My Top 10 Sexy Media Revelations

#1 Blogging, a way to get to know people or a cause better.

This is the first blog I have ever made. I was skeptical at first, a little weary on whether I would be able to figure this whole thing out, or if I would even like it. Since I have started blogging I have learned a lot about it. This creates a forum where people can really showcase their ability to use the Shifts of our 21st Century Media Culture, the Basic Principals of Media Education, and Persuasive Techniques to Analytical Tools. Since I have had my blog I have seen personal pages, pages that promote a start up business such as MyDietPower a blog that promotes the use of science baased software to help you manage your weight. The owner, a man who walks around my neighborhood at home to lose weight blogs about his interesting encounters while losing weight. I have also seen informative and support pages like Beth Fitzgerald's African Empowerment Project Blog and more recently a friend from high school sent me to his blog to read about a cause promoting becoming a Bone Marrow Donor and why he got evolved with it and then sent me to another blog to read more.

This is a video that is promoting a cause that was distributed online through a blog.

Seun PSA from Noah Hutton on Vimeo.

#2 Creating a Personal Life in a Digital World

"Do you think I should just Facebook him/her instead?" A saying I have heard many a times when friends have found someone they are attracted to or want to get to know them better. It has become more and more apparent to me how the internet and social networking sites have changed the way we interact with each other. Calling someone on the phone has become a daunting task that we have become afraid to do with people we don't know very well. In the article Brave New World of Digital Intimacy Clive Thompson talks about the difference between normal friends and say friends you have on Facebook; are they a different type of friend? We use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn to post information about ourselves which is them blasted all over the internet for anyone to use. As we learned in the Movie The Persuaders there are companies such as Acxiom who gather all your information up and then sell it to a company so they can market to you.

Clip on Acxiom


#3 Media, A mind altering experience.
Creating new forms of media has turned into creating new ways of learning. In Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death (Pg. 142) he talks about how education, the way we learn, and how television has changed that. He often references Sesame Street as a major player in making television a media for education. I have found this to be very true in many aspects. Once a new media technology comes out we adapt our minds to include it in our lives. So when the internet came we adjusted to using it because it was so much easier then reaching book and newspapers in the library. Now the computer has changed the format for which we learn. Our minds no longer want to learn without the internet we learn better using short bursts of information given to us on the internet, not looking through many pages in a book to find a certain fact. In the text Feed you can really tell how technology can change the way we learn. On page 26 and 27 in Feed you can see that they aren't even given the option to search for information it is just sent to them automatically, there is no effort whatsoever on the minds part. Now, is this good or bad, I think it can be both, but it sure does affect how we learn and gather our knowledge.
Mrs. Obama teaching kids how to grow their own vegetables on Sesame Street.


#4 Politics in Media

I have found it to be mind blowing the amount of control politics have on media. In the book Media and Society it has a portion of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Politicians passed this act and many of them reaped the benefits from it. This act did many things such as (Media and Society pg 91):
*Giving any single entity no limit on number of stations they can own.
*Putting no limit on national radio station ownership.
*And increase the amount of local radio stations that can be owned a single entity.

In Censored 2010 they talk about declaring a truth emergency (pg 197), asking if corporate media has failed to give us important information about issues facing the nation. They control what we hear about issues such as the War in Iraq, they place experts onto stations to talk about issues like war. If they choose to not tell us something or to spin it a certain way, we have no say. Putting Media outlets under a few as possible corporations has allowed the government to more easily control the message they want sent out.

Affects of the 1996 Telecommunications Act on Radio




#5 Corporate Power
First 1/2 of this video wouldn't let me embed it, but here is the link to the video

This is the second 1/2 of the movie


In Censored 2010 (pg 251) the book talks about "The Hyperreality of a Failing Corporate Media System". It talks about how a major media corporation has the power to report "news" in a hyperreality format where you are unable to distinguish between what is real and what isn't. And in Media and Society (pg 47) they argue that some critics think corporate takeovers of media in print have geared themselves more toward entertaining and attracting consumers instead of informing citizens of important local and world issues.



#6 How to attract to different parts of the Triune Brain (Reptilian, Limbic, and Neocortex)

Before this class I didn't truly understand how appeal to different parts of the brain. The brain is the most complex living thing in the universe. The three major parts of the Brain consist of:

Reptilian - Oldest part of brain, Intelectual, regular body functions such as heartbeat
- Eating, Mating, Fighting, Running Away


Limbic - Emotional or Feeling Brian,
- Processes pictures/images & Music

Neocortex - Newest par of the brain, Thinking or Rational Brain
- Higher level of thinking, Reading and Writing

In Amusing Ourselves to Death (pg 27) Postman talks about the emergence of new major mediums and how it creates new forms of truth-telling. New mediums affect our triune brains differently whether it is text as in a book appealing to your neocortex or photography appealing to your limbic brain. Once you know what parts of the brain react to certain stimuli then it is easier to understand what types of media appeal to you.


#7 Hegemony Theory


Gramsci argued that groups in power can maintain their rule with force, consent, or by combining the two. (Media and Society pg. 165) To rule by force you must use institutions such as the police, military, or other agencies to threaten or physically coerce people so that they remain obedient. He did realize that power could be gained at the level of culture or ideology. In the U.S. we seem to be controlled more by our culture where we just take current social arrangements as is. For the Hegemony Theory to work we have to consent to our society, and we in the U.S. have learned to consent our society through, media, schools, and religion. All of those intitutions have convinced us successfully to consent to society through the use of our four tool sets (the Eight Shifts, the Seven Basic Principles of Media Education, and Persuasive Techniques). In Feed you can really see how media can implement hegemony. They repeat things, they even finish Link's sentences to further make him think the way they want him to (pg 14).


#8 Web 2.0 pros and cons


Pros
Web 2.0 allows us to easily communicate with one another. For example web 2.0 made it really easy for me to share photos that I took while studying abroad with family and friends back home. Web 2.0 applications include Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Blogger. Some social networking sites allow you to connect with people from your past or get to know current friends better. LinkedIn has become a online hub for networking in the business world. These sites have also let a non profit groups get their name out without using paid marketing. Web 2.0 has allowed many people to be more competitive in the job market like with Feed and when Violets father didn't get a job because he didn't have the feed (pg 288) .

Cons

As stated in the article Brave New World of Digital Intimacy, Thompson suggests that web 2.0 social networking sites have made it uncomfortable to talk on a cell phone for hours. The article With friends like these... suggests that web 2.0 disconnects us rather than connects us. The article also implies that sites may sell your personal information to advertisers. Has allowed employers to be able to search through your past and personal life. Making things easier and more accessible which could as Postman says turn us into not knowing what we are laughing about and why we stopped thinking about it (pg 163).

#9 Media Censoring News


In Censored 2010 the whole book talks about stories that they consider to be censored in the U.S. media outlets. They suggest that if corporate media spent more time reporting these censored stories that they deemed unimportant, they wouldn't be in such difficult situations (pg xiv). Media and Society mentions how politicians use media to affects certain messages and worldviews. We are persuaded to be censored by stories because the people reporting our news to us have become masters at using persuasive techniques and other aspects of our four tool sets to convince us in thinking the way that they want us to. For example entertainment news has become more important to many of us over world news, those media reporters are the ones who convinced us that entertainment news like knowing where Robert Pattinson had lunch was vital news.

#10 The Effect of Images as a Medium


Amusing Ourselves to Death states that photography and writing do not share the same universe of discourse. Pictures as a language is totally different. Effecting us differently. (pg 71) Like I talked about before writing appeals to the Neocortex where pictures and images appeal to the Limbic, we even use different parts of the brain to process it. Being visual appeals to us as more truth then writing. In Feed when Link goes to visit Violet before she dies her father is angry with him for not caring. Link doesn't seem to react much until he starts sending him shots of memory in image form. When he saw what happened to Violet the reality set in for him and he begged her father to stop sending the image memories (pg 289) Images being processed by the Limbic brain tend to effect us on an emotional level that no other medium can.

The Magic with Magic Hat (Media Meditation #8)

When you come to VT you learn about the major companies that started here. The first ones we are told about include Ben and Jerry's, Vermont Teddy Bear, and Magic Hat. Magic Hat is a steadily growing brewery that is based out of South Burlington.

Since I came to Burlington three and a half years ago I have witnessed them growing. There are multiple things that have contributed to Magic Hat's success.

1. Creative Designs

2. Funky Lingo

3. Connection with Music

4. Events and promos

5. Social Networking






Magic Hat has very successfully created themselves a personality that everyone wants to be friends with. They know their market and how to reach them. I applied for an internship at Magic Hat my sophomore year at Champlain and lost the spot to a senior. Now that I and a senior and have grown and know more about what I want to do with my marketing major I have applied again (Interview on Wednesday -keeping my fingers crossed). The reason why I would love to intern with Magic Hat is because of their marketing department. They have figured out how to promote and run events that Market their brand to their consumers.

In Media Society on page 25 there is a simplified model of media and the social world. This model shows "that all components of the media, as well as the audience, exist within the broader framework of the social world". Magic Hat has found a way to market without their consumers feeling like they are being marketed to. They host social events most of the time based around music where their consumers go to socialize and have a good time. They see the Magic Hat logo or receive a Tweet from Magic Hat on Twitter and they don't feel annoyed or bothered it is more of an invitation from a friend, inviting you along to have a good time.

When you go onto the New Magic Hat web page they have section titled Get Social. From there you can connect to their Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter. They are keeping up with the times as does their target market and they seen the success in doing so. Through their Twitter page fans can get remind about events, told about contests, or just get information that Magic Hat thought was interesting. I won tickets to see a band play a Metronome through a link that Magic Hat posted on Twitter. On the same day as the show I won tickets to I found out about a live video stream they were having via Twitter. During this live stream you watched them talk with the band that was going to be at Metronome that night. You could also Tweet to them with questions you wanted answered. My roommate had a question about home brewing that she got answered during the live video stream. All of this marketing is through mediums where the consumer is choosing to be marketed to. Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter are all social networking sites where you choose to follow an organization or person to know more about them.

All of these things have given Magic Hat's its magic to appeal to their market as a friend rather than a money hungry beer company. This is the type of organization I want to work with, they know how to do their jobs and still have fun with it.

All In One - Media Convergence (Media Meditation #7)

Media Concergence is the "phenomenon involving the interlocking of computing and information technology companies, telecommunications networks, and content providers from the publishing worlds for newpapers, magazines, music, radio, television, films, and entertainment software".
So everything is coming together in one place. The three Cs - computing, communications, and content are brought together with media convergence. I want to talk about a few of the applications of media convergence that I have found interesting.



Cell Phones (Android Phones)


I just ordered a new cell phone recently. The one I have currently is a smart phone but I'm not paying for internet. I am on a family plan and with renewing our contract with Sprint we all receive free data plans. When looking through my phone options I came across the HTC Hero, a phone that has the new Android operating system technology in it. Like all smart phones it is bringing together many different technologies. Phones such as the HTC Hero want to be an all in one phone. If you have this you don't need a computer, ipod, or gps because they are all in your phone. I am very excited to try this new phone out and how I adapt to it, if I fall in love with how convenient it is, or if it will be too complicated for me. I am also interested to see if I use all or most of the applications it offers.


These phones are also opening a whole new landscape for marketers. Consumers now have 24/7 contact with the internet. Consumer behavior is going change with this new technology and marketers are going to have to adapt and figure out how to use this to their advantage. In the book Media Society it talks about technological determinism and how technology or technological advances are the "central casual element in processes of social change" (Pg 305). This means that with this new advance in technology there comes social change which without a doubt changes the way marketers are going to have to reach their target markets. So, keeping up to date with new technology is a good thing for me since I am a marketing major. Picking the Hero Android phone was probably a good choice.

Just like with the iphone, Android phones have applications. One that I found very cool was it's scanner application.



Google Wave



Another new media convergence that recently come into my life is Google Wave. I recently received an invite to join the testing stages of Google Wave. Shared space to discuss and communicate with other members of Google Wave using text, videos, photos, maps, and more. It is equal parts conversation and document. It seems to me to hopefully one day be an ideal work space for groups. If you needed to have a business meeting to discuss a project but members of this meeting were located all over the country you would be able to pick a time to meet on Google Wave. Here you would be able to have a live video chat, while working live on a common document. It also will be able to keep a record of your typed conversations or edits that you have made.



In the book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman talks about teaching as an amusing activity (pg 142). In this he talks about learning through the television. He notes that television is "creating new conceptions of knowledge and hot it is acquired" (pg 145). Google Wave may also be a tool that changes the way we learn or are educated. I know that I personally have been told that taking a school course online is a bad idea, you don't learn as much and don't get as much out of it. What if online courses used a medium such as Google Wave to conduct their class? They could have a live video chat, where they could tech and have a discussion about it at the same time. They could possibly help clarify or add to their lessons with pictures, videos, or maps.


Oh and look at this Here is a picture of a Android phone and an iphone with the Google Wave on it! - ALL IN ONE!

How do girls and women see themselves in the media mirror? (Media Meditation #6)

The media has this weird way of controlling us. Changing the way we perceive things, especially when it comes to body image. You can go back in history and see the trends in female body images in fashion. From Marilyn Monroe who would now be considered a plus size model, to Twiggy - the first super skinny fashion icon. Currently, French politicians are campaigning for a new law that will result in government health warnings on pictures that have been enhanced by photoshop. They are doing this in hope to regulate the images being seen by female youth and distorting views on what they should look like.




Here is a video on why the French feel like there should be a law regulating these photoshopped images.

Ralph Lauren had some controversy back in September of 2009 when the blog site Boing Boing were the first ones to recognize the photoshop work on one of their advertisements. The title of this Article was "Ralph Lauren opens new outlet store in the Uncanny Valley". The only text in the article other than the picture of the ad was "Dude, her head's bigger then her pelvis". This picture really shows how the media can portray unrealistic ideals to women and girls who see their ads. You can even see in the picture where the plaid colors don't match up. It is very disturbing that someone actually put this together and went...yes this looks good.



I know I have been referencing the Book Feed a lot, but this makes me think of the situation where all the popular girls decide lesions are cool because they saw people in the shows they watch getting them. In the Limbo and Prayer chapter Calista get an artificial lesion on the back of her neck to be cool and attract this guy Link who is likes. He even thinks this new lesion is attractive and tickles it. In the chapter Flat Hope (pg 190) Quendy, who is jealous of the attention Calista is getting, arrives to the party and everyone goes silent, her whole skin was cut up with artificial lesions that she got done to herself the day before. This whole epidemic of lesions started because the their feeds were doing it to them. But since their feeds made the lesions seem like they were cool, everyone to who had one just thought the same way, even going so far as to create lesions artificially to look cooler. Calista even says at one point "because seeing what's inside of you, all your guts, is just so sexy". This situation in the book makes me think about ads such as the Ralph Lauren ad I talked about above, and how eating disorders can start. Girls want to look skinny, like celebrities or like the girl in the ad so they don't eat, or they throw up. The more girls that think that kind of behavior is okay the more girls develop eating disorders and think that they HAVE to be skinny to be beautiful.

How Old Are You? And what social media do you use? (Media Meditation #5)

While being in college and learning more and more about social media I have noticed the wide range of differences in use by different age groups. I have seen this mostly through comparing teachers vs my parents, which are the same age group but use social media differently. I also have noticed how my sister that is 24, my brother who is 18 and myself who is 21 and how we use social media differently.

Here is a brief list of age groups and how they use social media differently. For more information go here.

Ages 12-25: Mobile oriented social media tools, uses text messaging often. Goes on social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube and MySpace. This age group loves videos and and anything with text she be as short as possible.

Ages 25-45: Most popular social media tool is e-mail. Facebook Twitter - Uses Blackberry or iPhone apps. Likes less text in blogs and on websites and enjoys video.

Ages 46-55: Uses Web about 90%of the time. Rarely uses text messaging. They will read and use blogs but rarely a microblog. They will probably print out articles online, they are textual and aren't visual through images and video.

Ages 55 and over: Media consumption habits - Radio, TV, Print News. When they use social media they like to work inside a framework such as Facebook.

This reminds me of the Book Feed. One Example would be when Violets father tells Titus about when he decide Violet needed a Feed. He went on an interview and they tried to chat with him on his feed but he didn't have one. He was older, behind the times, and that caused him not to get the job (pg 288). The feed was a necessary tool to have if you wanted to get a job and interact socially. Imagine if you met someone who didn't have a computer. No Facebook. No E-mail. Nothing. Wouldn't you think it was a little odd?

Only my teachers that are in the field that requires it seem to be really up to date with social media. My mother, whose job is running a restaurant only got a Facebook when I went abroad because it was easier to see my pictures and see what I was up to. She had to adapt to my use of social media to interact with me. Once I got home she barely used Facebook anymore. It was only until she decided to run for Council at Large that she got someone to make her a political page on Facebook and she started using it again.

My Sister, who is only 24, three years older than I am, feels like she is behind the times when it comes to social media. I came home for Thanksgiving and she asked me about Twitter. She works at a PR firm and they mentioned it. I had to explain to her what it did and how you could use it from a business point of view. She took notes. But even I feel like if I blink my eyes I could be behind the times. First I felt it with Twitter, and not that I have Twitter, Google Wave came out. I just got my invite but I have no idea how to use it yet.

And my little brother uses Social Media a lot differently then both me and my sister. He uses social media through video games, it allows them to have live chats with different people around the world. He also uses his cell phone very often to use the internet.



So, moral of the story if I want to be able to get a job when I graduate, especially in the marketing field, I better not blink.

Reel Bad Arabs - (Media Meditation #4)

Even if Hollywood movie creators don't mean to, they are persuading us into demonizing Arabs. Through their films they are creating one-dimensional stereotypical Arab characters. They use these characters as villains and comic relief, they are seen as dangerous and incompetent characters. From everything we have learned throughout class we know that media and government go hand in hand with each other. The same goes for movies. The American government has continuously made it clear what side they are on, and for the most part is wasn't in favor of Arabs. Hollywood movies depict that relationship, and the idea that Arabs are the villeins in every situation. This is shown very clearly in the movie "Rules of Engagement" where you are lead to believe a shooting on a Arabic crowd was started by America Marines, it makes you start to humanize the Arabs but the more the movie goes on the more you realize that you were wrong for humanizing them. In the end it comes out that the crowd shot at the marines first, thus justifying the killing of "innocent" people.



To give you a little understanding on how I viewed this movie I would like to give you a little background about me. I am 1/2 Arabic. My mother is 100% Lebanese, so while it was only my great grandparents who where born in Lebanon, this movie still really interested me. My Situ (Grandmother) was fluent in Arabic but only very often spoke it. Both my grandparents grew up in a time where it was better to blend in as Americans. They never taught their children to speak Arabic. She did make the most amazing Arabic food I have ever tasted, and I grew up going to a primarily Lebanese Maronite Catholic Church. Maybe due to the fact that I am only 50% Lebonese or that I never lived in Lebanon,but I don't look very "Arabic", so I didn't get many of the stereotypes that many other children of middle eastern decent did. But I have family and friends that look more Arabic then I do, and have experienced people believing the stereotypes that Hollywood feeds them. One of my more vivid memories when I thought being Arabic was a bad thing was when I was applying to college. I thought that since when everyone else put down that they were "ethnic" in some way, Spanish, Native American, African American, that being Arabic may help me stand out more too. When I brought this up to my mom she kind of laughed it off and said that it may work against you more then for me. And even though she was laughing I could tell that she was being serious.


The first part of Reel Bad Arabs that really opened my eyes was when it talked about the Disney movie Aladdin. I loved this movie when I was younger, I didn't think twice about the Arab stereotypes that I now see are so negative and abundant. My first question was why did my Mother let me watch this movie? Because while I may have been to young at the time to realize what was being shown to me she wasn't. The opening song to this movie has very clear lyrics that say, "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face, its barbaric, but hey it's home". I asked her about this and she said that she didn't even think twice about it. Aladdin is a child's movie, that was made for enjoyment and laughter. This made me think about when Dr. Williams said that the Reel Bad Arabs video was shown to a group of students, some of which were Arabs and one of The Arab students said that many of those videos where shown in her country and that even there they didn't realize the effects of showing Arabs in a false negative light could do. They were see an an entertainment source, not a medium to breed a stereotypical hate against the Arab people.



When Jack Shaheen, the featured scholar in the video talked about the War in Iraq and perhaps how it made it easier to go into war because we had more than a century of seeing Arabs vilified in our media. On September 11th we saw 19 Arab terrorists cause the deaths of nearly 3000 people, our media and trained mind made us think that action reflected all Arabs and their beliefs. We don't do this to all terrorist groups. We never thought that members of the KKK reflect all white Christians. It is only with Arabs that in this day and age that after September 11th we saw high increase in hate crimes and even our own government condoned racial profiling. This in itself demonstrated the power of film that even with all the facts staring us in the face that not all Arabs are bad, that we still embrace the mythology and stereotypes given to us by the media. Many of us are more comfortable with those prejudices then admitting there is more to it, then all Arabs are Really Bad. We dehumanize them, so is it any wonder or surprise that when innocent Arabs are killed or tortured that we don't feel an compassion, or that we even light of it?



We don't even notice that any of this is going on. We are being persuaded into thinking a certain way and we don't even realize it. I have middle eastern, Arabic blood in me and I don't even realize it. The Arab student that watched this film that Dr. Williams from what he told to us didn't even really seem to realize it. And that is scary, that we are so easily persuaded into vilifying a people without even knowing it.

I Image Googled Arabs and these are some pictures that came up:

Awareness Through Music (Media Meditation #3)

Michael Franti and Spearhead are very socially and politically conscious musicians, as well as advocates for peace in the middle east. After September 11th Franti wrote the song "Bomb the World". This song featured lyrics such as "You can bomb the world to pieces, but you can't bomb it into peace". These lyrics have shown up on protest signs and t-shirts all over the world, at demonstrations, large and small, for peace. He has become known as an artist that sings what he believes in. Michael Franti & Spearhead released the Yell Fire! album, inspired by Franti's trip to Israel, Baghdad, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The song Yell Fire!, with the same name as the album title is a good example of one of his songs with a strong meaning behind it.


He has even wrote a song showing his support for President Obama.




You know that music awareness affects listeners when in March of 2003 MTV banned music videos with war-related titles, lyrics or images. According to an article "MTV drops war-themed pop videos" written by The Guardian "MTV, like many other broadcasters, feels content should reflect audience sensitivities at this time of war," an MTV spokeswoman said. "There will be heightened public sensitivity to representations of war, soldiers, bombing, destruction of buildings and public unrest at home," stated the memo from Mark Sunderland, the broadcast standards manager of MTV Networks Europe. Yea right, MTV was probably told that they should refrain from showing these videos by the man upstairs. Not because they were being sensitive to their viewers but they didn't want these videos to evoke change or upset the public to a level where they choose to act on it...maybe even decide to protest against the war.


Another musician with a strong voice in preaching awareness is Ani DiFranco, singer, guitarist, songwriter, feminist, and gay rights activist among other things. "On July 21, 2006, DiFranco received the 'Woman of Courage Award' at the National Organization for Women (NOW) Conference and Young Feminist Summit in Albany, New York. Past winners have included singer and actress Barbra Streisand and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. DiFranco is one of the first musicians to receive the award, given each year to a woman who has set herself apart by her contributions to the feminist movement." (Wikipedia). Her songs talk about social issues such as: racism, sexism, sexual abuse, homophobia, reproductive rights, poverty, and war.

Here are two songs that show her ability to share awareness through music.





Another Group to note would be Liyana, a musical group from Zimbabwe who spreads special needs awareness through music.



It is key to note that all of the musicians I talked about above have gained an enormous increase in the amount of listeners they have from social media sites such as youtube. The technological shift from analog to digital has definitely helped them spread their message of awareness, which goes along with the cultural shift of how we choose to find music. They are persuading us to take action or be aware through value messaging, and for these artist depending on which side you take are mostly positive. But as we have seen music can promote bad value messages such as the Lil John song "Can't Stop Pimping" which was talked about in Censored 2010 in reference to Human Trafficking and Domestic Prostitution Reconsidered (pg. 346). His lyrics state "They don't keep nothin dough, They bring it straight to daddy, You catch them stealin dawg, You beat that ass badly". This obviously is music being used to send negative value messaging. I guess just like everything in life, you have to take the good with the bad. It just sucks to see the bad being viewed more by the public then the good.

The Truman Show - Calling a Corporation Mommy and Daddy (Media Meditation 2)

The Truman Show is a movie that was made to be dissected by a class like like Contemporary Media Issues. The main point to this movie is the media and its destructive powers when controlled by one of the mega corporations. Truman Burbank was the first child to be legally adopted at birth by a corporation. They stuck him in a massive Hollywood set and filmed him growing up. They created what Censored 2010 calls a Hyperreality, the inability to distinguish between what is real and what is not (pg. 251). Truman had no idea that he was not living in reality and that everyone around him was acting. Truman thinks that he is an ordinary man with an ordinary life and has no idea about how he is exploited by a corporation.


This brings up the question of how far is going to go? The idea of a corporation legally adopting a human being to do what they want with, seems ridiculous to us now...but maybe in 20, 50, 100 years it could be common occurrence that isn't even noticed by the average human being. In Postmans, Amusing Ourselves To Death, he says "Television has achieved the status of 'meta-medium' - an instrument that directs not only our knowledge of the world, but our knowledge of ways of knowing as well" (pg 79).

For Truman the corporation who adopted him put him into this controlled universe and dictated to him what was reality. This makes me think about the mega media outlets and how the fewer the corporations that control our major forms of news the more they control 'our reality'. Just like mega corporations controlling our governemnent and dictating legislature.



Once Truman starts to question his reality, his "friends and family" try to reassure him that everything is okay, the idea behind persuasion through "Big Lie" couldn't have been more present than in this movie. He starts to see his reality unravel around him and this leads him to mistrust everyone around him. That causes the corporation to get upset that their money maker could possibly put an end to their show. They go so far as to almost kill Truman to keep their show going. This made me think of the chapter in Censored "Index on Censorship 2008-2009" (pg. 241-250). In this chapter is goes over all the extreme lengths governments or other outlets have gone to keep certain information from being reported and viewed by the public.

Tweet Tweet, Twitters #3 Chick, Ellen Degeneres (Media Meditation #1)

How did Ellen get to be the #3 Twitterer?

I am rather new to Twitter but one of the first people I choose to follow was Ellen Degeneres’s, TheEllenShow. I choose to follow her after my roommate mentioned how she followed her and really enjoyed her tweets. Since then I have seen her Tweets all over my wall, and it occurred to me how smart she was being. Ellen was tweeting about up coming shows, fun events, articles, or other various things that either she or her Twitter team thought was interesting enough to share. What I believe really skyrocketed her followers was when she decided to hold contests or leak special information specifically on Twitter for her followers. This gave them the opportunity to win prizes and connect more with Ellen and the show.

Here is a video of Ellen discussing the beginning of her Twitter experience. She started just like everyone else hearing about Twitter through a friend. Even if in this case that friend was P.Diddy.

Ellen Talks Twitter



So many people are on Twitter now, updating their Tweets every couple of minutes. I found this article called, Tweeting by Thinking, through Magic Hats Twitter, and after reading it I couldn't help but think of the book Feed. In Feed they all had "feeds" installed in their heads which is like basically a computer hooked up to your brain. In this article a man was able to send a Tweet simply by thinking. It really hows how new technology can affect us and make us think differently and create even newer technology off of it, which could be used in so many different ways.


While reading Media Society, I came across the term Technological Determinism on page 305, which according to the book means, "an approach that identifies technology, or technological advances, as the central casual element in processes of social change".

Twitter has spawned a new level of social networking online and it has effected social change. Ellen brought about change to her show and the amount of followers and their interaction with the show through Twitter. TheEllenShow on Twitter was getting so popular that Ellen had to create a whole team dedicated to running her Twitter account.

Ellen Degeneres Twitter Team




Here Are some of the examples of how Ellen Tweets, these came right from her Twitter account:

*TheEllenShow: Attention Los Angeles Followers: Who wants prizes! Less than a half hour! Grab your red dresses & O Mag & get to The Grove! Santa's Workshop

--Ellen earlier Tweeted and let everyone view video and photos of her photo shoot with Opera for O magazine. Later when the magazine was published she had this promotion through exclusively Twitter. Here is the video from the Photo shoot with Opera.



* TheEllenShow: My tweets are real! RT @furtherpeace Are you really Ellen, or someone posting for Ellen?

*TheEllenShow: Want more footage from my trip to Chicago? Here's me having some fun in the Rockies: See it @ThisISGMC

*TheEllenShow: Everyone that who participated in my twitter challenge today got tickets to 12 days! Thanks for playing. It pays to follow me!

US Repression of Haiti Continues

Response to Censored 2010 Article: US Repression of Haiti Continues

Essential Facts

1. The United States Government as of March 2009 has destroyed 155 buildings in the town of Cite Soleil in Haiti, with numbers rising, to expand the occupying UN force's military base. The contractor for this expansion is the US company DynCorp, a quasi-official arm of the Pentagon and the CIA. This expansion and demolition of mostly homes started without warning to the people living in them.

UN Military Base in Haiti


2. Lawyer Evel Fanfan, the president of the Association of University Graduates Motived for Haiti with Rights (AUMOHD) said "The authorities have not told them what is being done, if they will be relocated, how much they will be compensated or even if they will be compensated. Legally, the Haitian government has not authorized anybody to go anything." "There is no paper, no decree, no order which authorizes it."

3. June 23, 2008 RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights released a report revealing the Bush administration's blocking of "potentially lifesaving" aid to Haiti in order to meddle in the impoverished nation's political affairs.

UPDATES

4. The aid was intended to fund water and sanitation projects to improve "the quality of life - particularly for women and children - and to reduce incidence of disease and child mortality"


5. "Water is the leading cause of infant mortality and illness in children....Haiti now has the highest infant mortality rate in the western hemisphere....[and] more than half of all deaths in Haiti were due to water-borne gastrointestinal diseases."(Washington, DC-based International Action)



6. By blocking crucial aid, The Bush Administration could have potentially caused the deaths of thousands of Haitians, for cynical and self-interested political purposes. Yet, this story wasn't worthy of coverage by the US mainstream media.

7. The report written by the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights sparked Congress to investigate possible wronge doing, but the people of Haiti continue to feel the effects and suffer due to the actions taken by the U.S. There is slow but continuous work being done to improve the water quality in Haiti.

There are organizations out there trying to speed up the process of bringing clean water to Haiti such as Charity: Water



Lexis Nexis Search

When searching on Lexis Nexis I couldn't find one article that directly referenced my story. This was very surprising to me, because although I understand this is a censored story, I thought this book was popular enough to be referenced and talked about. There were a bunch talking about Haiti and the problems they were and are having but I found only one mentioning the United States withholding monetary aid and aiding with the unauthorized expansion of the UN military base.

Article found in Lexis Nexis Search Key terms used: Haiti, US withholding aid -
Rights Groups Assail U.S. for Withholding Aid to Haiti, Citing Political Motives

I feel as though this story is a true "censored story, I couldn't believe the lack of information on Lexis Nexis and the web in general. I spend so much time trying to search, using different keywords and phrases the lack of information was making me think maybe I just wasn't searching properly. Try searching yourself, can you find more information linking the United States and the repression of Haiti?


Outside Research

I did some outside research just to see if I could find any more information that was covered in the Censored Story "US Repression of Haiti Continues".

Websites Found:
This article (Haiti's UN military base expanding: What is Washington up to in Cite Soleil?) I stumbled upon, and then later realized it was one of the articles that was used as a source for the Censored story. There is a second article if you scroll down that is worth reading.

Social Networking Sites

I thought I would try and do some research social networking sites to see if anyone was discussing issues that were brought up in the censored article.

I found four Facebook pages came up when i searched Haiti / Water. All four groups have a total of an extremely low 308 members.

I Found one group on Facebook called The Haiti They Never Showed Us, which has 3,307 members. Under their description it says:
"THIS GROUP IS TO OPEN EVERYBODY'S EYES ON THE SWEET ISLAND OF HAITI. THIS IS AN INSIDE LOOK OF WHAT MY BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY LOOKS LIKE. I WOULD LIKE FOR EVERYONE TO ADD PHOTO'S, VIDEO'S, STORIES WHATEVER RELATES TO HAITI PUT IT ON. THIS GROUP IS FOR US!"

On Twitter I found organizations that are dedicated to making a positive change in Haiti such as:

Yéle Haiti is a grassroots movement inspiring change in Haiti through programs in education, sports, the arts and environment.

FutureHaiti, a Twitter page that updates its followers on news and plans for the future for Haiti.

haitinewsnet Latest news and headlines about Haiti and Haitians from.Haitian radio stations worldwide

and many other pages that are affiliated with Haiti but none that Tweet about US involvement with Haiti.

Just For Fun!
Haitian Kompa Breakdance Popping by Robot Scorpion

Neil Postman's AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH

Three specific characteristics of the "Typographic Mind.”

Planned out and structured: Print allowed people to think about what they wanted to say. There was time to do research, reference outside materials, and think about how to structure what was being said.

Serious: Typography called upon the mind to work harder than before. More information had to be processed, which caused people to step back from their words. This made both writing and the spoken language more serious and impersonal.

Analytical: Readers and writers with a typographic mind had to analyze what they were reading and writing. Some of the things being analyzed were whether or not the content being read was the truth. Since information could be gathered from multiple sources people where able to form their own opinion.

Postman suggests that the twin inventions of 19th century Telegraphy and Photography challenged Typography's monopoly on public discourse. How, specifically did each of these two new media/communications inventions do this?

Telegraphy: Broke down communication barriers and unified American discourse. To gain information you no longer had to wait for printed material to arrive. It also was a turning point where we started receiving useless information from around the U.S. This information didn’t affect our everyday lives, but yet entertained us. People where so excited by the telegraph sending news to places that never would have received that information otherwise.

Photography: With photos came the idea of “seeing is believing”. Photos where concrete representation of a time and place. Like the first pictures of a man walking on the moon solidified that it happened. Photos challenged typography’s monopoly on public discourse by changing what the public remembered about people, and needing photo to show or understand truth. An example in the book was Albert Einstein. Before photography people would have remembered Albert Einstein by his words and theories, with the photo people tended to remember his photo, what he looked like.






What does Postman mean by "The Peek-A-Boo World," and can you give an example of this world from your own media experiences?

When Postman describes “The Peek-A-Boo World” he is talking about the amount of information popping in and out of our lives. It could be through television or any other media. This information has little to no affect on our everyday activities.

Today we are bombarded with useless information. The top supplier that I can think of is celebrity news. Even when you are looking through respected news papers you can find out which celebrity couples are breaking up, and where Brad and Angelina went for the weekend. Entertainment news has become a very large part my “Peek-A-Boo World”. Here is a video of a entertainment news program called The Soup:




Discuss THREE specific ways in which Postman explains how the medium of television transforms the epistemological nature of each of the following:

A. Public discourse about religion
• With the transfer of religion to television Postman describes how authenticity is lost in the process. People used to go to churches or synagogues now they participate in religion through a television set in the living room, bedroom, or kitchen. They watch a religious reading being read on the same screen as they do their soap operas.
• Religion on T.V. became a form of entertainment instead of enlightenment. Preachers alter their content to maximize their ratings. They tailor their shows to get the widest range of people to watch them.
• It became less about what was being preached and more about who was preaching it and in what fashion where they doing it in. Postman writes, “Though His name is invoked repeatedly, the concreteness and persistence of the image of the preacher carries the clear message that it is he, not He, who must be worshipped”.
Here is a video of an SNL skit that makes fun of religious figures that became famous through religious television as an entertainment:


B. Public discourse about politics
• The television allowed the public to see what the political candidate looked like while they talked about their stances. Voting and public option became more about what the candidate looked like rather than the candidate’s plans and knowledge.
• Politics used television to communicate to the public. To get viewers to watch politics became a form of entertainment. Postman writes, “If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are”.
• Political candidates choose to advertise on television through the form of commercials. This gave the public the impression that all problems could be easily fixed since they could get all the information they needed in the 30 second ad. They no longer had a need or want to listen to long speeches or written literature with details and explanations.
C. Public discourse about education
• Creating a different curriculum for how knowledge is acquired. Postman explains that even with educational programs they teach the viewer how to gain knowledge through television and not promote knowledge in the classroom.
• Television has made the school systems adapt to them instead of the school system figuring out how to make television work for them. Changing what is learned so that it goes along with what is entertaining on television.
• The television started a swing of teachers educating through drama. Like the television, drama got a good response. With time passing students were expecting learning to be entertaining and wouldn’t accept it otherwise.

What specific solutions does Postman offer to improve public communication in our "Peek A Boo" world, and our challenges to communicate in a thoughtful and rational manner in "An Age of Show Business"? In other words, how might we prevent a world in which we are "amusing ourselves to death"?

The first solution Postman suggest is “to create television programs whose intent would be, not to get people to stop watching television but to demonstrate how television ought to be viewed”. Postman also suggests using schools and education to gain knowledge about how we receive our media. Understand that all media is being presented to us in the form on entertainment, and with that your sense of what truth is changes.


HARD Question: Does Postman's thesis about television still apply to our public discourse in today's Age of the Internet? Please explain your reasoning in 4-5 sentences.

Yes, I do believe that Postman’s thesis about television still applies to our public discourse in today’s Age of the Internet. Although, we have opened a world where we are able to search and seek out information, the way that information is presented to us is still in the form of entertainment for the most part. Internet has allowed us to find more sources but that doesn’t mean that they are credible. For example some see wikipedia as a search engine that delivers the truth instead of seeking out a more credible source.