WK1 - Understanding key terms

Spectacle is something that is sensational, shocking or scandalous and is used by media to grab attetion. It is mostly employed due to the fact that many viewers consider it more appealing than real life.

Synergy is one of the main strategies of media conglomerates. It represents the ivolvement of multiple smaller companies in the development, production and distrubution of a media brand for the sake of maximizing profit.

Objectivity is simply the presenting of facts in a fair and impartial manner.

Information bias comes in four major types: 

1. Personalization implies focusing on individuals rather than institutions, even if it means disregarding broader social context and political perspectives. This way the stories are made more personal and impactful, but crucial information is omitted.

2. Dramatization means presenting information in a narrative way to increase audience interest. Spectacle is a common dramatization tactic.

3. Fragmentation consists of focusing on stories in isolation while disregarding their connections to other stories or a larger context, which can lead to a false idea that the world is just a series of random, unrelated events.

4. Authority-disorder builds off of Personalization and Dramatization, as it takes people and spectacle and then creates tension through conflict. This conflict is usually between authority, which can be the government or the police, and disorder, which is either criminals, terrorism or natural disasters.

Political bias means that a news organization has an ideological or political orinetation. This means that news organizations might attempt to appeal to audiences based on thier political leaning.