Module 3

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.