Wanted: the media that we need

     In my opinion the media we want is the same as the media we get. I think this was best explained in my classmate Korinna Charette’s blog where she stated that “we want the media we get, but the media makes us think that we get the media we want.” To further explain there is no clear way to know for sure that we are not being influenced by the media to want what they give us or if they are simply giving us what they know we want. As I stated in my last blog this compares to the chicken and the egg scenario, we will never really know which one came first. What is the big difference between these two things anyway? Either way we get what we want (which I think everyone always loves to do!). Whether we know we influenced the media or if they influenced us does not really matter very much to us because we feel that we have been satisfied by the media either way.

     As for whether our media choices better inform us about social, political, cultural and economic matters I think the answer to this is also hard to explain since the media does without a doubt inform us about these topics but is it really for the better? I agree with Allen Edgington when he said “what [he] wants from media is precise reporting which is unbiased and without conjecture” which I believe is what we all want but seems to be in scarce supply through the media in today’s society. The majority of news stories and reports have some type of bias buried in there somewhere, some are just much more subtle then others. So to be honest the media does “inform” us about these topics but not necessarily in the honest and unbiased way that we desire.

     It is fairly easy to find information in general social, political and cultural topics through the media since as Jessie Dowdall stated “now a days we can access these sites through our smartphones anywhere and at any time” but to find in-depth unbiased and informative information on these topics is much harder and may not be done as quickly and easily as reading the news on your Iphone while you’re waiting for the bus. To find real informative information through the media that is not bias might require some real research on the topic and time spent forming your own thoughts and opinions on the matter. So as easy as it is to find general information on these topics finding the REAL information is a lot harder and maybe this is why so few of us actually take the time to do it.

http://edgington1812.wordpress.com/- Allan Edgington

http://jessdowdall19.wordpress.com/- Jessie Dowdall

http://lookingformargo.wordpress.com/- Korinna Charette

The media we want?

     When it comes to the question of do we get the media we want or want the media we get, I believe it’s an extremely hard question to answer for the simple fact that we only truly have experience with the media we get so that is what we want. If we had any idea of other possible variations of media then we might not want the media we currently have. So I guess I would have to say that we want the media we get.

     Our basic idea of what we want in the media is based off of what we have already got out of it. As stated in the textbook “the media construct our values for us and have a direct effect on our actions” (O’shaughnessy, Stadler 43). The media is what is telling us what we want from simple advertisements about products or clothing to what we should want out of our news sources and other types of media. The textbook compares it to the chicken or the egg scenario, which one truly came first? It is further explained as “the media are one of the social forces that produce popular common sense, the general social beliefs and feelings of a society. In turn these social beliefs and values influence the media who reflect them” (O’shaughnessy, Stadler 59). So in this scenario just like the chicken and the egg, we will never truly know which one came first. If the media tells us what we want then they are obviously going to tell us to want what they are presenting meaning that we will want the media we get. This makes it much more difficult to want anything else.

     If the media was not telling us what to want then we might decide that we no longer want it the way it is currently being presented. In this case we would change our opinions of what we want and the media would have to adapt to give the people what they want. However currently we our being told by the media to want the media so we are therefore not getting the media we want but instead simply wanting the media that we get.

Works Cited:

O’shaughnessy, Michael and Jane Stadler. Media and Society. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. 2011

Blog Response #1

After reading over the blog posts of a few of my classmates it seems to be that we all feel the same way about the impact mass media has had on our lives. We all stated different examples of the impact but the end result was the same. The mass media impacts our lives in a very strong way, sometimes more then we even realize. No one stated that they had no impact whatsoever by the media and therefore my opinion on the topic has not changed. I strongly feel that the media is an important part of our lives and some of my classmates blogs reflected this feeling with similar/different examples.

In Chloe Lemay's blog(http://chloejocelyn.blogspot.ca/2013/09/blog-entry-1-effects-of-mass-media-on-me.html) she mentioned how movies and tumblr were "skewing [her] views on people and the rest of the world". This is something that i can strongly relate to and actually talked about in a similar example in my original blog. We all watch movies and TV shows and the majority of us wish we lived a life like those shows. However the idea of what life should be like based on TV is completely unrealistic and it creates a large disconnect between our idea of real life and what real life truly is.

In Emma Stubbs blog (http://unbeatable2.blogspot.ca/2013/09/1f25-post-1-media-impact.html) she talked about two things that i can also relate to. She mentioned how " media expands to advertising and it is everywhere you go" and how "we as a whole have allowed the world to persuade us as the consumer to buy almost anything" an example of this in my own life is the fact that i own an Iphone. The reason i bought an Iphone last year was because it was advertised to be the best and was constantly talked about and shown on TV. This made me as the consumer want it so bad that even though my old phone worked perfectly fine i was willing to pay around $600 for the Iphone just because its the "best". ( in my opinion not true!)

In Carla Alfaro's blog(http://cacpcf.blogspot.ca/2013/09/blog-entry-1.html) she talks about the extreme differences between what is presented and what is the truth. Her examples both talk about how a place( LA, Africa) are presented one way; LA being glamorous and Africa being poor and in need of help. But the truth is there are two sides to every story. Not all of LA is glamorous and full of celebrities and not all of Africa is poor and in need of saving but the media only presents one side of each story instead of giving a well rounded view of the country/ city. She then admits that it made her become "really skeptical of a lot of things" and from then on she "always asked questions". It made me realize that we should always ask questions and do our own research on any topics presented my the media because the media is not always right.

Overall the common opinion among my classmates seems to be the same as me. We all admit that the media has a large impact on our view of the world. Reading over the other blogs has made me think harder about how much i let it impact my life and has made me decide to try to make more of an effort to not let it impact every aspect of my life in such a strong way.