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Module 3 Reflection

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I have learned a lot through this week’s readings about attention and poverty. I found it to be very thought provoking. The idea of an attention economy is totally new to me. I think Lankshear and Knobel did a great job describing Michael Goldhaber’s idea of an attention economy. Our economy is based off of what is desired and what is scarce. Today, the amount of information available is overwhelming. In Lankshear and Knobel’s essay, they state that Goldhaber thought that attention is scarce because “each of us only have so much of it to give” (Lankshear & Noble, 2001, p.2). Attention can only come from humans, it can not come from media such as the internet like so much information comes from. I found the section on attention in schools to be particularly interesting since I want to be a teacher. According to the essay, children in schools who are seeking attention are often thought of as trouble makers while children who don’t pay attention are thought to have short attention spans (Lankshear & Noble, 2001, p.19). I can definitely see this in schools. So many children today are being diagnosed with ADD/ADHD because of attention difficulties. I would guess that many of these diagnoses are incorrect and that children are just not being engages in the information they are receiving.

Poverty is an issue that I hear about quite often these days. It is quite prevalent in our society. Out of 72 million children under age 18, 44% of them are low income (Jiang, Ekono, & Skinner, 2013, p.1). That is nearly half of all children under age 18. That really makes me sad to think about. Again, because I want to be a teacher, things about school stick out to me. It’s scary to think that nearly half of my future students will be part of low income families. According to the Children’s Defense Fund’s article , “Ending Childhood Poverty Now”, being hungry effects children’s ability to learn (2012). I want my students to be able to learn to the best of their ability and I hate to think that some children won’t be able to because they couldn’t afford to eat.  My question is what can we do about this? Well according to the same article, we can start to better childhood poverty by providing more assistance (Children’s Defense Fund, 2012). We need to make sure that children’s basic needs are met. According to this article, some ways we can achieve this are to increase earned income tax credits, increase minimum wage, create more subsidized jobs, provide more affordable childcare, and help with housing costs to name a few (Children’s Defense Fund, 2012). I hope to see these ideas implemented so that children’s needs can be met.

I have actually seen the Global Food Disparity images before. I can’t recall which class it was in, but I believe a teacher in high school showed it to us and I want to say it was either economics or health. I remember being shocked at these images when I saw them the first time and I was just as shocked looking at them again this time. It doesn’t make me feel good when I look at the United States. We spend so much money on junk food that doesn’t supply us any nutritional value. This could be a way to help us with solving the hunger and poverty issues. We should be teaching people to spend their money on fresh food. You can find fresh produce for cheap at places like the .99 Store.

As we have learned, media tends to showcase white, middle and upper class males with perfect lives. Why would they want to show people living in poverty? According to the article, “Poverty’s Poor Show in the Media”, most of the times, poor people are only featured on the news if they are causing some type of disorder (Kuper, 2013, p.2). The media doesn’t think people will be entertained by this. This reminds me of how people of other races are only seen on the news if they have committed a crime or something of the like. This article also mentions that it is easier for journalists to attend a PR event at a hotel than to go into the “ghetto” to interview people (Kuper, 2013, p.2). Poverty is hardly shown in the news. According to the article, “The Poor Will Always be with Us: Just Not on TV News”, major news stations such as NBC, CBS, and ABC featured about 1 news story regarding poverty every 15 weeks (DeMause, 2007, p.2). The article continues to state that these news stations had more stories relating to just Michael Jackson alone than poverty (DeMause, 2007, p.2). Typically in the media, the poor are not depicted well. Media makes the poor invisible, they are only looked at as statistics, they are blamed and told it is their own life choices that made them poor, and they are depicted as being “down on their luck” (Ridgeway, p.1-3). The one that makes me the angriest is that media makes it seem like people are poor because of their life choices. I am sure that this is true for some people, however; I do not agree with this. Often news stations report about things like poor people using food stamps, but they don’t report on what the real reason people are using them for. I hope this is something people keep an eye out for.

My final thoughts are on media and violence. I was never allowed to play violent games growing up because not only did my mom just not like seeing them, but she also was afraid it would lead my brother and I to become violent. I have to admit that before I started to become more media literate, I would have thought violent games also would lead to violent behavior in children and teens. I still personally don’t like violent games, but I know they won’t cause children and teens to be violent. According to Sternheimer, as media culture has expanded, violent crime rates have actually declined (104). The numbers do not support the idea that media culture is causing children and teens to act violently. I get why people would believe this though.

 

MODULE 3

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A lot of the reading that we focused on in this module was Poverty. Poverty is a huge issue that we face in America today, but I feel like we don’t pay much attention to it. We tend to pay attention to other things such as what the latest trend is, or what Kim Kardashian may be up to, instead of focusing on the bigger issues and doing something about it, in the Article Poverty’s Poor Show in the Media by Simon Kuper, he stated, “The media have probably always ignored the poor, but we continue to do so even as poverty becomes the most pressing problem in developed countries.” He also sated that, “we look away”, when we see the commercials of children asking for money, or to be sponsored we change it to look away from it so we don’t have to help. Often times when media, or we focus on people in poverty is when they commit crimes, Sternheimer stated that “Violence can be linked with a variety of issues, the most important one being poverty (Sternheimer, 108). Because people in poverty are unemployed, or can’t afford many things that they may want, they turn to violence or crimes, and when they do, that is what they are known for only in the media.

In the youtube video, The Child Poverty: In their own words was very touching to me, and grabbed my attention the most. A lot of the times I feel like when people are struggling they tend to try and hide it from their children, and try and protect them with it, but after watching this video it was children telling us their personal experiences and how they were living. How some people barely saw their moms because they were working too much, or how a mom only had fifty cents and her daughter noticed that other people were putting twenty dollars or more, as well as when Ayriq Sims said, “when your homeless, you don’t really have much to call your own,” and realizing that they had necessities and nota concern. This was very touching because like what we learned in the module about representation and attention and the way that media represents them, and we don’t pay attention to them in the media.

Another article that was very intriguing to me was the Basic Facts about Low-Income Children, Children under 18 Years, 2013, by Jiang, Ekono, and Skinner, I knew that we experience poverty dramatically, but I always thought that children would be taken care of by the government and taken into a home if they were seen out on the streets, this article stated that, “There are more than 72 million children under age 18 years in the United States.” A lot of the times people tend to judge other people for the amount of children they may have, and people say if you can’t afford to have children why are we bringing them into a world that is going to lead them to fall into poverty as well. People of color are often judged that they have more children so they can get more money from the government, but we still have millions of children are growing into poverty and many times it is hard for them to get out of poverty, Jiang, Ekono, and Skinner stated that, “Younger children are more likely to live in low-income and poor families than older children.”

Module 3 Reflective response

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Currently, societies communication within the medium of media has dictated individuals perception on issues, ideologies, and behavior through persuasive stimuli.  As a result, individuals no longer understand nor question consumed information. Yet, perceive said digested information as a norm that can not be changed. Thus, an illusion is created towards each individuals attention in the hope they are distracted from further intellectual growth. However, this distraction is not the fault of the eye of the beholder, but rather the lack of educational awareness of this structured power. I first want to discuss Lankshear and Knobel (2001) article titled, “Attention economy” to illustrate an understanding of the concepts and theories behind the relationship between both education and attention economy.

Although I found that this article to be a challenging read to dissect; it allowed a further understanding to each theory presented on an attention economy. Interestingly, there were two theorist who were of great interest to me because both shared similar points that made sense to me. These two men were Michael Golhaber and Richard Lanham. Golhaber hypothesized media as an abundance of information disallowing individuals the ability to fully understand intellectual property. Which I agree with completely. While, Lanham believed attention was losing its structure towards in-sighting wisdom and information sharing.  Lanham hypothesized this to be in short supply due to the lack of structure within the medium of media in regards to receiving information. While both theories made sense. I leaned more towards Goldhaber’s theory which further stemed towards the idea of human attention as an economy in regard to scarcity. Golhaber states, “when our material desires are more or less satisfied, such that we do not feel pressures of scarcity (such as being afraid of hunger or lack of shelter), we are driven increasingly by desires of a less strictly material kind” (1998a). Certainly this all made sense when comparing media and desensitization. The reason being is humans are statistically proven to spend more time on the cyber-web which Goldhaber stated would be the beginning of a new economy. Therefore, when one is subjugated to habituate into a behavior that simply consumes information, rather than question. That same individual is left to fall under the rule of power of misunderstanding how media facilitates its information or understand issues that are dire. A perfect example can be found within the coverage of poverty. This by far was the most disgusting information I was made aware of when I read the FAIR research. It was disgusting to see the lack of humanity behind the illusion of our news programs. This was a prime example of how behavior is changed only because information is not properly given or clarified. Thus, this is what I have learned thus far from our readings on attention economy, poverty, and behavioral change through media. It is disgusting to be aware of the true nature of how things are run through the means of media, but by knowing serves a greater purpose. By understanding the meta analysis behind this structure of power, one can determine where he/she attends their attention towards.

 

Module 3

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I’m not sure if it was just me, or maybe I was just too focused on the midterm, but this week’s Module was INCREDIBLY dense and, as a result, a bit difficult to follow!  Hoping I understood correctly, let’s start with of our readings about our society going from an information economy to an attention economy.  Goldhaber identified cyberspace as the being where the attention economy will come into its own.  “The idea of an attention economy is premised on the fact that the human capacity to produce material things outstrips the net capacity to consume the things that are produced” and in this context, “material needs at the level of creature comfort are fairly well satisfied for those in a position to demand them” (Goldhaber 1997).  Goldhaber continues to argue that when our material desires are more or less satisfied, we do not feel as many pressures of scarcity. (Lankshear and Knobel 2001).   As I look around our society today, I can agree with Goldhaber that, unfortunately, we feel less pressures from our surrounding society when our material desires are satisfied.  Once upon a time, people only cared about the food on their table, the roof over their head and the clothing to keep them protected and warm.  Fast forward to today, and although we still need a roof over our head and clothes on our bodies, our perceptions about how these necessities need to be is what makes us such a materialistic and attention economy.  I remember as I was taking my in-class courses that required many assignments to be printed how embarrassed I constantly felt because I did not, and still do not, have a printer.  While most students loved when our homework was to simply print out a couple pages for a following class, I had to request work to let me leave early in order to make it to the copy center before class.  If the copy center was closed, I’d have to find a student who seemed nice in the library that could possibly let me borrow their printing card for a moment.  In summary, if my materialist need for a printer was met, I would have felt a lot less pressure from the society of school that required everything to be printed.  Now, even though my example was small and a printer seems like such an easy fix, I cannot help but think about all the children in our society with all of their iPhones and tablets.  I can only imagine the pressure children of poorer families feel when their teachers require them to go home and look something up on the computer… a computer they might not have.  Even when you take away the material necessities for work or school, I hear children all the time mocking those who could afford an Android phone rather than spend more on an iPhone.  To connect this back to the article we read by Lankshear and Knobel, our attention economy will always reside to going online and using our materialistic tools because, well, it’s the only options our attention spans can handle these days!

This lead me to think about another one of our readings by Neil DeMause and Steve Rendall about how “The Poor Will Always Be With Us: Just not on the TV news”.  As a child development major, it breaks my heart to hear how the poorest age group in our country is the children, with more than one in six living in official poverty at any given time (DeMause and Rendall).  I feel that our attention economy has a dire need to have the latest, greatest, newest and biggest everything in our lives which kind of goes hand-in-hand with our American dream of climbing the ladder and creating successful lives for  ourselves.  But as DeMause and Rendall pointed out, the poverty line has not changed in almost four decades and studies of a minimal decent standard of living routinely find that the typical cost is twice as high as the poverty line, or higher!  Mark Greenberg, director of the Task Force on Poverty at the Center for American Progress was referenced in their article saying that ninety million Americans (nearly one-third of the nation) have household incomes below twice the poverty line.  These statistics were shocking to me, but the fact that our news and media chooses not to discuss these important topics just puts another crack in my heart!  DeMause and Rendall pointed out how unlike the powerful sources who are overrepresented throughout our media, the poor don’t have public relations staffs or corporate communications offices to speak up on their behalf.  People from poor communities are left to depend on the journalists who once spoke up for society’s underdogs, but the news companies these journalists work for seem to prefer more happy or shocking news that Americans actually “want” to see.  As stated in Shannon  Ridgway’s article 4 Problems with the Way the Media Depicts Poor People, “America’s poor is invisible because no one wants to see or hear about it” (2013).  Because of this, we reinforce the idea that to be a “true” American, we need to be as rich and as successful as possible.  We also read in the article Poverty’s Poor Show in the Media how sometimes it is not that journalists do not want to cover these stories, but that they are just not around these people and situations enough to see the problem and make a story of it (Kuper).  But all that says to me, is that journalists simply have “better” stories to cover elsewhere in the world.  This reminded me of the importance of advocacy in our own lives.  Even though we feel like college students without a voice, we actually can have a lot of power if we get ourselves out there and into the communities that need our help rather than pretend they don’t exist.  I feel that this is a main source of many problems in our society: rather than address something, we want to sweep it under the rug, or so to speak, in an effort to pretend that there is no problem at all; and I feel that our media does this constantly because, deep down, we all prefer to watch or hear something happy and fake rather than something sad and true.

The next topic that was addressed was the impact that violence in the media has on our society.  This topic has been widely argued over the years, especially with the popularity in video games.  I have always told myself that violent video games result in violent children, but several authors in our readings showed me else wise.  Sternheimer studied the rate of juvenile crime since the ’80s and, to my surprise, there have been no new waves of crime since… not even since Grand Theft Auto filled video game stores!  Bruce Bartholow explained in his lecture about the Effects of Media Violence on Mind, Brain and Behavior that violence in entertainment has existed well before television and media.  As Bartholow points out, violence in entertainment goes back to the Roman days when they would hold competitions in the Roman Colosseum that literally involved killing each other.  Even Shakespeare’s plays like Hamlet and Julius Caesar involved acts of violence, and we insist that our children read these plays in high school!  However Bartholow does agree that the violence we allow in our media is on another level of what we once considered “inappropriate”.   But after hearing Bartholow’s lecture and reading Sternheimer’s research, I will admit that maybe my thoughts were wrong about the impact violent entertainment has on our society.  I will still suggest that parents don’t allow their children to play games that involve killing innocent people, but according to the statistics, apparently there is no correlation… so I guess for this topic, I will just sit back and be quiet rather than worry about our youth’s video games!

Module 3 Reflections

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Attention is often associated with admiration or desire. We pay attention to people we admire because we desire to be like them. This perfectly explains why we follow supermodels on Instagram and not homeless people.  By that same token, people who are more or less satisfied with the material aspects of their life and have relatively few needs begin to crave meaning, which they usually find through attention; the more attention they receive, the more important they feel. There are two classes within the attention economy; stars, whom attention is paid, and fans, who pay attention. Children are the perhaps the most attentive group of people by far, and make up a large portion of the fan class. Young children are still in the process of defining who they are, and they need role models to help guide them. These role models are made easily accessible through the media (Lankshear & Knoble, 2001).

Unfortunately, there are some people who behave violently in order to receive attention. Most of us can name at least three mass shooters in the last decade who have taken the lives of many innocent people in order to bring attention to themselves or their causes. It is nearly impossible to turn on any news station without being bombarded with stories of violence, and if you change the channel, it is highly likely that you will find even more violence portrayed in television programs. So what came first; the chicken or the egg? Is the world truly a horrible place full of violent people who create violent content as an outlet of expression? Or are we being corrupted by the media, and becoming increasingly violent with continuous exposure to atrocities of all kinds?

Studies from the FBI have shown that media violence and actual reported crime have a negative relationship; While media violence has been rapidly increasing and escalating for the last twenty years, crime has been on a steady decline. Even children do not seem to be interested in imitating violence seen in the media. While sales of violent video games have continued to rise, youth violence has significantly decreased (Bartholow, 2014). In her chapter on media violence, Sternheimer (2013) addresses how exposure to violence in the media influences youth. One major concern is that children frequently exposed to media violence will begin to develop inaccurate, negative perceptions of the world, or “mean-world” syndrome, as identified by George Gerbner. However, media violence can have the opposite effect on children from impoverished, “dangerous” neighborhoods. They are not jaded by the depictions of violence in the media simply because it is unrealistic. Although in some cases, media violence can reinforce preexisting fears from prior real-life events (Sternheimer, 2013).

The problem appears to be not quite as simple as previously thought. Although, it is clear that the problem with media violence stems from attention. Maybe news sources portray the world as being more violent than it actually is because people are generally more afraid of being killed by another human than they are afraid of starving to death. When someone dies at the hands of another, they are victims, but when someone dies from extreme poverty, we do not tend to recognize them as victims at all.  FAIR’s study examined three major news sources over the course of three years, and only found 58 stories about poverty (deMause, 2007). We see more homeless people on the streets than violence, so why does poverty receive so little attention? For starters, we look away because poverty is unpleasant. There is nothing to be glamorized about not being able to shower for weeks. Also, poverty is so terrible that we cannot bear to imagine that it could happen to us. It feels much safer to blame poor people for their problems than blame circumstances that are out of our control. We also tend to assume that poverty is temporary, and that poor people will figure it out eventually (Ridgway, 2013).

As consumers, we have to power to decide what is important to us, and what deserves our attention. The media caters to us based on what we pay attention to. While it is sometimes amusing watching wealthy families act crazy and spend money, there are people in our neighborhoods who are suffering more than we can imagine. Once we show that we care, the media will follow.

 

Module 3

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Lankshear and Knobal talk about how the attention economy is a new kind of economy that is emerging with the rise of technology. Goldhaber says that “attention, unlike information, is inherently scarce,” this is true because there is information every where we look but our attention is something that has to be given to another person (p.2). Goldhaber talks about six points of relevance, one being how children these days are emerged all day in school and then when they are done they fully amerce themselves into technology, especially television. Also, there are going to be two types of people that are in the attention economy, the ‘stars’ and the ‘fans’. One in which has a lot of attention paid to them and the other that pays a lot of attention to others. The third point of relevance is that for a person to be able to be a part of the attention economy they must know how to pay and to receive attention. Another is that the attention economy has to create attention technology in which helps us get attention from others, such as the internet. The fifth is that we must have a private space away from the attention that we receive from others. Lastly, there is to gain attention we must have to have it be original and that you must come up with your own way of thinking. They look at several scholars ways of thinking when it comes to this ‘attention economy’ and they all have different ways of looking at it. It is important to see that attention is harder to get a hold of and keep from one person.

Talking about paying attention there is a huge problem that is happening with poverty and media literacy. We can see this poverty more than ever now with the media and how we can see how others are feeling through video, pictures and saying. Many times we do not think of those who are in need but this is a good way for us to see it and feel for these people. We were able to see a video of children who have lived in poverty for most if  not all of their lives. They talk about how they only have 50 cents for gas or they were born in a tent by a river. These really hit us hard because of how absolutely sad it is. According to DeMause, we will always have a poverty line and the line itself has not changed in almost four decades. Although, there is not much coverage on the poverty level in the media, it seems as though they do not want to put it out there to bring light to it. Almost as though it is a secret that this country has this problem. In DeMause’s article, he shares with us a study that had been done over a three year period to see just how many times a story would have the words “poverty,” “low income,” “homeless,” “welfare” or “food stamps.” It was a surprising discovery for me to see that in this study they only had heard 58 studies over that three year time. We see photos, such as the photo diary of all of the families who have some sort of help to get food but it also shows the kind of food that they will be eating. Some families had healthy choices while others had not such healthy choices.

In Kuper’s Poverty’s poor show in the media, he tries to tell us why it is that journalists do not cover the stories of the people that are struggling with poverty. He says that it is not that they do not want to cover these stories but more importantly they are not around these people enough to see the problem and interview people. Journalists are upper-middle class people who just so happen to interview and create stories of people who are in the same social class as them . I see a big problem with this because if all journalists are only covering stories about things that surround their lives, then what other stories are we missing out on? I think that more journalists should be going out and making the commitment to get stories from all different kinds of people.

Such as Ridgway says in his article 4 Problems with the Way the Media Depicts Poor People, he believes that the media has always ignored people in our society. Whether is be women, the LGBTQ community, colored people or the elderly. These groups however are being seen in more of the light now more that ever because of activist groups. One group though is still being left out of the media though, and that is the poor. We do not see them, almost as though they are invisible in the media. It is a group that is extremely sad to talk about, so people find it easier to just not talk about. The only time that we hear about them is when they are looked at as a statistic and not as the real people that they are. People always blame the poor as being poor because of the life choices that they have made. This is not always the case though since many people do hit the poverty level because of a tragic event or because they have been that way since they have been kids. People often do not see that this is not a temporary thing for many people. People that are below the poverty level often never leave that spot and are not just going to be able to pick back up and start making a lot of money.

Another thing that we must ‘pay attention’ to in the media is the rate of crime and violence due to the media. We often see movies, television shows and even video games that are very violent. People have always blamed these things as the reason why some people are violent and do things that they should not be doing. In the text, Sternheimer looks at the crime rate of juveniles and to our surprise there has been no new crime waves since the 1980s. It seems as though this means that since these violent media outlets that there has not been a crime wave even though movies, television shows and video games are getting more and more violent. I do believe that these things can not be good for our youth or any one for that matter but I do not think it has the major affect that people think that they do.

Module 3

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One quote from Lankshear and Knobel’s Attention Economy in particular resonated with me.  I had the hardest time absorbing the information from this article, but I felt that it warranted a mention in my summary. According to the text, “Goldhaber envisages two ‘classes’ within the attention economy. These are ‘Stars,’ who have large amounts of attention paid to them, and ‘Fans’ who pay their attention to Stars” (Lankshear and Knobel, 2001, pg. 3.) The essence of Goldhaber’s argument is that there are few people who receive a great deal of attention from many who are happy to give that attention. This can lead those outliers, such as the homeless, to be completely ignored. Even though this article is about the economy, I couldn’t help but relate this argument back to my experiences within the United States educational system over the last twenty-seven years. Growing up, it always seemed as though there were a few “Star” students in every class. In my case, I went to a small private school for elementary and middle school, so these students were the same in every class. They excelled in every subject, were athletic, and beloved by all of the teachers. They received the most attention and praise. The rest of us “Fans” worshiped them because of this. We were taught to look to them as an example and essentially to compare ourselves to them. Yet because of this, I often felt that everyone else’s accomplishments fell through the cracks. Sure there were mentions of other successes, but it seemed as though they were always in comparison to one of the star student’s achievements. I am curious, did any one else experience this growing up?

 

I thought I understood what the newscaster’s meant when they throw around the term poverty in the media. I assumed, as I think that  most members of our society who fall within the middle class bracket do, that the term poverty spoke only of those individuals who live their days devoid of the basic human rights. Author Shannon Ridgway demonstrates in her article 4 Problems with the Way Media Depicts Poor People, why,  before this course, I made this assumption.  Ridgway argues that although the media does feature a few segments now and then about those who are impoverished, “media representation isn’t enough; diverse and accurate media representation is essential.” (Ridgway, 2013, pg. 1.) In making this comment, Ridgway urges us to consider when taking in media messages, the following facts: the poor are invisible, the poor are often described only in terms of statistics, it is assumed or shown that the poor are poor due to their own life choices, or that they are not poor but simply “down on their luck.” (Ridgway, 2013, pg. 1-4.)  After analyzing the subsequent information provided to us in the Paying Attention: Poverty and Media Literacy  subsection of this week’s readings, I feel as though my eyes have been opened and my attention has been brought towards an entirely different form of poverty that exists within the confines of our own society.  I was shocked to learn that there are many families, working families, who live well below the poverty line. This was not news to me, however, I was saddened to learn just how many people in the United States live below the poverty line.

 

I found the video titled Child Poverty- In Their Own Words, to be truly heartbreaking. How did you react upon seeing this clip? I cried. Incidentally, the filmmakers knew exactly what they were doing in adding the young boy singing a blues song about struggling to survive. It plays on one’s emotions and set the emotional tone for the entire clip.  As a parent, it shook me to the core listening to the stories that some of those kids had to tell. I believe that it is the goal of most individuals who are lucky enough to call themselves parents to provide their children with the basic human necessities. By necessities, I mean food, shelter, education, and love.  I can only imagine how difficult it may be, for both the parents and the children, when the caregiver struggles to provide one or all of these things.  I wish that I was able to speak to those children directly, to hear more of their stories and wish the best for them as they continue to grow. I was elated to see that organizations, such as The Children’s Defense Fund, exist and work towards building a brighter future for these kids through eradicating poverty altogether. Their website layout  was superb. They provided a full range of statistics about poverty, firsthand accounts of poverty experienced by children, as well as visual aids such as graphics and photographs.

 

One graph in particular stood out to me. I have provided the aforementioned graph below this text.  In this visual aid, it shows where, in comparison to other nations, the United States ranks in child poverty. I was appalled to see that we are ranked SECOND in all of the industrialized nations. Yes, second. Likewise, Global Disparity: A Food Diary, provides an excellent visual comparison depicting global food shortage. I have a background in Food Science, so I was not at all shocked to see how much junk food was consumed in the average American household. We have set up our society so that it is cheaper for a struggling family to buy a bottle of soda than a bottle of water, McDonald’s than salad fixings, and chips rather than fruit. Yet, I have never, ever heard this information given on the news. Food deserts exist in low income areas and though there have been groups dedicated to bringing healthier meals to these individuals, it is still a problem that is somewhat unique to America as displayed by this visual food diary.  I am glad that, as I grow to become more media literate,  all of these things have been brought to my attention.

Chart-on-pg11
The information provided to us about violence and the media was not at all what I expected. What did you assume the text and video was going to say going into this subsection? I anticipated more information centered around how the media is feeding into our violent culture, influencing children, and causing a more violent society than ever before. For this is what they insinuate on the news. I was completely shocked to read in Chapter 5: From Screen to Crime Scene that “as media culture has expanded, we have seen dramatic declines in rates of crime and violence in the United States.” (Sternheimer, 2013, pg. 104.)  Furthermore, Bruce D. Bartholow, reiterates in the video Effects of Media Violence on Mind, Brain, and Behavior, the fact that violence has always existed as a form of entertainment, from the roman coliseum, to the first American film.  In this video Bartholow provides background information about the history of violence as well as presenting his research results from studies focused on predicting aggression. I thought the experiment they did measuring aggressive thoughts and feelings by assessing whether subjects chose violent words after playing video games was completely fascinating.  The results produced evidence that subjects were feeling more aggressive immediately after playing the video games, but after a certain period of time, that aggression faded away. Do you know anyone who plays video games on a regular basis? Do you find that they are more aggressive after playing them? 

Module 3: Final Thoughts

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As I begin my discussion of Module 3: Attention, I cannot refrain from touching on the recent atrocities that have captivated media attention on a global scale.  On June 9th, 22 year old singer and former The Voice contestant, Christina Grimmie was shot dead by a deranged fan while signing autographs and posing for pictures.  On June 12th in the same city of Orlando, Florida at Pulse nightclub, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history occurred.   50 people were killed and 53 suffered severe injuries.  The gunman, Omar Mateen claimed allegiance to ISIS and appeared to have homophobic malice.  Footage of grief-stricken parents and bodies being carried out of the club flooded the airwaves.  These brutalities have ignited an outcry with our country collectively seeking answers.  The tragedy not only lies within these heinous acts themselves, but within the young lives that will never see another day.  To quote Bruce D. Barthalow, “Mass violence is arguably one of the most difficult phenomena to explain, let alone predict”  (YouTube, 2013).  Recent media coverage has now forced our attention on examining critical issues such as gun control, gay rights, politics, and the overall welfare of this country.  As we remember those who have fallen, we must ask ourselves, from where did this intolerance spring?  In times of national distress, does the media operate under an information driven economy or an attention economy?  And finally, does the representation mirror the reflection?

According to Michael Goldhaber, as we continue to evolve, we move toward an increasingly attention-based economy.  Although he argues “attention, unlike information, is inherently scarce” (Lankshear, 2001).   The reason, he explains is because “‘each of us has only so much of it to give and [attention] can only come from us-not machines, computers or anywhere else’” (Lankshear, 2001).  Goldhaber believes that since we all possess an innate need for attention, an attention driven economy is what we all ultimately crave.  Richard Lanham agrees that we have an abundance of information and “‘are drowning in it’”.   He provides a spectrum of the varying degrees of attention saying “no attention gives you ‘raw data’; some attention gives you ‘massaged data’; lots of attention gives you ‘useful information’; maximal attention gives you ‘wisdom’” (Lankshear, 2001).  I believe while the media aims to make the audience feel heard, attention can still be lost in the flood of information.  Attention must be paid in order to successfully thrive in this society, one that requires informed attitudes and change.

The controversial issue of media violence versus real violence appeals to the following core issues we have been studying: visibility, representation, and attention.  In Chapter 5 of our text, Sternheimer discusses the common belief that school shootings are a direct result of media depictions found in television, movies, and most graphically, in video games.   For a time, she too subscribed to this notion as it was heavily supported by the news media; until arriving at the realization that little evidence actually backed these claims.  In fact, studies have shown “violence has declined as media culture has expanded” (Sterheimer, 2015, p. 104).  While there is great concern over juvenile crime rates, it is interesting to note that “adults are far more likely to commit violent crimes” (Sternheimer, 2015, p. 104).  Statistics prove juvenile crime rates have actually declined.  Why then are we as a society frantic about the criminal culture among our youth?  The answer Sterheimer argues is quite simple- juvenile violence “constitute[s] a large portion of crime news” (Sterheimer, 2015, p. 107).  It is a media representation that fails to accurately reflect the societal reality.  I agree with Sternheimer’s constructivist view on the matter and believe that in order to understand juvenile violence, we must not make the media a scapegoat; but rather examine violence itself and the root causes.  One of the most apparent causes of youth violence is not their action movie intake but a factor far more pressing, poverty.

There are approximately 72 million people under the age of 18 in the U.S.  31.8 million live in low-income families and 15.8 million are born into poor families (Jiang, 2015, p.1).  Part of the reason those statistics are so staggering is because due to media representation, we are completely unaware of the poverty crisis plaguing the United States.  The media’s attention to the poor population is just that, poor.  To quote Simon Kuper, “I’ve read columns by prisoners and by people with terminal cancer but I’ve never seen one by someone living on benefits” (Kuper, 2013, p.1).  “American media has a history of ignoring the marginalized in our society” and the poor are no exception (Ridgeway, 2013, p. 1).  Shannon Ridgeway goes on to explain the 4 major issues with the media’s depiction of the poor: 1. The poor are invisible, 2. The poor are seen as statistics, 3. They are poor due to bad life decisions, 4. The poor are riding a temporary stretch of bad luck.  In “The Poor Will Be With Us: Just not on the TV news,” it takes a candid look on how the poor demographic have been represented by news media.  DeMause and Rendall explain that when issues of poverty are broached, they are “discussed solely by experts, with no poor people appearing on-screen at all” (DeMause, 2007, p. 4).  To echo my fellow group member, Adilene Sanchez, I, too found the video, The Child Poverty-In Their Own Words to be incredibly poignant as well.  I felt the raw testimonies of children affected by poverty reinforced the idea of “the medium as the message.”  I believe in this instance, seeing actual poverty-stricken children discussing the luxury of food, it was a successful message.  Unfortunately, we are not exposed to these accurate representations with regularity.  How does my understanding of representation help me to understand the value of attention?  It has become increasingly apparent that discerning reflection and representation requires the utmost attention and with that, a deeper understanding of media literacy.

 

 

Module 3 Reflections

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In reading through the article, “Do We Have Your Attention?” by Lankshear, C and Knobel, M (2001); it brought to my attention (no pun intended) how critically important attention is for learning environments. Structures that once kept students attentive to teachers such as tests, and texts are being challenged both directly, and indirectly. Due to popular culture media the importance of “paying attention” in school has been disregarded. During my experiences through school as a student I have always fought for my teacher’s attention, especially in my younger days from K-12. After reading this article and participating in “Making Ideology Visible” voice thread I can’t help but notice the change of children’s sense of entitlement. Nowadays it seems the tables have turned and it is the teacher who must earn or deserve the attention of his/her students. According to Lankshear and Knobel (2001), “Rather than focusing on how to gain and maintain attention, Lanham is concerned with how to facilitate or enable attention to data by developing new human attention structures for attending to the flood of information-as-data we face constantly” (para. 24). Given the choice between Goldhaber’s and Lanham’s conception of attention I would choose Lanham’s perception. I enjoy his conception of attention because he accounts for the engagement of post literacy, the person, and the structure of attention.

Hurricane Katrina, a tragedy amongst the many that have occurred in our country have had an impact on us greatly. However, we cannot begin to imagine how much of an impact it had on the poor who lived and suffered through such event. According to deMause and Rendall (2007), “ The rare cases when the poor were allowed to describe for themselves the causes of and cures for poverty were all from stories about the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, with NBC in particular (12/19/05, 1/12/06) presenting residents who charged that developers were putting off the reconstruction of their neighborhood in order to make a land grab, and that the city was denying the restoration of services to poor neighborhoods” (p. 6). This is a great example on how the media does not reflect the poor but represents it through their value of perception. Hurricane Katrina was making headlines through different forms of media. Whether it was through music like the rapper lil’Wayne or through sports when the New Orleans Saints were close to winning and did win in 2009; four years after the tragic. If it wasn’t for such tragic their voices would have never been heard. The fact that we choose to indulge in reality shows where the wives are complaining about their boob size, a catty comment someone said, who has more money, and the better husband is sickening. I think the poor is not seen or represented accurately because we do not want to accept reality that yes people do live terribly poor lives. Nobody likes to face hard cold facts, they like to live in an imaginary world and pretend or be ignorant that poverty does not exists. At least media has lead it to believe this way, by producing unrealistic shows for their power in money consumption. People can’t handle to see, listen a depressing realistic life of a poor student, child, parent etc. Why is that? Is it easier to be sad than happy? Or is it that we use these “realistic” shows as an escape from our own monotonous lives? According to Kuper (2013), “Most people profiled in the media – artists, athletes and many politicians – are millionares” (p. 3). “When we make an entire community invisible in media, what we’re implying is that they do not exist – not in any meaningful way at least”­ (Ridgway, 2013, The Poor As Invisible, para. 6). I can’t help but refer back to what was stated in the article by Lankshear and Knobel, (2001), “Why are we here, and how do we know that we are somehow worthwhile? If a person feels utterly ignored by those around her, she is unlikely to feel that her life has much meaning to them. Since all meaning is ultimately conferred by society, one must have the attention of others if there is to be any chance that one’s life is meaningful” (para. 7).

Learning about all the statistical numbers of the children who are suffering from poverty is heart breaking. Like Edelman stated, “expanding investments and existing policies we can improve economic standing by 97% at a cost of 77.2 billion dollars” (2015). Do you know how much America spends on military expenses? I’ll just say we rank number 1. She also states it is an internal failure and I could not agree more. If we compare poverty around the world, the United States is one of the top countries who has a great number of poverty existence.

Sternheimer is not shy to state all the ridiculous tabloid titles that lead misinterpretations about real life relfections vs representations being made by the media. In this chapter she focuses on reasons why certain people commit crimes. Sternheimer believes real life situations are over looked and that media violence is something worth looking at to better understand our cultural fascination with violence, but not as the primary cause of violence (Sternheimer, 2013). This is why she took the consideration to interview teenage boys, who either experienced violence by committing it or were victims. I believe media violence affects everyone differently. From my perspective where I have never experienced any type of crime I can perceive what the media is representing as violence scary, gruesome, and very much close to reality. However, someone who has experienced violence in more than one way can see that the media misrepresents what violence really is. Which I don’t know what is scarier at that point. We cannot just blame the poor, or media as factors to such actions. I mean wealthy white males commit crimes too. For example, a recent issue about a white male by the name of Brock Turner was sentenced to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. He was a former Stanford swimmer, from a wealthy family. What made that story just even more appalling was his father, who had the audacity to offer an impossibly offensive defense of his son! I mean like father like son. What type of parenting skills? I do not want to know his view on women. “When middle-classed white youths commit acts of violence, we seem to be at a loss for explanations beyond media violence” (Sternheimer, 2013, p. 109). Media violence is not the only cause to why adolescents commit violence. Violent media can be one factor of crimes, but there are other factors like living in poverty, gang associated, high crime rate communities and in this case bad parenting skills.

Module 3

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I have to say I think I had the hardest time thus far in the class connecting to the reading in this module. Not because the material is less important or less impactful, but it just seemed more difficult for me to relate to and therefore understand. I almost feel guilty for that, the readings about poverty had a common thread; that we don’t pay attention to what we don’t’ experience. Although at work, I assist people who are considered low income, some of whom are homeless, I have not personally experienced it. I also struggled with the reading from Sternheimer’s book and the Bruce Bartholow video. While I read and watched them (with some teary eyes) and know the knowledge is important, I cannot write about it this week. I have been sitting at my computer trying to find a way to do so, but the tragedy in Orlando has me not wanting to allow my brain to think about violence any more for a while.

Lankshear and Knobel did an excellent job of explaining the views of Goldhaber in regards to attention economy while expressing their own. In their paper “Do We Have Your Attention?” They clearly stated that “the goal of attention economy is to get enough attention or as much as possible”(Lankshear & Knobel, 2010, p. 4). There were six pieces of relevance to concerns of Lankshear and Knobel; first, in economically advanced societies, school and media are where young people spend a “huge proportion of waking hours.” Second, the three classes within attention economy are the stars, fans, and losers. No one cares about the losers. Third, knowing how to pay and receive attention allows for participation. Fourth, attention technology is a large market. Internet is the best example. Fifth, those who are attention wealthy express themselves fully. Sixth, endless originality is the basis of attention economy (Lankshear & Knobel, 2010, p. 3-5). This list concerns me because I immediately think of kids constantly trying to change themselves to remain relevant in media or wealthy in attention.

The articles about poverty shared many astonishing statistics, which I am choosing not to cover in this blog. They are very important numbers, but I find a few of the quotes more impactful in communicating the way poverty is depicted. In “The Poor Will Always Be With Us,” the authors state, “exceptions aside, the poor seldom even appear on the evening news. When they do, they are relegated mostly to platitudes about their hardships” (deMause & Rendall, 2007, p. 2). This in my opinion lends to the “pity worship” the media tends to show certain groups. I found the photo diary by Asinus Asinum Fricat so interesting. The concept of looking at how much families spend per week on food in different countries was enough. However, adding the different family sizes into the equation was what really made it!

Simon Kuper’s article “Poverty’s Poor Show in the Media” included one quote that stuck out to me. We are always talking about the left wing and right wing media biases, especially in election times like now. Kuper says, “we tend to interview people like us. There are right wing media and left wing media, but all are controlled by the well fed” (2013). Isn’t that what it really all comes down to? Money. Comfort controls a lot of what we do too. Many of us who have not experienced poverty are so far separated from that life that we are afraid to get close. That certainly is true for media too.

In her article titled “4 Problems with the Way Media Depicts Poor People, Shannon Ridgeway lists the problems with examples easy to connect to. The first, “the poor as invisible” defines escapism as “takes us away from the realities of our daily, monotonous lives, and enables us to live temporarily in a world wherein our own problems don’t exist.” In a world of Kardashians and housewives, I think it has been made way to easy for us to practice escapism. Our problems are still there when the show is over and may get worse if we continue to ignore. Second, “the poor as statistics” I noticed this point was made several times “when we hear about the poor on television or read about them in the news, typically they’re described in the form of hard facts and poverty rates, rather than human beings.” I often think about this at work when I’m helping someone and wonder what happened to get them to where they are. Third, “the poor as poor due to their own life choices” the media tends not to cover the outside factors leading to poverty. I’ve noticed media likes to cover the people taking advantage of the system, but not the story of those who legitimately need that system to survive. Lastly, “the poor as the temporarily down on their luck” this point discusses shows about coupon clipping and other money saving tips for a certain “class” of people. “Television tends to focus on the working-to-middle class recently poor and ignore the poor and homeless all together.” This was most drastically seen during the recession. (Ridgway, 2009, p. 1-3)

The most stand out moment in this module, in my opinion was watching Marian Wright Edelman’s 2015 Poverty Report for all of two minutes and thirty one seconds. When she said “out greatest threat to national security does not come from an external enemy, it comes from the internal failure to build a strong citizen area,” I got chills. It is so true. We are building the future for our children and our children’s children and that is something that deserves focus.