The Media and its Ridiculously Outrageous Influence

For the Mass Communications writing portion or writing assignment, everyone had to do a semiotic analysis of a certain commercial, advertisement or something media related. We were told we had to relate this to at least 3 different texts we have had to read throughout the course. To start off, I think this assignment is great even though it took a while, because it encourages to use the new knowledge we have learned through the readings and apply to an actual media.

I began looking across the internet on different websites, including YouTube, Google Videos and Yahoo Videos just to name a few. Then through searching, "Media Commercial" on YouTube I found on the 5th page of videos one advertisement for a Superbowl Commercial that was appealing to me, and I knew would be great for my paper.

For my semiotic analysis, i decided to base my opinions and relations of the texts and course related media to a Pepsi commercial with Britney Spears as the main attraction. The three course readings I based my relations on were Amusing Ourselves To Death, Ways of Seeing and Understanding Comics, all of which could be related to this one Pepsi commercial in a substantial way. I think i did a good job of combining the ideas of technology, women, and color from the ideas found in these three texts in to a satisfying and compelling argument about the sexiness, color, and advertising in the commercial. My paper came together as such: intro, 1st and 2nd paragraphs general ideas, 3rd Postman relation, 4th Berger relation, 5th McCloud relation, conclusion. I think the way i organized my paper was an important part of delivering my message clearly and more effectively with starting off general and leading to more specific texts which not everyone has read.

Here is the video:



Overall, I worked pretty hard on this project, and I think my relations, the commercail i picked, and my ideas were solid enough to get a pretty good mark, and coming out of this project I have learned more on how to look for underlying ideas in media.

Activism is KEY

For Mass Comm, everyone has to do an activist project for one of the seven group projects, and i think this is one of the best out of the 7. It is good because it allows everyone to get together and form a sort of alliance and do something good for a change. One of the biggest concerns recently in the world has been pollution within cities and large factories around the world. There are so many different products in our society that are easy to make, cost basically nothing to produce, and are convenient, but definitely do not contribute to the environment in a safe and healthy way. When we first got together we all thought of this as one of the major concerns in the world that we as residence students see every single day when we are down in the cafeteria. STYROFOAM. Everyday as residents get their food, they are given Styrofoam containers without having the choice of that or a plate. This, although very cheap to do is horrible because styrofoam has been proven to take nearly 500 years to decompose. 25 billion styrofoam cups are thrown away just by americans every single year, none of which can be made in to more styrofoam therefore making a process which is uncureable until it is completely stopped. For our project we decided that we would each make a poster with some facts and other options in order to fix this ongoing problem we have in the residence. The day after these posters went up, our group went down to get some food and see what the deal was on our idea, and it seems there actually were noticeably more people with plates. This was fantastic, and let us know that just doing one or two good things can actually change the world just a bit and maybe save it for another couple minutes.

Group Media Map Layout...

Today, our group (Kyle, Katie and Myself) got together to start and finish our media map. We each had sort of read over the ideas of the project and what it was supposed to turn out like, but all in all we were all pretty lost on what to do. When we got together and started putting our heads together, we began to realize the task at hand. What we had to do was find a certain company or big gun branch that owned a variety of companies that people would never know were actually owned by that one big company.

After some thought, our group decided to go with CTV (Canadian Televison Network) which we began to search for information on www.yourmedia.ca. We found some relative information regarding media ownership, and then continued on to other sites such as wikipedia and ctv.ca in order to find who the company actually owns. The information we found was pretty astonishing, and it turns out CTV actually owns the Globe and Mail, many radio stations, and even has a relation to the Toronto Maple Leafs (not like that is a good thing!)

Out of this project, our group learned that not only is there more than meets the eye when it comes to girls, but media ownership as well and that it is a compound thing that we need to understand or else in our future things may go wrong when we do not give credit to who really deserves it. This was a successful project in the end even after all of our debating on what we really had to do or make for this assignment!

Boring = Useful

Well today, we had the day off from Mass Comm, and frankly i was looking forward to have another heather debate for a couple hours. Ever since i was a kid i loved having arguments about things i truly believed in; just ask my parents. Every week in Mass Communications different topics arise and fall and some good debates and arguments are presented by different students. This is what makes it interesting to come to class every week; the student body participating in what really matters. I think the we are privileged to go to university as Lipton says, but i think we are even more privileged to be able to speak our own thoughts in a comforting but subtly conscientious environment. Everywhere around the world there are places that kids cannot go to school, but even in places where there are schools, speaking our minds is sometimes rough or hard to do.

Today, i was bored and started to begin writing some blogs, working on a photography essay, and catching up on some sleep. Everyone in residence is starting to get anxious because it is halloween tonight and there are apparently going to be some sweet parties happening, so I am looking forward to that after a long day of writing. This weekend is going to be critical for me because i need to stop procrastinating on work and start my semiotics paper which has been staring me in the face for the past week.

Readings, The Future, The Media, Bibliography.

In my future years at Guelph Humber it is going to be important that I have a list of texts and books i've read and want to read over the years. So, Heres the start to this list!

1)Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War by Ashley Gilbertson

2)Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames by Ian Bogost

3)Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

4)Five Myths of Television Power or Why the Medium Is Not the Message by Douglas Davis

5)Getting the Message: A History of Communications by Laszlo Solymar

6)www.nationalgeographic.com

7)Ways of Seeing by John Berger (re-read)

8)www.engadget.com

9)Facebook.

10)100 Days in Photographs: Pivotal Events That Changed the World by Chris Johns

Understanding Comics: What's Important

I always do a first look at a book when I buy it at a bookstore, and I do the same thing with magazines. I do not know if this is a common thing, and I don't even think it helps, but I do it every time no matter what.

When I bought all of my books for Mass Communications I flipped through every one like I do with any other book. Obviously one stood out because it was purely black and white comics. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud was this very book, and right away it took me by suprise...why is Mark asking us to read a really long comic book? This is what I had to figure out, and after I had read two other necessary books, Understanding Comics came along and I started to read it.

I guess you could say right away the comics explained what the book was going to be about. The third comic box in the introduction told me, "An examination of the art-form of comics what its capable of, how it works."

Two parts throughout the book interested me specifically, the first part beginning on page 24 and continuing on to page 27. These pages are all about the icon, and it starts off by talking about the painted Magnettes Pipe with a simple caption reading this is not a pipe. This is a very famous painting that deals directly with the media, because people simply think; uh yes this a pipe! When the semiotics of it are that it is a painting of a pipe which was originally a drawing of a pipe which was originally just a piece of blank canvas. In my opinion the idea of this is that their is iconic imagery in everything to do with the media today. This is what McCloud goes on to talk about on pages 26 and 27, and these two pages are simply just a bunch of icons saying that they are not what they really are. I found this effective especially because I am in image arts, icons and images are especially important to success and portrayal of images.

The next part I really liked I actually used as a reference in my semiotic paper, there is one part of the book that is all in color, and through flipping and eventually getting to this part, it just seemed more interesting and more effective. Chapter 8 talks about how colors are more effective, and using them in comics and such is more pleasing to the eye, and this is particularly true in my vision of what is a successful image. I love black and white photography and I love the classic sense to it, but color images are where photography is going, and where it always will continue to go.

Understanding Comics was a great book to read, and it really opened my eyes to the different portrayals of images in different medias and how they differ from writing...very effective!

Technology is MORE than you would expect!

Today, was one of my favorite Mass Communcations days, because there were a bunch of different ideas brought up that sparked interest specifically in some of my favorite things.

The first topic brought up was about how so many jobs are changing due to technology and its advancements. Mark mentioned how even some of media's jobs including journalism are being taken over by server's, and online news sources such as msn.com and google are completely computer controlled and can actually pin point each computer or users most common topics of interest by which web pages they have viewed. This seems outrageous! but, I knew this before we even started talking about it, because of course I am really interested in technology and how it has been changed so much throughout the past years. By writing these blogs, I am changing the way people view web pages and other blogs without even knowing it! By sitting right at this very computer and in this very webpage space, my ip address is being traced through servers which then send the information to other servers all over the web. This told me a bit more than I knew already, and frankly it told me what my mom has been telling me all these years; BE CAREFUL ON THAT INTERNET!

The next thing Mark began to discuss was the change in technology throughout the past few years and how each of the products has been such a huge factor in both the media and technology world we live in today. I thought the video shown in class was really cool, and it had some special way of locking me in to it and it did not let make take my eyes off of it once. It actually was one of the coolest videos I have seen in a while that actually meant something. My reactions from seeing this video are basically just my thoughts right off the bat and how each product changed the world and the media. For the most part, each technology changed the world for both good and bad. My example of this would be that ICQ is an awesome invention, and if i didnt have it I would not have as many friends or as much of a social life as I do, but on the bad side, a lot of bullying and other situations have come out from messenger programs such as ICQ and I have had first hand accounts with them. All in all, the video inspired me to think more about the effects of technology on the media, and myself as well. Considering my interest in technology, if feel as though this topic kind of effects me directly, and it inspired me to think even more about what insane future technologies will change the media even more drastically than they do today.