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