Skip to content
Educator
KS3 Sociology

Media and society

50 questions5 subtopics
Practise all 50 questions free →

What's covered

Fake news and bias10
How the media shapes views10
Old and new media10
Social media and influence10
Stereotypes in the media10

Key facts

1

Bias means unfairly favouring one side, person or group.

2

Adverts are designed to persuade people to buy something or change what they think.

3

Convergence means one device, like a smartphone, can do many media jobs such as news, music and films.

4

In the UK, paid posts must be clearly labelled as adverts, usually with the tag #ad.

5

Showing varied, positive characters can challenge a stereotype and offer better role models.

6

A good way to check a story is to see if trusted news outlets also report it.

7

Celebrity endorsement is using a famous person to make a product seem trustworthy or desirable.

8

The media means the ways people share news, ideas and entertainment with a large audience at once.

9

An algorithm is a computer program that decides which posts you see, based on what you looked at before.

10

Ethnic minority groups are often underrepresented, meaning they appear less often than in real life.

Sample questions

A taste of the 50 questions in this topic, answers marked. Sign up to practise the full set with spaced repetition.

1Fake news and bias

What is the best description of fake news?

  • False information made to look like real news
  • News that is boring but completely true
  • Old news stories shared again much later
  • Opinion articles written by news reporters
2How the media shapes views

How can the media shape what people think about an issue?

  • By banning people from talking about it with friends
  • By choosing which stories to show and how to show them
  • By making everyone watch the same channel at the same time
  • By only ever reporting completely neutral, full facts
3Old and new media

Which of these is an example of old (traditional) media?

  • A news website
  • A printed newspaper
  • A social media app
  • An online video game
4Social media and influence

What is an influencer?

  • A computer program that picks which posts appear on your feed
  • A government worker who checks adverts are honest and legal
  • A person with many followers who can affect what their audience thinks
  • Anyone who posts a single photo to a private friends-only account
5Stereotypes in the media

What is a stereotype?

  • A balanced and detailed report about one single person
  • A made-up character invented only for comedy shows
  • A simple, exaggerated image of a whole group of people
  • A true fact that is proven about every group member
6Fake news and bias

What does it mean when a news story shows bias?

  • It only uses photographs and no words
  • It reports every side fairly and equally
  • It unfairly favours one side, person or group
  • It was published a very long time ago

Try it for four weeks. Free.

One school. Unlimited classes. No card limit. No teacher limit. If your students aren't practising daily by the end of the trial, you owe us nothing.

More KS3 Sociology topics