Module 3 Reflections

After reading the pdf written by Lanshear and Knobel, Michael Goldhaber on the ‘Attention Economy‘. I would like to agree that our economy is focusing more on the attention aspect rather than the information. When I think of this idea, I think about all the companies and all their advertisements. The authors mentioned how information gets moved around the internet but so does attention. “Goldhaber identifies cyberspace as the being where the attention economy will come into its own”. I think of companies because when I go on the internet and go to google to search something up there is always some type of advertisement on whatever page I may be on. I may have read this article wrong and if so someone can explain it to me better! It was interesting to see how Goldhaber relates media like television and education as taking on the same role of gaining attention. ” Everyone who is seen on television models one common role, as do all teachers in schools, and that role is to be the object of a good deal of attention. Thus, without planning or intention, there has been a kind of revoultion, tellings us that getting attention is a fine thing. And for many of us, having the attention of other turns out to feel very good, soemthing we often want more of” (Goldhaber, 1998, p.3). A great example that was also mentioned was how we have celebrities known as “stars” and then we have the fans who pay attention to the celebrities. Since paying attention takes effort, the fans who give the attention to the stars are supplying most of the attention for the economy.

Looking at the the two videos in this module I think they both had different qualities, but both try to raise awareness on the topic of child property that it out there in our world. The video called Child Poverty: In their own Words  grabbed my attention from the start because the child starts singing about his experience and then as we go into the video we listen to him and other children talking about their life experiences with poverty. I think when the information comes from someone who has actually lived through something like poverty it grabs peoples attention and you can connect with them on an emotional level. They all mentioned the necessities needed in life that they lacked like food, water, shelter, and something to call their own. In the other video Marian Wright Edelman: 2015 Poverty Report gave more the facts about 2015 child poverty that is an ongoing problem. This grabs your attention in a different way bay giving you the facst and what we need to do as a country to make a change. The report given by Marian Wright will give solutions on how to adjust different policies, which could lead to a shrink of child poverty by 60%. Mariam Wright stated in her speech that, “ Our greatest threat to national security doe snot come from an external enemy, it comes from the internal failure to build a strong citizenry” (Wright, 2015, video). No one is causing us to have these problems but ourselves the more people that are aware this is a problem, will maybe be the same people who can make a difference to help children in poverty. Looking at the reading,  The Poor Will Always Be With Us: Just not on the TV news it gave some good data about groups of people who are being affect by poverty in our country. “According to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data, 37 million Americans—one in eight—lived below the federal poverty line in 2005” (Neil, Rendall, 2007, p.1). I decided to go find more recent data but I only found data for 2014. According to the U.S census Bureau, “ In 2014, the official poverty rate was 14.8 percent. There were 46.7 million people in poverty. Neither the poverty rate nor the number of people in poverty were statistically different from the 2013 estimates”. The numbers have definitely jumped to a higher number since 2005 and I’m interested to know what it is now. I am guessing it is worse because I still do not think our main focus is to decrease child poverty but we are focused on other topics. Looking at media we never really hear anything about it too. Also looking at the other fact sheet, Basic Facts about Low-Income Children was also shocking, because a big chunk of the victims of poverty are children under the age of 18. There was even a graph that showed the line between near poor and poor and it is a lot! Different aspects play a role like, health insurance, home ownership, family structure, parents employment, parents education, and it’s interesting how the difference in poverty does vary depending on race. This relates back to parents employment and education. White was the least but still a big number, while black and hispanic were both around the same numbers along with American Indian. I think it is staying a problem and growing even more in numbers because our media does not bring awareness to what is going on in our backyard. This brings me to the article called, 4 Problems with the Way the Media Depicts Poor People by Shannon Ridgway.

Four of the problems she stated talked about invisibility, statistics, life choices, and luck. Since we are learning about media literacy I though the invisibility was the most important problem. “ We’d much rather watch a show about the rich, superficial housewives squabbling over trivial issues, or New Yorkers living in huge apartments that they somehow magically can afford, despite have jobs that pay moderate wage, or no jobs at all” (Ridgway, 2013). Like the author I’m the same way I like to watch these type of shows because as much as they are not educational, the drama grabs my attention. If we want to make a change we do need to try to have media raise awareness on things that are important so that more people can be informed on the problems we have like poverty. She also made a good point about not just showing statistics because then we just group poor people as statistics rather than human beings which I did not think about before this article. Media can play a big role with this because they can help give a stronger voice to the people. “Without the social context to understand why the poor live the way they do, we assume that they live that way because they choose to” (Ridgway, 2013). Like the video we watched with the children speaking about their experiences it gave a stronger connection and context behind the words of just children poverty. In the end all the readings and videos touched on the subject of poverty in America and we need to bring awareness to this problem with media, but as Ridgway mentioned we keep these things invisible because we do not want to hear about them.