Archive for year: 2016

One of the ideas in these readings that I found interested was the way products are marketed to children and teens. Children and teens tend to be the most impressionable so it is easy for companies to advertise to them. They also spend a lot of time looking at media. According to the article, Advertising to Children and Teens: Current Practices, one of the ways products are being advertised is directly in the shows they are watching (2014). For example, a logo will appear on something a character is consuming in a television show they are watching.  This could be one of the tools of persuasion such as using celebrities to promote a product and make it look cool or even the bandwagon technique where if these people on TV are doing it then I should too. I find this really interesting because I have actually noticed this on children’s shows. One thing that I see the most advertised on media children are using is food. Usually sugary foods, candy bars, and fast food restaurants. We see this in the article, Why that Creepy Character in the Cereal Aisle is Eyeing Your Child. This article states that sugary cereals are placed at eye level for younger children instead of up higher for adults (Tuttle, 2014). He says that they characters are actually looking downwards so they make eye contact with children. This is really creepy to me, but it shows how easy it is to market to children. Fun characters and yummy flavors are things children want. This is an issue because according to the article, Sugar Season. It’s Everywhere, and Addictive, sugar is an addictive substance and could possibly one day be listed in the DSM as a substance abuse disorder (DiNicolantonia & Lucan, 2014).

Media often promotes stereotypes and generalizations. Often times media, such as the news, show people of certain races or cultures committing crimes and other bad things, but don’t show any other positive things about these people and this unfortunately tends to lead to stereotypes (Cortes 148). In schools, one of the possible stereotype and generalization issues relates to gender roles. According to the article, Out of the Mainstream: Sexual Minorities and the Mass Media, gays and lesbians are a group that have been stereotyped heavily in the media (Gross 410).  The gender role stereotypes are a huge issue right now. Boys are supposed to like blue, trucks, and sports while girls are supposed to like pink, dolls, and dancing. Mass media stereotypes are something that I believe could be to blame for this issue.

The reading that stood out to me the most this week was the reading from the textbook about cyber bullying. I think this is such a huge issue in our society today and that is why it stood out to me. Teens and young adults spend so much time on social media today that they are bound to experience some type of cyber bullying. I know that I have experienced it in my life. To connect the reading to media and gays and lesbians, the text states that the internet is a new way to express homophobia (53). I don’t think we need to protect children from cyber bullying, but I think we need to teach them to be aware of it and that saying mean things over the internet is just as harmful, or more harmful, that saying it to their faces.

During my experience with researching our material for module 2 I found myself questioning each article with my own experiences. With every question came great concern towards how to negate mass media makers influence on society. More importantly, how could one learn to redirect his/her attention to see through what society considers a standard norm of living. Would education be the answer to allow individuals to be more media literate? What I learned shocked me in terms of education with Tollefson (2008) article titled, “The inversion of visibility. In Volatile knowing: Parents, teachers and the censored story of accountability in American public schools”. Within the article many ideas were presented.

Firstly, there was a lack of collaboration between both teacher and parents towards changing educational as a whole. Secondly, the structure of education was based on corporate power. Lastly, individuals were inhibited from believing that they could make a difference in changing the Panopticon structure. However, what spoke to me more was the structural analogy used to explain Michel Foucaults term Panopticon aka the “perfect prison”. In hindsight the prison is structured to keep individuals inline by forcing individuals to go against their moral responsibility by using the accountability spot light effect to force self-policing behavior to allow one to feel comfortable with the current ideology of discipline fixes implemented within the structure of power. Additionally, this discipline fix is what we see in current media that disallows community based systems to work together due to private corporate interest groups. Therefore, in summary this is a form of behavioral change.

Once I had wrapped this around my brain around this idea, along with the countless statistical data that showed we are consumed by media, it all came together. By considering this structure of power I realized that this was used not only in our education, but within our media outlets. This had answered my question on why people accepted mass media as it was. As a result, I saw the challenge that laid before us all. What if Tollefson statement were true, “If we have accepted the conditions of our own objectification as natural and inevitable, we will have relinquished our authority to define” (130). Would this be our undoing? No, I would like to argue that people could realize that this is all an illusion to distract us from pressing matters. Tollefson article does state if parents, educators and students work together to purpose dialogue on education than there would be progressive results. I say this because it makes sense, if you disconnect one another than you have won by allowing humans to be only individuals. Again, I feel as you read through all the reading you can get quite upset with the reflection of your own subjective life. I reflect and wonder how my life would have been if I was media literate growing up. The amount of time wasted, is disgusting. Yet, considering this course is granting me an opportunity to put it all together. I too want to help others see through the blight of corporate intellectual property.

I now want to ask about your thoughts. What do you feel you have gathered thus far from our reading? Do you feel the same as I do?

-Sebas

After finishing up these readings and the videos, I did take in quite a bit of information. In the video that Tollefson posted, the principles of media education were talked about. There was the five core concepts and the five key questions and it was emphasized that you want to ask those key questions when you are looking at media.

What really got my attention though was the video Trope vs Women. Before this video, I have never even heard of the word trope. Just looking at the title I asked myself “what the heck is a trope? According to the video, a trope is “a common pattern in a story or recognizable attribute in a character that conveys information to the audience.”  This video I found very interesting because it really opened my eyes about how women are rarely the main role and really showed the Smurfette Principle. This principle mentions how there is one female among a group of males. An example that was used was “Big Bang Theory” and used Penny among the group of guys and they make her seem like the “dumb blonde” compared to them. Another thing that was mentioned was how women are usually the sidekick or the sexy accessory, this is very noticeable in the James Bond movies. There was a test created by Allison Bechdel called the Bechdel test which is a “simple way to gauge the active presence of female characters in Hollywood films are just how rounded and complete those roles are” (feministfrequency, 2009). Overall, both videos are very eye opening and made me really aware.

When I opened the book to the required reading chapters, chapter 3 title really got my attention, “Does Social Networking Kill?” Throughout chapter 3, it is repeated a couple of times that with the internet and our smartphones, it is hard for parents to monitor these messages. One thing about this chapter that really stood out to me was the story Tyler Clemeti’s suicide. His story was about his roommate setting up a webcam in his room to catch him with another man and streamed it online. After this story though, really shocked me. It says that it is hard to get a solid number, but it is assumed that “30 percent of all youth suicides involve LGBT individuals” (Sternheimer, pg 54). Another thing was how she mentions that teenagers are actually the least likely to commit suicide, which honestly surprises me because when news stories about suicide are published, most of the time it seems like they are teenagers. Moving on to chapter 4 was a huge jump, going fro suicide to a question “Is popular culture turning us into a nation of shallow idiots?” (Sternheimer, pg 71).  What I liked about this chapter was how it contrasted some of the articles we read in the last module. It mentioned how there were some studies done that proved the opposite of what those articles were talking about. One that I really liked was “Sesame Street viewers had larger vocabularies and showed grater readiness for school than other children.” (Sternheimer, pg 75). Something that really stood out to me that even though the that the SAT scores have been declining, its shows a positive trend. Sternheimer stated that there are more students taking the SAT and plan on going to college, which to me was interesting. But with these conflicting studies, who should we actually believe?

Out of all of the articles that we read, the one that I found the most interesting was Struggling with Stereotypes: Uses and Abuses of a Critical Concept by Carlos E. Cortes. The reason that I say this is because it really differentiated generalizations and stereotypes. Cortes pretty much said that generalizing is good and help us create labels (that sounds kind of contradicting, but its true).  He says that without labels, we would be unable to communicate among each other. One thing that I found interesting that he said was “generalizations provide clues to individuals who belong to different social groupings, but stereotypes those clues tend to be assumptions.” Before reading this article, I thought generalizing was the same as stereotyping, but it really isn’t.

All of the articles that we have read so far are very interesting, some more confusing than the others, but very interesting. Every article that was I read, I learned something new, which is great. They are making me more aware of things and really opening up my mind and making me think.

The readings and videos that were assigned for this module brought up some points that I had never heard of, or let alone, even noticed within our popular media culture.  I was embarrassed yet blown away by the YouTube videos discussing the “Smurfette Principle” and The Bechdel Test.  I have been watching various movies and television shows for quite some time now… I mean, I am a 90’s baby, how could I not?  But never have I ever noticed the obvious imbalance between males and females within the movies and TV shows I constantly grew up around.  To be honest, I never realized that there was only one female Smurf and only one female Muppet while I was growing up;  for some odd reason, this was perfectly normal for me.  But after watching and reading these module’s assignments, I am actually shocked and embarrassed by the amount of inequality that was taking place in almost every show and movie I grew up with!  Even my classic, favorite Disney princess movies fail The Bechdel Test due to that fact that even if there’s at least two or more women with names, they typically are talking about winning a man’s heart or just waiting for their prince to come.  I think that, nowadays, our culture is really trying to push against these “norms” of more male roles than females, and you can see it in a lot of the movies that are coming out recently.  For example, the newest Ghostbusters movie is a cast of four female comedians rather than the four male comedians we have been so accustomed to.  It will be interesting to see if these movies coming out with primarily female leading roles will end up focusing a lot of their conversation on men because when I think of movies like Sex and the City where females are the primary characters, they still end up talking about mostly about men, love and sex.

Aside from the Smurfette Principle and The Bechdel Test, I was very impressed with the five concepts and questions the Center for Media Literacy describes that all media literate people should keep in mind and ask themselves when viewing something within our media culture.  In order to better evaluate the messages being sent throughout the media, one should consider that: all media messages are constructive, media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules, different people experience the same media messages differently, media has embedded values and points of view (the are representations not reflections of a culture or genre of people) and most media messages are for profit and/or power.  Also, when viewing a form of media, the Center of Media Literacy suggests that one should ask themselves: who created this message?, what creative techniques are used to attract our attention?, how might different people understand this message?, what values and lifestyles/points of view from from this message?, and why is this message being said?  These core concepts and questions provided by the Center of Media Literacy were very helpful for me in that they gave me a bit of a guideline of what to look out for when viewing a medium of media.  I feel that these concepts and questions help dissect a form of media in a non-bias or judgemental way and help look at something in a more general, almost third-party way.

When completing any assignment or task, I always tend to try to make connections to my major/profession, Early Childhood Studies.  We started Module 2 out by learning the theories of Joel Baker in what create’s a child’s, and therefore adult’s, self identity.  Baker believes that family, close friends and current leaders are the main components that make up a person’s self identity over time.  We than learned how only in the United States, media is believed to be a primary factor in what create’s a child’s self identity, and this was incredibly interesting to me because it reminded me of the theory that got me into child development in the first place!  Known as the Ecological Module, a psychologist by the name of Urie Bronfenbrenner created a theory that explains how a child, and therefore adult, become who they are.  Similar to almost an onion, people are like layers, in that many factors over many periods of time affect who we become, some factors and life situations being more effective or more impactful than others.  Similar to Baker, Bronfenbrenner believes that family, peers and a child’s intimate community such as their school and playgrounds are the core concepts to who this person becomes.  This first layer is what Bronfenbrenner calls the “microsystem”, and there are two more layers that affect our life experiences and help in creating who we become as a result.  The next “layer” that Bronfenbrenner believes form a person’s overall being are the extended family, friends or neighbors, school boards and committees, community services, parent’s workplace and (here it is), mass media.  Known as the “exosystem” these are like the secondary factors in what create who we become .  Ironically, Bronfenbrenner is a Russian psychologist and not an American practitioner, and he, too, believes that the mass media is not a key factor in what our self identities become.  Sure, it does play an effect significantly in what types of communities and ideas we are exposed to, but like Baker and Bronfenbrenner, I believe that it does not need to be a key component in who we become if we don’t allow it to.  Here is an example that I found online of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Module to get a better understanding of what I’m describing and the theory that made me fall in love with the fun yet huge responsibility behind Early Childhood Studies; with the child at the middle, these are the layers that make up who we are, with the closest layer being the most effective and the outer layer creating an effect down to the child over time and through the community:

(source: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model )

Alright so I ranted about child development there, sorry!  Continuing back to our other readings… this reminds me of what we read in our class text by Karen Sternheimer, Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture.  Sternheimer specifically goes into detail about cyberbullying and just how much of an impact social media has on teen’s lives in the book’s third chapter called Does Social Networking Kill?  I was shocked by some of the results Sternheimer presented not because things were worse than I thought, but that this issue we sometimes face within our youth today can clearly be avoided by educating our youth to be aware of the social and mass media messages surrounding them.  Although cyberbullying can have horrendous and permanent effects on an individual, only six percent of teens have reported being cyberbullied (pg 57 Sternheimer, 2013).  Sternheimer continues to describe that the safety resides in the hands of us adults, but rather than keep our youth away from the media like many protectionist theorists would believe, it is important that we become aware of what is occurring online both in our own social media lives and our youth.  Instead of avoid our children from being exposed to things online, we should educate them about how they should proceed with interpreting it because internet protection and parental blocks only go so far.

The time we are living in is very unique in that our youth are dealing with issues and concerns that never existed in our human’s time here on earth.  Carlos E. Cortes discusses the idea of stereotypes in his article The Children Are Watching (2000) defining them as “evocative terms” that sent powerful messages or ideas when used carefully or selectively (pg. 2).  Although it breaks my heart to accept it, many negative biases and stereotypes have existed in our country from the minute our founding fathers landed here; and for our youth, these stereotypes get passed around so much faster via the internet rather than word-of-mouth like when my generation and previous generations were growing up.  Regardless of this, however, I think is is important that we do not protect our children against the media and educate them to be more aware, themselves, instead!