What did I learn in this class?

After learning all I've learned in this class I would say I'm happily augmented with a better sense of how the world works. I already considered myself to be decently literate with the media, but now I realize there was a lot more to know. For instance I came in with a cynical attitude of the media and how it manipulates our minds (I still kind of feel that way) and I wanted to learn to counteract all the propaganda, but with the class I think I have a better understanding of the different media outlets through a combination of their history, ethical issues, and laws surrounding ownership and everything.

When I watch tv or surf the internet I am more aware of how different things are not always working for the public good but rather can be there to make money or decieve the public. I think I learned the most about how public perceptions are changed by the media - more so than the media itself. I think this last gubernatorial election gave me a heads up to how well TV ads work and how a democracy can be exploited to use couch potatoes to get votes. I mean WOW... Meg Whitman got ANY votes considering she did nothing but say "I will fix education, lower taxes, and create jobs" in her ads? (who doesn't say those things?) It goes to show how important it is to know your news sources.

I already know about the First Amendment like the back of my hand, because I took a law class in high school and they talked about it. Plus I do a lot of reading in my free time and got to know about things like that well. I thought everyone would find it obvious that you can burn the American flag, since after all it's free speech... I guess not.

What struck me most about the media and how it operates is how so few people own everything. For instance the textbook said just five corporations own 80% of the media in the US. Does that not shock anyone? Essentially five corporate CEOs can dictate all the information we're fed. If they were to conspire to concoct fake stories and run them through all their media outlets, be it a fake invasion of Iran, I'm sure LOTS of people would fall for it. Corporate consolidation is a huge issue in itself - and worse, the more consolidated it gets, the harder it is to get out. It becomes almost impossible to create a television news channel, mainstream newspaper, or record label in such an inpenetrable atmosphere, which has bad implications. If there is one statistic everyone should know about the media, it would be that.

Media Ethics/Media Law

Numerous law and ethics cases involving the media have happened in 2009 and 2010 (I assume we can talk about 2010 also) are worth noting. Six of them go as follows:

• Censorship - July 2010 - Google ended a standoff with China over censorship that ended with Google accepting Chinese users being redirected to the Google page of Hong Kong.
• Libel - January 2009 - A New York model, Liskula Shanks, sued Google in an attempt to find who was responsible for libelous statements said about her on the internet.
• Intrusion - May 2009 - Farah Fawcett speaks out about the media intruding on her life regarding her coming out about her cancer diagnosis.
• Copyright - November 2010 - The German company SAP was sued by Oracle over a copyright case where SAP was argued to have used Oracle's copyrighted software, costing SAP as much as $4 billion.
• FCC - April 2010 - The FCC loses a case to Comcast, where it was decided that the FCC doesn't have the authority to require equal treatment of broadbast users over internet trafficking.
• Misappropriation - July 2010 - Misappropriation lawsuit against the New York restaurant empire of Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich.

Propaganda and Advertising/PR

This ad for Barack Obama's presidential campaign back in 2008 is an obvious piece of propaganda. All the candidates used propaganda in one way or another, but this is the most famous example. Numerous propaganda techniques can be drawn from this.

The slogan "hope" (as well as "change", "yes we can", among others) has been repeated over and over again, which fits it nicely into the category of "ad nauseum". Ad nauseum involves repetition to instill a sense of validity.

With the slogan of hope, we can also say this hints at the "black and white" technique in that it implies other candidates don't offer hope. It's silently saying "With Obama we can find hope, but with the other candidates we can't." Black and white involves a false dilemma, making one choice appear obvious over the other and thus should be taken.

The technique of "flag waving" can be seen with the red-white-blue color scheme. Obama is the patriotic candidate of course, as opposed to the other ones. At least that's what they want us to believe. It doesn't involve a flag but it's implied by the national colors, as "flag waving" incites a sense of validity by using pariotic symbols. This also involves the "black and white" fallacy because it implies that if you're not for Obama then you're not patriotic.

Hope is also being used as a virtue word. "Virtue words" are words that tie into a culture's value system and are used to paint a positive picture of something. This fallacy is very close to "glittering generalities", which involve emotionally appealing words that have no concrete argument - also in use here.

Another propaganda technique that doesn't appear in the Wikipedia page is "cult of personality", which can be seen with the glorification of Obama's face. The red, white, and blue design with Obama giving us a stern and determined look, combined with the proliferation of this picture, can be compared with what dictators such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao have done. Not to sound cynical but it's true.

Internet

I searched "social networking sites" and counted 184 sites (you wrote "social working sites" on the yellow sheet and I assume you meant "networking"). Of these I've heard of Classmates, Crunchyroll, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Last.fm, LinkedIn, MySpace, Xanga, and Yelp, Inc. I've never heard of deviantART.com and apparently it's a site where users can upload artwork, much like a Youtube video, where others can write comments below it. Instead of videos you post pictures - most of which were done by computer animation, and a slideshow is available to page through a batch of someone's pictures. It looks like an interesting site that I might thinking about browsing through myself.

Personally I used to use MySpace, but those days are over. I have a Flickr profile but I never use it, though I use the website to search for pictures. I stopped using myspace because I got bored of it and saw the narcissistic nature of it all, and in fact I haven't logged into my profile in about three years. I don't have a Facebook page and never intend to. I'm conscious of the fact these sites can be used to quickly categorize people. For instance if I were to apply for a job, I know the employer would punch my name in, read my page, and make a virdict on what they saw. Most people don't read the entire page and I know people just throw someone into a category by either their pictures or their their numbers, such as their age, height, income, etc. I think people should get to know each other through more genuine means.

Once instance where I got in trouble or was helped out by a social networking site... I can't really think of one but I remember using MySpace years ago and my older sister noticed me and got excited and said "You have a MySpace Page?!". From then on she added me and sent comments, which made me feel a little uncomfortable because I was posting information that I wouldn't normally disclose in real life, and I knew she was probably reading all of it.