Media Extravaganza
Media Literacy v. The Ignoramus
The Age of Media
Media is the substantial communication method in our current century. From newspaper columns to television news, media bombards people with current “facts” pertaining to myriad topics. These facts are usually exaggerated by the media to cajole audiences towards a conclusion that the specific company wants. Due to the advancement of technology in our present era, many media companies are taking advantage of it by using every source of communication as propaganda. Unlike the infamous way Hitler epitomized propaganda nowadays it is how business functions in society. All businesses use advertisements to capture the attention of consumers through enchanting deals and methods. A lot of these deals and methods are created after businesses learn about what people want at the moment. How do they find out this information? Media. Everything we know and possess started with media genesis. As a result, people who do not stay up to date with how media works are left in an undesirable world. They can be gullible to the point where whatever they find out from the internet, TV, magazines, etc. will take over their brains and render them to think, believe, and do dolt like things (classic brainwash). Others who are “media literate” acknowledge what advertisements and news industries are sending out to the world, and are wise enough to decipher the content and understand what they want to agree and disagree with. Moreover, students in college usually learn the crisp details of how media runs so they have a great chance of being the most media literate; this is because media and technology is evolving at a gargantuan pace in our society.
Solve the Media Puzzle
Media vs. Media Literates'
Hungry? Here's some BS!
T-Mobile "No Contract" Precis
T-Mobile, in the advertisement, “No Contract” explains that T-Mobile is now selling plans and phones without a contract to provide customers with flexibility with their service and less stress about dealing with a contract. T-Mobile supports their explanation by using Tim Tebow as a figure who is accomplishing his goals (e.g. doing his own movie stunts, playing football on the moon, being a rock star, etc.) that cannot be done if he had a contract with the NFL, because he would not have the flexibility while he would be stressed about taking care of his one job. The company’s purpose is to persuade cellphone customers to purchase phones and plans from T-Mobile so that the cellphone users won’t have to worry about succumbing to regulations set by a contract. The company’s commercial is in a comedy ad for the teenagers, adults, and families who use cell phones.
NFL’s New Route Towards Safety and Popularity Growth
Zohraish Virani, Sports Reporter
Tue March 11, 2014
ATLANTA- The NFL is attempting to bring in more fans to the game by implementing more safety rules. Rules such as no hitting when the offensive player is not looking at the defensive player, no hitting quarterbacks above the shoulders and below the knees, and no hitting offensive players anywhere but the chest and knees are causing players and fans to love the game even more.
For about the past 50 years since the NFL was established in the 1960s, nobody enjoyed the violent nature of the game. Rivalry games and Super Bowls would not sell out because of the lack of interest. The fear of a player risking their life after football angered a lot of people. One anonymous player stated, “I would have never decided to turn to pro football after college if I knew that I would get hit so much.” The next step to take in this process is for the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to render the use of helmets and pads illegal. This would take away the unnecessary need of tackling and add the exciting rule of two-hand touch. Mr. Goodell and the rest of the NFL harlequins, I mean hierarchy, made a superb decision of getting rid of hits to the head by increasing the likelihood of players getting hit in the knees. As we all know, the use of knees are not that vital to a human’s life, so taking them away makes no difference.
Same Old Trip, Big Brother...
The song “Same Old Trip” by Chevelle represents Winston’s doubts about the government in George Orwell’s 1984. This song is about acknowledging injustice and rebelling against it while dealing with censorship of your ideas. In 1984, Big Brother rules the dystopian society by suppressing everything that can lead the proles to come up with ideas. That means there is no internet for the proles to look up information, and no science for them to think and form ideas and conclusions. And if anyone tries to go against the dystopian society, then the government finds out by watching everyone through a camera and diminishing the existence of that ignoramus. This is all done by the government to pull the strings on the marrionates’ (in this case the proles) and render them as ignorant slaves, so that Big Brother can gain sheer control of the world. This lifestyle of the government is summed up by the lyrics in the song "so innocent you're out of reach;” in the book this means that the big-shots running the society think they’re invincible because they have power and are brainwashing the little proles to the point where the proles don’t even know that injustice is being served to them. But Winston is not like one of these banal proles. Winston realizes that the way the society that he lives in is unfair. He tries to form concrete ideas about how Big Brother is corrupting the nation, but Newspeak and the lack of resources to research prohibits Winston from doing so. In the song the singer repeats “censor, censor” to tell that everything is censored and controlled by a hierarchy.
Media Literacy Refelction
From the commencement of this Media Literacy course to the end of it my knowledge about the curriculum we covered has expanded. I would not say that my views that I believed in when I wrote my first s’more has changed, but I can elaborate on media literacy and what it means to be media literate more than I was able to a few months ago. I recognized college students as generally the most media literate before because they learn about media in-depth, but now I would say that even students in grade school can learn to be media literate. The teachers are the nuances to whether students are media literate or not. In an age of electronics and media, kids need to be exposed to what the media is feeding the people and how they are doing it. My teacher did a tremendous job of opening my mind to the cunning ways the media runs. From this class the most memorable lesson I will take away is that the articles, letters, news channels, etc. that I see regularly try to sway readers to a conclusion that the media company wants. I do not follow the news daily, so if I was not warned and taught this then I would end up like the litany of ignorant people who are not given information; they are given opinions as conclusions. It is a lot like how a child is taught about religion; he or she never had a choice at birth about their take on religion, but when they learn about it on their own then they are knowledgeable to the point where they can come up with their own conclusion. This class was extraordinarily different than my previous language arts classes. In the other classes, I mainly learned about the history of reading, writing, and storytelling in multiple cultures. In this class I learned about how reading and writing about events are affecting the entire world right now and in the future. The only thing I would amend in this course is I would include reading Animal Farm sometime during the semester.