Top Ten Revelations: Aly Kibbee

Ten Media Revelations

1) Social media has started to become a huge source for advertisements. Companies have started using teens as their source of advertisement and they can advertise for free. Teens will ‘like’ certain things on Facebook or follow people on Twitter. The more likes the item gets, the more popular it gets and it starts to show up on people’s Facebook timelines and Twitter feeds.

•      “Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, provide a wealth of data for advertisers to mine.” (Campbell, 398) Based on what you have previously liked, or whom you follow, “target advertisements” will appear on you Facebook and Twitter feeds. These ads will be targeted directly to you and will most likely be items or services that are related to what you have previously liked.
•       “Bloggers often review products or restaurants as part of their content. Some bloggers with large followings have been paid to give positive reviews or promote products on their site.” (Campbell, 398) This is a good way for companies to advertise for a lower price and less effort. Instead of making their own ad, they just pay bloggers who were going to promote their product anyways. If the blogger doesn’t have a lot of followers the company most likely will not pay them. Bloggers are not the only ones who do this, but people on Twitter or Facebook unintentionally help advertise certain things by liking the product or by retweeting it.
•       http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/generation-like/

2) Privacy no longer exists. As media has progressed over the years, it has become impossible for                     one to have complete privacy. There are apps and devices that can track where you are at anytime. If you iMessage someone you can tell if they have read it or not, and what time they read it. With the Google Glass you can ask it where anyone of your friends who has a google account is and how far away they are from your current location. Therefore you no longer have any privacy because people can see what you are doing and where you are at all times. Also, it has become easier for media companies to invade an individual's privacy using the new technology on smartphones.

• "A number of laws also protect the privacy of regular citizens. For example, the Privacy Act of 1974 protects individuals' records from public disclosure unless individuals give written consent." (Campbell, 559) With this law, any private information that a given individual doesn't want made public cannot be shared unless they allow the information to be released. 
• "The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 extended the law to computer-stored data and the Internet, although subsequent court decisions ruled that employer's have no privacy rights in electronic communications conducted on their employer's equipment." (Campbell, 559) Now, any information on an individual's personal computer was not allowed to be looked at, but if an individual was doing personal business on his or her's employer's computer, the company would be allowed to look at it.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-qjhU6PB5U

3) We are the dumbest generation. Because of the progression of technology, teens often don't even know how to spell. When texting on a smartphone, spell check automatically spells out certain words for you as you type. Also, our generation's writing skills often struggle because we don't think in whole thoughts, but rather by paragraphs. Instead of sitting down and writing a paper completely with out interruption, we tell ourselves that if we finish one paragraph, we can look at our phone, or go on Twitter or Facebook before we start the next paragraph. Our thoughts then get interrupted and don't sound complete.

•  "New technologies, particularly cable television and the Internet, developed so quickly that traditional leaders in communication lost some of their control over information." (Campbell 9) With technology rising and becoming so popular, people slowly became dependent on it, making their intellectual intelligence slowly lessen.
•  "Some critics claim that popular culture, in the form of contemporary movies, television, and music, distracts students from serious literature and philosophy, thus stunting their imagination and undermining their ability to recognize great art." (Campbell 17) 
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/

4) The use of technology helps certain people connect with the outside world. While most people are able to speak and communicate with others face to face, some people are shy and don't like interacting the way most people do. Technology allows these people to communicate in their own way, whether it be by texting someone or by making a video or a picture collage and sharing it with their friends and family. Technology isn't all bad, and it does have some positive benefits.

• "...but the mobile phones of the twenty first century are substantially different creatures -- smartphones that go beyond voice calls. They can be used for texting, listening to music, watching movies, connecting to the Internet, playing games, and using hundreds of thousands of applications, or "apps" as they became quickly known" (Campbell 58) The use of smartphones lets people do so many things on their phones that they were never able to do before. They can take a video of what is happening in front of them and send it to a friend so they can experience it too. It allows people who may not be very social, to engage in social activity.
• "Increasingly, we demand access to our media when we want it, where we want it, and in multiple formats." (Campbell 59) Media is our generations form of communication. We can look at Twitter and see what our friends are up to at any given moment. We can snapchat our friends to have a "face to face" conversation without actually being in the same spot. Today's media lets everyone, no matter what your personality is, to communicate equally and it allows everyone to socialize with each other at every moment of every day.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v76f6KPSJ2w

5) Our generation depends on social for everything they do. Everywhere we go and everything we do involves social media in someway. Teenagers check Twitter or Instagram every chance they get. Our generation depends so much on their phones and social media that even if they are sitting at home watching TV, they have their computer screen or cell phone in front of them as well.

• "...social media... a venue for social interaction -- a place where people can share creations, tell stories, and interact with others." (Campbell, 52) Social media has become a huge part in any teenagers life. Teens tweet or instagram or snapchat about everything they do; it is how they communicate with each other and let their friends know what is going on at every moment in their lives. 
• "In less than a decade, a number of different types of social media have evolved, with multiple platforms for the creation of user-generated content." (Campbell, 52) The majority of social media users who are teenagers who use it to communicate with their friends, who most of the time are just a phone call away. Teens depend on social media for everything and it has become a big part of present day society. 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINa46HeWg8

6) The newspaper business is slowly dying. Newspapers may be struggling, but not news. News is slowly moving from print to digital. A lot of newspapers only exist online and the printed versions aren't available. The New York Times, for example, still is printing their newspaper, but less and less people are buying it because why buy a newspaper when you can just look online? To stay in business, newspapers like the New York Times are creating webpages for their newspapers, and charging people a monthly rate to subscribe to them.

• "Online newspapers are truly taking advantage of the flexibility the Internet offers. Because space is not an issue online, newspapers can post stories and readers' letters that they weren't able to print in the paper edition." (Campbell 304) In a way, the dying out of printed newspapers has been beneficial to the newspaper companies because they are able to print a lot more stories. Their papers no longer have a length restriction and more stories can be produced, drawing more readers in.
• "Because of their local monopoly status, many newspapers were slower than other media to confront the challenges of the Internet." (Campbell 304) Although the Internet developed rather quickly in a lot of different areas of media, newspapers had a more difficult time switching from print to digital. People were accustomed to buying newspapers in print, not buying them online. Also, it is hard for local newspapers who have monopolies to keep their monopolies once they move their paper to online.
• http://www.magpictures.com/pageone/

7) Different types of media influence the behavior of youth. Studies have shown that the behavior of young children can reflect on what types of media they are involved in. A good example of this is the popularity of violent video games, such as COD (Call of Duty), or Modern Warfare. These violent video games often cause young children and teens to start acting aggressive, or violent towards their parents and/or their peers.

•  "Most shooter games have first-person shooter (FPS) perspective, which allows players to feel like they are actually holding the weapon and to feel physically immersed in the drama." (Campbell 90) Playing the game with FPS perspective makes the game feel more real, which eventually leads to the gamer to act this way in more life, making them more violent and aggressive during their everyday lives. 
•  "Most games involving combat, guns, and other weapons are intentionally violent, with representations of violence becoming all the more graphic as game visuals reach cinematic hyperrealism." (Campbell 99) These games are all made to be violent, and are usually rated M for Mature. When these games are released to the public the rating is supposed to tell the consumer how old you should be in order to play the game, but most parents ignore the ratings and buy the most violent games for young children. The children automatically start to act violent and aggressive because they think it is okay if the video games they are playing are violent. 
•  http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2000/04/video-games.aspx

8) Multitasking isn't as easy as it looks. Every teen in America is a multitasker, whether they think they are or not. Right now as I am doing this project, I am also listening to music and texting a friend.  Tests show that multitasking really isn't possible. Although one may think they are good at multitasking, it is harder than it looks. Your brain is only capable of doing so many things at once.

• "In the past, we read newspapers in print, watched TV on our televisions, and played video games on a console. Today, we are able to do all of those things on a computer, tablet, or smart phone, making it easy -- and very tempting -- to multitask." (Campbell, 13) With the ability to do everything you want to do all on one device, it makes it hard to get things completely done. Multitasking is very common for anyone who has a smartphone, tablet, or computer and can be distracting in many ways. 
• "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)
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/

9) The warm fuzzies persuasive technique appeals to most viewers. A lot of people when watching commercials, such as Budweiser's "Puppy Love" commercial, want to buy the product right away because the cuteness of the content appeals to them so much. The warm fuzzies persuasive technique appeals to the limbic brain. The limbic brain processes feelings, pictures, and music, which is exactly what the warm fuzzies appeals to.

• "Ad agencies and product companies often argue that the main purpose of advertising is to inform consumers about available products in a straightforward way." (Campbell, 399) Without persuasive techniques, such as the warm fuzzies, the advertisements would be boring. Ad agencies decide to use these persuasive techniques to help inform the consumers of their product in a way that will appeal most to them. 
• "A one page magazine ad, a giant billboard, or a thirty-second TV spot gives consumers little information about how a product was made, how much it costs, or how it compares with similar brands" (Campbell, 399) Because a TV commercial only has a limited amount of time for the company to persuade the consumer to buy their product, they turn to different persuasive techniques to try and help convince the consumer to buy the product.  
•  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRd3lrukxu8

10) There are many forms of media that are kept secret until anonymously revealed. In the documentary, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, it is shown how many secrets are kept from the public eye. These secrets, once they are exposed, become the most popular types of media. They also let the public know what is also going on, but they also may not reveal the whole truth either.

• "WikiLeaks gained notoriety for its release of thousands of United States diplomatic cables and other sensitive documents beginning in 2010." (Campbell, 53) People can anonymously give tips to WikiLeaks and they will post it to their website. Many of the secrets that the US government are keeping have been released on this website created by Julian Assange.
•  "WikiLeaks presents a number of ethical dilemmas and concerns for journalists and citizens. News critic and journalism professor Jay Rosen has called WikiLeaks 'the world's first stateless news organization'." (Campbell, 514)
• https://www.wikileaks.org