Language Arts Journal
Nick Porter
What is media and media literacy
Social Media
25 words of Media
"The News"
24 hours without social media
I managed to go 24 hours without almost any social media. I figured it would be rather easy as I don’t use most of the common social media sites. I havn’t used sites like facebook in over a month so going an extra 24 hours was not a problem. I didn’t even think about opening it up on my phone. The only trouble was that I use Facebook messenger with a lot of my friends, so I ended up either not talking to them, or just using normal texting. Youtube was also rather easy. I watched everything I wanted to watch before 4pm and also didn’t open the app, or the site itself. I’m not overly attached to neither Facebook nor Youtube so honestly 24 hours was super easy. Snapchat, on the other hand was a different story. I had no trouble not opening it and looking at the stories but around 7:30, my girlfriend snapchatted me and I didn’t think twice about opening it up and using it. At that point I technically failed the challenge. I did however continue not using the other mentioned sites. This also included not watching the stories on snapchat. This morning was even easier to avoid using social media because i had a presentation in my first block, a test in my second, and band during third. So no time to really use social media, or my phone in general. Overall this challenge was not very hard and would be a rather easy thing to replicate again.
ABC&D's of Beauty
Unfortunately, too many people take what the media says too seriousley. They don’t understand that the media edits and adjusts what beauty “is” in an effort to seel more product. When they see a model, they often think THAT is what beauty is and THAT is what they want to look like. Then comes quite a bit of hypocracy. Some people in society complain about the unreal beauty standards of America, and then go out and buy and use the same products. They say that bikini-clad women shouldn’t be the norm of ads, and then make an ad with a “normal” women, in a bikini. They also like to complain about women in little to no clothing, but then break the internet when a guy does the same thing. I have only given it some thought in the past and most of it was that, clearly, the beauty industry had good ads if they are on of the biggest indusrties in America and I have enjoyed some of the comersials that componies like old spice make. I, however, have known for a very long time that what the media says is beauty is completly unrealistic and falsified. I gave it more thought with this presintaion because I was fourced to pay attention to the ads. I was fourced to see what the media was making society wrongley think beauty is and I was surprised at just how extreme many of them were. I was amazed that Corperations were alright with these ads going up. It showed how stupid and ignorant some people in society are. They don’t think twice about how fake the industry is.
Politifact fact checking
I tend to double check facts when they start to sound a little outlandish or if they were found on Facebook or heard from a friend. I tend to give the other person" the benefit of the doubt", otherwise. If I see a fact on a government website, like the CDC, or on more than one independent websites with studies of their own, then I will tend to believe it.
Victim or Villain?
Course Reflection
My view of what media literacy is has somewhat changed since the beginning of the semester. In the begin I thought that it was, literally, being able to recognize the different types of media, much like being literate, and the influence it has on people. I now realize it has a much deeper meaning. Media literacy is much more about learning how the influences of media have changed human nature and how to avoid too much media. I may have already known how media manipulates people, but I didn’t know the exact ways and techniques they use. I learned what exactly too look out for in terms of media lies and bias. I’ve can also take away the big brother way of thinking by most, if not all, governments in the world. This entire class was different, mostly, because it focused mostly on real world and current events that were/are relevant to our lives. Other Language Arts classes focused on a 100 year old book, or a myth, or other things that most people had little to no interest in. At the very least, I feel as though I learned something mildly relevant today that will actually be somewhat useful at a later date. The only thing I could think to make the class better would be show a few more examples for the projects we did as I often felt that I was doing the project wrong, or doing too much, or not enough, and seeing an example would have made life a little better.
Prince Ea Reflection
Prince Ea is scarily right when he says that humanity is becoming disconnected because of technology. Originally it was meant to connect those who were disconnected and allow people to find out about world events and try to spread them to even more people. As Prince Ea pointed out, quite the opposite has happened. People have never been more disconnected before. People text their friends who are in the same room, or laugh at others online, or simply have no social life in real life. The only way to prevent this from becoming permanent is to end it. While places like facebook can be great to connect people far apart or get your business's name out, etc. people have started using it as their entire life. If Facebook’s or Google’s, or any other major technology company's servers went offline for 24 hours, perhaps people would finally realize how unhealthily addicted they are to tecnology. They would realize that it should be used as minimally as possible and only for things you couldn’t do on your own, like talk to relatives across the earth or running a business, not talking to friends you see every day or endlessly looking at cat videos. I, now, only use Facebook for birthdays or group events/pages that I need to stay up to date with. I only use google for homework or important emails. All things that will allow me to harness the potential of technology without becoming a slave to it.