Chapter 01: Why Increase Media Literacy?
Test Bank
Multiple Choice
1. Our culture is ______.
a. lacking sufficient media messages
b. not impacted by media messages
c. at odds with some of the media messages available
d. saturated with media messages
ANS: D
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: The Information Problem
Difficulty Level: Easy
2. Users of YouTube upload how much new video?
a. more than 700 hours each year
b. 65.5 million hours each year
c. 100,000 hours in total
d. 500 hours every minute of every day
ANS: D
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: The Information Problem
Difficulty Level: Easy
3. The rate of production of media messages is growing at an accelerating rate because ______.
a. there are more people producing and sharing information than ever before
b. people think fame and fortune are easy to attain
c. blogging has exploded as a medium
d. politics happens more online than ever before
ANS: A
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Growth Is Accelerating
Difficulty Level: Easy
4. Approximately how many Internet users are there?
a. over 300 million
b. over 1 billion
c. over 4.5 billion
d. over 6 billion
ANS: C
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Growth Is Accelerating
Difficulty Level: Easy
5. Approximately how many hours of video are streamed on Netflix every minute?
a. 695 thousand
b. 1 million
c. 60 billion
d. 100 billion
ANS: D
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Growth Is Accelerating
Difficulty Level: Easy
6. Approximately how many posts are made on Instagram each minute?
a. over 275 thousand
b. nearly 1 million
c. 100 million
d. about 1 billion
ANS: A
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Growth Is Accelerating
Difficulty Level: Easy
7. What reason does Tucker give for the explosive growth of data in the past few years?
a. low media literacy rates
b. shift away from reading books
c. the device-ification of modern life
d. growth of online networking
ANS: C
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Growth Is Accelerating
Difficulty Level: Easy
8. What happens to the media exposure of the average person each year?
a. It is reduced.
b. It increases.
c. It is maintained at the same amount.
d. It is being monitored.
ANS: B
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: High Degree of Exposure
Difficulty Level: Easy
9. Which of the following is an example of multitasking?
a. checking your phone while you wait in line at the store
b. texting friends while streaming Netflix and online shopping
c. taking a call while walking
d. taking a break from work to check Instagram
ANS: B
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Keeping Up
Difficulty Level: Medium
10. The biggest increases in media usage will be with ______.
a. watching TV, playing videogames, and accessing Internet pages
b. text messaging, viewing videos, and visiting social networks
c. watching TV, viewing videos, and visiting social networks
d. listening to the radio, watching TV, and accessing Internet pages
ANS: B
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Keeping Up
Difficulty Level: Easy
11. How much more digital information existed in 2020 when compared to the information that existed in 2009?
a. ten times as much
b. almost twenty times as much
c. almost 45 times as much
d. half as much
ANS: C
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Growth Is Accelerating
Difficulty Level: Easy
12. Multitasking increases your amount of ______ per hour of ______.
a. media literacy; Internet time
b. media exposure; media time
c. media illiteracy; clock time
d. media exposure; clock time
ANS: D
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Keeping Up
Difficulty Level: Medium
13. If you wanted to view all the videos uploaded on YouTube in just one day, it would take you approximately ______.
a. one day of viewing, watching on one screen
b. one week of viewing, watching on three screens
c. one month of viewing, watching on ten screens
d. one year of viewing, watching on twenty screens
ANS: D
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Keeping Up
Difficulty Level: Easy
14. Your brain cells are linked to each other at junctions called ______.
a. synapses
b. neurons
c. tendons
d. dendrites
ANS: A
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Our Mental Hardware
Difficulty Level: Easy
15. Which of the following is a hard-wired function of the brain for protecting physical well-being?
a. multitasking
b. monitoring the environment for threats
c. the ability to learn a language
d. accumulating experiences in life
ANS: B
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
16. Tying your shoe, typing, and playing a song on the guitar are all examples of ______.
a. automatic routines
b. literacies
c. hobbies
d. direct exposure
ANS: A
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
17. Automatic routines ______.
a. involve sequences of behaviors or thoughts
b. require a great deal of effort to carry out
c. are inefficient in guiding filtering processes
d. are hard-wired into our brains
ANS: A
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
18. When we put our minds on “automatic pilot” with regard to the media, it means ______.
a. we like to fly from one website or channel to another
b. we are less efficient media consumers
c. we automatically filter out almost all message options
d. we increase our media literacy
ANS: C
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
19. Jameel is having coffee with Kelly, and they are sitting next to a window that overlooks the sidewalk. As Kelly tells him about her new job, Jameel notices an adorable dog passing by and smiles as he watches it romp around its owner. What best describes Jameel’s attention?
a. He is completely focused on Tran’s news.
b. He is multitasking.
c. He is operating with automaticity.
d. His conscious attention shifted to the dog.
ANS: D
Cognitive Domain: Application
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Hard
20. The main advantage of automatic processing is ______.
a. the information overload
b. enhanced attention
c. efficiency
d. attention to detail
ANS: C
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
21. Which of the following is most likely to happen if you clothes shop on automatic pilot?
a. You would have missed great items in the sale section.
b. You would have tried on too many clothes looking for the right fit.
c. You would have spent too long in the store.
d. You would have bought a lot of impulse items instead of the basics you needed.
ANS: A
Cognitive Domain: Application
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Hard
22. When do we experience message fatigue?
a. when we broaden our focus and pay attention to a wide variety of messages of different sorts
b. when we keep our focus on finding new messages
c. when we narrow down our focus and expose ourselves to only messages of the same type
d. none of the above
ANS: C
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
23. When we feel overwhelmed, we ______.
a. are able to be successful in our media message processing
b. best understand our experiences
c. lose opportunities to expand our experience
d. tap into heightened sense levels
ANS: C
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
24. Herbert Simon observed that “a wealth of ______ creates a poverty of ______.”
a. media; literacy
b. information; attention
c. attention; generosity
d. data; analysis
ANS: D
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
25. People who do not periodically examine their automatic routines ______.
a. are able to control media exposure
b. become bored of the media
c. are defaulting to influences outside their control
d. increase their media literacy
ANS: C
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: The Big Question
Difficulty Level: Easy
True/False
1. More information has been generated since the time you were born than the sum of all information all recorded history up until the time of your birth.
a. True
b. False
ANS: T
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Growth Is Accelerating
Difficulty Level: Easy
2. In our information-saturated culture, we are constantly connected to our friends, our society, and the entire world through the media.
a. True
b. False
ANS: T
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: High Degree of Exposure
Difficulty Level: Easy
3. Multitasking is a good-enough strategy for helping us keep up with the flood of information.
a. True
b. False
ANS: F
Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Keeping Up
Difficulty Level: Easy
4. The most remarkable piece of hardware on Earth is the human brain.
a. True
b. False
ANS: T
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Our Mental Hardware
Difficulty Level: Easy
5. When a potential threat is encountered, the body is automatically made ready (increased heart rate and blood pressure) to either fight off the threat or run away to safety.
a. True
b. False
ANS: T
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
6. As we learn to do something, we are writing the instructions like a computer code in our minds.
a. True
b. False
ANS: T
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
7. Automatic processing guides a small portion of our media exposures.
a. True
b. False
ANS: F
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
8. There are no advantages to automatic processing.
a. True
b. False
ANS: F
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
9. All sorts of authorities such as parents, teachers, religious leaders, political leaders, and the media tell us how to think about various issues.
a. True
b. False
ANS: T
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: The Big Question
Difficulty Level: Easy
10. The mass media and advertisers program viewers’ automatic codes with viewers’ goals and well-being in mind.
a. True
b. False
ANS: F
Cognitive Domain: Knowledge
Answer Location: Our Mental Software
Difficulty Level: Easy
Short Answer/Essay
1. Provide three examples of how our culture is a message-saturated one.
ANS: Hollywood movies, YouTube videos, commercial television stations, radio stations, books and the world wide web generate more content than ever.
Cognitive Domain: Analysis
Answer Location: The Information Problem
Difficulty Level: Medium
2. Discuss the reasons why so much information is being produced.
ANS: There are now more people producing information than ever before. Technology and the Internet allow anyone to distribute their content.
Cognitive Domain: Analysis
Answer Location: Growth Is Accelerating
Difficulty Level: Medium
3. Discuss how our mental hardware and our mental software function and are connected.
ANS: Mental hardware is the human brain that supports mental software, which performs automatic functions that control physical functions of the body and other decision-based functions.
Cognitive Domain: Analysis
Answer Location: Dealing With the Information Problem
Difficulty Level: Medium
Provide one example of an advantage and one example of a disadvantage of automaticity.4.
ANS: Advantages of automaticity include efficiency and disadvantages include the possibility we may miss out on things that are ignored that could be useful.
Cognitive Domain: Application
Answer Location: Dealing With the Information Problem
Difficulty Level: Hard
5. Explain how the mass media and advertisers program our automatic code.
