Cognitive Dissonance: Formulated by famed psychological researcher Leon Festinger, cognitive dissonance is the most widely known of the consistency theories that hold that people prefer to avoid tension or stress-producing situations by maintaining consonance. As a result, individuals tend to avoid paying attention to or retaining information which conflicts with their belief system. Festinger starts with the premise that cognitive elements such as attitudes, knowledge, and perceptions influence behavior. To take advantage of cognitive dissonance in modifying actions by members of targeted audiences, perception managers either have to offer new information designed to reduce tension or provide rewards that justify new behavior.

Episodic News Frames: Episodic news frames are the predominant frame on television newscasts and account for about 80 percent of television news reporting. Episodic frames depict public issues in terms of concrete instances. That is, they focus on discrete events that involve individuals located at specific places and at specific times (e.g., nightly crime reports.)

Thematic News Frames: Thematic news frames account for about 20 percent of television news reporting. Thematic frames place public issues in a broader context by focusing on general conditions or outcomes (i.e., reports on poverty trends in the U.S.) The type of news frame, whether episodic or thematic, has a profound effect on the way in which individuals receiving the frame assign responsibility to the individuals inside the frame.

Preferential Sourcing: selecting certain people to act as sources and ignoring others slant news reports. Sometimes this skewing is purposely done, but often preferential sourcing reflects an over-reliance on government officials and other influential people who have proved reliable in the past in helping the journalist file stories. The resulting news coverage greatly affects not only the perspective reported, but also distorts the baseline of what is considered "factual" when widely conflicting claims are put forward by the protagonists.

Pseudo-environment: Walter Lippmann's term for the kind of world in which we live, one part direct experience, and the other we construct from what others tell us from stories, pictures, newspapers, and the like. The "pictures in our heads" form stereotypes that, while useful in providing a sense of security in an unfamiliar world, provide us with only partial truths of reality. Therefore, what we often assume to be facts are often judgments. Lippmann writes in Public Opinion (1922): "But while men are willing to admit that there are two sides to a `question,' they do not believe that there are two sides to what they regard as a `fact.'"

Salience: All communication providers have to answer two basic questions that people tend to ask when faced with persuasive messages: (1) "What does this mean to me?" and (2) "Why should I care?" A failure to understand the real nature of the targeted audience means that the communication provider's main ideas will be "off message." On the other hand, the more the key points emphasized in the message relate to the interests and needs of the target audience-an indication of salience-the more effective and meaningful the messages are likely to be perceived.

Social Capital: Social capital ("community connectedness") refers to social networks and the norms of reciprocity that arise from them. A growing body of hard-nosed literature over the last several years shows that social capital, and the trust, reciprocity, information, and cooperation associated with it, enables many important individual and social goods. Communities with higher levels of social capital are likely to have higher educational achievement, better performing governmental institutions, faster economic growth, and less crime and violence. And the people living in these communities are likely to be happier, healthier, and to have a longer life expectancy.

In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000), Robert Putnam describes social capital as the value that social networks have on community development. "Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals-social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them." While forms of social capital vary, Putnam describes two prominent forms-bonding (exclusive) and bridging (inclusive) social capital. Examples of bonding social capital include ethnic fraternal organizations, church-based women's reading groups, and upscale country clubs while bridging social capital examples include the civil rights movement in the United States, many youth service groups, and ecumenical religious organizations. Both forms of social capital are in decline for various reasons he describes including increased television viewing, declining trust in government and society, urban sprawl and civic fragmentation.

Background: Widely utilized news media convention where a source agrees to provide quotable information to journalists on condition that direct attribution not be made. Example: "a high administration official revealed today." See also Deep Background and Off the Record.

Backgrounder: A public relations release distributed by an organization to appropriate journalists, usually as part of a media kit. Backgrounders neutrally and factually summarize pertinent facts about a subject of current public interest. Typically, backgrounders starts with a historical overview of the topic, incorporate a situation review of the present situation, and conclude with a straightforward discussion outlining the implications of the facts presented.

Court of Public Opinion: Refers to that period long before an issue arrives in a court of law, when it receives widespread publicity and discussion in news media coverage and other public forums. How these controversies are interpreted, which sides appear to have a more moral position, and who is seen as right or wrong in the public mind can have important implications in the court of public opinion.

Deep Background: A news media convention where an influential source agrees to provide confidential information to journalists on what is happening with the condition that it not be quoted or used except in the most general or indirect manner (i.e., "knowledgeable Washington sources speculate that").

Earned Media: Public relations industry euphemism for free coverage in newspapers and magazines, radio, television and the Internet.

Fourth Estate: The news media as a check on government. Its usage dates back to 18th century Britain when Irish statesman Edmund Burke turned to the Reporters Gallery in Parliament and declared: "There is an estate more potent than any!" This speech delivered in 1780 led others to use the term "Fourth Estate" to refer to the journalistic profession. The other three classes or "estates" of English society were the Lords Spiritual (clergy), the Lords Temporal (nobility) and the Commons (bourgeoisie middle class and laboring lower classes).

Hooks: Those elements of a persuasive message that attract the attention and build the interest of target audience members. This can be centered on a "unique selling position" that differentiates the sender from competitors by pointing to a compelling benefit important to the receiver and specific to the advertised product, service or idea.

Media Kit: Package of information containing news releases, fact sheets, backgrounders, photographs, positions papers, reprints and other materials given to news media representatives so as to simplify their jobs and maximize the possibility the supplying organization's "story" will be covered. Also known as a press kit.

Narrowcasting: Instead of reaching out to the broadest possible general audience, narrowcasting involves directing messages to a more highly differentiated and narrowly defined marketing niche. This occurs through very selective buying in mass media and increased use of specialized or targeted media. Synonymous with direct marketing (DM) and specialty advertising.

News Feed: A grouping of syndicated or network news reports and video news releases (VNR) story packages sent via satellite to affiliates for airing and editing as the recipients see fit.

News Values: Out of the whole panorama of life, certain events, trends, organizations and individuals are singled out by journalists as more newsworthy than others. Reporting textbooks generally point to the presence of certain "news values" as important determinants in this process. Five of the most widely cited include:

• Impact/consequence: what numbers of people are affected and to what degree will their lives by influenced by the events,
• Prominence: how well-known are the people and institutions involved,
• Currency: how relevant is the story to today's social conditions,
• Conflict: so that dramatic differences between two or more sides to an issue can be presented, and
• Uniqueness: how defiant or unusual are the events from everyday norms.

Off The Record: The practice of providing confidential information to journalists on the understanding that it will not be openly published or broadcast with attribution. Sometimes the information is leaked simply as background so the reporter has a better understanding of the process and issues being addressed by source. In other cases, materials can be used in preparing stories, but no linkage is to be made to the source. These explanatory briefings give authorities a chance to present their official point of view without fear of being held accountable should the resulting report prove controversial or incorrect. Journalists occasionally violate these conventions, particularly when they have not given assent as part of the ground rules established at the beginning of their researches. However, when reporters break a verbal contract state courts have ruled they can be legally held accountable. In practice, most journalists accept off-the-record agreements because their access to information (particularly from government sources) would dry up without them.

Spike: The deliberate suppression of a potentially controversial news story before it becomes public knowledge by a media gatekeeper responding to political, economic, or other censorship pressures.

Media and Democracy: As much a movement as an idea for greater public representation in the media and promotion of independent, non-commercial media alternatives to the small number of for-profit media conglomerates that provide information and entertainment to the public.

Electronic Democracy: A form of direct democracy utilizing television and radio talk shows, electronic community networks, and other forms of telecommunications to create "electronic town meetings," which influence the public policy process by putting pressure on government representatives through grassroots lobbying or bypassing them entirely.

Media Advocacy: Media advocacy is the strategic use of news media and sometimes paid advertising to support community development and organizing in order to advance a public policy initiative. Media advocacy is a response from community groups to address their need for visibility and power in the news media. It reflects a growing recognition among community organizations that it is useless to curse news media coverage or complain about journalists' indifference to grassroots coverage-what is needed is a media savvy community based organization that learns how to effectively work with the news media.

Media Literacy: Media literacy is the process of learning specific skills of critical media viewing: learning to analyze and question what is in a media frame, how the media frame is constructed and what may have been left out. Media literacy may include an effort to go beyond media frame analysis to address the social, political, cultural and economic factors that determine how media production occurs. UCLA's Center for Communications and Community uses media literacy research and skills to address the impact of media in our communities and its implications for community transformation and social change.

Media Mergers: In June 1949, American journalist Walter Lippmann traveled to Iowa to celebrate the 100th birthday of The Des Moines Register and Tribune. He told his audience: "There is, I believe, a fundamental reason why the American press is strong enough to remain free. That reason is that the American newspapers, large and small, and without exception, belong to a town, a city, at the most to a region." When Lippmann spoke, 1,300 American newspapers-almost all at the time-were independent and locally owned. By 1999, during the "decade of the media merger," there were fewer than 300 independent and locally-owned newspapers. In 2001, with the recent merger of AOL with Time Warner, media mergers show no signs of slowing.

Media Monitoring: Media monitoring is a task by which individuals and organizations pay close and critical attention to how their issues are being reported by various news sources in an effort to more effectively target those news sources. Media monitoring requires the individual or organization to develop a critical eye as a news consumer and to keep the following media monitoring checklist of questions in mind:

1. Is your issue being covered?
   
2. If not, are other issues being covered that relate to your issue?
   
3. What are the main themes and arguments presented on various sides of the issue?
   
4. Who is reporting on your issue or stories related to it?
   
5. Who are the spokespeople on your issue?
   
6. Who is writing op-ed pieces or letters to the editor on your issue and which side are they taking?
   
7. Are any solutions to the problem being presented?
   
8. Who is named or implied as having responsibility for solving the problem? Is your target named in the coverage?
   
9. What stories, facts or perspectives could help improve the case for your side?
   
10. What's missing from the news coverage about your issue?
    
Source: News for a Change: An Advocate's Guide to Working with the Media, by Lawrence Wallack, Katie Woodruff, Lori Dorfman, and Iris Diaz, pg. 30)

Media Power: Media power refers to the media's ability to provide visibility, credibility, and legitimacy to a public policy issue and/or to an organization seeking social change. The media have the power to select some events for coverage and leave out others, which sends a public signal about what's important and what's not important. Put simply, the media communicate to the public, opinion leaders, public policy makers, and persons of influence what issues they should think about, how they should think about them, and who should have a platform for saying something about these issues.

Media Mayhem: Framing device that emphasizes negative news so much that it undermines actual statistics about violent crime. James Fallows, author of Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (1996), indicts the media mayhem frame:

The trend in local TV news over the last 10 years has been more and more emphasis on violence-rape, murder, mayhem. The trend of actual life has, by most social science reports, been less of those things. I would argue that the trend in local news has still exaggerated the degree to which most people feel hostage to crime every day. And there's not any kind of coherence, context, explanation, etc. that would at least make people feel they had some control over their destinies, some way to improve the things that are troubling to them.