk, all sports, and Top 40.
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| 45-RPM disc | The record format developed in the late 1940s by RCA. It had high-quality sound but could hold only about four minutes of music on a side.
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| gatekeeping | The function of the traditional news media to decide which stories are news.
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| geographics | Measurements of where people live.
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| girl groups | Vocal groups from the 1960s, like the Shangri-las, the Ronettes, and the Crystals, fronted by several female singers.
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| golden age of radio | A period from the late 1920s until the early 1940s during which radio was the dominant medium for home entertainment.
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| golden mean | Aristotle's notion that ethical behavior comes from hitting a balance, a "just-right point between excess and defect."
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| gramophone | A machine invented by Emile Berliner that could play prerecorded sound on flat discs rather than cylinders.
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| group communication | A level of unequal communication in which one person is communicating with an audience of two or more people.
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| grunge | A style of rock that evolved out of the punk music of the 1970s in the Seattle area by bands such as Pearl Jam and Nirvana.
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| hacker ethic | A set of values from the early days of interactive computing that holds that users should have absolute control over their computer systems and free access to all information contained on those computers. The hacker ethic shaped much of the development of the Internet.
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| halftone | An image produced by a process in which photographs are broken down into a series of dots that appear in shades of gray on the printed page.
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| heterogeneous audience | An audience made up of a mix of people who differ in age, sex, education, ethnicity, race, religion, and other characteristics.
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| high fidelity (hi-fi) | A combination of technologies that allowed recordings to reproduce music more accurately, with higher high notes and deeper bass, than previous forms of recording allowed.
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| high-definition TV (HDTV) | A standard for high-quality digital broadcasting that features a high-resolution picture, a wide-screen format, and enhanced sound.
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| Hollywood 10 | A group of 10 writers and directors who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee about their political activity.
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| House Un-American Activities Committee | The congressional committee that held hearings on the influence of communism on Hollywood in 1947.
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| hypertext | Material in a format containing links that allow the reader to move easily from one section to another and from document to document. The most commonly used hypertext documents are Web pages.
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| hypertext markup language (HTML) | The programming language used to create Web pages.
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| hypertext transfer protocol (http) | A method of sending text, graphics, or anything else over the Internet from a server to a Web browser.
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| ideogram | A abstract symbol that stands for a word or phrase. The written forms of languages such as Chinese, Korean, and Japanese all make use of ideograms.
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| indirect action message | A message designed to build the image of and demand for a product.
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| industrialization | The replacement of work done by hand using muscle power in small shops by mass production of goods in large factories that made use of steam power, and later electricity.
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| instant messaging (IM) | E-mail systems that allow two or more users to chat with one another in real time, hold virtual meetings that span multiple cities or even countries, and keep track of which of their "buddies" are currently logged on to the system.
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| interactive television | Cable or satellite services that allow consumers a high level of custom control over their television programming.
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| Internet | A diverse set of independent networks, interlinked to provide its users with the appearance of a single, uniform network.
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| interpersonal communication | The intentional or accidental transmission of information through verbal or nonverbal message systems to another human being.
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| intranets | Computer networks that are open only to members of the organization. They are used to improve two-way internal communication and often contain tools that allow for direct feedback.
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| intrapersonal communication | Communication within the self.
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| intrusion | Invasion of privacy by physical trespass into a space surrounding a person's body or onto property under his or her control.
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| jazz journalism | A lively, illustrated style of newspapering popularized by the tabloid papers in the 1920s.
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| jumps | Newspaper stories that begin on one page and then conclude on another page.
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| kinetoscope | An early peepshow-like movie projection system developed by Thomas Edison.
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| large-sized model | A female fashion model who wears an average or larger clothing size.
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| libel | A published statement that unjustifiably exposes someone to ridicule or contempt.
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| libertarian theory | A theory of appropriate press behavior that says the press does not belong to the government but is instead a separate institution that belongs to the people and serves as an independent observer of the government.
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| Linotype | A typesetting machine that let a compositor type at a keyboard rather than pick each letter out by hand. The Linotype was the standard for typesetting until the age of computer composition.
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| listservs | Internet discussion groups that use e-mail to exchange messages between as few as a dozen people to as many as several thousand.
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| literary magazines | Publications that focus on serious essays and short fiction.
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| local advertising | Advertising designed to get consumers to purchase a product or engage in a behavior.
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| local cable television systems | The companies that provide cable television service directly to consumers' homes.
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| long-playing record (LP) | A record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. The LP could reproduce 23 minutes of high-quality music on each of two sides.
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| magazine | A periodical that contains articles of lasting interest. Typically, magazines are targeted at a specific audience and derive income from advertising, subscriptions, and newsstand sales.
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| mainstreaming | The effort by newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times to include nonwhite and nonmale source in stories that aren't about minority issues.
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| mass communication | A societywide communication process in which an individual or institution uses technology to send messages to a large mixed audience, most of whose members are not known to the sender.
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| mass media | Technological tools used to transmit the messages of mass communication.
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| mean world syndrome | A perception that the world is more dangerous and violent than it really is.
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| media literacy | People's understanding of what the media are, how they operate, what messages they are delivering, what roles the play in society, and how audience members respond to those messages.
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| media planning | The process of figuring out which media to use, buying the media at the best rates, and then evaluating how effective the purchase was.
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| media relations | Two-way interactions with members of the press. Typically media relations involve the placement of unpaid messages within the standard programming or news content of the medium.
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| message | In the SMCR model, the actual content being transmitted by the sender.
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| misappropriation | Invasion of privacy by using a person's name or image for commercial purposes without his or her permission.
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| modernization | The social process by which people go from having an identity and role in life that they are born with to being able to decide who they want to be, where they want to live, what they want to do, and how they present themselves to the world.
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| morals | A religious or philosophical code of behavior that may or may not be rational.
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| Mosaic | The first easy-to-use graphical Web browser, developed by a group of student programmers at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
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| MP3 | Moving Picture Experts Group audio layer 3; a standard for compressing music from CDs or other digital recordings into computer files that can be easily exchanged on the Internet.
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| muckrakers | Progressive investigative journalists typically publishing in magazines in the early years of the 20th century.
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| multiplex | A group of movie theaters with anywhere from 3 to 20 screens that share a common box office and concession stand.
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| narrowband service | A relatively slow Internet connection using a modem and conventional copper phone lines. While it is acceptable for viewing text and graphics, it is generally considered too slow for video and audio service.
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| national advertising | Advertising designed to build demand for a nationally available product or service.
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| network | A company that provides common programming to a large group of broadcast stations.
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| nonnotated music | Music such as a folk song or jazz solo that does not exist in written form.
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| obscene | Term that describes sexually explicit material that is legally prohibited from being published.
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| ombudsman | A representative of a publication's readers who takes the point of view of those who purchase or consume the news; also known as a reader's representative or audience advocate.
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| open contract | A contract that allows advertising agencies to sell space in any publication (and eventually broadcast outlets as well) rather than just a limited few.
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| opinion leaders | Influential community members who spend significant time with the media. They are ordinary people who are simply very interested and involved in a topic.
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| opinion leadership | The process of using respected and influential individuals to deliver messages with the hope of influencing members of a community.
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| packet switching | A method for breaking up long messages into small pieces, or packets, and transmitting them independently across a computer network. Once the packets arrive at their destination, the receiving computer reassembles the message into its original form.
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| paper | A writing material made from cotton rags or wood pulp; invented by the Chinese sometime between 240 BC and 105 BC.
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| papyrus | An early form of paper made from the papyrus reed, first developed by the Egyptians around 3100 BC.
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| parchment | An early form of paper made from the skin of goats or sheep. It had the advantage of being more durable than papyrus.
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| payola | Payoffs to disc jockeys in the form of money or gifts to get them to play a particular record.
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| penny press | Inexpensive, widely circulated newspapers that were published in large numbers and were the first American newspapers to be supported primarily through advertising revenue and read by large numbers of people.
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| PeopleMeter | An electronic box used by the ratings company Nielsen Media Research that records which television shows people watch.
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| phonograph | An early sound recording machine invented by Thomas Edison.
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| phonography | A system of writing in which symbols stand for spoken sounds rather than objects or ideas.
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| photojournalism | The use of photographs to portray the news in print.
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| pictograph | An early form of writing made up of pictures of objects painted on rock walls.
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| portal site | An organizing website that provides surfers with easy access to e-mail, news, online stores, and many other sites.
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| Postal Act of 1879 | Legislation that allowed magazines to be mailed nationally at a low cost. It was a key factor in the growth of magazine circulation in the late 19th century.
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| press agentry | An early one-way form of public relations that involved sending material from the press agent to the media with little opportunity for interaction and feedback.
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| Principle of Utility | John Stuart Mill's principle that ethical behavior arises from that which will provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
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| prior restraint | A judicial order that stops a media organization from publishing a story or image.
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| privilege | A legal defense against libel that holds that statements made in government meetings, in court, or in government documents cannot be used as the basis for a libel suit.
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| producers | In the music industry, the people responsible for putting together songs, songwriters, technicians, and performers in the creation of an album. Producers are often as important to the sound of an album as are the musicians themselves.
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| Production Code | The industry rules that controlled the content of movies from the 1930s until movie ratings came into use in 1968.
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| proofs | The ready-to-print typeset pages sent to book authors for final corrections.
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| public | A group of people who share a common set of interests. An internal public is made up of people within an organization, and an external public is made up of people outside the organization.
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| public access channels | Local cable television channels that air public affairs programming and other locally produced shows.
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| Public Broadcasting System (PBS) | A nonprofit broadcast network funded by government appropriations, underwriting by private industry, and support from viewers.
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| public relations (PR) | Defined in modern times as "the management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends."
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| publishers | The companies that buy manuscripts from authors and turn them into books.
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| punk | A raw, stripped-down version of rock that came out of British dissatisfaction with politics and economics in the 1970s.
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| race records | A term used by the recording industry prior to 1949 to refer to recordings by popular black artists. It was later replaced by terms such as R&B, soul, or urban contemporary.
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| Radio Music Box memo | A document written by David Sarnoff in 1915 that outlined how radio could be used as a popular mass medium.
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| rap | A style of music that came to prominence in the United States in 1979 out of the hip-hop culture in New York. It grew out of music being played in clubs with DJs playing different records and sounds and then speaking (or rapping) over the top.
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| rating point | The percentage of the total potential television audience actually watching a particular show. One rating point indicates an audience of approximately 1 million viewers.
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| receiver | In the SMCR model, the audience for the mass communication message.
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| resonance model | A model of political campaign effects that says that the candidate's success depends in part on how well his or her basic message resonates with voters' preexisting political feelings.
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| rock and roll | A style of music popularized on radio that combined elements of white hillbilly music and black rhythm and blues.
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| rotary press | A steam-powered press invented in 1814 that could print many times faster than the older hand-powered flatbed press.
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| scoop | A news story that a news organization reports well ahead of its competition.
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| scriptoria | Copying rooms in monasteries where early hand-copied books were prepared.
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| sensationalism | Coverage of events that are lurid and highly emotional.
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| serial novels | Novels published in installments; popular in the 1830s and 40s.
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| service magazines | Magazines that primarily contain articles about how to do things in a better way; such articles include health advice, cooking tips, employment help, or fashion guides.
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| share | The percentage of television sets actually in use that are tuned to a particular show.
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| shock jocks | Radio personalities, like Howard Stern, who attract listeners by making outrageous and offensive comments on the air.
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| SMCR model | The sender, message, channel, and receiver model.
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| social music | Music that people play and sing for one another in the home or other social settings.
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| social responsibility theory | A theory of appropriate press behavior that is based on the concern that although the press may be free from interference from the government, it can still be controlled by corporate interests. It is an outgrowth of libertarian theory.
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| socialization | The process of integrating people within society though the transmission of values, social norms, and knowledge to new members of the group.
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| standard digital television | A standard for digital broadcasting that allows six channels to fit in the broadcast frequency space occupied by a single analog signal.
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| status conferral | The process by which people achieve status simply by being portrayed in the media,.
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| studio system | A factorylike way of producing films that involved having all of the talent working directly for the movie studios. The studios also had almost absolute control of the distribution system.
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| subliminal advertising | Messages that are allegedly embedded so deeply in an ad that they cannot be consciously perceived. There is no evidence that subliminal advertising is effective.
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| sweeps | The four times during the year that Nielsen Media Research measures the size of individual television station audiences.
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| synchronized soundtrack | An early form of movie sound that synchronized voices with the pictures.
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| synergy | Where the combined strength of two items is greater than the sum of their individual strengths. In the media business, synergy means that a combined company can offer more value, cost savings, or strength than the two companies could separately.
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| tabloid laundering or tabloidization | When respectable media report on what the tabloids are reporting.
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| tabloid newspapers | Newspapers with a half-page (11-by-14-inch) format that usually have a cover rather than a traditional front page like the larger broadsheet papers.
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| talkie | A movie with synchronized sound.
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| targeting | The process of trying to make a particular product appeal to a narrowly defined group. Groups are often targeted using demographics, geographics, and psychographics.
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| TCP/IP | TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol, which controls how data are sent out on the Internet. IP stands for Internet Protocol, which provides the address for each computer on the Internet.
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| telegraph | The first system for using wires to send messages at a distance; invented by Samuel Morse in 1844.
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| telenovelas | Spanish-language soap operas popular in both Latin America and the United States.
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| television network | A company that provides programs to local stations around the country.
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| trade magazines | Magazines published for people who work in a particular industry or business.
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| typemold | A mold developed by Johannes Gutenberg that allowed printers to make multiple, identical copies of a single letter without hand-carving each.
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| uniform resource locator (URL) | One of the three major component of the Web; the address of content placed on the Web.
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| university and small presses | Publishers that issue a limited number of books covering specialized topics.
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| Usenet | The Users Network; the original Internet discussion forum that covers thousands of specialized topics. It is a worldwide bulletin-board system that predates the World Wide Web.
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| uses and gratifications studies | A approach to studying media that seeks to determine what uses people are making of television viewing and what gratifications (or benefits) they gain from it.
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| vanity presses | Publishers that print books with the author paying all the costs of publication and distribution (a process known as self-publishing).
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| V-chip | An electronic device that allows parents to block programs that carry certain content ratings.
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| veil of ignorance | John Rawls's principle of ethics that says that justice emerges when we make decisions without considering the status of people involved and without considering where we personally fall in the social system.
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| vertical integration | In the media business, controlling every aspect of a media product from production through delivery to consumers.
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| video news release (VNR) | A taped or digitized audio and video message that serves as a press release to the broadcast and online media.
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| videocassette recorder (VCR) | A home videotape machine that allowed viewers to make permanent copies of television shows.
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| video-on-demand | Television channels that allow consumers to order movies, news, or other programs that are digitally delivered at any time over fiber-optic lines.
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| Watergate scandal | A burglary at the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate office and apartment building. The burglary and its subsequent cover-up led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, two reporters from the Washington Post, covered the Watergate scandal.
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| webcasts | Programs transmitted by audio and video signals to computers over the Internet.
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| weblog (blog) | A collection of links and commentary in hypertext on the World Wide Web that can be created and posted on the Internet with relatively little effort. Blogs can be public diaries, collections of photos, or commentaries on the news.
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| wireless telegraph | Guglielmo Marconi's name for a point-to-point communication tool that used radio waves to transmit messages.
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| World Wide Web | A system developed by Tim Berners-Lee that allows users to view and link documents located anywhere in the world using standard software.
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| yellow journalism | A style of sensationalistic journalism that grew out of the newspaper circulation battle between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.
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