Final Post

1. "Media products are often ideological in the sense that they consistently promote certain messages over others" (Media, 274). This quote represents my first revelation. Media is used in similar ways through out different cultures. We can see this through social networking, entertainment, and other web applications, such as global modules. We see this again in FEED, when titus and his friends travel to the moon. On the mood they use the medium of the feed in the same way to receive advertisements and information. "The hotels were jumping on each other, and there was bumff from like the casinos and mud slides and the gift shopsand places where you could rent extra arms. I was trying to talk to Link, but I couldn't because i was getting bannered so hard." (Feed, 8). We can also see that even though the Feed world is very different then our own, they still use the media to promote and entertain.




2. Independent media is important to have democracy in the media and provide consumers with unbiased news. Much of the news in the United States biased for different reasons. "Politicians routinely criticize the press for its supposed lack of objectivity, charging journalists with taking sides, being too opinionated, or having a routine bias" (Media, 131). This can limit our knowledge and our ability to form our own opinions about political and world issues. Amy Goodman from "Democracy Now" describes footage of the Iraq war as being something out of an action movie. This illustrates how the desire to have support from the public for the war has pushed the news stations to report in favor of the war. In FEED the media reports from the feed in favor of the president when it says, "When the president called the Prime Minister of the Global Alliance and 'big shithead', what he was trying to convey was, uh-this is an American idiom used to praise people" (Feed, 119)




3. Most media has characters that represent "normalization". Normalization creates images of certain stereotypes and situations that the public adopts as being the norm. "Media texts can be seen as key sites where basic social norms are articulated" (Media, 163). An example of normalization in the media is the reoccurring characters in sitcoms such as "Friends" and "King of Queens". We continually see people that we consider typical in these types of shows. The feed world exhibits normalization when the tv show characters make lesions the cool thing and they are no longer seen as gross and unwanted. "It was all going pretty good until Quendy arrived. When she got there, it was like- silence.. because her whole skin was cut up with these artificial lesions" (Feed, 191). Quendy later describes her lesions as being the "big spit"



4. Public Relations is a driving force in the news. We learned from "Toxic Sludge is Good For You" that up to 50% of what we see in the news is pre created VNRs. "News stories can essentially be repackaged and reused for a magazine format...the evening news and the newsmagazines also promote each other routinely and build on each others reputation and audience" (Media, 61). Although this quote is discussing the relationship between the news and magazines, it also describes the relations ship between PR and the news. We see public relations in FEED when Violet and Titus are out of a drive and they see a Dynacom Inc. banner at the bottom of a lake. We flew over a lake. The bottom had been covered with a huge blue as that was lit up and magnified by the water, which had a picture of a smiling brain and broadcasted 'Dynacom Inc' when you looked at it" (Feed, 145). The company is using PR tactics of aligning its self with something environmental, such as a lake, to take attention from the harm they are doing to the environment.



5. Media ideology creates hegemony and assumptions about groups of people. The ideology is controlled by the elites and the insiders. "Ideology is basically a system of meaning that helps define and explain the world and that makes value judgments about that world" (Media, 160). Because elites control what goes into the media, they directly effect what we see and the hegemony, or the reality that is created. In Feed the elites that owned the schools made the public believe that school was for learning how to shop, and shopping being important to learn became a reality for them. "School TM is not so bad now, not like back when my grandparents were kids, when the schools were run by the government, which was completely like, Nazi, to have the government running the schools? ...Now that school TM is run by the corporations, it's pretty brag, because it teaches us how the world can be used, like mainly how to use our feeds" (Feed, 109).




6. Social inequality can be highlighted by the media. From seeing both "Beyond Beats and Rhymes"and "Killing us Softly" the degrading of women in the media was made apparent. Race and sexual orientation are also highlighted in the media. Media Society discusses the inequality of gays and lesbians when it says "For decades lesbians and gays have been either ignored or ridiculed in nearly all media accounts" (Media, 224). Social inequality is also shown in FEED with Violet not receiving medical attention because he parents could not afford to buy her a need model. "I got my feed later...than some kids. But the problem is, if you get the feed after you're fully formed, it doesn't fit as snugly. I mean the feedware is more susceptible to malfunction" (Feed, 170). Violet got her feed so late because he family was of a different socioeconomic standing.



7. The media uses different techniques to persuade consumers. Some persuasion techniques include using symbols, bribery, beautiful people, humor, and testimonial, among many others. All media contains numerous persuasion elements in the content. "The social significance of mass communication is that it differs substantially from unmediated face to face" (Media, 304). Because there is no actual interaction during most consumption of media these technique are used to reach the audience. In media the commercials aired show this. " ...attracted to its powerful T44 fermion lift with vertical rise of fifty feet per second?" (Feed, 15). This is using a rhetorical question to get the consumer thinking about the product.



8. The media industry has large conglomerates that control many aspects of the media. "In particular, media conglomerates seeking the benefits of what industry insiders refer to as 'synergy' are likely to favor products that can be best exploited by other components of the conglomerate" (Media, 44). We see this in Feed when the characters are trying to get free coke. Coke owns feed time and the product. "One Saturday a few days after we saw the riot from the news in our dreams, there was this promotion, where if you talked about the great taste of coca cola to your friends like a thousand times, you got a free six pack" (Feed, 158).



9. How much regulation is appropriate in the media is debatable. Conservatives want little regulation while liberals are in support of regulation so that big industry does not have too much power. In the everyday political world. calls for the media regulation come from both liberals and conservatives" (Media, 98). The group that causes the malfunction in Feed does not want to media of the feed to have so much control over people. "But the braggest thing about the feed. the thing that made it really big, is that is knows everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know what those things are" (Feed, 48). This is similar to conglomerates having all the control and some wanting the regulation of the media to stop conglomerates.



10. The most personal thing that i realized this semester is how much how i was brought up and how my family uses media has influenced my experiences with media today, from writing my media memoir. An example of this is that i associate watching movies with being with my family so it is something that i enjoy doing to relax. This has to do with how i interpret media and the media experience. "The meanings of the media messages are not fixed" (Media, 267). Titus has a different expereince in Feed then Violet because he has grown up with parents with a feed and she has not so it is more typical to him. "Your life...It must be kind of Strange?"
"Meaning what?"
"Just...it's not the thigns that most of us...do? (Feed, 138).

Midterm

"Beyond Beats and Rhymes" and "Killing us Softly", use persuasive strategies and the basic principles of Media Education to support their arguments that challenge the way media conveys men and women. Both films force the viewer to consider if the media portrays men and women in a negative way and has created stereotypes that have become normalized in our society. 

"Beyond Beats and Rhymes" uses montages of hip-hop videos and music lyrics to illustrate the strong emphasis on masculinity in hip-hop and the degrading elements that it has towards women. In the opening segment it plays hip-hop music and highlights words that support Byron Hurt's thesis, like pimp, manhood, chump, and dominate. One production technique that particularly stuck out to me was when they slowed down the footage while amateur rappers were performing to show the anger in their faces, which proved Hurt's point that hip-hop has been portraying an image of angry black men as the norm. They also use sound bytes of woman screaming while flashing statistics of rape and death. In "Killing us Softly", they also use a montage of images of women in advertising to show that women are objects in media. Another technique that the two films have in common is using statistics while showing evidence of the statistics, like displaying the photo of a woman with a watch on her upper arm and giving viewers the statistic that 1 in 5 women have eating disorders. This technique leads the viewer to believe that eating disorders are a result of the way the media portrays women as having to be skinny, supporting Jean Killbourne's thesis. The films contrast each other because "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" has a much more fast pace feel and it uses many different clips, interviews, footage, and music, while "Killing us Softly", is more straight forward and is pictures paired with a speaker that is giving a presentation. In "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" the value message is that men don't have to be hard to be a part of hip-hop and violence isn't the right way to prove yourself as a man. It also says that women should be respected in hip-hop. "Killing us Softly" has a message that women should be respected in advertising and not objectified. Both focus on the media respecting women, but "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" also focuses on how the media portrays men and how it effects how men behave. Both films discuss how men and women tend to act a certain way to fulfill the image that the media gives them. For reality construction both films are one sided and do not tell the positive effects that the media has on men and women. "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" was produced my Byron Hurt, who consuls young men on respecting women. Showing positive aspects of the media would not support his thesis that hip-hop negatively portrays both men and women. "Killing us Softly" was produced by Jean Killbourne, who wants to improve the image of women in the media. Like the other film, not showing the positives of media would deter from her argument. The emotional transfer in "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" is anger that black men are made to look so violent in the media and maybe desire to defend hip-hop. In "Killing us Softly" the emotional transfer is similar in that women would feel angry seeing the film and seeing how the media shows women. It could also invoke a desire to challenge media. 

Both films use many persuasive techniques to support their ideas. In "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" fear is used by showing images of guns and bullet proof vests along with violent statistics. In "Killing us Softly" we see images of women that are too skinny and shown in sexual ways to invoke fear of how negatively the media effects women and how hard it is to live up to media's standards. Humor is also used. A white man in interviewed in "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" giving wrong information and trying to act "black" to show that most hip-hop music is consumed by white people. "Killing us Softly" uses the ad for women's shampoo and a calvin Klein ad in contrast with one another and witty narration to show how imbalanced men and women are in advertising. Testimonial is used in "Killing us Softly" with the speaker talking about her first hand experience with women in advertising. "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" uses interviews with people in the industry and rappers to show how they feel about the way media portrays hip-hop. Scientific evidence is used to persuade viewers with statistics about violence in "Beyond Beats and Hip-hop, and about eating disorders in "Killing us Softly". "Killing us Softly" seems to rely more on scientific evidence because it does not have flashy production techniques. They have evidence of retouching and information about the average number of advertisements people see daily. Both films use diversion by not pointing out anything that could go against their arguments that the media gives us negative images or men and women. They both fail to show anything positive about either hip-hop or women in advertising. Both movies also have strong narrators that use the persuasive technique of strength. Jean in "killing us Softly" has a commanding presence that catches the viewers attention. In "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" Hurt also shows strength in that he is passionate about exposing the flaws in media and comes across as a strong advocate. 

The two films we saw in class both challenge how media has assigned certain stereotypes of men and women. Media Society says that media can "normalize specific social relations, making certain ways of behaving seem unexceptional" (pg. 163). "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" tries to challenge how the media has created an image of men in hip-hop that has caused men to act certain ways. Men feel the need to act tough and hard to be respected by their peers in the hip-hop world and being sensitive has become unacceptable. Feed shows a similar situation where the characters act a certain way because it has become normal from what the feed tells them, like media. All the characters are ditzy and only concerned with being consumers, because it is what the feed has taught them. In "Killing us Softly" how women are treated by the media is challenged by pointing out how they are objectified and the unrealistic standards the media sets for the average woman. It does so by showing the contrast in advertisements with men in them and women in them. In contrast to one another "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" focuses on many different aspects of how media portrays men and women, while "Killing us Softly" just shows women and how media makes women's beauty seem to be so perfect that it is unreachable to most of us. 

Killbourne in "Killing us Softly" says the media "tells us who we are and what we should be". This makes everyone that doesn't fit into the media's mold of what a woman should look like, the others. The normal are those that can have that perfect body and image,when it should be the other way around. This fits into the concept of hegemony. "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" shows the difference between the elites and the masses by pointing out that its the elites that control what type of music is popular and what kind of images artists should portray, while the masses are who consume the violent rap music and accept the violence as being part of hip-hop. 

"Beyond Beats and Rhymes" was the more convincing film for me. The use of music that illustrated violence and degrading women was a strong persuader. Also, it gave so many interviews that showed the perspective of rappers, women, industry elites, and specialists to help convince me that Byron Hurt has the right point of view. I also felt that "Killing us Softly" had a lot of advertisements presented that were a stretch to say that they were objectifying women. It seemed like the narrator found fault in every ad, even if there wasn't one. The element of fear in "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" was much stronger and helped to make the film persuasive. 

Media Memoir

The hardest part of making the youtube video was having to work with people that I didn't know. I am usually a shy person and it took a lot to do something that i am so uncomfortable with. Also, no one in our group knew how to edit so we had to spend a lot of time together trying to figure that out.

What I liked about this assignment was that is broke the ice for the class. After doing something like making a PSA I felt a

lot more comfortable to speak up in class since I was forced to put myself out there already by doing the video.

A. Burr Commercial

Reality Construction: 

This was produced by the Milk campaign to sell the milk product. The ad is creating the reality that milk is the most thirst quenching beverage and you should always have some at hand. The ad doesn't show that other beverages could have saved the man and allowed him to speak clearly. 

Production Techniques: 

The camera scans all the paraphernalia in the man's room to emphasize all the knowledge he has on Aaron Burr. Also, when the man takes a bit the camera is looking from the side of his mouth to emphasize how much he is putting in his mouth. The sound effects are classical music  to show that the man is almost nerdy. You can clearly hear him spreading the peanut butter to show how much he is using. They use the recognizable milk logo in white at the end. 

Value Message:

This message promotes drinking milk and buying the product. 

Emotional Transfer:

The viewer of the commercial can relate to the man and can imagine having so much peanut butter and desperately needing something to drink. We can feel the panic of he man and the anger that he didn't have more milk to wash him sandwich down with. 

Persuasive Techniques:

* Hyperbole- they exaggerate how much peanut butter in your mouth can inhibit your speech

* Simple Solutions- Drinking milk to be able to talk would have been a simple solution for the man.

* Rhetorical Question- Got Milk?

* Humor- They use the man not being able to speak and knowing the answer to the question as humor

* Plain Folks- The man in the commercial is any typical man that could be chosen at random to answer a question for money. He is also eating typical food, like a peanut butter sandwich. 

* Repetition- The commercial repeatedly shows Aaron Burr merchandise to show that the man is an expert. 

* Timing- The commercial uses the timing of him putting the sandwich in his mouth at the exact time that the phone rings to make it humorous and create tension for the man. 

* Fear- It establishes fear that anyone could be caught in the same situation. 

Feed/ Media and Politics

" State control of the mass media is a routine element of totalitarian systems...the emergence of illegal underground media is also common in such situations." (pg. 77 in Media Society) 

In FEED, the group of hackers in the the book that the man who attacked Titus and his friends belonged to, seemed to be rebelling against the same type of society that ch.3 of Media Society touches on. The media the in the book is so controlled by the feed and who runs it that it acts as a totalitarian system. Titus and the other characters only receive information through the feed that the government wants them to know. The man who screams " We enter a time of calamity", is trying to draw attention to the control that the feed has over everyone. (pg. 38 in Feed) The control of the government over media led hackers to take action by forming underground movements to expose the government. Violet tries to explore this underground network of rebels by researching her feed for more information. 

The books Feed and Media Society both discuss how politics influence the control over media. In Feed we see that the president uses the feed to give speeches and does not disclose information over the feed that would make himself look bad. (pg. 85) The Media Society book talks about how in some countries "controversy regarding the political content of programs has plagued public service broadcasting." (pg. 88) Both books express similar ideas about how political interests can influence the media. This idea reminds me of a paper I did for another class about the control over media. While researching for it I found out that Disney owns one of the major news stations and would not allow them to air stories about sweatshop labor because they didn't want to draw attention to suspicions that the Disney company did use swear shop labor. To me, this is the perfect example of the control politics has over the information we receive and this theme carries through in both books. 

Another topic that was seen in both readings was that of regulation of the internet. In Feed, some of the characters go to a site to "malfunction" (pg.86). In the book there is not any regulation of the internet mentioned and the characters are able to do whatever they want through it. In Media Society they talk about how many people feel as though the internet should not be regulated at all because they are not using public airways and it should be up to the parents to regulate where their children go in the internet. In both cases, the internet is open to minors to travel anywhere.