Mae's Media Blogs

              I consume a lot of media on a day to day basis.   From the articles I read, to the posts I see, to the ads that are everywhere, media fills my life.   This media has a huge impact on my life, but I only truly understood how large of an impact it has after working through these media blogs and the classes that went along with it.   Because I now understand the needs that advertisers try to satisfy and the techniques they use to do it, I feel like these ads affect me a little bit less. Of course, advertisements will always affect me, but because I know all the things companies use to make me buy their products, I feel that I am affected less.   I also know more about how media manipulates our thoughts, and I feel like this helps me to be manipulated less than the average consumer, but this may just be wishful thinking.               Throughout the Media unit, I realized that I probably should spend less time with media, and hopefully lessen

A story that has been in the news a bit during the past few weeks is about how a journalist in Russia was reported dead, reportedly killed by the Kremlin, and was then found to be completely fine.  An  article  from the New York Times detailed the news. Although the man had been reported dead, he turned up soon after at a news conference, alive and well.  It became clear that the whole thing was an elaborate stunt, one meant to catch a killer, and Mr. Babchenko, the man who had supposedly died, was in on the whole plot. No one had expected this result, and most were chocked. Obituaries had already been written, and the Kremlin had been blamed.  After he turned up alive however, his fellow journalists weren't pleased. They were greatly upset, mainly due to the fact that journalists in Russia are often subject to persecution when they share news that the government doesn't want them to, and Mr. Babchenko simply ignored all of that and worked with a government agency and lied to a

Ever since I took the PSAT earlier this year, I've been getting hundreds of emails, pamphlets, and fliers from colleges and universities all across the country. The huge amount of college mail I have received has created a few questions for me.  First of all, it amazes me that the colleges have a large enough budget to pay for all these mailings and email campaigns, especially when I don't see it paying off in a huge way in the end.  This connects to my main question, which centers around how  these mailings actually get students to attend their college or university.  Most students will only end up attending one college, maybe two or three if they transfer or attend a different school for graduate school. However, based on the huge amounts of mail that I, and many of my peers have received, it seems like they expect us to attend many more.  I decided to look at one of the flyers I received from a college that sends me a lot of mail, Oberlin.  In this flyer, they made strong

The video MissRepresentation Points to many of the issues that women face in today's society, mostly stemming from their portrayal in the media.  According to the documentary, women are seen as sexual objects due to their portrayal in media, which causes young girls and women to feel pressured to fit these unreasonable body images. Women are also seen as inferior because of their roles in shows in movies, which prevents them from having much of a role in politics, or other powerful positions.  However, after realizing that there is a problem, there is the problem of finding a feasible solution, and this isn't very easy.  The documentaries solution centered around challenging media companies and holding them accountable, encouraging women leaders, and having more education in media literacy for boys and girls. However, I feel that these steps aren't necessarily enough to make sure that future generations of girls and boys feel safe and comfortable on social media and in t

Through watching the video Missrepresentation, we learn all about how women, and to a much lesser extent men, are seen throughout media, ans by extent, the world.  The film detailed how women feel pressured to act, look, and be a certain way, all because of the images that we see on TV shows, in movies and in ads.  So this all raises the question of who i, as a teenage girl, really am.  Am I the person that I feel I am when I'm alone or hanging out with friends? Or am I the person I feel I have to be when I'm in public, either on social media or in the real world?  The answer isn't an easy one to find, and chances are, we won't be completely happy with it.  See, we can't truly be someone that is not commercialized, not affected by the public eye, because in this era, everything we do is not private. A video can be uploaded to Snapchat or Instagram in a second, and things can be seen by all of your friends, and thousands of people you don't know in just a few

During the Frontline program Merchants of Cool, the advertising technique of stealth advertising is described.  Stealth advertising is a type of advertising that advertises to consumers without them knowing that they are seeing ads.  Product placement,where a product is effectively placed in a TV show or movie is a type of stealth advertising.  Over the past years, marketers have moved towards stealth marketing, away from traditional ads, like the ones that play during TV shows, or are printed in magazines.  This article  details one of the first large scale stealth marketing endeavors, which was an ad campaign for a new Samsung phone.  Instead of having traditional ads, they paid actors to go out in public, ask someone to take a photo with the phone, and then tell them all about how great a phone it was. The campaign was very successful, but the practice of having paid actors, or placing products in TV shows raises questions about ethics.  The traditional ads we think of are always pr

One of the discussion questions for after watching PBS's Merchants of Cool asks if the show has made us better consumers.  After some reflection, on both the show itself and my own habits as a consumer, if I were to answer honestly, I'd most likely say no, it hasn't.  The show detailed how advertisers and companies will go cool hunting, find their audiences, and market towards them, and all of this was interesting, and made sense. However, I don't think that it actually changed the way that I think about ads.  Although it gave me more background about how ads are designed, and why we see the types of marketing that we do, most of it didn't surprise me, and wasn't shocking enough for me to change my habits.  I know about how products are placed in shows, and how much of what I see is cool is based on the programming and media that I see on a daily basis. However, this knowledge doesn't really change the way I interact with this media.  For me, ads are a part

My mom always tells me not to take the quizzes you find on social media, like the Buzzfeed quizzes that we all know so well.  These quizzes promise to answer any question you have, and also all the ones that you didn't know you even had.  They will tell you where you should go, guess your favorite food, and even tell you what TV show you are. There are thousands of quizzes like this, and they can be a fun way to pass a few minutes when you are waiting for something, or trying to procrastinate. However, my mother always told me not to take them, due to the fact that they are just a way to gather your information. However, I had no idea how true this actually was, so I decided to look into it.  According to an  article by Local 8 News , some of these quizzes are designed by hackers who want your data, or who want to get you to visit another website and give them data there, or share it with your friends.  However, the article also said that not all quizzes do this, and if you take a

One of my favorite book series is the Unwind series by Neal Shusterman.  This series discusses a futuristic dystopia, where abortion has been outlawed in favor of Unwinding, a medical process done to unruly, misbehaving teenagers.  They are surgically divided, and each part of their body and brain is used to help others.  There are many more complexities within the series, but that's the main idea.  In this dystopia, abortion lead to a huge civil war, known as the Heartland war, and eventually a compromise was reached that made no one happy. Although it seems crazy, this fictional dystopia is actually a logical progression of where we are now regarding abortion rights.  Currently, abortion rights are a hotly debated topic, from  editorials , to news articles and clips, and everyone seems o have an opinion. Although the series is targeted towards teens, it shows exactly what can happen when these debates can't be refereed any longer.  So many other dystopian books show exact