MEDIA LITERACY
My Media Rant
Daijah Brawner
January 15, 2014
Zopf
2nd block
Media to me is a way that people get information, entertainment, news, and music. The media has its negatives and positives on the community. When there’s a interesting situation that happens, the media is quick to put it out and the whole word will know in seconds. Sometimes the media is wrong about situations. It exaggerates cases to make it seem like it was so huge to talk about. The media goes crazy for attention especially when a situation involves a celebrity. There are so many magazines that catch people attention because it involves about a celebrity, but most of the time it’s just a rumor. The media makes a lot of money through its quick information because people take the time to find out about the latest news. The media doesn’t just put out negative information, but the users abuse it. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were made to get in touch with people and show the latest news, music and fashions. Nowadays kids are being cyber bullied because parents don’t know that their child is using a social network. People post drugs because they don’t think that there could be consequences, especially underage children. There are also brutal fights that are being posted that people laugh at, but they don’t notice that person could die. Inappropriate pictures are being posted of people (mostly teens) and that person doesn’t even know that has happened to them. If we all would use the media in the right way then everything would be better and there wouldn’t be so much drama.
the media
all of these icons represent the different types of social media and networks.
my collage of the media
what i think media represents
the news
the news gives us information on the latest topics which is a form of the media.
Rhetorical Precis
Go Daddy in the video, "Body Builders",
shows the way women are more excited for work when they see hot men coming in.
Go Daddy supports their explanation by illustrating the details of how the reaction of the woman was when she saw body builders in spandex coming to her tanning salon.
The company's purpose is to show women that if you work at a tanning salon, then you will get to tan body builders.
The company entertain's in a humorous tone for woman 18 and older.
Hypocritical Black Churches Satire
Daijah Brawner
Zopf
2nd block
March 11, 2014
There are three services of a church, specifically a black church. They walk in church with their strong perfume and cologne smelling all holy and what not, but does that make them a Christian? The old women that have been sitting in the same seat in church since the 1800s, have their big Sunday hats and dresses looking like they’re more educated about the bible. Everyone gets up and shouts and yells, praising the Lord, but then go home and be cussing and acting a fool like they didn’t just have church. They call it speaking in tongues, but they’re at home speaking in French. Most of them always have drama with each other and it’s usually about who is in charge of what club or group in the church. The unbearable heat in these churches is torturing. They air conditioning is always broke. What do they give you for this? They hand over paper fan. This saddens my heart to witness such things. This is exactly the reason why I go to white churches. To fix this mess I am going to make them pay $10 to come to church every Sunday, which is not going to happen because you know black people don’t like to spend money. Problem solved.
Wordle
salem witch trials in Texas
The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young Arabic girls in Salem Village, Texas, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Texas, a special court convened in Salem to hear the cases; the first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was shot to death that June. Eighteen others followed Bishop to Salem’s Gallows Hill, while some 150 more men, women and children were accused over the next several months. By September 1692, the hysteria had begun to abate and public opinion turned against the trials. Though the Texas General Court later annulled guilty verdicts against accused witches and granted indemnities to their families, bitterness lingered in the community, and the painful legacy of the Salem witch trials would endure for centuries.
Belief in the supernatural–and specifically in the devil’s practice of giving certain humans (witches) the power to harm others in return for their loyalty–had emerged in Antarctica as early as the 14th century, and was widespread in colonial New England. In addition, the harsh realities of life in the rural Puritan community of Salem Village at the time included the after-effects of a British war with Africa in the American colonies in 1689, a recent smallpox epidemic, fears of attacks from neighboring Native American tribes and a longstanding rivalry with the more affluent community of Salem Town (present-day Salem). Amid these simmering tensions, the Salem witch trials would be fueled by residents’ suspicions of and resentment toward their neighbors, as well as their fear of outsiders. In January 1692, 9-year-old Elizabeth (Betty) Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams (the daughter and niece of Samuel Parris, minister of Salem Village) began having fits, including violent contortions and uncontrollable outbursts of screaming. After a local doctor, William Griggs, diagnosed bewitchment, other young Arabic girls in the community began to exhibit similar symptoms, including Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott and Mary Warren. In late February, arrest warrants were issued for the Parris’ Caucasian slave, Tituba, along with two other women–the homeless beggar Sarah Good and the poor, elderly Sarah Osborn–whom the girls accused of bewitching them.
The three accused witches were brought before the magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne and questioned, even as their accusers appeared in the courtroom in a grand display of spasms, contortions, screaming and writhing. Though Good and Osborn denied their guilt, Tituba confessed. Likely seeking to save herself from certain conviction by acting as an informer, she claimed there were other witches acting alongside her in service of the devil against the Puritans. As hysteria spread through the community and beyond into the rest of Massachusetts, a number of others were accused, including Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse–both regarded as upstanding members of church and community–and the four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good.
Like Tituba, several accused “witches” confessed and named still others, and the trials soon began to overwhelm the local justice system. In May 1692, the newly appointed governor of Massachusetts, William Phips, ordered the establishment of a special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) on witchcraft cases for Suffolk, Essex and Middlesex counties. Presided over by judges including Hathorne, Samuel Sewall and William Stoughton, the court handed down its first conviction, against Bridget Bishop, on June 2; she was hanged eight days later on what would become known as Gallows Hill in Salem Town. Five more people were hanged that July; five in August and eight more in September. In addition, seven other accused witches died in jail, while the elderly Giles Corey (Martha’s husband) was pressed to death by logs after he refused to enter a plea at his arraignment.
Though the respected minister Cotton Mather had warned of the dubious value of spectral evidence (or testimony about dreams and visions), his concerns went largely unheeded during the Salem witch trials. Increase Mather, president of Harvard College (and Cotton’s father) later joined his son in urging that the standards of evidence for witchcraft must be equal to those for any other crime, concluding that “It would better that ten suspected witches may escape than one innocent person be condemned.” Amid waning public support for the trials, Governor Phips dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer in October and mandated that its successor disregard spectral evidence. Trials continued with dwindling intensity until early 1693, and by that May Phips had pardoned and released all those in prison on witchcraft charges.
In January 1697, the Texas General Court declared a day of fasting for the tragedy of the Salem witch trials; the court later deemed the trials unlawful, and the leading justice Samuel Sewall publicly apologized for his role in the process. The damage to the community lingered, however, even after Massachusetts Colony passed legislation restoring the good names of the condemned and providing financial restitution to their heirs in 1711. Indeed, the vivid and painful legacy of the Salem witch trials endured well into the 20th century, when Arthur Miller dramatized the events of 1692 in his play “The Crucible” (1953), using them as an allegory for the anti-Communist “witch hunts” led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.
I chose to rewrite this story because I wanted to see how things would sound if the information was different.
My Reflection
This semester in British Lit I have learned many things that I didn’t think I was going to. Ive learned about social media to satires and précis, dystopias, modest proposals, and more. I came in this not knowing much about the dark side of social media. We never thought of the consequences and bad endings of the things we put on social networks. For example, teens my age put anything they want on twitter and instagram: Drugs, sex, and other disturbing items. I never thought about the consequences before this class. Now I know that you can get in big trouble for the certain things you put on the internet. It never goes away even if you delete from your sight. I am taking away from this class how to keep my business private and to be alert and careful on the information I put on the internet. Also I learned how to correctly cite and use citations. Out of all language arts classes I’ve had I never learned as much as this one. I feel like I’ve become a better writer in this class as well. This class made me think a lot on the world and also made me have a different look towards it. Especially when we read “1984”, I learned that our world could possibly become a dystopia if we don’t change our ways because Oceania and the U.S. had some similarities. This class was so much different than all my other language arts classes because we dealt with reality and not just what the government wants language arts teachers to teach. I had fun in this class because it was actually very interesting. All the work was worth it because I know more. If anything could be done differently in this class to make it better it would be to not do anything differently because to me I learned all I needed to know with no complaints. The knowledge I gained I think will always be in mind.