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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

absolute poverty    A level of economic deprivation in which people do not have the means to secure the most basic necessities of life.

accreditation   Certification by the government of members of the press to cover wartime action or other official government business.

achieved status   A social position that a person assumes voluntarily as a result of personal choice, merit, or direct effort.

activity theory   The proposition that people tend to shift gears in late middle age and find substitutes for previous statuses, roles, and activities.

affiliates   Broadcast stations that use broadcast network programming but that are owned by companies other than the broadcast networks.

age stratification   The inequalities, differences, segregation, or conflict between age groups.

ageism   Prejudice and discrimination against people on the basis of age, particularly when they are older persons.

agenda-setting   The principle that members of the press do not tell people what to think but do tell people what and whom to think about.

agents of socialization   Those persons, groups, or institutions that teach people what they need to know in order to participate in society.

aggregate   A collection of people who happen to be in the same place at the same time but share little else in common.

aging   The physical, psychological, and social processes associated with growing older.

alienation   A feeling of powerlessness and estrangement from other people and from oneself.

alternative press   Newspapers that become outlets for the voices of social protest; also called the dissident press.

analog   In mass communications, a type of technology used in broadcasting, whereby video or audio information is sent as continuous signals through the air on specific airwave frequencies.

ancillary-rights market   The revenue opportunity for a movie beyond its theatre audience, including television and videocassette sales.

animism   The belief that plants, animals, or other elements of the natural world are endowed with spirits or life forces having an impact on events in society.

anomie   Emile Durkheim's designation for a condition in which social control becomes ineffective as a result of the loss of shared values and a sense of purpose in society.

anticipatory socialization   The process by which knowledge and skills are learned for future roles.

apartheid   The policy of the South African government that required the separation of the races.

ascribed status   A social position that is conferred on a person at birth or received involuntarily later in life.

assimilation   A process by which members of subordinate racial and ethnic groups become absorbed into the dominant culture.

authoritarian leader   A leader who makes all major group decisions and assigns tasks to group members.

authoritarian personality   A personality type characterized by excessive conformity, submissiveness to authority, intolerance, insecurity, a high level of superstition, and rigid, stereotypic thinking.

authoritarianism   A political system controlled by rulers who deny popular participation in government.

authority   Power that people accept as legitimate rather than coercive.

B

basic class location   Positions in the class structure where issues of property ownership and control are relatively clear.

bilateral descent   A system of tracing descent through both the mother's and father's sides of the family.

blanket licensing agreement   An arrangement whereby radio stations become authorized to use recorded music for broadcast by paying a fee.

blind booking   The practice of renting out films to exhibitors without showing the films to the exhibitors first.

block booking   The practice of scheduling a large number of movies for a theatre, combining a few good movies with many second-rate features.

body consciousness   How a person perceives and feels about his or her body; it also includes an awareness of social conditions in society that contribute to this self-knowledge.

bourgeoisie (or capitalist class)   Karl Marx's term for the class comprised of those who own and control the means of production.

browser   Software that allows people to search electronically among many documents to find what they want on-line.

bureaucracy   An organizational model characterized by a hierarchy of authority, a clear division of labour, explicit rules and procedures, and impersonality in personnel matters.

bureaucratic personality   A psychological construct that describes those workers who are more concerned with following correct procedures than they are with doing the job correctly.

C

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)   The principal public broadcaster in Canada.

Canadian Radio/Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)   The federal commission charged with regulating the telecommunications sector in Canada.

CANCON   Canadian content regulations for radio music programming administered by the CRTC.

capitalism   An economic system characterized by private ownership of the means of production, from which personal profits can be derived through market competition and without government intervention.

caste system   A system of social inequality in which people's status is permanently determined at birth based on their parents' ascribed characteristics.

category   A number of people who may never have met one another but who share a similar characteristic.

catharsis theory   The proposition that televised materialism and violence provide viewers with a vicarious outlet for their own greed or aggressiveness.

censorship   The practice of suppressing material that is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.

central city   The densely populated centre of a metropolis.

channel   In mass communication, the medium that delivers the message.

charismatic authority   Power legitimized on the basis of a leader's exceptional personal qualities.

chronological age   A person's age based on date of birth.

church   A large, bureaucratically organized religious organization that tends to seek accommodation with the larger society in order to maintain some degree of control over it.

civil disobedience   Nonviolent action that seeks to change a policy or law by refusing to comply with it.

class   The relative location of a person or group within a larger society, based on wealth, power, prestige, or other valued resources.

class conflict   Karl Marx's term for the struggle between the capitalist class and the working class.

class system   A type of stratification based on the ownership and control of resources and on the kinds of work people do.

cohabitation   The sharing of a household by a couple who live together without being legally married.

cohort   A category of people who are born within a specified period in time or who share some specified characteristic in common.

collective behaviour   Voluntary, often spontaneous, activity that is engaged in by a large number of people and typically violates dominant group norms and values.

commonsense knowledge   A form of knowing that guides ordinary conduct in everyday life.

comparable worth (pay equity)   The belief that wages ought to reflect the worth of a job, not the gender or race of the worker.

complete observation   Research in which the investigator systematically observes a social process but does not take part in it.

concentration of ownership   The trend among the media industries to cluster together in groups.

conflict perspective   The sociological approach that views groups in society as engaged in a continuous power struggle for control of scarce resources.

conformity   The process of maintaining or changing behaviour to comply with the norms established by a society, subculture, or other group.

conglomerate   A combination of businesses, in different commercial areas, all of which are owned by one holding company.

consumer magazines   All magazines sold by subscription or at newsstands, supermarkets, and bookstores.

content analysis   The systematic examination of cultural artifacts or various forms of communication to extract thematic data and draw conclusions about social life.

content   The multimedia term for information sources and programs that can be digitized for the new communications network.

contingent work   Part-time work, temporary work, and subcontracted work.

contradictory class location   A class position within the productive process that possesses a combination of elements from two different basic class locations (for example, a department head who controls the work of sales personnel but still is accountable to the company's owner).

control group   Subjects in an experiment who are not exposed to the independent variable but later are compared to subjects in the experimental group.

conventional (street) crime   A term used to denote all violent crime, certain property crimes, and certain moral crimes.

convergence   The blurring of lines between the publishing industry, the communications industry, consumer electronics, and computers because of advances in technology.

cooperative news gathering   A practice first used by the New York Associated Press, whereby member newspapers share the expenses of acquiring news and returning any profits to the members.

core nation   According to world systems theory, a dominant capitalist centre characterized by high levels of industrialization and urbanization and a high degree of control over the world economy.

corporate crime   An illegal act committed by corporate employees on behalf of the corporation and with its support.

corporation   A large-scale organization that has legal powers (such as the ability to enter into contracts and buy and sell property) separate from its individual owners.

correlation   A relationship that exists when two (or more) variables are associated more frequently than could be expected by chance.

counterculture   A group that strongly rejects dominant societal values and norms and seeks alternative lifestyles. .

CPM   In advertising, cost-per-thousand, which is the cost of an ad per one thousand people reached. (M is the Roman numeral for 1000.)

credentialism   A process of social selection in which class advantage and social status are linked to the possession of academic qualifications.

crime   Behaviour that violates criminal law and is punishable with fines, jail terms, and other sanctions.

criminology   The systematic study of crime and the criminal justice system, including the police, courts, and prisons.

cross-ownership   Used to describe a company that owns television and radio stations in the same broadcast market.

crowd   A relatively large number of people who are in one another's immediate face-to-face presence.

crude birth rate   The number of live births per 1000 people in a population in a given year.

crude death rate   The number of deaths per 1000 people in a population in a given year.

crude net migration rate   The net number of migrants (total in-migrants minus total out-migrants) per 1000 people in a population in a given year.

cult   A religious group with practices and teachings outside the dominant cultural and religious traditions of a society.

cultural capital   Pierre Bourdieu's term for people's social assets, including their values, beliefs, attitudes, and competencies in language and culture.

cultural imperialism   The extensive infusion of one nation's culture into other nations.

cultural lag   William Ogburn's term for a gap between the technical development of a society (material culture) and its moral and legal institutions (nonmaterial culture).

cultural relativism   The belief that the behaviours and customs of a society must be viewed and analyzed within the context of its own culture.

cultural universals   Customs and practices that occur across all societies.

culture shock   The disorientation that people feel when they encounter cultures radically different from their own.

culture   The knowledge, language, values, customs, and material objects that are passed from person to person and from one generation to the next in a human group or society.

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