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.