Language and Media Dictionary of Key Terms (April 2016) Martin Montgomery

broadcasting media n. transmission of messages from a single source simultaneously to multiple receivers. Television and radio are prototypical examples of broadcasting. The defining characteristic of broadcasting is that large audiences share in the reception of a single event transmitted via a public medium of communication. The classic age of broadcasting covers the last half of the twentieth century. Since then, the digitization of communication and the growth of the internet has seen a relative decline in broadcasting and the growth of narrowcasting where smaller audiences are targeted via media that allow for reciprocal communication flows - for instance, Facebook, or other social media. mmo

broadsheet media n. a kind of newspaper. Broadsheet newspapers use a large format, usually 750 x 600 mm (29.5" x 23.5"), which was gradually adopted as an industry standard after the British government placed a tax on the number of pages in a newspaper in 1712. The large format of broadsheet newspapers contrasts with smaller sized newspapers often referred to as tabloids, which measure 430 x 280 mm (16.9" x 11.0"), almost half the size of a broadsheet. However, the differences between broadsheet and tabloid newspapers go beyond questions of size. Tabloid newspapers have tended to reach larger readerships than broadsheet newspapers and have drawn on a different mix of news values, emphasizing particularly popular culture, personalization and human interest. Broadsheet newspapers by contrast have tended to target a minority readership associated with the holders of economic, educational and cultural capital, and their news values have correspondingly given more space to politics, government, diplomacy, the economy, and foreign news. More recently, however, many established and quality newspapers have changed from the large format broadsheet size to a more compact format closer to, or identical with, tabloid format. mmo

censorship media n. controlling the public dissemination of information by suppressing or deleting anything found to be objectionable. Censorship is not new: the Catholic church, for instance, published an list of prohibited books in 1559, partly in response to the introduction of the printing press a century or so earlier. And censorship applies to many forms of public communication: for instance, books, plays and theatrical performance, films, newspapers, broadcasting, and the internet. When practiced by governments, enforced by formal administrative bodies and sanctioned by legal codes, it can serve to shape and perpetuate an official version of the truth. But not all censorship is official and governmental: it can work implicitly by means of social pressure and established practice to favour certain topics and versions of the truth over others. Even in societies with no official censorship, journalists will admit to various forms of self-censorship. The rise of the internet has posed particular challenges to censorship, principally because the sources and the routes of communication are so de-centralised they are difficult to regulate. Nonetheless, governments with a major investment in the power of the state are prepared to commit large resources to trying to censor internet communication. mmo

celebrity media n. person who achieves special status within popular culture primarily on the grounds of fame and/or notoriety deriving from the amount of media coverage that they attract rather than on their intrinsic qualities or attributes. mmo

chat room media n. an internet or cyberspace facility that allows several users to communicate in real time in a form of synchronous conferencing. mmo