Top Ten Media Revelations
1. Media is Everywhere, You Can’t Avoid It
The 21st century is the digital
age, nearly every part of our days are impacted by technology in some way or
another. No matter what you’re doing
there is some sort of technology that has been created to go along with
it. Sometimes this is negative whilst
other times it’s not. When people go out
into the wilderness they may not need any technology to aid them, however if
they go missing the search team could use GPS in order to find them.
- "Media stores put events in context, helping us to better understand both our daily lives and the larger world" (Campbell, 15).
- "Today, with the reach of print, electronic, and digital communications and the amount of time people spend consuming them, mass media play an even more controversial role in society" (Campbell, 16).
2. Privacy Doesn’t Exist Anymore
As we saw in Generation “Like” advertisers monitor everything that we do on our
social media. The government is also
monitoring what we do on the Internet, they collect everything that we search
or click on. Once you put information
about yourself online it isn’t going anywhere.
People are able to invade your privacy at any given time.
- "However, when you use the Internet, whether you are signing up for an e-mail account, shopping online, or even just surfing the Web, you give away personal information - voluntarily or not" (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. The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, however, weakened the earlier laws and gave the federal government more latitude in searching private citizens' records and intercepting electronic communications without a court order" (Campbell, 559).
3. Consumers Are Becoming the Advertisers
In Generation
“Like” is became evident that advertisers are no longer putting in as much
effort as they used to, because their consumers are willing to do it for
free. Social media has made it very easy
go get the word out about a new product.
When someone has a lot of followers, they become “famous” causing a
company to send them some of their products in hopes of gaining attention. The followers will then see this and be
interested in buying the product because they person that they seem so familiar
with online likes it.
- "Social media are helping advertisers use such personal endorsements to further their own products and marketing messages - basically, letting consumers do the work for them" (Campbell, 398).
- "Some bloggers with large followings have been paid (either directly or by "gifts" of free products or trips) to give positive reviews or promote products on their site" (Campbell, 398).
4. Images Portrayed by the Media Have An Effect On
Viewers Behaviors
Whenever someone sees something in a movie,
television show or image they are impacted by it. Video games have constantly been disputed,
especially the ones that are violent, because they are believed to evoke
inappropriate behaviors onto children.
This was thought to be evident during the Columbine High School
massacre, where two students organized to open fire on their high school before
committing suicide. This is only one
example of many with had an unfortunate outcome that can be traced back to
violence in the media.
- "Bandura developed social learning theory as a four-step process: attention (the subject must attend to the media and witness the aggressive behavior), retention (the subject must retain the memory for later retrieval), motor reproduction (the subject must be able to physically imitate the behavior, and motivation (there must be a social reward or reinforcement to encourage modeling the behavior)" (Campbell, 532).
- "... many believe that media have a powerful effect on individuals and society. The belief has led media researchers to focus most of their efforts on two types of research: media effects research and cultural studies research" (Campbell, 521).
5. “Likes”
Are Social Currency
One of the first things that the
documentary Generation “Like” points
out is that in today’s media culture “likes” are social currencies. People are constantly posting things onto
their social medias hoping that they will attract the attention of their
peers. In a way it’s a form of
self-exhibition, you want to put your best foot forward on your social media;
showing that you live an awesome life.
People are becoming obsessed with what people thing of them over their
social media. This is evident when the
obnoxious girl in the song #SELFIE by
The Chainsmokers says “I only got 10 likes in the last 5 minutes, do you think
I should take it down?”
- "We are also increasingly making out media choices on the basis of Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter recommendations from friends" (Campbell, 13).
- "[Facebook] enables users to construct personal profiles, upload photos, share music lists, play games, and post messages to connect with old friends and meet new ones" (Campbell, 54).
6. Smartphones Are the Ultimate Convergence Tool
One of the eight shifts in 21st
century media culture is an aesthetic shift, which goes from discrete to
convergence. The cellphone is the
ultimate example of convergence by uniting different types of media
technologies and platforms. There are so
many things that you can do at the tips of your fingers, I haven’t gone to the
bank for months because I can check my balances, cash checks and transfer money
without leaving my dorm room. Phones
aren’t just for making calls anymore, now you can take photos, listen to music,
check your e-mail, Facebook or Instagram, send Snapchats or play games.
- "The ability to access many different forms of media in one place is changing the ways we engage with and consume media. 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 smartphone..." (Campbell, 13).
- "Today, media consumption is mobile and flexible; we don't have to miss out on media content just because we weren't home in time to catch a show, didn't find the book at the bookstore, or forgot to buy a newspaper yesterday" (Campbell, 59).
Technology is taking away from our lives, making us
live in a virtual reality. Everyday you
see people walking around while they’re on their phone, blocking out the rest
of their peers. Cellphones and social
media have changed the ways in which we communicate. They may allow us to talk to people from
miles away however they also cause us to forget about the people that we have
right in front of us.
- "Some critics and educators feel that media multitasking means that we are more distracted, that we engage less with each type of media we consume, and that we often pay closer attention to the media we are using than to people immediately in our presence" (Campbell, 13).
- "Sometimes called the "Big Mac" theory, this view suggests that people are so addicted to mass produced media menus that they lose their discrimination taste for finer fare and, much worse, their ability to see and challenge social inequities" (Campbell, 24).
8. Multitaskers Aren’t Really Good At Multitasking
The movie Generation “Like” explains that the “multitasker” tends to perform his or her tasks in a less efficient manner than someone who is doing each task separately. When someone is multitasking they are unable to devote their attention to a specific job, causing them to produce work that’s lacking in quality. The human brain can’t process two things at once; it just switches back and forth between its tasks. This means that it’s actually impossible for the brain to multitask.
- "Media multitasking has lead 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).
- "Some critics and educators feel that media multitasking means that we are more distracted, that we engage less with each type of media we consume, and that we often pay closer attention to the media we are using than to people immediately in our presence" (Campbell, 13).
9. Newspapers May Be Dying, But the New Lives On
There will always be news for someone to
report; however the print media that reports it is slowly dying out. The technological shift from analog to
digital has hit the newspaper industry hard.
As technology advances the ways in which people access their news
changes as well. Instead of going to the
store or getting their newspaper delivered people just have to pull out their
laptop, tablet or smartphone and download the most recent issue of their
newspaper.
- "Today's converged media world has broken down the old definitions of distinct media forms like newspapers and television - both now available online and across multiple platforms" (Campbell, 13).
- "Despite the importance of newspapers in daily life, in today's digital age the industry is losing both papers and readers" (Campbell, 277).
10. Technology Makes Us Powerful
The unstated purpose of this class was to “Make
Us More Powerful”. This is something
that technology and the media does.
Technology done so many things in order to change the way we go about
life, making it easier. Without
technology we wouldn’t be were we are today in terms of medicine, education or communication.
- "Social media tools have put unprecedented power in our hands to produce and distribute our own media. We can share our thoughts and opinions, write or update and encyclopedic entry, start a petition or fund-raising campaign, post a video, and create and explore virtual worlds" (Campbell, 54).
- "Developing an informed critical perspective and becoming media literate allow us to participate in a debate about media culture as a force for both democracy and social progress" (Campbell, 31).
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