Archive for year: 2016
Better Late than Never!
Hi everyone, my name is Dakota-Rose but I generally just go by Dakota or Dak. I find myself to be pretty positive and most of my joy comes from the accomplishments of other. It’s kind of a weird thing but I just get so motivated by the happiness and achievements of friend, family and peers. I am also the type of person who feeds off the energy of others so at home when I’m alone I am quiet and contemplative but when I am out with friends I am full of energy and fun! I am a senior at CSUCI working toward my B.A. in Liberal Studies and I plan on getting my single subject credential in science. My guilty pleasure involving media is to watch cartoons. I know it sounds silly but I just love the idea of slipping into childhood ignorance and forgetting that there are problems in the world. I love to immerse myself into the realms of imagination and simplicity. In the mornings, if i don’t have a class to be at, I drink my coffee and watch my little pony and/or littlest pet shop. Those are both shows for very young children but I will watch cartoons that are angled at very young children all the way up to adult cartoons like Archer, Futurama and Bobs Burgers. My favorites shows to watch are Adventure Time, Ed, Edd and Eddy, Steven Universe and Regular Show. I also really love science and currently work as a teachers aid in the physics/ astronomy department at school. I look forward to working with all of you and again I am so sorry for the delay in my work! I guess I will end this with a good old fashioned fun fact! Did you know that Pluto is not the closest dwarf planet to us?
Click here if you want to know what the closest dwarf planet is to Earth!
Hiking Picture!
Jessica Zarate Module One Recap
I would like to start by saying online learning could be intense, scary, and fun all at the same time. I have struggled in figuring out some of the activities and how to access them. I know that for me, learning how to use all of these online feature will be challenging, but eventually I will master the skills needed to successfully complete this course. It has been interesting to read and connect with classmates and hear their stories and reflections on media literacy. In the text “Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture” chapter one discusses perception on how media can be portrayed and blamed for social problems and the root of America’s social problems. The author goes on describe what to expect in the upcoming chapters and how people will try and put blame on popular culture for issues pertaining to online bulling, violence, eating disorders, etc. The author would like the book to be the starting point to analyzing real issues of power, privilege, and inequality. The author states, “I want to be clear that by arguing that popular culture isn’t the central cause of our biggest problems, I am not saying that media have no impact on American society or that popular culture doesn’t matter” (Sternheimer 2013). One issue mentioned was the obsession society has with popular culture. I can see how this issue is very relatable to people. Often times, when people come in contact with one another, small talk is initiated and a person or event in pop culture is mentioned. I personally feel that this happens for reasons such as one, it is relatable, two it is impersonal, and three it current information that is well known. Often times this generation uses popular culture because it is accessible. I look forward to peeling back the layers on these topics and learning more about media literacy and how to teach students how to use it appropriately.
Reflections on Module 2 Readings
So far these readings have introduced us to inequalities of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. It also has mentioned the daring topic of cyberbullying and how media education can be mportant. In the activity 2 video, Professor Tollefson mentions that there are five key question that media literate people would ask themselves when experiencing a piece of media and they are:
- Who created this message?
- What creative techniques are used to attract my attention?
- How might different people understand this message differently than me?
- What values, lifestyle, POV are represented or omitted from this message?
- Why is this message being sent?
Although all media messages are created, they also can be uncreated. In this video, i also learned that everyone can be viewing the same media message but perceive it differently, and media education is about trying to understand why the same media message can be differently viewed or translated. Media has implanted values and P.O.V. All media types are representations and not reflections. They don’t reflect society as it is; they represent the value and perspectives of whoever created the message/s. Hausman makes known the kinds of things that media makers tend to lean on as being unnoticeable to the average media consumer. The power and visibility are two closely associated schemes. We should get into the habit of asking the 5 key questions.
Going into the other videos and reading, I seemed to enjoy the trope vs women video, the text book reading, and the gross 21 reading. In the book reading, it mentioned that with new media coming up it make it more challenging to protect children. This fear rose when cyberbullying was on the rise.”New technology allows meanness to pervade new spaces.” When online, anything goes. It doesn’t matter how popular you are or not, whatever is said about you and posted on line, it’s viral. Although the internet is said to be a negative, it can also give those who feel alone a sense of community and acceptance. “Tolerance is growing at the same time cyberspace has given everyone of us an almost magical ability to invade other peoples lives.” In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court made legal changes that made schools liable if they don’t take action to protect students from sexual harassment.
Module 2
Wow! The Tropes Vs Women and The Bechdel Test video clips were a game changer for me. I like to think that I am an advocate for gender equality. Yet, I hadn’t noticed that this principle was being applied to some of my favorite movies and television shows. These tropes are highly visible, yet, because this has become such a normal occurrence in the media, we often do not actually perceive what is going on. In this case, many forms of media often only feature one leading woman surrounded by a cast of men. This is often referred to as “the smurfette principle.” Women are often stereotyped as being blonde, passive, or playing a limited role in society such as mother or wife. In the educational article, The Children Are Watching, author Carlos E. Cortes, defines the term stereotype as “powerful, evocative terms” that “when used carefully and selectively, they communicate powerful ideas.” (Cortes, 2000, Pg. 2.) In this article, Cortes explores the media from an ideological perspective. He argues that it is in our nature to generalize. However, mass media often subscribe certain traits to these stereotypes.
It is my opinion that, the aforementioned smurfette principle is issuing a powerful message to young women, and society as a whole, that in order to be of value a woman must be surrounded by men at all times. Otherwise, she can only define herself as just being a wife or just being a mother. Women are constantly being stereotyped in the media and the smurfette principle is just one example of how this is occurring. It is very rare that filmmakers cast a woman and portray her as a multifaceted character with many talents outside who she is in comparison to a man.
I was shocked at how many movies did not pass the Bechdel Test. In order to pass this test the movie or television show must pass the following questions:
1.) Are there two or more women present (with names)
2.) Do these women speak to one another
3.) Do they speak to one another about a topic other than a man
I even applied these rules to one of my favorite shows on Showtime, Penny Dreadful. I assumed that because the show features a female lead, it would pass with flying colors. Boy was I wrong! Yes, the main character is a woman, however, she is featured with a man or group of men in almost every scene. A detail that I had not previously noticed. What’s more, when she is shown speaking to a female psychologist, the stories center around her past love affairs. By teaching students these rules, we can increase the visibility of these inequalities in the media and work towards creating a society that does not think in the norms of the “privileged white male.”
What’s more, author Larry Gross, confirmed my suspicions in his work Out of the Mainstream: Sexual Minorities and the Mass Media, that this issue doesn’t just affect women in the media. I was saddened, yet not surprised when I read this text. I felt that, due to the nature of the information, this article was embarrassing the protectionist philosophy to media literacy.I felt as though the author was warning his audience against subscribing to any of the notions that he mentioned. That we should protect our students from absorbing this information fed to them from the media. Gross paints a very accurate portrait of what it means to be “mainstream” in the media and the impact that this has on our thought process. (Gross, Pg. 406-407.) He then moves into a compelling discussion surrounding the repercussions of being an outsider. For homosexuals in particular, this fear of the outsider leads to isolation, because the mass media has played a direct role in ascribing to them how masculinity or femininity should look. Additionally, Gross reminds us that “ for the most part gay people have been simply invisible in the media.” (Gross, Pg. 410.) When they do include homosexual characters in their stories, the media tends to overlook characters who fit within their box of social norms, they just happen to be gay in favor for those who fit the stereotypes that the media has created. I can only hope that as we progress as a society, we can see more extraordinary, positive, gay characters who do not fit within Hollywood’s stereotype emerge on screen.
Children as Consumers really stuck out to me as well. I enjoyed the fact that this article took a factual approach and included several different clips from media sources, much like a magazine or research paper might. I think there were several lessons in this article that I will take with me as a mother. As a marketer, a majority of this information was not new to me. Children can be some of the best brand advocates. They also have the highest purchase power out of any demographic. Yet, I did not realize to what extent the media was targeting children. Even in most marketing companies, it seems to be a debate whether it is ethical to direct advertisements to children or not. I agree with the Swedish people, who have banned advertising to children since the 90’s (Shah, 2010, Pg. 5.) Common sense seems to dictate that children lack the ability, at a certain age, to be truly critical of what they see on the television. The facts back this logic. It follows then, that children should be shielded from any media that intends on coercing them into believing a non truth or pushing them towards an unhealthy product. Shah prompts the audience with the question, “can the media be trusted to self-regulate.” I would argue that no, they cannot. The benefit for corporations greatly outweighs the cost.
Module 2 Reflections
Module 1 gave me a solid background on what media literacy is and different approaches to media education. With those foundations in mind, Module 2 has challenged me to look deeper at media, how it is developed, and looking for what is not easily seen. Visibility is a fundamental theme when teaching media literacy to students because media has the power of changing what is or is not easily seen (Tollefson, 2008). In this module we have learned many ways media lies with images.
Knowing how media lies with images is important to media literacy students, because it gives them the power to see more than what is easily seen. Furthermore, having tools and knowledge on how media deceives, can help consumers navigate through what is deception and what is truth. Visibility is often times controlled by those in power, meaning that media makers with power can hide the truth to those with little or no power (Tollefson, 2008). When reading The Inversion of Knowing from Volatile Knowing written by Dr. Kaia Tollefeson (2008), I could not help but to make connections between power and visibility with white privilege. Once explained to me, white privilege is like being a white crayon on a white piece of paper; it can go anywhere and not be noticed however, the other crayons will be noticed everywhere they go. This to me is proof of how power and visibility works in our society. Another example is how critics blame popular culture and social media as reasons students lose out on education instead of focusing on the structural conditions that effect the education system (Sternheimer, 2013). Those who have power in media tend to focus on stories about electronics, blaming parents, or using television as a scapegoat, instead of investigating the cultural and educational structures that are cause of these issues.
Stereotypes, generalizations, and labels are also types of visibility. When used in media labels can be beneficial because they help categorize social issues (Cortes, 2000). These categories help people see a larger picture that can lead to understanding and acceptance. Generalizations develop based on personal experience and are created in order to help people understand the world (Cortes, 2000). However, often times media contributes to stereotypes based on generalizations that do not capture the entire picture of a cultural group. When media only highlights bad activities of a social group it is only giving visibility to a small portion of said group, and can contribute to a bad stereotype. I also have learned that these generalizations have effected the LGBTQ community in television and movies. The visibility of the LGBTQ community has been small and underrepresented in popular culture due to mainstream ideals (Gross, 2001). Although, and thankfully, I think this is changing I do believe that the film industry has more work to do to represent sexual minorities on the big screen.
This module was enriching because it opened my eyes to how important visibility really is from larger social issues to shopping in the grocery store. Children are one of the most sought after consumers because it starts brand loyalty at a young age, their world views are easy to manipulate, and even at young ages children have tremendous purchasing power (Shah, 2010). With so much debate about how much “screen time” a child should have, learning about all the ways marketers reach children makes the debate that more valid in my opinion. Holidays, major movies or television shows, and even the education system are commercializing childhood itself (Shah, 2010). If a movie is successful toys and games are manufactured to make excess revenues, corporate influence is trumping a parents influence, and even auto manufacturers are targeting children. This unchecked power is even allowing corporations to provide curriculum, school lunches, and gymnasiums to the education system (Shah, 2010). Marketers are using every single angle they can to reach children and the dollars that follow. Just to add another example, even at grocery stores children are being targeted. Cereal companies are using visual strategies to reach children from bright colors, love able characters, and even making the eyes on the characters angled so the children make eye contact with the box (Tuttle, 2014). Visibility in the grocery store, on television, and in societal structures are all controlled by people whose biggest interest is to sell. This is why I find it so important to teach the youth media literacy so they can look at everything with an inquisitive perspective. Not just to lose trust but to question what is not easily seen and to search for the truth.
Which Map Do You Like Best?
We are nearing the release of our 2016 Drone Poll Results!!!
By way of prep, I am curious as to what you all think about our potential mapping output formats. The underlying data represented in these draft graphs isn’t important at this point. Rather, I am curious as to which you all think is the best representation of geospatial data for the web:
Option 1: Cluster
Option 2: Heatmap
Option 3: Bubble
Let us know what you think (Option 1, 2, or 3).
