Media Revelations Final Exam
Ten Revelations
Journalism has evolved to become a race to see who can get the story first. The value and accuracy of news stories has become more difficult to determine with the increasing access to information around the clock. Ever since the rise of online media resources such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, etc. information is easily manipulated and embellished; This makes it very hard to find trustworthy news sources because of how easy it is to access and post information on the internet. The rise of online news resources has created a world of journalism that puts more importance on the timeliness and quickness of a story instead of its accuracy, which typically results in grand errors and flaws in their stories.
- “...he also talked about the news-gathering process as a game that journalists play. It's now routine for local television stations, 24/7 cable news, and newspapers to run self-promotions about how they beat competitors to a story.” (Campbell 499)
- “It is not always clear, though, how the public is better served by a journalist's claim to have gotten a story first...Although readers and viewers might value the aggressiveness of reporters, the earliest reports are not necessarily better, more accurate, or as complete as stories written later with more context and perspective.” (Campbell 500)
- Big businesses rely on consumers to sell and promote products.
Advertising agencies often rely on their consumers for the promotion of products, campaigns, events, releases, and premiers. By placing advertisements on social websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram, advertisers leave the consumers on those sites to like, share, reblog, or retweet their advertisements. This allows the advertisements to spread amongst different friend groups and circles, which increases the popularity and profit of the ads. When a person likes or shares an ad, this allows the advertising agency to collect information about the interests of that person with the use of cookies.
- “A major objective of their paid media is to get earned media, or to convince online consumers to promote products in their own way.” (Campbell 398)
- “Knowing you like it, your friends view it ; they pass it along, it gets more earned media and eventually becomes viral—an even greater advertising achievement.” (Campbell 398)
- Cell phones are tracking devices.
With highly digitalized and technologically advanced cell phones, we have unknowingly positioned ourselves to be tracked and located at any moment. The softwares that have been placed into the cell phones that we purchase offer amazing features such as GPS, location services, and photo maps; though seemingly harmless, our cell phones' ability to track our location on the spot can pose a serious threat to many. As we have learned throughout the course, many individuals rely on their cell phones to complete tasks of every day life—almost everyone in the digital age almost always has their cell phones with or around them. The inability to separate person from cell phone makes it that much easier to track and locate whoever you want, which puts everyone at risk of 24/7 surveillance.
- “Internet surveillance involves tracking all of the communications over an ISP, which raises concerns about the privacy of thousands of other users.” (Campbell 68)
- “The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 extended the law to computer stored data and the Internet, although subsequent court decisions ruled that employees have no privacy rights in electronic communications conducted on their employer's equipment.” (Campbell 559)
- Printing businesses of all sorts are quickly going out of style as digital media takes over.Books, newspapers, and magazines all had their run of fame as the earliest mass mediums in the pre-digital age. With the help of new technology and inventions, the world of printing and publishing quickly flourished and grew over the last century. At the rise of the digital age, however, the world of printing is quickly diminishing as tablets, kindles, e-books, online magazines, and online newspapers become more popular and efficient. This increase in the popularity of digital reading has forced many businesses (bookstores, newspaper and magazine companies, publishers, etc.) to converge with the digitalizing of print in order to maintain the status of their flourishing companies.
- “First, rather than subscribing to a traditional paper, many readers now begin their day on their iPads, smartphones, or computers scanning a wide variety of news web sites, including those of print papers, cable news channels, newsmagazines, bloggers, and online-only news organizations. Such sources are increasingly taking over the roles pf more traditional forms of news..” (Campbell 290)
- “Still, the largest trade book publishers and independents alike find themselves struggling in the industry's digital upheaval and the dominance of Amazon.com in the distribution of e-books.” (Campbell 366)
- Advertisers sell products by appealing to consumers' emotions.
- After watching and analyzing a series of commercials during the course of the semester, I have been able to learn, understand, and witness the tactics advertisers use to effectively sell their products. Advertisers aim to create aesthetically pleasing advertisements that heavily appeal to the limbic brain which allows us to process feelings and emotions. With the right type of music, sounds, and images, advertisers can manipulate emotions to evoke certain reactions within their audience. A commercial's ability to successfully appeal to these emotions ultimately aid in the selling of certain products
- “They emphasized stereotyped appeals to women, believing that simple ads with emotional and even irrational content worked best.” (Campbell 388)
- “Eventually, however, through the influence of European design, television, and (now) multimedia devices, such as the iPad, images asserted themselves, and visual style became dominant in U.S advertising and ad agencies.” (Campbell 389)
- Certain types of media can have a negative impact on youth.
Growing up in the digital age means that many children have unlimited access to a wide array of uncensored, violent, and vulgar material. Despite the age requirements on movies, television shows, music, video games and websites, the easy accessibility of the internet allows for an easier access to such material. Early or frequent participation in distracting, violent, sexual, or inappropriate forms of media have been proven to result in aggression, violence, and behavioral issues within young children. These types of issues will continue as long as mediums such as Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Pornography sites, and inappropriate television shows remain accessible to children.
- “Violent and misogynistic content has from time to time spurred calls for more regulation of electronic games. But, as games permeate more of culture and increasingly come in nonstandard formats and genres, they may also become harder to define, and therefore, regulate.” (Campbell 96)
- “But the possible effects of such games have been debated for years, and video games have been charged as being a factor in violent episodes, such as the Columbine High School shootings in 1999.” (Campbell 99)
- Technology has made everything easily accessible.
As I stated above, the advancements in technology have made just about everything in today's society accessible at the click of a button. As long as we have access to the internet, we can easily obtain music, books, movies, television shows, newspapers, magazines, appliances, and clothing. Websites like Amazon allow us to buy just about anything and everything from the comfort of our own home—we don't even have to leave our houses to shop for groceries anymore! Before, things like books, encyclopedias, newspapers, and magazines were hard to obtain, but now they come just as easily as our wifi!
- “The open Internet—best represented by Google...and a Web browser—promised to put the entire World Wide Web at your fingertips.” (Campbell 61)
- “Today, sharing on the Internet is made easy with mobile devices and the ever-present social media “share” buttons.” (Campbell 45)
- Social media both separates and segregates people.
There is a huge double standard when it comes to the way media is said to affect certain groups and people. Some people argue that the usage of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr separates people from the real world—that the amount of time dedicated to theses social media sites take away from the experience of connecting with people face-to-face. On the other hand, many people believe that using these websites allows us to stay connected with friends and family by sharing photos, liking items, and posting on each others walls or timelines. Because of the validity of both statements, we can confirm that social media both separates and segregates people.
- “Of all the leading Internet sites, Facebook is one of the “stickiest,” with Americans staying on the social networking site, on average, about 20 percent of their overall time online.” (Campbell 64)
- “In just a decade, social media have changed the way we consume and relate to media and the way we communicate with others.” (Campbell 54)
- Many different radio stations play the same music because they are owned by the same company.
For years I wondered why all of my favorite radio stations only seemed to play the same ten or fifteen songs, and I often found myself confused when I would switch back and forth between stations and the same exact song would be playing on both of them. It wasn't until this semester that I learned this was because many of the radio stations that I listened to were owned by the same company. In chapter five, I learned that big radio companies buy out smaller radio stations in an attempt to control as much of the nation's airwaves as possible. Format radio and program logs are implemented by program managers to control the flow of the radio station. These program managers choose the most popular songs to be played on each station at a certain time,and because many radio stations are owned and run by a single company, many of the same songs are played on different stations.
- “Combined, Clear Channel, Cumulus, and CBS own roughly 1,500 radio stations (more than 10 percent of all U.S. Stations), dominate the fifty largest markets in the United States, and control about one-half of the entire radio industry's $17.4 billion revenue.” (Campbell 187)
- “The 1996 act allows individuals and companies to acquire as many radio stations as they want, with relaxed restrictions on the number of stations a single broadcaster may own in the same city...” (Campbell 186)
- Many advertisers use beautiful people to promote and sell their product.
After we were introduced to the persuasive techniques in the media matrix, I focused a lot of my attention on recognizing advertisers' usage of beautiful people in their ads. It never dawned on me that almost all of the ads I had come across in my lifetime only used seemingly attractive men, women, children, and babies to promote their product. I used to think that only fashion magazines and music videos strictly hired aesthetically pleasing people to sell their products or get their point across, but I began to notice that even the simplest of commercials like fast food restaurants and dental care only had beautiful people in their ads.
- “Worst of all, women, or even parts of women—with their heads cut from the frame—have been used as merely objects, associated with a particular product.” (Campbell 401)
- “A long-standing trend in advertising is the association of certain products with ultrathin female models, promoting a style of 'attractiveness' that girls and women are invited to emulate.” (Campbell 408
No comments:
Post a Comment