Media Blog Reflection

Over the past few months, I have been able to observe my own media use and how media impacts others more closely than I used to. This has been due, in a large part, to this blog that I have been keeping. I have realized that I consume a lot of media. I mostly consume media from YouTube or Instagram because they are my favorite social media sites and they are the most time consuming. This causes me to procrastinate on work a lot. I would rather watch YouTube videos or scroll through my Instagram than do my homework because I find it more fun and more engaging. Being aware of my media consumption does not change it in a very large way. When I see a commercial, I am usually able to pick out some advertising techniques when I see an advertisement or a commercial, but nothing really more than that. They already weren’t very effective, so it doesn’t really change how likely I am to respond to them. Even after learning so much about how media works and the various advertising techniques that they use to get people to engage with media, I have not changed the way I interact with media. This is because I didn’t find any of it so unethical or shocking to get me to change it. It’s nothing I did not already know or could have guessed. At the end of the day, even if some of the techniques seem a little unethical to me, I am fine with them being used. I am not overly shocked, and without a drastic change in how I view the media, I will not go out of my way to change my media habits.

Over this semester, I have learned about media literacy and how to be media literate. According to http://medialiteracyproject.org/learn/media-literacy/ "media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media." Having media literacy in today’s society is extremely important. It makes us educated consumers. It allows us to see the messages hidden in various types of media and allows us to see how advertisers are using us in order to make money. It is very important to many people that they know how their information is being used for privacy purposes. People do not want to be taken advantage of and many people are very uncomfortable with their private information being known by a total stranger. Being media literate allows us to be more aware and to take more control of our own lives and be resistant to forces that we would otherwise be resistant to. I also think that it is very important that people know how they are being used by the media because once you know your role in the way advertisers create ads and market their products, you can control it. You can become less susceptible to various advertising techniques if you wish or you could potentially give advertisers a much more real idea of what you (and perhaps others) would want as consumers.

By keeping this log, I was able to more closely observe the various advertising techniques and message present in some of my favorite pieces of media. I was able to truly understand WHY I like them and what makes them so appealing to others as well. This blog helped me to further my own media literacy beyond what I have learned in the classroom.

Nostalgia

     This weekend, I finally got around to seeing Solo: A Star Wars Story. I was slightly anxious beforehand because I had heard that it was just okay. I walked out of the theater really liking it though. The LUKEwarm (ha ha) reception of Solo and the polarizing reception of The Last Jedi (which is one of my favorite Star Wars movies) really got me thinking about a quote I heard somewhere. "Nobody hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans." I think that there is a certain element of truth to this. When I see negative reviews of these movies, a good portion of them are from people who hold the franchise in a very special place in their heart. They appear to idealize the Original Trilogy (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi), but have varying amounts of distaste for any of the newer movies. Some of their criticisms are indeed quite valid, but others seem to stem from the fact that they are new and different from (but not even contradicting) what was established with the original three movies. It seems to me that these are, in general, people who grew up watching the Original Trilogy and who likely were children when these movies came out. I think that it is extremely likely they are letting nostalgia close their minds off from accepting new developments in the saga. They appear to hold Star Wars in a sort of mythical regard and to a higher standard than other movies. They remember how amazing it was to see the original movies as a kid for the first time and expect a similar sense of awe from the new ones. But as they become older, they begin to scrutinize things more. The older ones are immune, or at least mostly immune to this scrutinization because they are protected by nostalgia, but the new ones do not have this protection. They notice a plot hole or something that is new and they immediately hate the movie for it, which is unfair. Maybe this is not the whole story. Maybe my excitement for having new Star Wars films released in my time is clouding MY judgement. I don't think I'd be able to tell if it was. But that doesn't mean that I am completely wrong. I still believe nostalgia plays quite a large role in the reception of the Star Wars franchise. This is not an issue that only occurs with Star Wars though. The influence of nostalgia can be seen in many places in the media.

Are Animals Effective in Advertising?

     Recently, I was reading an article about how pets are going to become the next big social media influencer. But will this work? Are people willing to switch their loyalties from people like the Kardashians to cute and fuzzy animals?
     Well, I can't speak for everyone, but for me the answer is yes. I am a huge animal person, especially dogs. I love dogs. There is nothing that puts me in a better mood than seeing a dog. In fact, I follow two separate dog accounts on Instagram, which is a big deal for me. Usually, I only follow accounts that I think are funny or if I know the person behind the account. But the dogs are just so cute that I can't help myself. I think that this cuteness could be easily used to manipulate consumers into buying products. At least, I know that I am more likely to register or respond positively to an advertisement if there is a cute animal, especially a dog, in it as a focus. But I don't just think it's me. I think that a lot of people would enjoy it more if more cute animals had a larger social media presence.
      But is this exploitation of the consumer ethical? Well, no not really. However, I don't feel that it is very unethical, just slightly unethical. Other forms of advertising are far more manipulative, so I guess it's fine. I am also much more okay with this manipulation because it means I get to look at more animals. I realize that I should probably be a lot less okay with this than I am, but the animals are REALLY cute.
Here is a link to the article: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/03/loni-edwards-agent-for-pet-stars-on-social-media.html

What Is Real - Me or the Commercialization of Me?

     After watching the documentary Miss Representation, in class, one of our discussion questions was "What is real - you or the commercialization of you?" This question really stuck out to me because it is something I have never really thought about before. The thought of there being another version of me that wasn't quite me is completely crazy to me. And the fact that this other me -- the one that advertisers see -- could be more predominant than how I see me just doesn't sit right with me. Luckily, I didn't have to look too far for my answer. I realized that while the me I think I am may not necessarily be the most accurate depiction of me, it is far closer than the one that advertisers have of me. I am much more than a walking wallet that is willing to spend its money on anything and everything it sees. I have already determined that most advertisements have little to no effect on me anyways. The common advertising techniques just don't work on me. I don't buy that many things, so I don't feel that advertisers can really have a more accurate and real idea of who I am than I do. I am certainly more real than my commercialization.

How Does the Media Influence Women and Men?

      In class, we watched a documentary called Miss Representation, which focuses on how women are represented in the media and its effects on them. It says that the media teaches girls and women that the most important thing about them is the way they look. Everything revolves around the way they look. The media sets unrealistic expectations of how they should look by photoshopping and digitally altering pictures of women on magazines and on social media. They do this to promote the idea that women should be tall and skinny to be considered beautiful. This teaches girls that if they do not look this way, they are not beautiful. As a result, they become self-conscious about how they look and become vulnerable to objectification, both from others and themselves. People begin to believe that a woman's sole purpose is to just stand around and look pretty, and this expectation has damaged women's representation in positions of power and in prominence in places like Hollywood or other media outlets. The documentary didn't focus a whole lot on the media's effect on men, but it did touch on it. It said that boys are taught from a very young age to be very masculine and to suppress their emotions. They said that men suppressing their emotions combined with the objectification of women leads to violence against women. Overall, the message of the video was that the media heavily influences the way people see themselves and they way they act, usually for the negative. It is our job to ignore and see past these forced messages and just exist as we want to, without anybody telling us how to do so.

Stealth Marketing

 

           While watching Making Cents Out of Teens: Merchants of Cool, a documentary about the various techniques used by advertisers to sell their products and how this must change over time, I came across the term “stealth marketing.” According to marketing-schools.org stealth marketing is any type of marketing technique in which the advertisers are trying to sell something to consumers without the consumers knowing they are being sold something. A very common example of this would be product placement in a movie or TV show, or placing actors out in cities to talk to normal people about whatever product they are trying to push. The goal of this type of advertisement is to create a buzz around a certain product, so that people will be more receptive to direct advertisement later on. I am interested in the ethicality of stealth marketing. When looking at the definition, I feel very strongly that it is not ethical and I feel like I have been purposefully deceived and taken advantage of. I feel offended that people may have, or at least have tried to appeal to use my subconscious to control me. But when I look at actual examples of this technique, I feel better about it. It seems a bit more obvious than I had originally imagined. Like with product placement, it’s either so subtle that I didn’t recognize it, or so blatantly obvious that I laugh at it. If I ever make a decision based solely on product placement, it will most likely be to not buy a product because it was so annoying. At that point, I’d probably go with the competition just to spite the company. But very rarely do I think it would ever come down to just that. That being said, I would absolutely promote a product in person or on social media for money, but it would probably have to be for a considerable amount of money. It would also depend on the product, how I feel about it, and its reputation. Although almost every product has a price that I would do it for. I think my only condition would be that people know I’m getting paid for it. I’m not too sure why, but the transparency would make me feel much better. I would like to be a non-deceptive as possible. However, I don’t think I would be too hard for people to figure out that I am getting paid for it, just like how it is fairly easy for me to spot this marketing.

For more information of stealth marketing, go to: http://www.marketing-schools.org/types-of-marketing/stealth-marketing.html

Advertising and Coolness

 

          Recently in class, we watched Making Cents Out of Teens: Merchants of Cool, which is a documentary about how advertisers try to keep up with the times and how they market their products. Something that I thought was very interesting about their tactics is that advertisers send people around to find out what is considered “cool.” These people are called cool hunters. They talk to people and look at the trends they see and common threads and interest between them. The cool hunters then report back to the advertisers about what is cool. The advertisers use this information to craft their ads to appeal to young people. Specifically, they are targeting teenagers because they have a lot of excess money to spend. But the most interesting part of this is that the advertisers doing this essentially destroys the coolness of whatever cool thing they put in the ad. This is because when something is brought to the mainstream, everybody tries to do that cool thing. This makes it lose its specialness and its coolness. Then the “cool kids” move on to something else and advertisers have to figure out what that is so they can put it into their ads and ultimately inadvertently destroy them. And it continues on in a cycle forever until the cool kids find something that is completely indigestible by advertisers. This is usually something that is highly vulgar or inappropriate in some other way for the mainstream population. I think that this plays a large role in the rebellious teen stereotype. While this problem may not cause the stereotype, it definitely would exacerbate it. In their effort to find something that is cool, they stray further and further from the media and everything else that is seen as “safe” or “mainstream.” While this stereotype used to be very common and still is to an extent, it is slowly decreasing. Some of this void has been taken up by hipsters, whose whole thing is liking something before it was considered cool. They like smaller, lesser known things, like indie movies or very small bands. This is a more peaceful escape from mainstream media and culture than the rebellious teen movement was. But I find it quite ironic that in their search for cool, advertisers end up destroying cool, or taking the coolness of a thing away. Advertisers are aware that this is happening, but they do not know how to combat it. All they can do for now is keep on looking for and destroying coolness until they can find another way to do things.

While writing my previous blog, an idea popped into my head that really intrigued me. I was writing about the effectiveness of commercials and I began to talk about how I want to see Star Wars IX even though I know almost nothing about it. That led me to think about if movies today are just advertisements for their sequels. This is especially prevalent today, as many major film studios are intent on setting up their own highly successful film franchises, much like the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars. These franchises usually release at least one movie per year, and require audiences too watch most, if not all, of the previous movies in order to watch the new ones. It has even gotten to the extent that movies contain entire scenes with no other purpose than to set up sequels, usually placed during the credits or at the very end of the credits. These scenes can also be put into the main part of the movie, where they set up a plot thread, and just leave it hanging until the next movie. And while these scenes can be very enjoyable, it is almost undeniable that they are pure advertisement for the next movie. It’s pretty obvious. This is a very smart business tactic because fans of a movie/franchise don’t have to wait around for months wonder if there will be another movie in their favorite series. As soon as the audiences walk out of the theater, they know that the story is not over and that they have more movies to enjoy their favorite characters. The studios are basically guaranteeing that audiences will come back to spend even more money next year. While this can certainly be handled incorrectly and quite obviously, there are plenty of movies that can pull this off organically. So as long as it doesn’t feel too forced, I am okay with this type of advertisement.

How Effective Are Commercials?

            Commercials and advertisements surround us constantly throughout the day. There is no escape from them, wherever you may be. But their prevalence in our society has led me to an interesting question: How many commercials truly convince you to buy something? I know that I don’t typically find commercials too effective in persuading me to buy or do something. If I buy something, the chances are that I would buy it without having to look at a commercial for it. I would either already know enough about the product through my own research or have it recommended to me by a friend. The closest thing to an actual advertisement that I think would convince me to buy something is a review for the product. This could be an in-hand product review, like for a phone, or a written review for something like a movie that I was on the fence about seeing. Although in this specific case, and probably only in this specific case, a commercial might just convince me, but not very often. Usually, I hear about movies a long time in advance and make up my decision about whether or not I want to see it then, like with Star Wars IX. I haven’t seen anything for it yet, they probably haven’t even started shooting it, but I have heard about it and I know that I want to see it. But as for the ads and commercials, I don’t think that they are very effective at all. Once in a while, they might convince me to buy something, but I think this is a rare occurrence.

Politics and Media

    The current state of politics and its relationship with media is kind of weird. I’m not sure if it is the Trump presidency or if it has always been like this and I was just too young to notice or care, but it seems to me like more people are involved in politics since the 2016 election. More people are talking about them, big political issues and debates have become more mainstream, and people almost always have an opinion about everything. There are also more people who quickly jump to extremes, as well. It just seems like public focus has shifted more towards Washington D.C. than normal.

    Perhaps the oddest thing about all of this is the White House’s relationship with late night talk shows or comedy shows, Saturday Night Live or The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. These two shows in particular have gotten a lot more popular over the last two years. They have done very well making fun of President Trump and his administration. As much as they oppose him and make fun of him, at the end of the day, is presidency has been a good thing for them, at least in terms of business. It seems that every day something so crazy happens surrounding President Trump or his administration that they never run out of material. Their main focuses have shifted towards the White House. This has become so drastic that some people events these programs as their main source of news, myself included.

    Many of these late night comedy shows are left-leaning, politically. They have found their audience who is not pleased with the current administration. The shows attempt to ease their audience’s pain by making them laugh. More and more people flock to these shows because they feel better when watching them. While they’re watching, they hear the news, which eliminates their need to watch regular news programs.

    So, in a way, these shows have their increasing successes because of the very thing that they oppose. I thought that it was kind of weird, but now it makes perfect sense to me. Conflict keeps things interesting. Of everything stayed perfect all the time, there would be no competition and everything would be boring.

My Issues with Instagram

     My preferred social media platform is Instagram. I have mentioned that here before. But lately, I found it has gotten so much more difficult to use. 

     Since I do not have a whole lot of free time in my life right now, I do not check it as regularly as I’d like. I end up only checking it about once every week or two. This makes my life just that much more difficult because I like to see each and every post that people I follow post. I don’t want to miss anything, even if I do end up seeing it very late. Earlier today, I was finally checking my main feed after twenty-two days. But I got to pictures from about two weeks ago and then the feed just wouldn’t load any more.  It wasn’t that my WiFi cut out or anything like that. I just reached the bottom of my feed and there was no sign that suggested that the app had any intention of showing me posts from before that. I was kind of mad. I had spent hours trying to look at all the posts I had missed in the past three weeks, but it wasn’t even letting me see all of them. So I had to go to each account’s profile to see their pictures from this missing time frame. Why is there a bottom to my feed? Why doesn’t it just continue forever, just loading a few posts at a time like normal? It is a complete mystery to me. 

     Also, I have noticed that posts in my feed do are not always in chronological order. Sure, they follow a loose chronology, so that you won’t get posts from months ago in between a few posts from yesterday, but a post from five hours ago might show up before a post from three hours ago. I don’t get this either. Is there any purpose to having my posts show up in a somewhat random order? Because I just find it plain annoying and pointless. 

     I really wish Instagram would fix these very annoying issues with their app because overall I quite like it and I think it is vastly superior to other forms of social media. 

Superhero Successes

NOTE: This article contains NO spoilers for Avnegers: Infinity War, or any other movie or show discussed in this article. 

     A big trend today in the entertainment business is the use of superheroes. It seems like every other month, they release a new superhero movie and that the amount of superhero movies being released is quickly increasing each year. But this is not just a trend in the movies, it has also impacted television, but to a much lesser extent. This is great for somebody like me, who just absolutely loves these kinds of movies and shows. I can’t get enough of them. When talking about the movies, I’d have to say that Marvel and Disney have the best movies right now, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (this includes the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy). But for  TV, the best shows come from DC Comics and The CW (my favorites are The Flash and Arrow). But why are these the best? Why am I drawn to Marvel movies more than DC ones? Or DC shows more than the Marvel ones? Most superhero movies or shows are adapted from comics. Both companies have built up expansive multiverses that allow many characters to show up together and interact with each other. Even though I have never read a comic, I like this idea very much. I like just how interconnected these worlds are and how much crossover they allow. I have noticed that most of my favorite superhero movies are the ones with many characters who can cross over with each other. A really good example of this is the recently released Avengers: Infinity War (no need to worry if you haven’t had the chance to see it yet— no spoilers here!). It takes many well-established characters that the audience cares very deeply about from many different successful franchises and has them all come together against a common threat. The people who make the Marvel movies understand the importance of their characters and their interactions with others and their growth over the years. They started off by doing individual movies for most of their main cast before they did the first Avenegrs movie in 2012. In contrast, DC movies tried to do too much too quickly in an effort to catch up to their competition. Their second movie was Batman v Superman, and they had to spend half of the movie focusing on establishing characters and trying to set up the sequels. The movie suffered for this, because due to the sheer amount that they wanted to introduce, they didn’t leave sufficient time to do it well and still focus on the movie. In a roughly 2.5 hour movie, Batman and Superman only spent about eight minutes fighting. The movie (and the franchise) lacked the character development, care, and precision that was clearly evident in all of the Marvel movies. Luckily, TV lends itself a little more towards having lots of character interactions and development, because they have a lot more time to fill than movies do. Strangely enough though, this is where the MCU fails. Marvel and Disney are adamant that their TV shows take place in the same universe as their movie do, but they hardly ever reference each other and the crossover is almost nonexistent. Even when ignoring the movies, there is a lot less crossover between different TV shows when comparing Marvel to DC. DC’s movies are not connected to their shows, so there is no crossover expected. But they will have various characters from one TV show cross over to another every once in a while. It feels more like an actual breathing world than the Marvel shows do. So in conclusion, I like the shows and movies that I do because they create a world that is larger than just that one movie or show. They create entire universes to explore with believable and lovable characters.

Marketing

     Recently, in class, I was watching a video about the role of advertising in our world today. It was called “The Persuaders.” I thought it was pretty shocking to see the methods used by the companies and the amount of thought that went into crafting advertisements and presenting various companies. It was even surprising to learn things that I had been aware of subconsciously, but never fully thought about. An example of this would be that most companies, rather than trying to give you all of the facts and benefits about their product or service, will focus and getting you to feel a certain way by watching the advertisements for their product. The focus on how good it will make you feel, or tell you how much it will improve your life by making it easier, or making you look cooler or smarter by simply using their product, even if it doesn’t really make sense. They want to create a cult-like devotion in consumers towards their product so that they are the only company that pops into people’s minds whenever there is a chance. Advertisers actually go to study cults to see how they can more effectively market their products to get a similar response. A good example of this devotion is Apple. People who own Apple products, usually their iPhones, typically are unwilling to switch to any other company, even though there is no real reason to feel so strongly about sticking with Apple. Most people have iPhones, so that is what they want. This apples to me, too. I can’t exactly explain why I feel such loyalty to Apple, but I would much rather own one of their products than something from a rival company like Samsung. People who work in marketing departments and in advertising all know that the heart can always beat the head. That is to say, emotion can always win out over logic. So they need to appeal to this emotion more than they need to appeal to logic.

     When looking anywhere on the internet today, you are more than likely to come across the phrase "fake news." But lately, this phrase has lost its true meaning. It has evolved into a phrase that people use to dismiss pieces of information that they do not agree with, regardless of its validity or whether or not they even know anything about its validity. The most prominent examples the phrase "fake news" being thrown around come from our current President, accusing various media outlets of conveying less than factual information. His common targets ore CNN and the New York Times, while he seems to have a very strong preference for Fox News. Interestingly enough, Fox News itself has a reputation of not conveying news accurately/impartially. This difference in opinion got me thinking: what is the actual difference in articles between CNN and Fox News?
     Earlier today, there was a shooting at a Waffle House in Tennessee. One of the most prominent things that stuck out to me about the differences in these articles was the tone. CNN mostly stayed factual and professional, not letting the author's opinion get in the way of their reporting. Fox News on the other hand, had a very clear opinion that it was not afraid to display. Fox News tried to evoke an emotional response in the reader. They tried to make the reader feel sad and like these people had so much more life to live before it was taken from them. They wanted their reader to feel true sorrow at the deaths of these people. This is admittedly a very safe stance to take, as almost nobody would object to it, but a stance nonetheless. While in this case, I did agree with Fox News's stance on the event, I prefer CNN's more factual approach to reporting the news. Opinions and stances are important and they do have a place, but just not mixed in with news reporting. That kind of writing is more for social media or a blog, like this one.
Here are the articles:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/04/22/waffle-house-shooting-victims-include-brilliant-college-student-aspiring-rapper.html
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/22/us/waffle-house-shooting-what-we-know/index.html

My Relationship with Media

            As a teenager in this generation, media and electronics are a very large and essential part of my life. I am almost always interacting with them in some form or another. I honestly cannot think of anybody I know, from my eight-year-old little sister to my great-grandfather, who does not use any form of media or electronics daily. The two main social media sites I use are Instagram and Snapchat. I use Snapchat more often because it is less time consuming. Everything on the app is designed to be used very quickly. This makes it perfect for people with busy schedules or people with short attention spans. However, I prefer Instagram over Snapchat because Instagram gives off more of a sense of permanence and it also seems a lot more official. Pretty much anything that is posted there stays until the owner makes a conscious decision to take it down, but things on Snapchat only stay for a day. There is also a lot more to do on Instagram. It is very useful for when I need to kill time. But that is also its weakness. I always feel obligated to look at every post that pops up in my feed, but I very rarely have time to do that. As a result, I only scroll through my homepage once every week or two.

I don't really use Twitter for the same reason. It takes too long. But I feel that there is less to do on Twitter than there is on Instagram. I see social media as a way to keep in touch with everybody you want. From relatives you don't see often to friends you see every day, there is a really good chance that they have some sort of social media account that you can use to contact them.