Review of Class- 5/6/10

I decided to sign up for this class because I have never taken an advertising class, and I thought it would be a new and interesting experience. Some of the things I enjoyed most about the class was the relaxed atmosphere and how you could freely participate and speak your mind without being judged. It was always a class that I looked forward to coming too every monday and thursday, I liked how we went off on random tangents in class and did not stick to a set agenda. I am generally a hard working student and complete all my work on time and to my best. In my opinion it was really difficult to get a good grade on any of the blog assignments, and when I started editing and using citations I noticed my grade was less than I thought i deserved, especially with the work I thought I was putting into the class. Towards the end of the semester i also starting getting confused with what the blog assignments were and when we needed to have them done, I think now that it is the final week of school I feel like I finally have a better understanding of what I needed to do. I did enjoy the group final projects, they were really a lot of work though, we spent hours out of class working on the culture jams and creating the magazine. I really hope our work pays off on my final grade! I also found the class interesting and unlike some classes i have taken in the past, I do feel like I will remember and apply lots of the things I learned. Some of the topics that stand out to me are: being media literate, rhetoric, neo-aristitilean five canons, mass audience and niches. I know that these are concepts that will stick with me! I had a good time with the class and the group project really helped me make a great group of friends who i never would have met otherwise! I would definitely reccomend this class to someone else if they are interested in the content matter.

In Class Assignment: Show and Tell/Using The Five Canons

For this assignment I decided to choose the time when I first went shopping for prom dresses as a junior in high school. It was my first prom, so i wanted my dress to be something meaningful that i could treasure forever. My mom and I were in NYC for a weekend looking at colleges and we found this cute little boutique with all different kinds of sample dresses from a sample store where the dresses were being sold there first and then sold from different large department stores. I couldn't have been more excited, I was going to have a one of a kind dress for my junior prom. The second i walked into the store, this pink, long, sparkly disney princess dress caught my eye, it was SO Sophie. I just had to have it, or i wouldn't have been satisfied with anything else. At a whooping 500$ my mom was not about to pay for the dress, but the sales people made their pitch quite convinving, after calling my grandma and asking her to contribute to my cause, i ended up getting the dress I paid 250$ and my grandma paid for the rest. I used almost all the money in my piggy bank, but in the end, I honestly thought it was worth it.

Now I'm going to use the Neo-Artistitilian approach and the five cannons to explain why i ended up purchasing this item/why i was so influenced. The first of the five canons is invention, invention is when you recognize the need for a message. The people that worked at the store knew that they needed to sell this dress, and i was the perfect consumer, a young 16 year old girl who wanted/(thought i needed) that dress. The next of the classical canons is arrangement, and that is how they organized the message, they made a sales pitch of why i should buy they dress and how it would be beneficial to me in the long run. They said i could sue it for any occasion when i needed a ball gown or to go to a fancy party. The next of the canons is style, they were very persuasive since they were sales people. Their goal was to sell their product to me. They were very polite and set up a dressing room for me, the fact that they were attending to my every need made me want to purchase the dress even more. The message was delivered from the two people working at the store, they told me where the dresses were made and why they were in that specific sample store. The last of the 5 canons is memory. There was no way i could forget the message that was being relayed to me. I wanted that dress and there was nothing stopping me from getting it, they even threw in a free pair of earrings with my purchase. Language really influences the audience because without their push for me to purchase their product and all the benefits it would come with I would not be nearly as inclined to purchase the dress at such a hefty price of 500$

Challenge Blog

For the challenge blog I watched Halle Berry's acceptance speech for Best Actress at the 74th annual Academy Awards ceremony in 2002. The context of the speech was that Halle Berry had just won the award for best actress and she went up on the stage to accept her award in front of hundreds of other actors and actresses. It was a very emotional time for her, as she walked on the stage she was crying and had lots of feelings and emotions to express to the audience. This clip of her speech is available online, on youtube and on many other websites. It is easily accessible over the internet to watch for free.

The target audience for the original presentation was definitely african american women. Halle Berry felt like she opened the doors for African American women to win awards and be able to achieve that goal, she felt like the award wasn't just for her, but it was for all of the talented African American women thats voices should be heard. This was definitely her target audience for her speech, but this speech was broadcasted on national TV in 2002 and it was a very emotional speech, not just about her feelings and beliefs, but also the way she accepted the award, your attention could not be lost while watching. I think everyone who watched the show could have been impacted in some ways, the people that would have been watching are people who frequently watch movies or are interested in movies or like the actors that are nominated for the award.

After analyzing her speech by using the neo-Aristotelian approach and the five canons, Halle Berry definitely used her language persuasively and appropriately to get her point across. SHe used invention or recognizing a need for a message stating that she was the first African American women to receive that exact award and she feels like she reached a new level for African American women, and that itself is a message she was trying to get across. She also carefully arranged the way she put her speech together. Before she even started to get her point across through her speech, she was crying, out of breath and emotional and the audiences attention was completely focused on her. Once she had the audiences attention she made her main point first, then moved off into thanking other people that helped her achieve this award. What was important about the organizational structure was that she explained that she made her point and stood her ground firmly throughout the entire speech. The language she used in the speech was somewhat simple, she didn't use complex words but she said 'this award isn't just for me, its for all the women out there' and she name some names like Jada Pinkett Smith and others who she felt were worthy of the award. Berry also had very intense facial expressions and actions which compelled the audience to listen to her more and this added to the language she used while speaking. She delivered the message on public television that everyone could see, so this message was delivered all across the united states, and after i was put on you tube and other online video sites. This message is very memorable because of its content as well as her emotional expressions, at least that was what caught my attention the most. We also remember this because it has cultural significance, it was a landmark for Halle Berry as well as other women and african american women in the world that strive to do something.

In my opinion, I though the speech was a little over the top, especially concerning her crying and emotional part. But i do think she made a very good point and got it across to the audience. As the camera was being flashed around the audience during her speech, there weren't many dry eyes in the theater.

In Class Blog 4/5/10- Use 5 phases and pick cultural topic!

For my cultural topic, I chose Twitter. Twitter is an outlet for people to tell everyone what they are doing at any point in the day, you can find news on twitter, you can follow your favorite restaurants, celebrities, newspapers or even president obama. It is a quick and easy way to be constantly updated on what is happening with your friends as well as around the world. Twitter was created for people to be connected in a simple and efficient way, a quote from twitters main website is "Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what is happening now." Twitter truly became a huge company when major corporations became involved in 'tweeting'. After breaking down the use of twitter by using the neo-aristotelian rhetoric, It was interesting to see what twitter was really getting at and what the huge appeal is.

The first classical canon of the neo-Aristotelean rhetoric is invention, and invention is recognizing the need for a message. Twitter is really one of the first organizations/companies to create an outlet for people to constantly express what is happening them whenever with 160 characters or less or re-tweet someone else's idea that they liked or thought was cool, or even create a trending topic. There was really no largely known organization like twitter prior to Twitters creation in 2006. Now there is really a system that can keep people connected around the world at all times, people are able to see the messages conveyed by other people with ease, its even possible to have twitter on any kind of cellular device, computer, pda anything. Twitter is also a faster and more accessible way to read the news. If your looking for a quick world update, just check the new york times twitter page, It is constantly being updated.

The second canon is organizational structure. The way twitter is set up is everyone has a homepage where all they put is their name, a few words about themselves and a picture. It is not very detailed, just a simple description. Then there is a wall where you can see your most recent tweets and everyone else's tweets that are being updated constantly. There is also a list of people that you follow and people that follow you, you can also use the simple 'search' button to look for more people. These people are allowed to see your updates (tweets) and you are allowed to see theirs (unless your profile is private). This structure is very simple, its not hard to use at all, even a five year old would be able to manage their own twitter account. The simplicity of the site also makes it more enticing to new users.

The third canon is style and style is the language used by the speaker. On twitter, everyone is their own speaker, but they can also read and interpret what other people said on their tweets. Every type of twitter is different, someone may use their twitter strictly for business and may only tweet information and updates to fellow employees, whereas some people may use their twitter just to tweet their everyday activities or their plans for the evening. There are also restaurants like Starbucks that are always tweeting about free drinks or new drinks being created, each twitter account or tweeter tweets for a different reason.

The fourth canon is delivery, this is how the message gets disseminated to the public. With twitter its easy, all you do is click a button and the message is posted to your wall and your followers walls. The update is instantly, there is no delay with the news, like getting the newspaper delivered to your house. The news is immediate as well as the feedback. If someone wishes to make your tweet a trending topic or re-tweet it for other people to see that is always a possibility. This is how the messages become more widespread and reach over thousands of followers. It is also possible to receive these messages on your cell phone and it will ring immediately when your twitter is being updated.

The fifth canon is memory, which is obviously how we remember and process the message. On twitter you are usually just checking out to see what your friends are doing, or what is going on with your favorite celebrity that day. Its like you are connected with your friends constantly even if they aren't contacting you directly. If you see your favorite celebrity just tweeted they have a new girlfriend or boyfriend, the first thing you are going to do is remember the name of that person then google it. It becomes very routine when it comes to checking your twitter, its part of your daily routine form memory. While you are on twitter, messages are constantly being sent to you whether you want to read it or not, but it is you that gets to pick whether you want to remember what you saw or just go on to something else.

As far as twitter achieving its goal, I would definitely say that it did.

Culture Jamming of Manhattanville

the culture jammed picture is not appearing for some reason...I'm going to email you the picture, or attempt to email it!

In my culture jamming of Manhattanville, I took a picture of Manhattanville's Reid Castle with some students on the quad that said "Manhattanville College" on the bottom. This picture/advertisement that has been shown on the website is to make the school appealing, especially having the castle being the center of attention, the weather and trees looking beautiful and students frolicking on the quad; what could be better than that when looking for a college to attend? But that picture can be deceiving, full tuition to this school costs about 46,000$ a year, which is a hefty sum of money, especially in these dire economic circumstances our country is in. The "school" and living parts of Manhattanville don't even involve the castle either. Recently, all student events have been banned from being in the castle, so in fact, the picture is actually very deceiving. In my short time here at Manhattanville, I have seen people relaxing on the quad a total of 3 times! Looking at that picture Manhattanville looks like a friendly environment where people can relax and hang out, but that is not the case at all. So in my 'culture jamming' of this photo I wrote, instead of Manhattanville College on the bottom, i wrote "High School" because going to this school feels like you are at a high school. It is so clicky, jocks hang out with only the jocks, dancers with the dancers, theater kids with theater kids and so on. I feel like i stepped out of high school at the end of 2009 and stepped into another high school. I also included a little blurb on the top that says "pay thousands of dollars for education in a castle". I wrote this keeping in mind that i have been in the castle a total of 6 times since I've been at Manhattanville, and 2 times were because part of my tuition wasn't payed properly. This is misrepresentation of Manhattanville's campus and what it is actually about.

In Class Assignment- Week 6 Discuss Reactive Measure of the Media

In chapter 6 of the textbook Media Literacy, we learn that "we need to be proactive-rather than reactive-in understanding how the media affect us" (Media Literacy 73). In order to become media literate, it is necessary to understand how to control the effects the media has on us, and how we can change the way we perceive things and react to them. If we are proactive instead of reactive, it will be much easier to become a more media literate individual.

There are constantly reactive measures occurring in media, once one witnesses these reactive pieces of media, they need to comprehend it and know how to react appropriately. An example from the textbook describes a scene from a movie where two characters are playing Russian Roulette, a game that involves shooting guns at peoples heads and in hope that the gun is not loaded. Two young boys watched this movie and decided to play out or react on the scene of Russian roulette, one of the young boys died from this. In this example from the Media Literacy text, These boys reacted to what they saw instead of being proactive and thinking about the ramifications and damage that could occur if they play the game. These boys did not have the experiences or maturity to prevent them from acting on what they saw in the movie.

There is always media surrounding us, we are constantly being emotionally and physically affected by media. The effects that we easily notice are called manifested effects, these effects are visibly noticeable on a person (Media Literacy 74). But when it comes to being media literate, one must go above and beyond the manifested effects. Another reactive measure of the media is when you see a political commercial or campaign on television, you don't just say oh I'm a democrat or republican or sure I like this person, you need to dig deeper and not just look at how perfect that person is portrayed in the commercial and do research about who they are, what their opinions are and what they are about. You need to make your own decisions when viewing things and opinions about people in the media. If you aren't forming your own opinions then you are not fully media literate.

Everyone has a baseline, which is what is socially acceptable in society and what developmental maturity level one is at. People who have lower developmental maturities, like young children, they won't be able to comprehend and thoughtfully analyze a commercial for a fast food chain, they would just enjoy watching the commercial because it is about food. They aren't able to comprehend the message that the commercial is giving at a more matured level, but once children mature "they are less influenced by a central, salient feature of a message and can process many elements in that message" (Media literacy 77). That is just one aspect that can fluctuate a persons baseline.

Once one is media literate, they are able to fully have and create their own baseline, of course there are things that can make their baseline fluctuate. But once one is able to think more critically and create their own opinions and beliefs they will become more media literate and knowledgeable and then in turn be able to control their reactionary and proactive responses.

Potter, W. James. Media Literacy. 4th ed. Minneapolis: Sage Publications, Inc, 2007. Print.

In Class Assignment Week 5- Unfair Advertising Practices

Unfair advertising practices are advertisements that aren't adjusted correctly for different niche audiences with different demographics. One type of a special audience that needs advertising directly focused on their niche is children. Children need this special type of advertising because they are not matured and have a lack of maturation; maturation is predicated on knowing what something is and having experienced that thing. "Think of maturation as a series of gates along the path to higher media literacy" (Media Literacy 57). Once one reaches a more developed level of maturation, they are able to break down and process media in a more effective and coherant manner, once they have reached a higher level of maturation they will also have experienced more and be able to relate to what they are seeing in the media. An unfair advertising practice for this niche audience would be something about a serious relationship, they are not going to relate to the relationship that is occuring in the commercial, they are going to want to see a commercial that is appropriate and applies to their age group, it needs to be something relateable. This special audience needs to be protected from harmful or confusing advertising. Children need to be able to see the difference between program content and commercial content. "Young children are fuzzy about the difference between program content and communication content" (Media Literacy 62). Now there are new laws in place that require this separation to occur, childrens minds can be clouded very easily with the programming they see on television. Now there is a clear line where advertising practices can become unfair and unjust toward certain special niche audiences.

Potter, W. James. Media Literacy. 4th ed. Minneapolis: Sage Publications, Inc, 2007. Print.

Blog Asssignment Week 5- The Corporation

After watching the movie, The Corporation, it really changed my perspective on big companies, i knew corporations were overpowering but i was not aware of that they are some of the most dominating institutions of our time. Most corporations main concerns are with making as much money as possible, and making a profit off of other people even if it means exploiting them. These corporations are names we hear daily, such as Exxon, General Electric, Wal-Mart, Mitsubishi and many others, these companies are portrayed as ruthless bad guys who will stop at no cost.

People need to be able to create their own opinions on whether they are going to invest their time or spend money on these corporations. In the section of the video called perception management, communications organizations provide these large corporations with ways to create a good image for themselves and not make them look like the monsters that they are. These organizations use propaganda to make us think in a certain way. But if people have a proactive perspective on the media, they won't confine to the norm and willingly donate their money to these corporations. "We need to be proactive-rather than reactive-in understanding how the media affect us" (Media Literacy 73). This means we are able to make our own choices on whether we want to buy that product or support all the things that the company supports. The advertisements these companies use can be deceiving, for example the pfizer commercial from the video, it made it seem like the company was peaceful, calm and like they were doing a good thing. But in reality this company has committed fraud multiple times.

These companies have complete disregard for the well being of other humans, in one portion of the video called "Are Corporations Psychopathic?" they show case how corporations seem to actually be psychopathic, it seems almost true, they do not feel guilt, they fail to conform to the social norms with respect to lawful behaviors and they have an incapacity to maintain relationships. "The media are constantly influencing how we think feel and act" (Media Literacy 74). If we constantly let the media without us choosing to make our own decisions, these corporations will take a hold over us as a people and be a large monopoly that cannot be stopped. We are constantly experiencing process effects from our exposure to media messages, these messages affect our emotional and physical states of being, when we are able to make our own decisions about what we see on the media, we will be able to make the decision of whether we want to believe these decorated and over-exaggerated commercials about corporations.

Potter, W. James. Media Literacy. 4th ed. Minneapolis: Sage Publications, Inc, 2007. Print.

Cool Picture- In class assignment

For my picture of cool, i decided to use my Mac laptop. I wasn't able to go out this weekend because i was sick, so i thought of an object i have at school that i treasure the most and is the coolest to me and used a picture of it. I decided to use my Mac because in my opinion it is one of the coolest gadgets i own. I had been saving up to get mac the second i started applying to colleges, my mom purchased a desktop mac for her work, and i couldn't stay away from it when I was at home. That was when i made the executive decision that when i went away to college i wanted to get a Mac and not a PC.

A mac is a perfect example of a 'cool' that is constantly changing. The apple company has been developing and creating a name for themselves for over a decade. Now they have products like my slender, sleek, virus free macbook that comes with a free ipod touch if you are purchasing your macbook for college. What young adult can resist that deal?

The Mac commercials on television come in all different forms and are aesthetically pleasing to the consumers, like me. The ipod touch commercials play new age techno music that attract many different niche audiences, especially my niche, young adults. Everyone wants to be the guy dancing around with the earbuds in his ear playing techno music. This advertisment makes you want to go out and buy one for yourself. The macintosh insignia, the apple, also makes an eye-catching statement. If you see someone with an apple computer, you know it is high tech and has all the new up to date applications. In 2010 the mac laptop is the one of the coolest gadgets to have.

Press Kit for Look Look-In class assignment

After reading the "Look-Look" press kit, I found myself very interested in what the Look-Look companies mission is. It is a huge corporation that benefits marketers and advertisers world wide. This company has over 35,000 employees who just research what is trendy and in the mainstream media at this very moment. They are constantly updating new and current information onto their website. Their research team of 35,000 people is made up of clients, business people, young adults, photojournalists, respondents, sociologists and more. All of these people each play an important role in achieving the goal of the Look-Look corporation, which is to find out what is trendy now and how they can help marketers and advertising companies reach out to their niches of their individual products. Look-Look has a specific way of finding what is trendy. Since the concept of a 'mass audience' is no longer a valid way of addressing advertising, Look-look searches for the 'minor minorities' in society. "Over the years, audience segmentation schemes have become more complex in an effort to generate more precise grouping" (Media Literacy 45). This is the goal of Look-Look is to look for these minority niches that are not on the radar of the widespread media groups and advertisers. After they research and find these specific niches, they pay specific attention to that certain demographic.

The Look-Look company has a series of steps that they follow when trying to find out what the hot topics are right now. The Look Look network does not just do a surface level scan of these niches, they ask young adults what is cool right now and they try to get to know them and interact with them on a more personal level, not just as a selling point for marketing or advertising. They strive to get a very in depth analysis of what these teens are like and what their needs and desires are. Look-Look uses a variety of ways to gather and collect their research, they use surveys, field reports as well as photo research to get to the heart of what is going on in the world of young adults. These ways of gathering information help marketers know what these kids existing needs and interests are so they can attend to them. Look Look strays away from what is already mainstream, they investigate deeper and look toward what all types of audience niches are into, not just what is main stream. They want to find out what the minority is interested in, and then they give their information, statistics and findings to companies and organizations that advertise for the majority. Once the information that look-look finds is handed off to their clients, they use the information to direct their advertisements towards the correct niches, attract audiences and assists with cross-media and cross-vehicle promotion. "Media programmers must find potential members of their audience in other audiences so the programmers can promote the new messages and thus attract people in the audiences that they are trying to construct" (Media Literacy 50). This is exactly what Look-Look is trying to provide for these companies, a new and unique way to get their advertising across to their niche audiences.

As i looked at all the clients that the look look network has, it was very interesting to see all the different demographics that they provide information for. For example, Kellogg's cereal and Maybelline make-up. Kellogg's cereal is usually marketed to the niche of younger children, they have mascots that appeal to little kids like Tony the Tiger, the mascot for frosted flakes. Maybelline is marketed to women in their late teens to late twenties. Their research spans over a mass audience, but then separated into these smaller majority of categories. Look-Looks main goal is to look past what was trendy and hot yesterday, and find the minority today and turn that into an advertising trend. " The mass media segment the general population into marketing niches..." (Media Literacy 42). This is the exact goal of the Look Look company, to find those small niches; research and examine them and then give their findings to the marketers to create advertisements that will be directed at these particular niches.

Potter, W. James. Media Literacy. 4th ed. Minneapolis: Sage Publications, Inc, 2007. Print.

Design a Poster- Blog Assignment #3

Since Mass Audience is no longer a valid concept, I composed this ad about "Scoring a Slammin Bod" because it appeals to my 'Niche'. The demographic of my niche is a younger, late teenage female, who is a student in either high school or college. The media message my ad sends out is a guide to find a slamming body, and when your young and in college, there is no better time to achieve the best body that you can. It gives tips on how to stay healthy, eat right, exercise properly and with confidence.

It is very true that this ad will only attract a certain kind of audience, it has bright perky colors, very bold statements and words describing how you will feel when you do and achieve the steps to having a slamming body. "Although we have a wide variety of media and messages available to us, we usually select a small subset of them that tend to serve our needs best." (Media Literacy 49). This ad is very broad, it can attract a wide variety of ages, mostly younger but still a concentrated niche or audience of younger women. This ad does fit my needs best, it is something i desire to achieve and many other young women do as well. I thought the idea i chose would be compelling as well because it doesn't apply to social or economic segmentation, it isn't expensive and anyone can try any of these ideas risk free. This advertisement is catchy and innovative, anyone in the audience of my niche would definitely not pass by this ad.

Potter, W. James. Media Literacy. 4th ed. Minneapolis: Sage Publications, Inc, 2007. Print.

Superbowl Commercial 2/10/10- In class assignment

This SuperBowl commercial connected is with mass audiences because it is appealing to a wide variety of people, not just one niche. It is anonymous because the commercial dealt with relationships and nearly everyone has some type of relationship with another person. All people can relate to why the little boy slapped his mothers date, he was protecting and watching out for her, he also was protecting his Doritos, so the commercial was insinuating that he had a certain affection or relationship with the Doritos as well.

In my opinion this is directed to the marketing niche of younger people. The couple in the commercial was young, as was the little boy. The little boy was standing up for himself in the commercial as well as if he was advocating how strongly he felt about his mom and his Doritos. This marketing technique makes the product seem more hip and likable to younger kids. The demographic of this commercial definitely applies males as well as females, a younger age group, and people of an average income. The boy wanted the Doritos to himself, so if he wanted them that bad they must be delicious, that is definitely one of the selling points of the ad.

The psychographic segmentation was new age and current, the story line of the commercial takes place in present day 2010, especially with the little boy hitting the boyfriend, it shows the way children act in this era, with the boy slapping the boyfriend and not the boyfriend slapping the little boy. I was not expecting the boy to slap his mothers boyfriend, it was very unexpected to the audience, it made me want to rewind and replay that moment. This commercial attracted and appealed to the interest of many types of audiences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYyfbeRVM4E

Target Commercial Jingle- IN CLASS ASSIGNMENT

This commercial doesn't necessarily have a jingle, but it was the song playing that stuck in my head. The song played in the 2008 and 2009 target commercials was Hello Goodbye By the Beetles. Although i knew the song was sung by the beetles and that was where i originally heard it, after i kept repeatedly hearing it on the Target commercials I would associate Hello Goodbye not with Target but with the beetles. It was also interesting seeing the Target commercial from the early 1980's. They didn't play hello goodbye but they had another song that was familiar to me. The commercial also showed the red target sign at the end, although the songs were different i think the people who created the advertisement had the same idea in mind. This Target commercial is also relevant to my life because I shop there often and I go there whenever I see a sale on a commercial. One time that Target particularly affected my life was this past summer when i was shopping for accessories for my dorm room with my mom. My mom is unable to walk for long periods of time so she needed to use one of the electric wheelchairs in target with the cart attached to it and we were both dying laughing because she knocked down every display she drove by, its just one of those memories that you will never forget.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4iJC5gdkeA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2ui19zu5lw

Blog Assignment 2- Pick an advertisment and its correlation to pop culture

The advertisement I chose is from the Abercrombie and Fitch clothing line. This advertisement is enticing to anyone who looks at it, there is a half naked man on it, who isn't going to stop and stare? This ad is directed mostly at younger people, from later elementary school to high school aged. What young boy doesn't want to look as buff and handsome as that man does in the abercrombie clothing and what girl doesn't want to be with the strapping young man in the photo?

In order to understand and comprehend this advertisement you need to be able to understand the deeper message of the product they are trying to market. This advertisement displays the different aspects of how knowledge structures are necessary to find information and evaluate this advertisement effectively. Social information is "composed of techniques that people learn from observing social interactions" (Media Literacy 14). Concerning the Abercrombie advertisement, young people are attracted to it because of the appeal that the 'sexy body' that everyone should have. The commercial is basically saying, if you wear Abercrombie, you will be as hot as this guy or you can be with this hot guy. Once we have built up our knowledge structures, it brings us a step closer to being a media literate person.

The idea of being a media literate person applies to this advertisement as well as understanding any advertisement. The people who created this advertisement wanted the six pack of abs to grab an onlookers attention; once someone decides they want to be like that guy on the ad or be with that guy, it raises the chance that they will purchase the clothing from that store. Since Abercrombie and Fitch is percieved as cool by a large percentage of tweens, then all the other tweens will want to have A&F clothing as well. This idea applies to being a media literate person because young teens are not maturated fully and don't have the experiences to fully assess this brand and come to the realization that this brand may seem to be make you look hot from the photo, but wearing the clothing may not necessarily make you a 'cool' person.

http://images2.layoutsparks.com/1/237016/abercrombie-and-fitch-guy-31000.jpg

Potter, W. James. Media Literacy. 4th ed. Minneapolis: Sage Publications, Inc, 2007. Print.

Blog Assignment #1-Who Owns the Media

Who owns the media? there are many different answers to this question, of course we as a people own the media, and we have ownership over the Internet, but there are also many large corporations that own the media, after I looked at The Media Channels Ownership Chart, it was interesting to see the major companies that run the mass media system. These six large corporations: Time Warner, Viacom, Walt Disney, News Corporation, Bertelsmann, Vivendi Universal and Time Warner. All of these names all ring a bell, but I never thought of them as the corporations that run our mass media production today.


For example The Walt Disney Corporation owns 29 Radio stations, 10 major news stations (ABC Television & Radio), the corporation also owns almost all of the major Film Producing companies such as Miramax, Touchstone, Buena Vista and others as well. These companies on the media ownership chart cover mostly television, radio, book publishing as well as large film companies. All the companies I assumed were large entities of their own, such as ABC are actually owned by these large corporations, so small public television stations are owned by larger companies with more power. Although these are some of the biggest corporations that run the mass media today, we as a people have a choice of what kind of media we choose to watch and listen too.


Internet is one of type of media that is not covered by these companies, the Internet it is a free world, there is no controlling what you can look at, what information is available and what information you can make available. When we use the Internet, it is almost automatic to us what websites we go to and what information we wish to see. This concept is called automaticity; "automaticity is a state where our minds operate without any conscious effort from us" (Media literacy 7). When one accesses their favorite sites on the Internet, it is almost an automatic action, like going to facebook or aol. These automatic routines are ingrained in our head so we get to choose what media we want to watch and enjoy.


In the textbook "Media Literacy", chapter one addresses the fact that we live in a media saturated world. This means we are constantly surrounded by all different kinds of media, television, commercials, advertisements, Internet and radio. It is our job to choose and filter what kind of media we choose to follow or listen to. One of the most powerful media devices is the television. "Television is still by far the dominant medium at 275 minutes per day" (Media Literacy 5). This means that we as a people watch on average about 275 minutes of television a day. That is a lot of television, so each individual needs to stop their 'automatic pilot' of just watching TV and filter out the stations that they don't want to watch, they have to be selective. So going back to the idea about the Media and ownership chart and all the networks, one can be media literate and choose what networks they agree with and enjoy watching. Although there are advantages to just watching whatever station is on, "it helps us get through many great decisions without the effort" (Media Literacy 8). But once one can be media literate and understand and comprehend media in an effective way, their automatic pilot will not be on anymore and they will be creating and making their own decisions.

Potter, W. James. Media Literacy. 4th ed. Minneapolis: Sage Publications, Inc, 2007. Print.