Stereotype
Stopwatch culture See immediacy.
Storyboard Sequence of sketches or photographs
used by the director or the producer of a fi lm to
sketch out, scene by scene, and sometimes frame
by frame, the fi lm’s progression; its sight and
sound.
Storyness See narrative.
Strategic silence See silence: strategic
silence.
Strategy A term sometimes used to describe
a communicative act that has been planned to
some extent beforehand, which is deliberate
and which has a clear purpose. Strategies can
become a matter of habit: an example here might
be the strategy used by a door-to-door salesper-
son. Th ere are many diff erent kinds of strategies
used in interpersonal communication, and
we learn to use them through experience. Some,
like the greetings strategy, are commonly used
by many people; some we invent for ourselves to
deal with particular situations; and some may be
specifi c to certain groups or circumstances. See
tactics and strategies.
Streaming The process by which data is
compressed for transmission over the internet,
then recompressed for consumption by the user.
Th e audio or visual content reaches the recipient
in a continuous stream, played in real time on
arrival, thus avoiding delay caused by download-
ing. Special software is required to facilitate the
process of uncompression and the directing of
data for consumption.
Street view (Google Maps) Massive data bank
of images of the urban scene, surveillance
on a universal scale: countries, regions, cities,
towns, villages, streets, houses, shops, people,
cars, bicycles; all are on google camera. Having
your front door online is not compulsory;
requests for removal from the database can be
registered in an online form, and sophisticated
technology blurs human faces and car registra-
tion plates. Such ‘intrusion’ nevertheless prompt
ongoing concerns over privacy.
Stringer Name given in the news reporting busi-
ness for a non-staff reporter.
Structuralism A twentieth-century term of
wide defi nition to describe certain traditions of
analysing a range of studies – linguistics, literary
criticism, psychoanalysis, social anthropology,
Marxist theory and social history. Swiss scholar
Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de Linguistique
Générale (1916), translated as Course in General
Linguistics (1954), is probably the initial key work
in this movement, later developed and diversi-
fi ed by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes.
Structuralism is something of an umbrella termVision, or 3D, in the early 1950s, but never
caught on – mainly perhaps because members of
the audience had to wear special glasses. Only in
Russia has a stereoscopic process that does not
require the wearing of glasses been developed,
yet even there it does not appear to have been
widely adopted. However, 3D (with glasses) was
brought experimentally to TV screens in the UK
by ITV in 1982–83. It took on a new lease of life
with the sensational special eff ects of the movie
Avatar (2009) directed by James Cameron.
Some commentators in 2010 and 2011 predicted
that the TV of the future would be 3D. See
holography.
Stereotype Oversimplifi ed defi nition of a person
or type of person, institution, style or event; to
stereotype is to pigeon-hole, to thrust into tight
slots of defi nition which allow of little adjust-
ment or change. Stereotyping is widespread
because it is convenient – unions are like this,
Jews, Muslims, teenagers, women, gays, asylum-
seekers are like this. Stereotyping is often, though
not always, the result of or accompaniment to
prejudice. It serves the media well because they
are in the business of instant recognition and
ready cues. It is very rare that we actually know
any stereotypes: we only read of them, hear of
them or have them ‘framed’ for us on TV. See
halo effect; labelling process (and the
media); self-fulfilling prophecy. See also
topic guide under media issues & debates.
▶Michael Pickering, Stereotyping: The Politics of
Representation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001).
Stigma According to Erving Goff man in Stigma:
Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity
(Penguin, 1963), stigma denotes ‘undesired
diff erentness’ and may result in the individual
becoming ‘reduced in our minds from a whole
and usual person to a tainted, discounted one’.
Th e sources of stigma are varied, but once the
information is in the open it has the potential
to damage reputations and trigger social rejec-
tion. Consequently an individual may feel
apprehensive about disclosing information that
is perceived to have the potential to confer a
stigmatized identity. Goff man comments that
the individual concerned is faced with numerous
dilemmas: ‘To display or not to display, to tell
or not to tell, to let on or not to let on, to lie or
not to lie; and in each case, to whom, how, when
and where,’ so there are clearly implications for
communicative behaviour. Of course the indi-
vidual may not always have much choice here,
as others may control access to and disclosure
of the information. See impression manage-
ment; johari window; self-disclosure.