Tracking Media Exposure (the basic stats)

1. I was exposed to an average of about 176 hours of media total.
2. Excluding the very difficult to catch indirect exposures that just sometimes escape our eyes; I experienced 7 different types of media exposure. (Labels, music, computer, internet, TV, newspapers, magazines)
3. 1/3 was indirect; the other 2/3 was direct exposure.
4. Same as above—1/3 passive, 2/3 initiated by myself.
5. I actually had a larger average for my estimate than my actual data collection proved.
6. Definitely ads on television, and labels that said, PowerAde or Coca Cola. That was definitely more obvious that the lyrical messages from music or the television shows, which I think is intentional, so we don’t feel we’re being manipulated.

Avoiding Exposure, aka “Media Fast”

It was not very easy to do this fast of the wonderful world of addictive media because my roommates would turn on their computers and play music, or play computer games that headphones without music just didn’t block out. Especially when one finds that their roommate is playing something that you really wish you were playing. Also at my internship, my boss plays classical music and has a talk radio show that she switches back and forth between while we work.

At the cafeteria I’d see Coca Cola labels and various other big brands that were bright and eye catching. It was very difficult to look away from the vivid colors of the Fanta Orange Soda label on the drink machine as well as many of the signs advertising Sodexho. Then I’d see all the advertisements for upcoming campus events. I just live in a world where it’s almost impossible to avoid media unless you just sit in a dark room for ten hours without moving from that room.

I think it’s really interesting that our world, especially the world on a college campus is extremely dependent on media and all its various forms. I watch my roommates and myself, my friends, my family. What’s the first thing we do when we get up in the morning? Here at school I turn on my computer to check the weather, and then I’ve turned on music, and played a game of solitaire or Neopets. My roommates do the same thing. At home, almost every member of my family turns on the television or gets the newspaper. Classes rely on blackboard, on our p-drives and websites for our information. Newspapers and magazines are still important, but the point if it were taken away we’d be lost. We’re so dependent on what we’ve been exposed to; i.e. because in our generation we’ve always had (or most of us have always had) television, and so it’s like losing a microwave or fridge. We don’t know what to do. We’re conditioned to media, and even if it has an occasionally negative influence on our minds and our development. I’m sure if we didn’t have media like computers and IPods it wouldn’t kill us, but it would surely drive us nuts. We love living in introverted worlds where we play computer games/video games and watch movies. I think it’s just something to think about. What would we do if we didn’t have computer technology? Television? I don’t think we’d be the same. In more ways than one…and on that note, I’ll leave that open for you guys out there to think about…

Extra Blog Entry

Last night I went with my friends to see the new Tim Burton movie, “Corpse Bride,” on its opening night. I thought it was very amusing, and though at one point the plot seemed very predictable I thought it was quite enjoyable to watch. The humor wasn’t over the top ridiculous; it wasn’t overtly sexual, but it was funny and cute. The clay animation was very well done. At first sometimes it seemed like, “Oh how can I believe this, with all these goofy animated clay figures,” for some reason when you watch enough of the movie, you start to feel a part of these characters’ world, and you sympathize with them. You know it's a well-done movie when you start to feel bad for characters and it doesn't feel like a fake sort of feeling. It was such a cute movie with occasional musical numbers. That was another good thing, I was glad they didn't have a song all the time like some musicals do. They'd put one there when it seemed to be necessary and I was quite pleased with the movie overall. I hope it does well in the theatres.

So this is my blog about media criticism. I'm CSCEnglishbabe, and I'm here to talk about criticizing the media or something like that. I've read two pieces for today's blog entry and both were rather entertaining. The first was a transcript from CNN Crossfire: John Stewart's America.

In this piece Jon Stewart spoke candidly, and more seriously than he is known to usually do on his comedy central show "The Daily Show." He was actually a guest on CROSSFIRE. And what I loved, mainly cause I was/am a big John Kerry fan, was how the discussion revolved around the election. The other interesting thing is how the hosts of Crossfire just seemed to completely disregard Stewart's questions or refused to allow him to honestly comment on things that bothered him. That bothered me, because it seemed to me, to be an indirect reflection of how our government has been working, and how slyly it’s been working to keep our citizens in the dark about everything.

The second piece I read was an article from “The New Yorker” by Rebecca Mead, entitled “You’ve Got Blog.” The piece was written in the year 2000, when I had no idea even what a blog was. I didn’t even know they existed.

In this article, Mead basically tells what seems to be the story of Blogger.com. It tells a tale of Meg and Evan, co-founders of Pyra, a company that produces Blogger. I found the article to be interesting. Not so interesting as the Jon Stewart piece because I’ve been blogging on Livejournal for a while and that’s very similar to Blogger. But it still was a cute read because it had this little romance thing going on between Meg and some fellow blogger named Jason and it was just a well-done piece.

So what IS a blog? A blog to me, is an online journal that can be about pretty much anything. You can make it private, depending on the site, and your preference; you can make it devoted to Media Criticism, or Lord of the Rings, you can create an RPG or Role Playing Game, where you post in communities and create a story. You can create or pick a user icon, you can put as much or as little information on yourself as you like, make your journal friends only or public and can even comment on yours and other people’s blogs. It’s pretty fabulous. Especially if you’re a computer and internet geek, like me.

So what is a blog for? Well, I half-answered that question already. It’s for pretty much anything you want it to be, and it’s usually written, though people have been known to include pictures on occasion. It can be for personal use, recording your own thoughts and feelings, events, etc. But it can also be for a common interest, politics, media, fan clubs/forums, creating stories/RPGs and even “unspeakable” things like sex, which years ago no one would have ever dreamed of even speaking about with other people…

Most people seem to use blogs for personal expression, at least that’s what I’ve found in my experience, they also seem to use blogs to be funny, share their lives with other people, keep in touch, etc. Some implications of blogs and blogging are both positive and negative. If a person writes the wrong thing on their blog, they can easily be ridiculed by other bloggers or readers of blogs. A person’s blog entries could be private and their personal feelings could be completely disregarded and offended if they allow too much of themselves to be exposed to the whole world wide web. Also, people could stalk an individual and hurt them if the blogger gives out too much personal information.

Overall I like blogging a lot; I’m a more avid livejournal user, but who knows: maybe Blogger.com will snag my interest more this semester. I doubt it, but you never know, and you gotta give new things a try sometimes, ya know?