Module 4
The reading for this week’s module instructed us to think about content we experienced in previous modules. I could not help but think about the idea of power being a repeating factor throughout our class. In Sternheimer’s “Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture,” she mentioned “controlling information about sex has historically been used in order to maintain dominance over others” (2013, p. 162). In my mind, this can be connected to the way media communicates many things to us. Poverty as an example; In the last module, we discussed they way the low income population is talked about in terms of raw data, but not the back story of what really matters. In Terry Dugan’s “Developing a Common Culture: The Role Mass Communication Plays in Forming a Common Culture” he discusses that before mass communication, culture was local. It sparked my curiosity about how individuals of different cultures were treated and talked about then.
In Dugan’s video “The Functions and Effects of Culture,” he mentioned four types of culture; individual, family, bounded, and dominant. The dominant culture is our public one. Sternheimer discussed that “there is nothing wrong with feeling good and looking good, yet it is often characterized as an imperative rather than an option” in “Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture” (2013, p. 208). The connection for me between these two individuals works in this regard is that our dominant/public culture is leading us to believe in a necessity of not being ourselves. It is creating a world of people trying to fit in to avoid being different or bullied and we are losing ourselves in the process.
I enjoyed learning the eight elements of communication and their functions. A lot of what Dugan taught was common sense and things that I think we know and want to perhaps change but don’t. For example, when he said “we see, hear, and believe what we want,” in “Impact of Media on Culture: The Communications Process,” I was definitely nodding along. Also, his points about how mass media can lead to misunderstanding and unclear messaging were so true. I’m curious which of his points stuck out most to my classmates!
