"Empowerment" of women in Ads

In the first ad for Keds it says "Never underestimate a pretty face". You can also come to the conclusion that the person reading the newspaper is a women because of the dress and the legs. The newspaper that the women is holding also is a picture of a lion which tends to symbolize strength and power. This ad is empowering to women because women can be viewed a lot of times as just being pretty and delicate. With them saying to never underestimate a pretty face it is basically saying that women are capable of much more then beauty.

 

 

 In this ad for Brawny it shows women in outfits that men usually wear in the commercial. It also says that strength has no gender. This ad is empowering to not only women but different races of women as well. This shows a women in a strong stance that usually you see men doing, standing with there chest and head held high. This is an empowering ad for women showing that you can be strong and powerful as a women and doesn't mean that only men are those who are.

Romantic Couples in Pop Culture

One couple that teaches people about how to meet a romantic partner and how to deal with a romantic partner once your together is the Disney movie Shrek. In this movie Shrek falls in love with Fiona. She is a princess and he is an Ogre which is seen to be completely out of his league or to ever happen. This story teaches people that to meet your romantic partner you should choose who your heart desires even if that person is looked at as "to good" for you. This story also shows that once you have found your romantic partner you should settle down, buy a house together, and then begin to start a family of your own. Fake love is when you love someone or begin to fall in love with someone because of the movies we see and the expectations they set. This movie and the characters in it, specifically Fiona mentions a lot of the time that she needs to have her happily ever after and that it has to be perfect. Happily ever after is a concept that comes about in the ending of every Disney movie. All the characters goals in the movies is to have a happily ever after ending with their prince charming. This influences Fiona's perception of what true love is and who you should fall in love with, prince charming, and not an Ogre or someone who is seen as "below" you. Movies such as Cinderella had influenced Fiona's perception on how her life should be when looking for a romantic partner and even how he should look.

Brand Idetity

Brand identity is the personality of a brand and the way that we view a brand in society. The identity of a brand is very important and something that brands care a lot about. A brand's identity is responsible for creating the relationship between the customer and the brand. Once they build this connection between the two they can depend on the customer to buy the brand faithfully. When shopping I usually go to the same few stores. My favorite store to show at in the mall is Forever 21. The brand identity is very grabbing to people ages 16 and up I'd say. They have an identity of people who shop here are very hip and in style with the latest fashion trends that are going on from time to time. They're clothing is fairly cheap so there are lots of young women in the store taking advantage of buying cheap clothing that is also in style. I can tell that the identity of the store is intended for young women because of the display windows that are filled with outfits that people are wanting at the time. It also has bright lights, with music that is on the top charts at the moment, and big mirrors that grabs the attention of ladies.

A store that I usually avoid or don't really like shopping at is Hot Topic. This store is always very dark and plays rock music throughout the store. In the display window they usually have some type of customs or graphic tees that have rock bands on them or even cartoons. The identity of this store tends to lean towards the crowd of what people say "emo" kinds of people. It's easy to see what kind of identity this store gives off because of the dark colors (black and red) and the dimness of the store itself. The vibe the that store gives off when you walk past is quite dark and not very friendly and welcoming.

Duke Student and Porn Performer

Out of the four reports that we watched as a class, the two that compared with each other in my point of view was the Young Turks video and the Take Part video. In the Young Turks video their main focus of the story was looking at how the media went about exposing the women at Duke and also how her student body and those around her attacked her for her pursuing in porn. In this video they were considering her young and dumb because she was only 18 years old at the time. With her being so young they emphasized that she had probably not thought this idea all the way through before making the decision that she did. This video showed the way that society judges young women who enjoy sex. We often turn the situation into a bad thing and even slut shame them for making the choices that they deicide to make.

In the second video Take Part which was a college news broadcast, I felt as if it was a more sarcastic approach towards the Duke student. They made a lot of side jokes and comments about the student and the things that were being said in the media about her. They also talked a lot about how she was doing this to make ends meet while in college since it was so expensive to go to Duke. The only difference I noticed is in the video the women speaking in this group felt as if the student was considered a grown women once she hit the age of 18 and was able to make whatever choices she wanted to make at the time. They also bring up the fact that we are judging this student because she is a Duke student and consider her to almost be better than that to work in the porn industry because of her background. Both of these videos compare when talking about the Duke student and the way that she was attacked.

Justin Beiber

In the first video we watched as a class about Justin Bieber, they talked about his Photoshop incident with a Calvin Klein photo-shoot that he did. People were saying that the photos were clearly photo shopped making parts of his body larger and adding more muscles. This was a big controversial problem and caused a lot of attention in the media. In the second video we watched of a women explaining to us the situation with the Justin Bieber photo shopping she also explain the scenario and how Justin and his legal team handled the situation.  A lot of people questioned the cultural response to Justin's fake picture allegations. Both of these videos claim that they believe the main reason for the controversy over the pictures were due to the fact that Justin and his legal team denied any such allegations. The videos we watched both said how almost everyone in the media today is photo shopped to shape any flaws into perfect human beings when finished. With Justin saying the photos were not photo shopped at all made him look ridiculous. This also made him look a little insecure with feeling the need to lie about the original picture instead of having self love for the way he looks. This is also a big controversy in the media because for quite a long time it's been a major thing for women to be photo shopped to fit beauty standards but never really men. We judge men for their  package size and make them feel like less of a man if it doesn't meet our standards. Women stress about wanting to be smaller while men stress about wanting to be bigger. The media makes it seem as if its acceptable for women to be photo shopped but not the men.

Cultivation Theory

In this weeks reading we examined what is cultivation theory, which was developed by George Gerbner. He explained that cultivation theory is how television and the things that we watch on TV affects us in the real world. The author of the video we watched described cultivation theory as a fish in a fish bowl. When a fish is in a fish bowl surrounded by water, he does not realize he is surrounded by that water because that is all the fish knows. This is how our society is when it comes to TV. Since we have been exposed to violent types of TV for so long we tend to not realize how it is affecting us because we "know nothing else". It's hard to measure something when there wasn't a starting point that a person was not exposed to the thing being measured, such as violent TV. Violent TV also tends to make society feel a lot of fear and anxiety for what "could" happen. Even more specifically violent TV that contains torture draws a lot of viewers to think that torture works and that it is reasonable to do. With that being said 57% of people believe that torture in real life actually works. TV today also scares us into thinking that torture and violence could happen to us personally. Torture on TV is dramatic and is really just a device used to move the plot a long when watching. People today who watch TV, see violence, and then become scared and do things such as increase security systems around homes, buy guns, and even try to better our government to protect us as a whole from violence. We misinterpret violence because of the way that TV explains it to us. 

BIRG & CORF

In class we watched two videos, one that explained BIRGING and CORFING and also the Stephen Colbert old show from comedy central that showed examples of the two terms. In the first video we were introduced and explained to what BIRG and CORF were. BIRG stands for basking in reflected glory. That basically is when a person feels a strong connection with a team and have a sense of belonging with them. CORF stands for cutting of reflected failure. This essentially is when a person minimizes a relationship that they have with a bad team. When doing this they often blame the lack of success on outside influences and even demonizing other teams in the process.

In both the video from Stephen Colbert, there are several examples they show the viewers that better help our understanding of BIRG and CORF. One example is what the NFL team the Jaguars did to their stadium. The team had been having a rough record for the past several years, which was causing their fan base to decrease tremendously. With that being said, to draw a stronger fan base behind the team, they decided to make some renovations to the stadium itself. This included replacement of the stadiums seating area with pools and cabanas. This is an example of CORFING, people stopped attending the games and began to minimizes their relationship with the team so in order to improve this they added the pools to attract more support and people involved at their stadium. This video also shows and example of BURGING. It talks about a time that state senators of two hockey teams placed bets against each other on who's team would end up winning the championship cup. Although the bets were stupid ones that held no value to them, the state senates still were connecting their state team to themselves. They both felt as if they had a belonging with the team and took a team win as also a fan win to them.

Gaming Can Make a Better World & Why We Play

In the film we watched in class, "Gaming Can Make a Better World" and the reading "Why we Play" both talk about the motives behind why we play games and more specifically video games. Although they are two different authors and perspectives the motives are generally the same for the reasons on why we play. One way both stories compare are when they talk about goals, challenges, an rewards. In the reading why we play the author explains that we play these video games because while we are playing we are being motivated to reach a certain goal or reward. This concept also compares to the video we watched when Jane McGonial talks about an "epic win". She defines an epic win as an extraordinary outcome that the player had no idea could happen.The two of these motives relate because the video gamers are trying to reach a goal or reward when playing which motivates them to play longer. Another motive that are covered in booth stories are social contact and social fabric. In the reading,  social contact is described as a motive we are drawn to because it allows us to put ourselves in a world where we are able to play with anyone and everyone and even communicate with them as well. McGonial talks about the social fabric which is generally the same motive which is explaining how we like people more or better after playing a game with them because we develop some sort of trust. Trust and the fun we have with online friends are the reason behind the motivation of playing these games. Finally, a motive that also compares among the reading and video are fantasy and game world. Why do we play describes the fantasy world as a place where we are able to be any type of person we want to be and portray any image we want people to see. The fantasy world allows people to use their imagination to be someone we have always wanted to be and never were able to in the real world. This type of motivation is talked about in McGonigal's video but is described as the "game world". Game world is the best versions of ourselves. This is the same as fantasy, in which they are both who we are in the game world. Were motivated to create these characters and continue playing because it allows us to be in our dream world and control and dictate what does happen and how it does.

Media Phobia

In Media phobia by Kren Sternheimer she talks about how panics about pop culture are shown throughout history and that they are often masked by putting the blame on the less powerful social groups in society at the time. She shows how this works in several examples throughout the reading. One example she talks about is popular music at the time. More specifically Rock and Roll music. At the time this sort of music was very new to society and caused a lot of panic because the powerful music often made people intermix races because they all had similarities and enjoyment for that music genre.

Keren talks about other genres of music. For example she talks about how society does this by bringing up the genre of rap music. Rap music when it first came about caused a lot of fear and panic because of the language that was used and the talk of violence, drugs and even gangs. The media and society as a whole even till this day puts the blame on violent acts and the way teens act now on the type of music that they affiliate themselves with. When society panics they pin the blame on something that is smaller and much easier to pinpoint a reason for the issue on. These groups are less powerful which makes the blame just that much easier for others.

Keren also brings up the fact that panic occurs due to the fact the it's usually two different generations intermixing ( Parents and Children). Parents were raised and lived in a different generation. Therefore parents do not know everything in their child's new generation. This also causes panic to occur at times.  Newer generations spend a lot of time in private with pop culture without parents super vision. Parents blame less powerful social groups in these situations as well.

Digital Nation

When watching the film digital nation they introduced us to four main themes that technology affected. These were home & social life, work, school, and military. The theme that stuck out to me the most was the way that technology use affects student in school. In the film we saw many examples of how technology affects children and even college students. For example, they showed an underprivileged middle school was on the verge of getting shut down due to low attendance and scores on state tests. It showed that in the film when the children were giving the opportunity to receive laptops and both of these things improved tremendously for the children. Another example showed in the film of how technology affected students were the students the attended MIT college. These students were using laptops also at school, but the technology use affected them negatively. The students were incapable of paying attention enough in the classroom and also ended up being horrible at multitasking. This was an example of how technology affects students negatively.

When looking at the pros and cons of technology use in schools I find several interesting facts. For example, " After George middle school in Portland, Oregon introduced a social media program to engage students, their grades went up 50%, absenteeism went down 33% and 20% completed extra credit". This fact came from Oregoned.org, which is a site dedicated to education. This site includes articles, experiments, and also advice for those involved with education in some sort. A con that I found from the pro con website was "31% of students say that using social media during homework reduces the quality of their work". This fact came from Commonsensemedia.org, which is also another credible source that. This site gives advice to parents on how to control their kids digital well-being. Both sites give advice, information on recent articles, and also movie rating that are appropriate or not for children. I find these sources both credible based on the fact they are often stating helpful advice not quantitative facts or evidence.

Sherry Turkle

Technology Use

During Sherry Turkle's TED talk she explained the impacts of technology and our lives that so much revolve around them. She went into detail about how technology today is a way for people in our society to stay connected, yet alone at the same time. Society, in essence, allows us to never leave our homes but yet still gives us the opportunity to talk to all of our friends and family. We even see at times we are "alone together", sitting in a room full of friends or family but are completely drawn into our social media world and even connecting through it while in the exact same location. Sherry also speaks about how society has now altered how we communicate with each other. It's so much easier to just text what we want and have more control over what we do say and how we say it.

With many pros of how technology has impacted the human relationships there are also the same amount of cons. First, technology affects are learning tremendously. As Sherry mentioned we often multitask while at school or meetings and we will be on our phones during a lecture but tune out the boring stuff and only give some what of our attention to the things that we find important. This is changing the way we understand things and sometimes can even alter our interpretations of what we think we hear.  Second, phones and social media change what we do and who we are. On social media we share "important" things or things that make us seem interesting. Sherry mentions that this can sometimes create an entire new persona for our online life in real world life. Lastly, the ability to hide behind a cell phone so easily it is affecting our ability to have a real conversation with people. Sherri also mentions that while using our smart phones we are capable or copying, pasting, editing and deleting what we want to say before we press send. This is effecting society as a whole to where we see it as so much easier to just text to have a conversation than it is to have a real one face to face, so why do it. The younger generation doesn't see the problem of how texting does not help us learn and understand each other and it is affecting us more and more everyday.

Justine Sacco

Celebrity Culture 

Celebrity Culture has many different definitions and interpretations on its meaning, considering everyone has their own personal view on it, I define it as changing your thoughts, ideas, and the way you react to things based on the people that we pay high attention to. We often get an emotional attachment to these people. We fall in love with who they are and when they make any sort of mistake or bad judgment we often lash out because we are truly hurt or even offended.  With celebrity culture we attack those who misuse their privilege with the help of social media. For example when a celebrity says or does something against our beliefs or what we see as morally wrong the internet tends to take over and call out he or she in any way possible. Our society can even do this to those who are not a celebrity or hold any higher power as seen in the video of Justine Sacco.

In the Justine Sacco incident we saw a average women in today's world who had around 170 followers on twitter turn into a celebrity within minutes, due to a tweet that was taken out of context and used against her. The tweet went along the lines of  "I am traveling to Africa in hopes of not catching aids, but I won't because I am white." Within seconds Justine became the #1 trending topic on twitter. Everyone began bashing her for what they saw as an insulting tweet. People wanted her to lose her job and enjoyed tearing her down via social media. Celebrity culture sometimes leads to situations like this to where we take someone with little to no power and give them lots of power by bashing them for going against our beliefs or what we find acceptable and also even turning them into a celebrity at times by people tagging along and following people into the bashing of a person. This then creates a very powerful world that we control. Celebrity culture has the ability to make anyone powerful as long as we give attention to them. With Justine Sacco she got power quickly and negatively. Celebrity culture affects our lives everyday.