How Mass Media Really Affects the Public...

According to Wikipedia, agenda setting theory is defined as "the theory that the mass-news-media have a large influence on their audiences by their choice of what stories to consider newsworthy and how much prominence and space to give them." Agenda setting theory is valid in terms of influencing the public unknowingly. When the news or other such mass media, promotes a certain topic, it becomes more important in the public eye; making it seem that the more something is discussed in the media, the more important it is. This causes people who are already well informed on a certain subject either unsure or change their mind. There are positive and negative influeces of agenda setting. The positive is that people who are clueless are filled in on certain issues, but the negative is that the media sways them in one direction with regards to the issue. Wikipedia states, "The two basic assumptions underlie most research on agenda-setting are that the press and the media do not reflect reality, they filter and shape it, and the media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues." This basically means that the media is highly influencial on important issues--rather than giving blunt information, they give you selected information to think just like them. I think that the news is heavily influencial, especially if you only watch/read one broadcasting company's views. A lot of times, people watch different news broadcasts on different channels in order to get different information which then demonstrate all the different views. Even with corporate issues, public issues, and governmental issues are all disected and then projected to the public--in the way that the mass media corp. wants it. There seems to be no balance between this, which greatly changes the way people think.

In an interview with Herbert Gans, PressThink focused on what Gans believes to be a multiperspectival viewpoint in journalism. Herbert Gans is a top sociologist in news along with being the author of Deciding with News. He studies the tactics, rules, ideologies, and the writing style of most journalists--and how they influences media. Gans states in his interview with PressThink, "Journalists should be covering politically relevant activities of all social strata, economic classes, races, and so on— which means that journalism has to be more than about the issues and problems that concern the white middle class mainstream." What he is trying to say is that journalism needs to be versitle and well-roundedly written--with information from all viewpoints. I have to agree with Herbert Gans that journalists must provide all sorts of information, and must definitely put a limit on how far they go with concealing certain points. It almost seems unfair, but when thinking practically, there is bound to be bias in the media.


Here is a video called, "How the News Works." This video points out the flaws in the news media and they way it affects the public. The video demonstrates agenda setting in use, along with how some corporations conceal certain information but then focus on others.








Sources:

YouTube. UpdocFilms. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pajKfN9VP8

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. "Agenda-setting Theory." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda-setting_theory

Jay Rosen. PressThink Media, http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2004/01/13/interview_gans.html

Feminism in Magazines

The article titled, "Beauty and Body Images in the Media" mainly talk about how fashion magazines focus on three things: a hot body, sex, and fashion. Media is what promotes beauty, but is also the creator of the standard of what is beautiful. But the truth is, magazines are not reality. The models in the magazines are about 23% lighter in weight than average women. Not only are they ridiculously skinnier, but they are also airbrushed to look oh so perfect! The article claims that the causes of this display of "unattainable beauty" is economic. When women strive to look like the models in the magazines, they buy all the products they could possibly use to look sexy. This includes: fashion jewelry and clothing, make-up, toners, hair products, nail polishes, diet aids, and even different types of cosmetic surgery. The article states that the diet industry is worth between 40 and 100 billion dollars a year. Seeing super skinny women in magazines makes normal women feel insecure and forces them to believe they are overweight. This is the cause of many eating disorders and depression. Anorexia Nervosa is one of the most commonly used "diets." Even young girls are believing they are fat, and are becoming anorexic or bulimic. Could it be that the media industry is pushing the concept of beauty too far?

The other article, "Do We Still Need Feminist Media?" goes into detail about how women's role in media has evolved over the years, but not as much hoped. Feminism forced the media to change and to include women. Currently, women have all sorts of jobs in media, but the article claims that we still need feminist media. The reason being, "Feminist media remains an instigator and a feeder of content, as well as providing a gender lens through which to view the news." Feminist media provides an outlook for issues like domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, gender bias, and equal pay in the workplace. Feminists are still fighting sexual discrimination to this day, which is why it is necessary for feminist media.

I believe that it is necessary to still have feminist media because it fights for the women who are still unheard. Although the United States has evolved out of its original mentality that men are superior, other cultures in foreign countries have not. Women are still the inferior sex in many cultures, so they do not get as many opportunities as women in the U.S., or the respect they deserve.

Body image is a big issue in today's society. It has changed the lives of many men and women and forcing them to believe they are not wonderful beings on their own. Media has forced this image of thinness and beauty onto women and even men, leaving them to want to change themselves--for all the wrong reasons. I think the worst thing about this is magazines like CosmoGirl and VOGUEgirl are forcing the same concepts on younger females. Girls younger than ten years are now dieting and experimenting sexual relations. I feel like as some women are gaining more and more respect in the workplace, the value of women is consistently declining. How much worse will society get?


Here is a video on "womenly perfection" which shows what society views women as:



As entertaining as the video may be, there is some truth lying within it....

Texting: Are We Speechless Now?

It seems as if we have found a new way to talk, but without our mouth. Barker's article, "Technology leaves teens speechless," gave a modern issue of texting versus verbal communication. She gave real life and real people examples of how teens today are constantly text messaging rather than having face to face conversations. It is not only affecting their verbal communication skills, but it seems as if it will affect schoolwork like grammar, and even skills of the workplace. In her article, she goes into detail about how teens are living their lives through this technology and even developing relationships via texts and IM. Also, the text messaging phenomenon has affect the way teens are now reacting and responding in a verbal conversation like the classroom, an interview, or just a face to face conversation.
The other article focuses more on the historical context of the development of communication and its role in society. Harold Adams Innis was a political economist who studied the social history of communication media. His main belief was in regards to a cultures ability to survive with a balanced dependability on media. "For Innis, a key to social change is found in the development of communication media." He believes that oral communication is time biased because you need face to face contact.

I believe that text messaging has been taken to the highest extent it can possibly go, but I am still afraid of where it will go in the future too. It may seem as if we cannot advance any further, but new technology always finds a way into our lives. Current teens are very dependent on texting, and it seems that if one is without it, their lives are completely out of the social loop. I completely agree with Barker, and I really do feel that teens now are being negatively affected by texting and are revolving their lives around the technology that they feed on. AIM, emails, and text messages have completely taken over face to face conversations or even conversations over the telephone. It is really scary to think where we can go from here, will we be so advanced one day that we will never have to open our mouths again to communicate? Its hard to believe, but it just might be a possibility.

The video below demonstrates how teens have been negatively affected by texting. Grammar skills are decreasing, and students are relying too much on technology to think for them. Spell check has taken over spelling, and text messaging lingo are now appearing in formal papers and assignments..








Barker, Olivia. "Technology leaves teens speechless." USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2006-05-29-teen-texting_x.htm

Innis, Harold Adams. The Bias of Communication. 1951. Intro. Marshall McLuhan. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964.
http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/innis.htm

Video Games: Are They Really Violent?

I was definately surprised at the results and true effects of video games on today's population. I have always believed that video games do affect violence levels in people who consistently play them, but it has not yet been proven. Although there are links, the effects are different than what people seem to believe. Williams states, "...they have yet to demonstrate this link" in terms of aggression. In the study of Williams and Skoric, older players were more strongly influenced and argued more with their friends and others around them. What I found the most interesting what that out of the 60 percent of Americans who play video games on a regular basis, "32 percent of the game-playing population is now over 35 years of age."
Games are becoming much more violent than before, and although there are negative outcomes of them, there are also positive. According to Williams' study, a "potential gain" is meeting new people and attaining problem-solving skills. In Anderson's article, he discusses the myths and facts of video games. It is made evident that he believes that video games to lead to aggression, even when the research is shaky. There are mixed results in which type of people are effected though. He states, "there is not consistent evidence for the claim that younger children are more negatively affected than adolescents or young adults or that males are more affected than females." His studies have shown that there is an increase in aggression with college students with exposure to unrealistic and fantasy violent video games.
I do believe that there is some link between aggression and video games in people, but with certain games only. When the game producers make the fantasy violence seem real, people start to believe it is real too--which is where the problem is.

One of the most popular video games is GTA, Grand Theft Auto. This game exposes players to stealing cars, killing people, and getting women. Here is a CBS news clip on the release of the video game.




Williams Article: http://news.illinois.edu/NEWS/05/0809videogames.html
Anderson Article: http://www.apa.org/science/psa/sb-anderson.html

What is Semiotics?

All three articles on semiotics went hand in hand in terms of describing what semiotics is. A general definition, according to all of the authors, would be that semiotics is the study of signs, which it is, but there is also a lot more to it. Semiotics deals with not only signs, but the interpretations, responses, and the language that comes with it. Eugene Gorny classifies three definitions of semiotics in different contexts. Chandler on the other hand, talks about the historical context of semiotics. Something that interested me was what Ponzio and Petrilli said about signs and interpretations. They state that, "The interpretant of a sign is another sign, which the previous sign creates in the interpreter." So basically, the formations of signs and interpretations is a repetitive cycle. In regards to all the writer's definitions of a sign, can't anything that can communicate and be interpreted be a sign--which would be anything and everything in the present world?

Here is a video that demonstrates how signs are interpreted differently.

Article on Email and the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The article on Wikipedia regarding the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis was very informative, but I feel that it lacked demonstration through examples. In terms of the hypothesis, the article made me really think about language and how it works today. Without language our world could not possibly exist. I definitely agree with Whorf that language influences thought. The more developed our language is, the more developed our thoughts are. If we live in a society where language is articulate, we speak our thoughts more often too. Although, Sapir believes that "...languages are systematic, formally complete, systems..." which I don't not completely agree with. Yes, with human interaction it describes it perfectly, but what about other animals? Animals communicate, though in different ways than humans, all the time but not as formal, (at least it seems so) and systematically as humans do.

The article on email honestly helped me. I do try to write proper emails when writing to someone with more authority, but the detail Jerz goes into never occured to me. His ten points, I believe, should be communicated to the world because it will definitely help the world of emails. Point number one, "Write a meaningful subject line," affected me the most. I never gave much thought to the subject line before the article, but now I know that if I want people to read my emails, they should appeal to the reader thought the subject line. I do agree with Jerz on punctuation and spelling. Many younger people take email in the same resect as text messaging. Sometimes their half spelled words will not make sense and confuse the reader (other times its just plain annoying..). I will be sure to use Jerz's ten tips for my future emails.

Here is a video called "The Dirty Dozen Rules of Email Etiquette" (Tim Sanders) that also argues how email is abused in the professional world today.
http://www.emailatoz.com/index.php/video





Articles:
Wikipedia Online Encycloedia. "The Sapir-Whorf Hyothesis"http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/e-text/e-mail.htm
Dennis G. Jerz. "Writing Effective E-Mails: Top Ten Tips" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir%E2%80%93Whorf_hypothesis