Reading between the Lines
Analyzing each shape and form of the media
What is media literacy? Media literacy is to allow people to analyze and think about different range of genres. It helps us improve our creative mind and our critical thinking. The media that we are talking about is everything that we hear, see, or read. It could be anything to video games to educational videos. Media literacy helps us analyze our thoughts and opinion on the subject. Learning to come up with our own evaluation and our own messages will help us become a media literate. A media literate is a person who can be able to create any messages at any given time. Whether it’s on a blog or an interview, a media literate will be able to do these things quickly and comfortably. Learning how to communicate through the media will help us in many ways in the future. However, not many people are a media literate. To be a media literate is a skill and will take a lot of work for a person to be able to communicate and understand the media. We would know how the media works and have a clearer meaning what the media is really saying. The media also throws a lot of hidden messages that we should be able to catch. A media literate person should be able to read the hidden message and is always aware of the media. Media literacy is to help us think deeper about what the media real intention are and how the different voices of people help us shape our opinion.
The media is everywhere
Media Literacy
Eye on the media
Sonos commercial, “Face Off” (2014), demonstrates their wireless speakers which can be controlled from any device and that each speaker could only be heard in that room. The music from the speaker produced different colors that would spread around and stop when it was near another speaker. Sonos is showing that when you are listening to a speaker, but there are other speakers playing, you can only hear the speaker you are listening too even in the smallest of places. Each speaker played different variety of music, from Hip-Pop to classic music; therefore the target audience were from young teens to adults that like to listen to music with high quality speakers.
America goes healthy?
Jannie Chun, Food expert
Wed April, 2014
U.S- As many people know, Americans are quickly become obese because of the fast food they eat daily. To solve this problem, the fast food industry decided to make a healthier and nutritious menu. Fast food restaurants now offer a variety of foods that will help people become healthier and have a more balanced meal. Although the restaurants still have their original menus, they believe that certain tactics will help convince people to try the healthier foods.
For example, Burger King’s idea was to cut apples into looking like they were French fries. Great idea! Children, nowadays, are too stupid to realize the difference between the taste and look of a fruit and potato so this idea is full proof. Also fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and Burger King now offer salad, fruit, and skim milk. The best part is that the healthier choices are right next to the Big Mac and French fries. This will just test the temptation of how strong we can withhold the juicy, delicious hamburger and fries.
Also let’s not forget the new selections of diet sodas and low-fat meals. Now people can eat more and more of the low-calorie French fries without worrying if you get fat! Customers can buy low calorie foods for a cheaper price and kept getting free refills of diet sodas! People can now have the opportunity to eat healthy than before when the entire restaurant’s menu was filled with their bestselling burgers.
Of course there are going to be people who do not choice to get a salad and rather get a hamburger. Don’t worry; there is a solution to everything! The salads now have fatty bacons and a huge amount of dressings that is already pre-added. With salads like these, there is no way that anyone can resist this drenched, bacon salad. If you don’t believe us just read what a customer said about the new salad they offer, “That was the best salad I ever tried before! The other salads that I would usually eat barley have any dressing on it and it has no bacon like the one I just ate. Best of all I’m getting my daily greens. You have to try it!”
Spies are everywhere
“Spies” by Coldplay would be the perfect theme song for the upcoming movie 1984. The song overall talks about how there are spies everywhere you look and that there are not privacy in the world. The lyrics,”But the spies hide out in every corner…They’re all spies”, describes exactly of how Winston’s society is like. In his society, there is no knowing of whether or not a person would know if someone is part of the thought police. Also towards the end of the book, it is told that basically everyone that Winston knew, O’Brien and Julia, was a spy for Big Brother. Another part of the song sang “We’re all fugitives” and it reminded me of how Winston and Julia had to constantly run away and sneak around from the thought police to meet each other. In a different part of the song they had “And if we don’t hide here they’re going to find us”. This relates to how Julia and Winston had to pick different spots and trails to make it harder for people to find them. There is a part of the song of where they sang “They’re going to catch us where we sleep” and this was just like how Parsons got caught for saying “Down with Big Brother” in his sleep. In Winston’s society, the citizens do not have any privacy even when they are sleeping so they have to constantly keep watch of how they act at all times.
Reflection on Media Literacy
Throughout the semester, my views on Media Literacy have not changed since the beginning. I still believe that Media Literacy is talking about everything we hear, see, or read. We did analyze and talk about different ranges of genres such as the news and book. I didn’t think that learning about Media Literacy would help me improve, but as we started to begin different topics my skills to come up with opinions and evaluations began to get stronger. I learned how to analyze different types of work and understanding what the authors are trying to get across. Another tip I learned from this class was to read and take notes on the contents and by doing this it helped me understand much better than just reading. Some things that I would be taking away from this class are that the media isn’t what it seems to be. Another thing that I learned from this class is to have more opinions and think more than what is on the paper. There is a much deeper meaning than what the media tell and show us. This wasn’t like my usual Language Arts class I have taken before. In the other classes, we would usual read something and then answer typical questions on them. However in this class we actually thought in depth and criticize every work we read. Also the study of this class was all on the media which was different and that we worked in groups rather than by ourselves was a good way to hear different opinions. Honestly there wouldn’t be anything that should be done differently for the class. However I think that it would be better if we could have more creative assignments rather than writing essays and précis. Media Literacy helped improved many skills that I lacked and that I can take these skills and use them in many different ways.