Author: drewmillikin

Top Ten Things I learned in Media Literacy

10 Things I learned in Media Literacy:

1. Just because they tell you it’s true, doesn’t mean that it is true. This class has definitely reminded me that I have to be a skeptic when looking at any type of media.

2.Lunz scares me. He seemed okay with what he was doing. He didn’t appear to believe that he was misrepresenting information by changing the words politicians use.

3.I was watching the news this morning and saw a clip on U.S. Air. It’s pilots were filing grievances saying that the airline was pressuring them to take on less fuel. The news clip seemed to be very much on the side of the pilots complete with Experts and Plain Clothes interviews. It didn’t quite seem to fit in the local broadcast. I wondered if it was put out by the pilot’s union. Before this class, I wasn’t aware that news broadcasters would do this.

4. How enormous companies like AOL/TimeWarner, Disney, Viacom are. I know they were big, but I wasn’t aware of how diverse their holdings are.

5. Yaks are raised for fiber and meat.

6. The 7 Basic Principles of Media Education and the 29 Persuasive Techniques. Super valuable.

7. The Feed. It’s there and I’m plugged into it to some extent. What does that mean and can I resist the Feed? Should I resist the Feed? These are some new questions that came with this renewed realization that the Feed is all around us.

8. This is big business, man. I can’t find the name of the French consultant that said, “American cheese is dead!” but I was blown away at how much companies will pay to consult with him. I’m very curious to see what his formula is.

9. Political ads are evil. They just prey on emotions. The Bush ads in particular were total fear mongering. How did the dems not beat them?

10. Awareness. It’s important to be aware of the Feed. It’s there. One should always look at whats presented with a critical eye.

Remaining questions?

Is resistance futile? Can you fight the feed? Or, like V’s dad, will we all succumb?

I wonder what critics thought of advertisement back in the 20’s and 30’s. Sure it was factual based, and very different from it is now. All those facts couldn’t be true though. Did Crest really give you the brightest smile? Just a made up example there, but I wonder if people thought critically at those ads.

Where do we go from here? I’m cynical I guess. When Money gets involved with something it immediately becomes corruptible and it’s hard to put right. Clouds TM, school TM, etc. Are these inevitable?

Drew, bring food and project next Friday.

Well, the wait is over. Maria is finally on Facebook.

It’s funny that it happened this weekend because we were talking about it in class on Friday. Somebody asked me why she was holding out, and I told them that it was because she had no interest in it. I didn’t think she’d ever sign up.

What happened?

Her friend and college roommate sat down with her and set it up.

We had a couple of long distance friends (Mike from Chicago and Donnie from San Diego) at our house this weekend. They were both on Facebook and talking about how great it was when keeping in touch with everyone. Donnie convinced her that it was time to give in and sign up.

It’s new and she seemed to like it, but I wonder how long she’ll really stay with it. This will be like a little experiment.

Facebook

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

Hodkinson’s article here is interesting. Clearly anti-Facebook, he looks into the money behind Facebook.

His strongest two arguments against Facebook are that all that data is being mined and sold to advertisers, and all the data available makes it much easy for orgs. like the CIA.

He really weakens his argument, by going after Thiel so hard. He clearly disagrees strongly with the guys politics and spends a ton of time in the article attacking him. He also really over simplifies the abilities of Facebook.

Sure Facebook connects people who work and live around each other, but it also connects people of great distances as well. I like to give the example that my brother lives in San Francisco, my sister in Maine, and we’re all playing a game of Scrabble on Facebook.

He seems to argue that bringing people together globally is a bad thing, but I don’t agree with him.

Hodgkinson does make the reader think by writing about the money behind Facebook, but he just comes off a little too strong for me.

Chapter 7

I can’t remember which part I’m supposed to read, so I’ll read this one too.

  • Everything is political. That’s what I grab from the bulk of this. If a show chooses to address a political issue then it’s obviously going to be political. If it chooses not to address a political issue, then it is being political as well. in fact, the book says, “the most non-political programs may be making the strong political statements of all.”(p 254)
  • Viewers will interpret ambiguous political message in their own way.
  • Music can have political influence as well. However, it can fade away too. Dylan used to be the anti-establishment. Now he’s selling cd’s in Starbucks. It’s proof that the music industry is interested less in the message and more in the money.
  • Cultural Imperialism – Western culture is distributed around the world, especially developing countries. Western culture can be influenced in the reverse order, but it happens on a smaller scale. Think Beatles going to India, Paul Simon going to South Africa and Tiananmen Square

What in the hell?

So I just bought an iPod Shuffle. Well, my wife bought it for the charger that came with it as she seems to have misplaced hers. The charger by itself costs $30. A brand new Shuffle costs less than $50. (You’re shocked by this I’m sure) My old iPod died a while back so she just went ahead and bought a whole new one and now we’re sharing chargers and have two Shuffles.

Anyway, I’m getting of track. I’m sitting here at our dining room table, reading for class and listening to this neat little gadget. I’ve been here for an hour or so and at least three times I’ve said to myself, “What the hell is this and where did it come from?”

Is this a sign that I have too much music?

Is my taste in music really this bad?

That’s what fun about these little shuffles, and completely annoying at the same time. If you allow it to add music randomly, you’ll never know what is coming next. Of course, if you in the mood for that one particular song, good luck finding.

Now playing, some song by Weezer off of some album.

Chapter 7 and "Project Harmony"

I read the “Project Harmony” article first, and it is such a cool idea. Not only is it important for American students to understand the American media, but it is also important for them to learn about foreign media as well. I’m sure it was also eye opening to hear their opinions on American media and culture.

This is also why Web 2.0 stuff is such a great teaching and learning opportunity. I’m sure the students were able to communicate well using email, blogs, youtube, etc.

Onto the last two sections of Chapter 7:

Whoops, should be reading chapter 8 not 7:

  • “Interpretive Resistance” in other words is essentially the idea that people have preconceived notions and it’s hard to break those down. It happens when people read messages that are in direct opposition to their preconceived notions.

    The authors use Ms. as an example to illustrate that audiences will see what they want to see and may miss the larger message in doing so.

  • I like the “Semiotic Robin Hoodism” term for those who remake billboards or ads to poke fun at the original.
  • Pleasure in media – This is the reason it is so popular. I bet that most media is used as an escape to distract for other areas (and perhaps more important) of life. the authors talk about fantasy and how it can be empowering and pleasurable and liberating to escape reality into a fantasy world.

Chapter 4 & "Making Media That Matters….In Minutes"

Really glad we decided to split up the readings. It makes it much more manageable and it makes the wife happier that we can spend time together.

So I’m going to try to read and blog at the same time again. Didn’t really work as well as I had hoped last time, but here goes:

Chapter IV:

  • Right off the bat, that adapted quote from Marx on pg 121 is an important one. The past plays an important role in everything, the media included.
  • There’s a great thesis topic, “The educational value derived from ‘the Flintstones’ and ‘the Jetsons’: Past v. Future”. That’s pretty funny that networks were able to pass those two shows off as educational in order to satisfied the 1990 Children’s Television Act.
  • I wonder if journalists get bored. I wonder if they get stuck in a rut, doing the same thing over and over again. That’s what I didn’t like about journalistic writing. It was like a math formula. I hated the funnel format because I didn’t feel like it gave me enough room to be creative.
  • The Clayman study is intersting. I expected that editors would fight for one of their writer’s stories to hit the front page. That they tend to midly support the stories was suprising.
  • Bennett’s 6 Key Practices (p 133) are very valuable!
  • All of those spin offs of Survivor are lame. Is imitation really more successful than the alternative? Or are they just easier?
  • It’s just occurred to me that they’ve spent a lot of time talking about newspapers here and only a page or two about the Internet. I guess that is because of the age of this text, and we’ve talked about that in class. If newspaper readership is really dwindling, then what structured forms of news media is taking its place?
  • The star is the key. Look at Katie Couric and how the CBS Evening news is doing.

Making Media That Matters…In Minutes

  • A great way to teach kids about media literacy – through hands on experience.
  • I’m sure they love doing these little films.
  • The movie awards nights must be a hit