Access - The ability of media consumers to produce their own texts and to have those texts acknowledged by the agenda-setting media. Also, the ability of media consumers to respond to the dominant media.
Audience - The group of consumers for whom the media text was constructed as well as anyone else who is exposed to the text.
Censorship - The practice of suppressing a text or part of a text that is considered objectionable according to certain standards.
Critical Viewing - The ability to use critical thinking skills to view, question, analyze and understand issues presented overtly and covertly in
movies, videos, television and other visual media.
Demographics - Measurable characteristics of media consumers such as age, gender, race, education and income level.
Gatekeepers - Those in control of the flow of information. The gatekeeper can choose to accept or reject a piece of information for public consumption. Newspaper publishers, editors and reporters, television producers, radio station owners and broadcasting executives have all been cited as examples of media gatekeepers.
Genre - Specific kinds of media content, e.g., entertainment, information, news, advertising, etc. Each category is defined with traditional conventions, but categories may overlap.
Ideology/Ideological - How individuals understand the world. This understanding involves an interaction between individual psychologies and the social structures that surround them. Mediating between these are the individual processes of communication as well as the technological processes of the mass media. These ideas are usually related to the distribution of power.
Mass Media - Any form of communication produced by a few for consumption by many people. Mass media are channels of communication through which messages flow. As the messages go through the channels, they are distorted. When people receive media messages, they have no opportunity for immediate feedback with the producers of the messages.
Media literacy - The ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media in a variety of forms.
Propaganda - Any media text whose primary purpose is to openly persuade an audience of the validity of a point of view.
Transparency - The quality of a media text by which it appears to be natural rather than constructed.
