Our Media ( Mind Control) Universe
What Is It to Be Media Literate?
Smore 1
The media is how everyone knows everything. It’s the newspaper, television, internet, the news and typically anything that you can use to spread the word. The media can be good or bad depicting on what is going around. There are shows like TMZ that spread news about celebrities and typically they show their mistakes. The media uses its power to manipulate to whatever they want the people to see. They can twist peoples’ words and make it seem like the person is a negative human being. There’s also the news like CNN or FOX that share the local, national and international news. People can learn about the cotton shortage in Georgia while living in Wyoming. Information can travel through the media and can reach across the world. Whether you are learning about how Kylie Jenner got new lip implants to learning about an earthquake in Haiti. Any person can be media literate. It’s a person’s ability to take whatever they want from the news and analyze it. Everyone does this whether they know it or not. They see Donald Trump on the news talking about how he doesn’t want any new Muslims coming into America. A person can hear that and automatically think he is a racist or a bad person. People can take anything that want out of the media. Some people sit there and nitpick every little word a person says while being projected out in the media. Others just make a simple review out of what someone says. Replying your view about a celebrity’s tweet is an example of being media literate. Everyone can use media literacy to their own advantage by analyzing the media.
TMZ
Media
Media is All Around Us
Smore 2
Gaza Strip Activism
Before this project, I already spent some of my time acting on the Gaza Strip crisis. My boyfriend’s family has houses in the Gaza Strip and in Nazareth, Israel so I get to hear a lot of input on the situation. Last year in the summer of 2014 when the fifty day war was going on, his family was going pretty much insane. They were constantly ranting about the Israelis and they were non-stop praying about for their family that was still over in Gaza. My boyfriend’s sister was really passionate about the situation so she ordered over fifty t-shirts to give out to friends and family to raise awareness. Several of us pitched in money for the t-shirts and the money went straight to supplies for the wounded on the Gaza Strip. Rayyan’s sister told me to wear the shirt as much as I could to get awareness out. Almost every time I wore the shirt, someone would either comment on the situation or would ask why it just had the word “Gaza” on it. I knew I was helping by spreading some awareness towards Gaza. I want to do more about the situation rather than just wear a t-shirt. Several of Rayyan’s family members talk about going to downtown Atlanta and protesting when the next rally is going to occur. I would like to join them some time because after hearing from first hand experiences about the situation, I want to act on it more. After learning more about Gaza, I want to join them in protesting and hopefully it will make a difference.
Smore #3 Super Bowl 50 Commercial
In Mountain Dew’s new commercial during the 2016 Super Bowl, the company was advertising for their energy drink, Kickstart, a mixture of juice, Mountain Dew and caffeine. By using a cross of humor and horror, Mountain Dew came up with a new mascot for their drink, a mix of a puppy, monkey and a baby. With the creative new Puppy Monkey Baby, the company used the creature in order to capture the audience with the creepy and quite disturbing tool; Mountain Dew wanted people to talk, tweet and remember this commercial even if it did leave people with nightmares. With a comedic tone, the commercial audience was aimed towards energy drink users who are mostly college students, teens and young adults.
Smore #4: Advertising and Society
In today’s advertising, women and girls are portrayed as the more dominant figure. In commercials, women are seen as the powerful, controlling head of the family while the male figure is childish, immature or clueless. Women have always been brought down by men ever since the beginning of time. They were seen only as caregivers, sex objects or the cooks of the family while society put the pressure on men to be successful money makers. Now women are realizing of how powerful they can be and I think advertising has helped to an extent. When I think of advertising that’s supposed to move women, it can be really powerful and I personally can reflect on it. I think they use advertising as a tool to help women or it could just be companies are aiming their target audience towards women. But I still don’t think women are as near as respected as men in society. I don’t think men take advertising into effect when it comes to society. They may be pictured one way on advertising but when it comes to the real world, they are still in charge. Women are powerful to a certain extent in a relationship but I think it’s different when everyone steps out of the house. Men still get more pay, still are seen as more powerful and still run the country. You look at politics and almost every person is a man. When someone thinks of a doctor or a surgeon, they automatically think of a man. Society is slowly starting to get more diverse with sexes but it’s still a dominantly male work force.
Smore 5
Hypocrisy in Advertisement
I feel like companies want to be hypocritical when it comes to advertising. They say one thing but do another. They want to promise something to one group of people but never really act on. They want to make a group of people happy by saying something but never actually do anything to help towards that cause. Nobody can really be forced to do something, but why promote something or support it, if you don’t act on it? Why promise towards something that you don’t HAVE to do? They want to grab people’s attention in any way they can. Companies will do anything to get light on their supplies or services. They want promotion in any form they can get. Patagonia tells people not to buy their products because they are not environmentally friendly, pledges to become more environmentally friendly and continues to sell their products (Costa). L’Oréal rats out Dior for using “airbrushed lashes to artificial perfection” instead of actually using the product in a commercial but then, L’Oréal gets caught by the FDA for health concerns (Costa). They either want to help themselves or hurt someone else. I believe companies just should be honest when it comes to making or selling products. They shouldn’t support something if they aren’t going to act on it. Just be honest and don’t do something just for attention.
Smore 6: Freedom vs. Security
I believe that Apple shouldn’t be forced to help with the San Bernardino case. I completely understand the reason of why they want into the iPhone but it will come with some consequences. Being able to get into someone’s private information is always a scary thought. Americans deserve their freedom to have privacy against our government. I respect Apple for standing their ground on this case. They honor their customers’ privacy even with the FBI knocking at their door. They are defending the reason of why they made their phones so private in the first place. They don’t want into our phones and they want to keep it that way. Yes, there might be evidence on the phone and it may help in the case. But what could also happen is, they make this software but there is nothing helpful that is located on the phone’s storage. This dangerous software would have been created for nothing! Then, hackers could easily obtain this software and get into anyone’s system. Not only hackers could get into anyone’s Cloud, but the government could start using the software to get into anyone’s. There’s a definite line between listening in for information on a phone call and hacking into someone’s personal Cloud. The government needs to look in the perspective of the other iPhone users.
Smore #7: Camera Surveillance
“Society would be safer if we had security cameras in public places to catch potential criminals.”
We have security cameras in public place and I believe the more surveillance we increase, some places are becoming safer. Cameras help us catch criminals. Without cameras, I bet there would be so many cases that would have never caught a murderer or a thief. Without surveillance, we could possibly miss out on so much crime that is happening. Stores use cameras to catch shop lifters or to catch the faces of people who are trying to break in at night. We use cameras to our advantage and without them, I feel like so many crimes wouldn’t have been solved. For possible suspects, security guards could be watching the screen and see someone with a gun walking around the store, could call the police and prevent a crime. Using cameras isn’t a bad thing. If security guards see a kid creeping around the store and picking up objects and putting them in their pockets, they can stop them before they get away with it. Our own school had an incident at the softball fields where they destroyed the video cameras, then ruined the rest of the field. If there were either more cameras, hidden ones or if they weren’t destroyed, we probably would have caught whoever ruined the field. Just the idea of having security cameras out there would maybe lesson more crimes because people will be afraid that they are even on camera. Even just having the camera lets the store know that someone was there. They don’t want to get caught for a crime so they won’t even do it. Yes, I do agree that cameras all over the place would be kind of hectic and it might invade our privacy. But, people need to understand that someone isn’t just constantly staring at every single moment of a security film. Not everything you do will be certainly be seen. Why does it matter if you are being recorded in public? You already put your life online and if you are in public, you should be fine if you act in a behaving manner. Cameras might help up prevent crimes rather than just invading our privacySmore #8: The Truth of the Candidates
Today I found out the majority of what the candidates say is false. They are just coming up with lies to put up against each other or to make whatever they are saying more realistic or exaggerated. People probably don’t check to make sure whatever the candidates are saying is true or not. They take what they can from the debates and make their opinions off of what they say. Almost every “fact” Trump said was false. According to the website, only 3% of what he says is true. We definitely cannot rely on the media for our information of the presidential campaigns. Things can be altered and edited or even taken in the wrong sense to create major headlines. People need to start researching their favorite candidates to make sure they are the ones to be voting for. I know for sure that most Americans do not look up whether the things that Trump or Bernie are even true. All of the candidates seem to just been making up numbers and different scenarios that aren’t true just to get certain groups of people’s attention. You can’t always find the truth online. You don’t always know what a credible source is and what isn’t. You need to either watch the debate live or do some background research on the things that they say before you strongly support anyone in the race.
Smore #9: Stono Rebellion
Rebellions are powered by hate and anger. People all find a common thing that is driving their hate and they act on it. They hardest part of a rebellion is finding the right people for it. They all have to have the same amount of driving force to knock down their opponent. These people are tired of following orders or being oppressed by a leading or dominant party. The Stono Rebellion was a planned uprising of slaves that started in South Carolina and hoped to reach St. Augustine in search for freedom given by the Spaniards. They were then stopped by the colonists when fear of the power of the slaves awoken.
The slaves were getting tired of the way they were being treated by their owners. There were hundreds of new slaves that were being brought into the state of South Carolina and they started to realize, the more slaves they had, the easier it would be to rebel. They wanted to break free from slavery and escape to Florida. They wanted to be free of the colonists.
Imagine the United States’ history slavery ended before the 1800’s? Everything to this day would be completely different. History would be completely rewritten. Blacks could have gone back to their home countries or even stayed with the Spanish. What if Florida was the only colony that had black people in it? Countless of important African American figures like Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King Jr. might never have been needed. The large amounts of racism in our world might have disappeared long ago.
The slaves all had the same idea. They were tired of getting put down by their racist white owners. As more slaves were coming into the state, they saw their chance to start a rebellion. On their “Free Labor Day”, the slaves all gathered to come up with a plan. Being one of the largest slave rebellions in United States’ history, twenty slaves met up, broke in to a store, stole guns and demanded their liberty. Even though they weren’t successful, this rebellion stuck fear in every white person of the South’s hearts. As soon as the rebellion was over, every single rule for the blacks was enforced heavily.
Last year in the town of Ferguson, I would say that was an uprising. Then as more African Americans were being killed by police, the more the uprisings grew. The Black Lives Matter movement grew and is still in our society today. Ferguson remains in ruins from the riots and outrages of the people. Uprisings have calmed down for now but who knows when the next one will happen here in the States.
Smore # 10. Winston vs. Snowden
I would say Winston is a form of Edward Snowden. Winston faces this world of Oceania no freedom and constant surveillance. Snowden identifies that in our own society today. He sees that our own government is spying in on us just like Big Brother. We don’t really know who is watching when we open our lap tops or who is listening in our telephone conversations. Winston doesn’t rebel like Snowden has. Snowden is stuck outside of the country, banned and away from the United States because he wanted everyone to know what the NSA is doing. He believed that everyone has a right to know what they are really doing. Snowden thinks we need to put web encryption on every website that we use to help with user privacy. He’s trying to help while Winston just wants to help. Winston is scared to act against the party even though he wants to find the Brotherhood. Snowden points out that “we are just giving up our rights” and “we don’t know when we are going to need them” if we just let our government do this to our privacy. Both of these people worked in a government job and they both had access to information that no one else had. Winston kept that information to himself while Snowden acted on it. Even though some people were upset with his actions, Snowden did it for the sake of the people and I think Winston would admire that sense of activism. Snowden did what Winston wants to do. We see his sense of admiration of Obrien and his hope of wanting to join him if Obrien is actually in the Brotherhood. Winston isn’t willing to give up his life like Snowden did. Snowden is gone while Winston wasn’t ready to give up Julia or his job in the Outer Party. He wanted too but, he was just scared. He isn’t the acting hero in the history of technology like Snowden was.
Smore #11- Is technology sent from heaven?
In a way, Technology is sent from heaven. It’s a blessing in a way that makes our lives so much easier. People can now easily communicate across the world, build things faster, search the web and even make it do things that normal humans don’t want to do. We have discovered so much from technology like space, the ocean and even just the basic makeups of our land. Just imagine that about a hundred years ago, we barely had electricity. Now it seems that our world is kind of stuck in a rut. Laws are being created against certain things like bombs or drugs that you can make yourself but the government does anyway. Orwell says “scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought” but how can we question our world if we are being stopped to limit ourselves? Have we run out of ideas or questioning? Is there a way that we can continue on with our progress in this world? Or are we stuck in time with no progression?
Smore 12: Freedom vs. Security
Mankind just wants to be happy. They are willing to give up their freedom just to be happy. They don’t want to be controlled but they rather just be happy and enjoy their lives. Some people today don’t really know what they are really giving up. They don’t realize how much they are putting at risk for the government to see or how much the government has access to our lives. Now that Snowden revealed this information, people are now extremely upset about the Patriot Act. Some people still are willing to just not act upon this so when we really do want our privacy, it’s taken away. Now with everything online and being recorded, we don’t know who or what is watching. It’s a scary idea to think about and I know several people who just put tape over their web cams just for precaution. We can’t really avoid the issue since everything we do it basically put online or sent through an email. We are giving up our freedom just by sending those messages without further caution. Not knowing that this is happening is just as bad as giving up our privacy and saying that it is okay for the government. You might not have something to hide but it’s our freedom that we should have.
Smore 12: Freedom and Privacy
Mankind just wants to search for happiness. They don’t want to be controlled but if they have to put effort into fighting for their freedom or if they don’t get happiness as a result, they will lean towards control. Today, people either care a lot about how their government watches over them or they don’t even know that it is even happening to them. Snowden just let us know what the government is actually doing to us behind our backs and I believe we have the right to know. We might not have complete freedom, but we should at least know what’s happening to our private messages and calls. People are willingly putting all of their information, thumbprints from their cell phones and sending private messages that they wouldn’t want their grandmother to read through emails and text messages. I feel people just don’t care anymore because they know they aren’t involved in illegal or terrorist activity. They aren’t realizing that even if they don’t care, they are still giving up their right to privacy. They just carry on with their lives as if this isn’t really an issue but once they actually want some privacy or any other right, it might be already taken away. You don’t know what you have until it’s gone and most people don’t realize that the government could be spying through camera lens and phone calls.
Smore 13 Gaslighting
Smore 14 Performance Final
All we can do is control our own selves. We can’t control others and what they do with their lives but you can always try. Invite people to go out and do things other than stay home where the Wi-Fi is. If you don’t use your phone around a group of people, they may learn to catch on to the idea that you are stepping way and hopefully a domino effect will occur. I personally call out people when I go out to dinner or to the movies with if they are using their phone. I remember texting someone saying that I did not want to hang out with them because all they do is play on their phone. Now we are best friends and he never plays on his phone.
I notice a big difference in age groups when they come into the restaurant that I work at. The older groups are loud and laughing while when a couple of teenagers come in, they are very quiet and just play on their phones. People have become to think that if you don’t put whatever you are doing on social media, that event never really happened. If a person wants to fight this addiction, they slowly can cleans themselves just like any drug. They can slowly ease off of it. Start by putting your phone away for 10 minutes. Then slowly add more and more time away from it. I know I can easily put my phone down for a couple of hours and I would be fine. I know so many people like to sleep with their phones but I cannot do that. I have to put my phone down stairs while I sleep in order to completely step away from it and I think others should start to do that too. It helps me become completely disconnected from my phone.
If people continue to constantly be on social media and their technology, they’re going to slowly move away from being able to have a face to face conversation with someone. Now, people don’t have to look at another’s face and have a full on conversation. I know several people that text and Instagram each other non-stop but once they are put in front of each other, not a single word comes out. People can be so powerful online when they are behind a screen but once they step out in public, they lose all confidence in themselves. People need to start being able to use both worlds to their best ability. Now that everything is online, people need to be able to have those skills of working a computer and posting promotional ads to social media. But, they need to have social skills and be able to form a sentence as well. As people start to realize how dependent they are with social media they can step back and wonder how much of a life they are really living. If everything is virtual and there’s no love, how can they grow as a person? Some people aren’t even people anymore because they are so disconnected. Others need to reach out to those who are addicted and help them step out of that web world.
Part 2 of PF
Part 2:
I didn’t realize how much everyone used the media. People from all ages to all over the world. I thought media was just social media and the Kardashian but I didn’t realize that media is everything in our modern world. It’s how news is spread and not just a couple of tweets. I would say my views have deepened towards media because I’ve learned how important it really it in our society. This year I have learned so much about politics than I ever have before. Not just because it was the election year, but the fact that we watched the news, learned about the election itself and analyzed so many things that the candidates have said. I actually enjoyed this language arts class more than any other. Since we did learn so much about media, it was actually interesting compared to Oedipus and Lord of the Flies. I actually really enjoyed watching CNN news since I typically don’t watch the news at home. I knew about stuff around the world that even my parents didn’t know about and it was good to be able to know about so many things. I did like how everything was online and it was easier to access all of my work and to write. Some of the s’mores were kind of difficult to understand and so were a lot of the diary entries. I think they could have been explained a little better before we had to write about them.