Wednesday, April 30, 2014

10 Media Revelations: Nikki Stys

1. Privacy no longer exists. With our current smartphones we are able to track our friends when they enable the location feature on any social media platform for example; putting a location on their Instagram posts, tweets or status updates. You can see what time your friends read your Facebook messages or even iMessages. Everything we do on the Internet has the potential to be monitored by anyone.

"Computer hackers have the ability to infiltrate Internet databases to obtain personal information and to steal credit card numbers from online retailers (Campbell, 69)."

"And given the endless archives of the Internet, such images never really go away but can be accessed by anyone with enough skills to find them (Campbell, 559)."




2. We have gone from objective to subjective. Because everyone feels that they are able to post their every thought on social media we are undergoing a major discursive shift. Everyone has an opinion and social media allows that to happen. When something goes crazy during a television show or sporting event you can often find it trending on twitter via the hashtag, when Michael Pineda the New York Yankee pitcher was caught using pine tar during a Red Sox vs. Yankees game the twitter world went crazy. His name was trending for hours and even the next day, every Red Sox fan/Bostonian was bashing him and every New York fan was backing him up.

"Now with the proliferation of social media, and in particular Twitter, we can discuss that program with our friends-and with strangers as we watch the show (Campbell, 13)."

"Many TV shows now gauge their popularity with audiences by how many people are "live tweeting" it, and by how many related trending topics they have on Twitter (Campbell, 14)."


3. Technology has become a part of our daily lives, no matter how hard we try to avoid it. All social media platforms give us the option to use the location services so that whoever is reading your posts knows where you are and what you’re doing. People have become consumed with twitter, where you can post a tweet about anything and people have become addicted to reading about it. Rob Delaney has one of the funniest twitter accounts, it has become popular enough that he was even offered a book deal, his fans always want to know what he is going to tweet next.

"Although about 80 percent of U.S households are connected to the Internet, there are big gaps in access, particularly in terms of age and education (Campbell, 69)."

"Today when kids announce they are "on the computer," many parent wonder whether they are writing a term paper, playing a video game, chatting on Facebook, or peering at pornography (Campbell, 16)."




4. Social media has become such an important part of our generation. It is hard to find someone who doesn’t own a smartphone in todays world, and if they do they will soon be under the smartphone spell sweeping the nation and be forced to give in. Ask any child you see what they know about technology and their responses will amaze you, most of them already have cell phones and haven’t reached the 7th grade yet. We have grown up in a digital age and cant escape it. In the movie Digital Nation they mention that kids spend 50 hours per week with digital media. Any social media platform can be a great distraction when trying to accomplish homework as I found myself trying to watch Netflix and type at the same time, but don’t worry I stopped.

"Gender may play a factor in game addiction (Campbell, 98)."

"For example, a 2012 study found that only 41 percent of Americans over the age of 65 go online, compared with 74 percent of Americans ages 50 to 64...(Campbell, 69)"






5. Advertisers have improved their persuasive techniques to tug at our limbic brains. The limbic brain is the section of the brain that processes music, images, and feelings. For example in the Puppy Love commercial by Budweiser the production techniques are impeccable, where the climax of the song plays during the saddest part of the commercial. Also, the GoPro commercials ignite our fight or flight and play up flattery of the athlete.

"Most consumer ads, however, merely create a mood or tell stories about products without revealing much else (Campbell, 399)."

"To increase their revenues, media outlets try to influence everything from how people shop to how they vote (Campbell, 16)."



6. In order to make their commercials more relatable many companies are using the plain folk technique. The commercial I chose for the first media project about the Microsoft surface plays to this because of its plain folk setting and the plain folk themselves. The commercial begins and ends in a business park and you see a wide range of people from businessmen and women to schoolgirls and grandparents. You can also see plain folk being used in commercials like Best Buds by Budweiser because it takes place at an animal shelter and the main characters are a puppy and a farmer.

"In a way, the Facebook technique of sponsored stories fits this model since it depends on their friends' endorsements of products rather than the words or images of stars or athletes (Campbell, 400)."

"Another technique, the plain folks pitch, associated a product with simplicity. Over the years, Volkswagen ("Drivers Wanted"), General Electric ("We bring good things to life"), and Microsoft (I'm a PC and Windows was my idea") have each used slogans that stress how new technologies fit into the lives of ordinary people (Campbell, 399)." 




7. Multitaskers are terrible at multitasking. It’s extremely challenging for the brain to do more than one thing at a time. I find it impossible to succeed at multitasking. Multitaskers lose focus easily because the brain is switching from one thing to another instead of being able to do both at the same time. Although media is converging it doesn’t necessarily make it easier.
"The ability to access many different forms of media in one place is also changing the ways we engage with and consume media (Campbell, 13)."

"Media multitasking has let to growing media consumption, particularly for younger people. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that today's youth-now doing two or more things at once-packed ten hours and forty-five minutes worth of media content into the seven and a half hours they spent daily consuming media (Campbell, 13)."





8. Social media platforms have become a target for advertisers. You can see all over Facebook that there are advertisements for anything you could think of. I have noticed that Facebook even puts up advertisements that they think would be of interest to you based off your profile and what your friends “like”. This also happens on twitter, I just recently started to notice it. Random companies advertisements would start appearing in my twitter timeline and I don’t think they tailor the advertisements to whom I’m following. I’m thankful that Instagram rarely has advertisements posted on it because I think it takes away from the app itself.

"Most recently, companies have used seemingly innocuous online games to sell products like breakfast cereal to children (Campbell, 406)."

"Because children and teenagers influence up to $500 billion a year in family spending- on everything from snacks to cars- they are increasingly targeted by advertisers (Campbell, 407)."




9. Advertisers use the consumer to do their jobs for them. Advertisers use the consumer to create a stronger fan base for their product without having to spend lots of money on the advertisements. For example Tyler Oakley is a famous YouTuber and is often seen promoting everything from the Doritos Locos Tacos to Disney World. Social media allows the consumer to partake in the promotion of the product without knowing they are doing so.

"Children and teenagers, living in a culture dominated by TV ads, are often viewed as "consumer trainees" (Campbell, 407)."

"In television, getting product placements(also known as "brand integration") during shows is much more desirable than running traditional ads (Campbell, 404)."



10. With the current technology addiction, it comes with many social downfalls. Technology has greatly impacted how we interact with one another; our conversations have gone from face to face to cyber conversation. Technology has the effect on people that differ them from living in the moment, as they are completely consumed with what is on the screen in front of them.

"In a 2011 study of more than three thousand third through eighth graders from Singapore, one in ten were considered pathological gamers...(Campbell, 98)."

"Gender may play a factor in game addiction (Campbell, 98)."



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