Mass Media and Everyday Life Review Questions

Answer your assigned Review Question in the Discussion Forum on the next page. Copy your question number and question in the text box, then place your 75 to 100 word answer below your question, using original language, current examples, and citing your sources. Be sure to respond to at least two of your classmates answers.

This assignment is worth 5 points total. Your initial Review Question answer is worth 3 points. Each response to a classmate's Review Question answer is worth 1 point, up to 2 points.

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1. Are there clear advantages and disadvantages that you can identify if the Internet of Things were to become a reality? List one of each.

2. What does “mass media are everywhere you are” mean to you?

3. Shirley Biagi cites statistics that show that on average, Americans spend more waking time each day with the mass media than without them. Show that you understand the claim. Place yourself within the statistics by explaining your daily dosage of mass media consumption.

4. Do you engage in intrapersonal communication? If so, explain with one clear example.

5. There is a general assumption that the art of “good” interpersonal communication is decreasing in the 21st century. What is your position on this?

6. Do you agree with Shirley Biagi’s definition of “mass communication”?

7. Speaking of the key elements of mass communication, what do you see as the value of feedback?

8. The mass media industries have eight members. Describe your own relationship with any two members of these industries.

9. Name the newspapers in your town/city. Who owns those newspapers and in which ways [share two] would you say that these papers contribute to public discourse in your town/city?

10. Review Impact Money [Illustration 1.3] on page 8. Based on information shared, describe in your own words the ways in which U.S. mass media industries have changed.

11. How do you TV? Compare with and discuss the experiences others in your network [friends, family, co-workers].

12. Consider the following statement: “The mass media are profit-centered businesses.” Are you are aware of this assertion? What does foregoing statement mean?

13. Name and describe ways in which technological developments have influenced (a) delivery and (b) consumption of the mass media.

14. About 80% of all U.S. adults have Internet access. What factors in your informed opinion must be keeping 20% of U.S. adults away from the Internet?

15. What do you know about “concentration of ownership” of media businesses? Do you consider “concentration of ownership” problematic?

16. Do you understand “vertical integration”? If you do, please explain who between media companies and media audiences do you think benefit the most from this business model.

17. How many dimensions to the phenomenon known as “convergence” do you understand? Do you consider the phenomenon valuable to contemporary society?

18. What in your informed opinion qualified today’s age of communication to be called the “third information communications revolution”?

19. Explain the difference between a “dumb” and a “smart” communication appliance.

20. Explain in your own words the ways in which mass media reflect politics, society and culture.

21. Explain in your own words the ways in which mass media influence [or affect] politics, society and culture.

22. Give two different reasons why you and I should be interested in the impacts of the mass media on everyday life.

23. Who pays for the cost of mass media and how?

24. Some have claimed that the book – an invention that has been with us since Johannes Gutenberg’s Bible (c. 1455) will soon die as a medium. What is your informed opinion on the near-extinction of the book?

25. Describe two distinct roles of the Federal Communications Commission [FCC]. Should the mass media be regulated?