Module 3!

So far this has been my favorite section of the class. The topic of attention is much more important than I have ever thought. I started to think to myself and reminisce what really grabs my attention? That answer was easy my phone! It constantly alerts me of events that are important to keep in mind but most is filled with non-sense. The amount of time I spend staring on a screen is ridiculous. This leads into my first topic on the article Attention Economy.

This article gives several reasons as to why the topic of attention economy verses information economy is prevalent in today’s society. This article makes notion that we are part of an attention society. Our society is full of competition to obtain attention from the media and others who get info from the media. We seem to place our attention on various things and people that seem most interesting.  A great example I found was the attention we give to movie stars and famous people. They receive extreme amounts of attention due to the fascinating work they do to produce movies that we enjoy seeing.  This society spends a lot of time watching information about stars look at the Kardashion’s for example they are famous because of the lavish lifestyle they choose to live. Often times our focus gets carried away in giving stars attention and being interested in their life we fail to see the value of that information.  This article mentions that society enjoys giving attention as well as receiving attention. Seems to be a two way street, but in reality the amount of attention stars give back is only an illusion. A star will give the crowd of people a small amount of attention when in return the crowd goes wild. This concept is called “illusory attention”, and society doesn’t recognize that we are giving energy into a person/people that don’t do the same. “Attention involves exchange” and in order to get attention one has to give attention, a concept part of Attention Economy that I thought to be interesting. Goes to show our attention as a society can be leading in the wrong direction.

Another very important part to the Attention Economy article was the topic of attention in education. In schools the goal of every teacher is to grab their student’s attention with information that will further their knowledge. But this is an issue for teachers, the difficulty lies in getting children to pay attention in school. School aged children are drowning media and their attention is placed in a video game or TV show rather than ideas and values taught in school. There is also this difficulty in schools with giving attention and getting attention which results in behavior issues while at school. It seems that the media is having a bad influence on children and their learning. If students are requiring more attention than the students are paying attention to materials the unsuccessful learning is taking place. I was able to create a connection between this article and thoughts given by Karen Sternheimer. I discovered a point that Sternheimer made and it is that children “cannot discern fantasy from reality” thus their attention is placed in fantasy of a violent video game.  In their minds, children may relate violence and bad behavior learned in video games and media as a rewarding experience. Violence in video games sparks responses in the mind of a child, only if education could always do the same. This article pushes for teachers to create new techniques to fix this challenge we are facing to get children’s attention to learn and promote good behavior.

The next topic addressed in this week’s reading was the attention given to those living in poverty. Or in other words the lack of attention media places on those who live in poverty. In the first YouTube video called Child Poverty: In their own words gives the chance for children who live in poverty to reveal what they have faced. In the video the children and teenagers are free to say what their life is like and what challenges they come into contact with. These children shared what it was like growing up, some had to sleep on the floor in a small room that their whole family lived in where it was dirty and living conditions were uncomfortable. Many of these children grew up with single parents whose father’s left them and the mothers struggling to work several jobs and were never adequately rested. A young girl explains that she tried to eat more at school so when she got home her siblings could have the food they had. Children explained there were nights where there was nothing to eat and no money to buy food.  These children have little to call their own. This video was purely their feelings not twisted words the news and media likes to place as their voice. Seeing those children speak in the video was heartbreaking to watch how media does very little to recognize a large amount of people that are struggling.

The next article about Poverty in the News really made me upset of how little poverty is shown on the local news. During the articles 3 year study only “58 stories about poverty made it on the news and 191 quotes sources” during this period of time.  Those results really astonished me, it seems that media is so concerned what they deem as important to play on the news. Poverty is an issue that is happening all around America yet little of the news recognizes this as an issue. This article gives a great example of how messed up the media be while comparing Michael Jackson’s trial in 2005 to hurricane Katrina that wiped out New Orleans. During that year NBC aired the most on poverty “44 stories on Michael Jackson to 22 on poverty and hurricane Katrina” this left me in disbelief. The country was experiencing a horrific natural disaster but the media still chose to focus on a less important topic in my opinion. This relates back to my previous point above that media shares stories that think will be in most interest of the public. The only way this country will stick together during times of disasters is if the country supports each other. We seem to be in a divide over what news on the media we really need to be paying attention to.

The next article that really grabbed my attention was the Global Food Disparity: The Food Diary by Fricat. This article consisted of photos from Fricat’s travel around the world. The purpose was for us to explore what a week’s worth of food for a family looked like. This article really captured my interest since I have never seen pictures of a bunch of different families from other cultures before. Each picture resembled what their family looked like and what and how much they typically ate. Each cultural was amazing to see. If it wasn’t for this photographer pictures like these would never be on the media. Much of what news shows about other cultures outside ours is limited. Another realization I saw was the lack of fruits and vegetables the American family had shown in their picture. I took this in 2 ways. For one, the media seems to lack the representation of healthy foods in America.  Secondly, it made me realize how easily accessible junk food is for our society. Food in America was one of the most expensive but had the smallest amount of nutrition. Children and families that live in poverty may only have access to food items such as fast food hamburgers since they are inexpensive and quick to get. But of course the media doesn’t give attention to that struggle.

The next article of my readings was The Basic facts about Low-income children: children under 18 years by Yang Jiang. After reading this article my heart once again was torn about the facts I was reading about children that lived in poverty. There are more children and families that live in poverty that I had ever expected. The article stated that “44 percent of children live in low-income families” and “22 percent of those children live in poor families” all children that are 18 years old or younger. These statistics point out that about half of the children country wide lives in poverty.   The main focus I had on this article was the percentage of children in low-income families and varying rate between race and ethnicity since it related well to Sternhrimer’s section Violence in Context: poverty and racial Inequality.  In Jiang’s article it revealed that “65 percent of African American children and 63 percent of Latino children live in low-income families” (Jiang pg.4).This was shocking news to me once again. Sternheimer did a fine job of relating crime to poverty rates in the Latino and African American low-income neighborhoods. Sternheimer explains that crime rates aren’t only linked to children playing video games at a young age but to poverty as well. Gangs and crime rates seem to have skyrocketed in these low-income neighborhoods. Crime seems to be overwhelming influence in these areas where violence is seen on normally on a daily basis. Several children are frightened by guns and crime. A way to take away that fear was to become part of it and learn to defend yourself. These children getting involved at young ages were not looking in ways to “swoop down on the weak” but rather get involved based on fear and hopelessness. They were trying to survive in “destroyed communities as best as they could” and their violence was liked to survival. Wow that was powerful to me. That last line really hit home for me in this section. I’ve never made that connection before prior to these readings.

The next 2 articles I think relate very well Poverty’s poor show in the media by Kuper and 4 Problems with the way media depicts poor people by Ridgway. An excellent point that shows how messed up our society is the reveal of this quote by Kuper. “The global poor -2.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day – are considered even more boring, due to the triple whammy of being non-white, non-Anglophone, and poor”. Since the media doesn’t think of the poor as exciting news it seems to fen away from the importance it actually brings to the table. Instead media wants to fill our minds with shows about rich and spoiled people since talking about the poor seems “sad”.  In order for the poor to get attention some type of chaos has to happen says Kuper. News casters never seem to capture low-income areas because they would rather interview people more like them middle to upper class. This gives the feeling that the poor seem to be invisible which leads into Ridgway’s topic of poverty invisibility as a big problem media depicts poor people.  This article by Ridgway explains the reasons for the most part poor people are invisible in media. Why might we ask?? “Because no one wants to see or hear about it”. Ridgway explains the idea of escapism, where we escape from what reality really is. Like my example earlier in the paragraph about rich people shows being of a higher importance, a fake reality that poor problems don’t exist making them invisible. This quote also comes from Ridgway’s article… “We need to see that there are people out there who struggle, and who deserve to have attention paid to their struggles”. That was another quote that touched me. We live in a world that no one seems to care too much about others and it is heartbreaking to know that.  The poor are just as important as the rich people we see flaunted all over TV and should be shown in the media light.

The next video part of this module about the Children’s defense fund to end poverty gave light to this sad situation we have been discussing. In the video the lady states that more 14.7 million children are poor and 6.8 million children are extremely poor. I am glad there are people that care about this situation and are willing to make a change to help end poverty. United States is one of the richest countries in the nation yet it fails to address the poor. Not making a change to end poverty will negatively affect our future, and is costly to our economic security. Approving this yearly fund of 7.2 billion dollars would improve the lives and futures of millions of children. The call to end poverty in this richest nation will drop poverty by more than 60% and improve the lives of 97% percent of poor children’s circumstances. As we can see this could be an awesome thing for our country. I hope this fund will be successful in improving our poverty rates. I am for helping the children who live in poverty. It seems silly if American turns down opportunity.

Prior to watching Bartholow’s video Effects of media violence and reading the chapter 5 in Sternheimer’s book From Screen to Crime Scene I had a very set opinion about media violence. I was very well convinced that violent video games did cause aggression in young children. I still believe that it does have an effect that might not be positive there are other factors that lead into child aggression. However I have learned from this section that factors that can indicate violent behaviors are poverty, unemployment, or family issues have an influence on crime” (Sternheimer pg. 133). These factors listed account for more childhood violence than video games both the video and Sternheimer present in a well proving matter. This chapter and the video both revealed to me that we need to look outside media for answers about aggression. Yes the media does have an influence on crime but then how it is that crime rates have drastically dropped over the recent years says Bartholow. Media likes to blow up crimes on TV and make them seem much worse than what they actually are. That causes media to pay extra attention to those crimes instead of identifying the problem. Since media ignores the poor and doesn’t help address issues the young adults and children are left to figure it out themselves. If the media gave attention to the low-income and poor and helped address issues in front of them society could stop blaming that video games for causing aggression. The base of the problem is media and the poor attention it gives to matters that are important and the extreme attention it gives to things that aren’t an issue but more of an interest. In concluding this blog I have ultimately learned that the attention we give to the media might not always be what is most important. So I challenge both you and myself to steer your attention to matters in the media that are actually important not what the media thinks is important.