Approaching the end.

This week marks the end of the semester for all of my classes except for one. This will feel like the longest week of my life.

Anyways, back to COMM 101. Reviewing each of the articles covered in class this week gave us all a chance to revisit and rethink some of the topics covered in the second half of the semester. With the combination of this and a lecture in COMM 102 this week, I've been able to think more about the existence of social media on the internet today. Looking at websites like those mentioned by Sharon Meraz, such as Digg, we see just one style of social media out of the thousands and thousands that exist online.

It will be very interesting to see where social media takes us in the future. I begin to think about whether or not people will eventually lose hope on big time news companies and realize that people can make their own news through the use of blogs and sites like Digg.

Also, I sit around and wonder if the world as we know it will change so dramatically that face-to-face communication becomes far more rare than it is today and we rely more on internet communication.

All about Katrina

So this week's guest lecturers brought with them some rather intense conversations. Every now and then you hear about how New Orleans is still recovering, but you don't hear about it with the intensity that the New Orleans area deserves.

It's interesting to see the framing the news stations did after the storm hit. I'm slightly on the fence with a lot of the statements that were made in the lecture though. On one hand, it's highly unfortunate that so many stereotypes were reinforced by the images that were shown. But, on the other hand, are news stations not supposed to show certain footage because it might reinforce negative stereotypes? But BACK to the other side, do the negative images really have to be shown when the reporters are talking about things totally unrelated to what we're seeing?

Either way though, it is highly evident that there are people in Louisiana that need help. I have no idea what I want to do as far as a career goes after I graduate, so I have already thought about doing something along the lines of AmeriCorps. This is just making me want to join some sort of organization to help people in need even more.

Everyblock

I found the guest speaker's presentation this week very interesting. I've actually used the chicagocrime.org web site before to check out the crime in the neighborhood I used to live in. It was a very useful tool, even though the results I found were less than desirable (luckily I moved out of that neighborhood).

The evolution from that site into everyblock.com is very interesting, to say the least. I've subscribed via the RSS feeds and have been keeping up with what's going on in my neighborhood every day since that class. Just today, using everyblock.com, I found out that 2 Hispanic males pulled a gun on a 58 year old woman driving her car and shot out her windows at 8am. Unfortunately they got away, but without this site I probably wouldn't have even known about it. What scares me even more than the fact that it was 3 blocks from my apartment is the fact that it happened 1 block from my girlfriend's apartment. I feel like a parent with as much as I worry about her safety living here.

Regarding outsourcing in the film industry.

This week's guest speaker brought a lot of interesting things to think about to the table, at least for me. I felt as though I could have had a conversation about many of the things she spoke of at far greater lengths than the class time allowed.

For instance, when it comes to a film being Canadian vs. being American, there are so many shades of gray that it nearly makes it impossible to have a right or wrong answer. I think one way to look at it is to remember that even big-budget, feature films are still works of art. These works of art are done by many people, who would be considered artists. Not to say that everyone that holds a boom mic is an artist, but definitely the director, the actors, the cinematographer, as well as others would be the artists of the project. Now, if the people making the film are all American but are filming in Canada, from the vantage point of the artists, I would say that it is still an American film. Look at it this way, if an American photographer travels the world taking photos everywhere he or she goes, does that make the photos non-American? After all, the American artist did all the work, he or she just traveled to other places to get the work done. On the other hand, if Canada is helping pay for the film, does that mean Canada should have the rights to call it a Canadian film? In some cases it may seem like they should, but as I said before, there is no definite right or wrong in these cases.

After all, the entire system of Hollywood was based on moving your production somewhere that was cheaper. Before the boom of movie-makers in Hollywood, that area was nothing but deserts. The whole reason people moved their film studios out there was because no one owned it yet, so who was going to charge them to use the land? No one!

Some would argue that moving an American film to Canada in order to save money makes it un-American, but since when has doing whatever you can to decrease costs, thus increase profits, been un-American? To me, saving money at all costs just screams, "AMERICAN!"

Communication Major

Rather than relating class material to my own thoughts, this post will be more of me saying what I think about the Communication major at UIC (though I guess that was class material, just in a different style). I'm planning on declaring Communication as my major after this semester ends, and I don't really think I'm too worried about things. That is, until after Tuesday's class with Dace's presentation. I'm a transfer student with most of my gen eds completely out of the way, so after this year I SHOULD only have 1 year left, but it's starting to look like I might have a tough time doing so with all of the pre-requisites for many of the Comm classes. Let's hope I can get through this as quickly and painlessly as possible. I don't know if I could afford another semester of school!

Another thing, which is more of a critique of her presentation, that I noticed concerns the way she made the path of graduating with a bachelor's degree in Communication seem. She spent quite a bit of time talking about how it's not going to be easy getting through the program, but not because of class difficulty, but she made it seem like things will go wrong that will be out of the student's control. It almost seemed as though she was trying to scare people out of the program rather than convince us to join it. I know she doesn't mean to do that (at least I hope not), but this is what she seemed to communicate to the class (ironic?).

Either way, I hope choosing to major in Communication at UIC doesn't end up biting me in the rear end rather than help me learn.

Torture in the media

In class we talked about the use of the word "torture" in media stories about Abu Ghraib. It seems as though the feelings of the people that conducted this study were trying to get people to think that the news coverage should have used the term "torture" more often than they did. Now, I definitely believe that the treatment of some of the prisoners there was DEFINITELY torture, but by no means do I think that it's the media's job to tell us whether it was torture or not. If the media started reporting this as torture out of nowhere, I think it would sound very biased if no one was convicted of torturing prisoners by that point in time. I think the media should report what exactly occurred and then leave it up to the readers to decide whether or not it was "torture." Until anyone is convicted of torture, the media has no actual power in saying that torture occurred.

Media Theories

I feel like I could go on for hours on some of the theories covered in today's class. More specifically, the Hypodermic Needle Model, Gatekeeping, 2 Step Flow, Agenda Setting, Cultivation, and Media Ownership. For the sake of time and keeping myself from rambling on incoherently, I'll try to keep everything short and concise.

The Hypodermic Needle Model is a theory that I feel a great connection with. Not in the sense that I feel that I have been directly effected, but rather the total opposite. I have grown up playing video games that many would consider extremely violent. I have always watched violent movies. I have even listened to music that many people have considered "bad for kids." With all of this evidence stacked against me, I have SOMEHOW managed to keep myself from committing random acts of violence. It's crazy, I know. I think this notion is completely backwards. I don't think violent media tends to cause people to become violent, I think that violent people tend to enjoy violent media.

Gatekeeping is something we see constantly on the major television news networks. The 2 Step Flow and Agenda Setting are also parts of that. Do we really expect people like Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olbermann to not try to influence their viewers with their own ideas? People like this are on television solely to express their opinion, despite the fact that they're on news networks. I'm not necessarily complaining about this, but that's because I have the mental capacity to distinguish unbiased news from pundits and their opinions. The bad part is that there are some people that can't do that, and will take in whatever they're told, as long as it fits conveniently with what they want to believe.

Cultivation is something that I find myself thinking about often. I am very intrigued by people who live their lives emulating what they see on television. I don't mean that there are people out there trying to solve murder cases in similar ways that the detectives on CSI do it, I mean more along the lines of people mimicking people throughout pop culture. It's always interested to see what new (and often strange) things will show up in music videos and concerts, and then to see the huge amounts of people in the public swallowing it all and looking exactly the same within days. I like to think that I have somehow avoided this, but who knows? Maybe I'm not as "free" as I think I am, or as I would like to be. After all, I'm not the only 23 year old kid out there today wearing black jeans, black shirt, black shoes.

Media Ownership. I only have one thing to say, and it's VERY opinionated as well as very short. F*** Rupert Murdoch. Seriously, that guy sucks.