Children Food Choices

So basically, I wanted to research further into the topic of how children fast food advertising is changing or altering the food choices of children. From the group presentation I did in class, I recall having to compare the food advertisements for the particular McDonald's fast food franchise. There was a distinctive difference in the advertisement of how before the advertisement showcased the happy meals toys for the children and promoted the movie while now these days you still see the toys being promoted but there are also the nutritional tips that come along to promote healthy food choices. In terms of the connection to the popular culture, by researching the topic, the nutritional health aspect can be evaluated for the children foods. As of now, I would say that the society is taking better steps to improving the health of everyone because of the extent of how much obesity has grown and the fact that there are even cases of diabetes being exposed in children. I further need to know more about the distinctive role of the advertisement and the food choice.

Facebook's Message of Connection

            With advancement of technology, we have opened ways to communicate through new mass medias. The popular quote by Marshall McLuhan “the medium is the message,” implicates the impact of the new mass medias on the audience. These new mass media can include blogging, television, and magazines, but the largest impact new mass media can have is through social network sites. Social network sites have become very much popular in our era. Practically anyone with access to an electronic device or computer can be found using the social network sites. Facebook in particular is a perfect example of one of the leading social network sites.  The quote by McLuhan can be expressed through analysis of the Facebook site being used within the educational system.

            Created by Mark Zuckberg on Feburary 2004, Facebook is one of the social network services that has made itself on the list as being one of the newer mass media. Facebook has enabled people to create identities and also be able to make connections with family and friends worldwide. There has been a controversy that Facebook is promoting anti-social behavior but if you consider the many connections people have accomplished through Facebook, such as relationships and friendships, Facebook is anything but anti-social. It allows people to discover others that share common interests and enriches their lives. Therefore, when McLuhan had pointed out the medium, which in this case is Facebook, “is the message,” he refers to the many connections that have followed with the innovation of Facebook.

            When taking a closer look at McLuhan’s quote “medium is the message,” it can be interpreted as the “message is the medium.” With the wide use of Facebook specifically by students, anything can be utilized and transmitted through Facebook. For example, since college students have knowledge that their classmates have a Facebook as well, they can add their classmates to communicate through private messaging for a particular assignment or project. It beats other resources such as emailing because when you don’t have your classmates email or phone number you have a greater chance of finding them on Facebook because its such a popular social network site. Therefore when said the medium is the message

            Another tool that enables Facebook to become the connection is the event creator. When students feel the need to meet up for a project or presentation, they can invite people to the event on Facebook. You can either claim to be present at the meeting, or claim not to go. It beats trying to contact each and everyone of your classmates to inform them of meeting somewhere because you can simply invite all the classmates at once with a click of the button. If someone is not able to make it they can simply click “No” instead of having to call. This enables an entirely new way to interact with people because you do not need to take time out of your schedule to inform about meetings. Because people use Facebook daily, they will see the invite to the event and be able to inform you if they are coming or not.

           

            Furthermore, Facebook has proven to be beneficial to the faculty and professors of educational institutions. By contacting the students through Facebook, the professors can easily learn about their students. With an understanding of the student’s background by looking at the student’s interest, professors can suggest ideas for a particular project. For example, when I was in High School, my teacher had required everyone to join the Honor’s Writing Group on Facebook to discuss possible topics they would want to write about. Students find it more comfortable to access Facebook than any other institutional platform such as Pima’s D2L. In addition, there is more comfort in knowing that your teacher doesn’t need your phone number to contact you and can just message you on Facebook. Furthermore, even when a class has ended, the relationship between the student and professor is still maintained when the student wants to seek advice for their future career or need a recommendation letters as their references when applying for internships or jobs. The medium of Facebook once again builds the “message” of connection.

The Walking Dead TV Series Analysis (Rough Draft)

A television show series that has for a while been of my interest is “The Walking Dead.” Based off of the 2003 black and white comic book series  “The Walking Dead” by the author Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, this tv series has gained excellent ratings since its first premiered on on October 31, 2010 cable AMC channel. This television series revolves around the plot of events occurring after a zombie apocalypse has occurred. The interesting thing that sets apart this  tv series from any ordinary zombie apocalypse movie or other show is because instead of focusing only on the main idea of survival against the large hoards of zombies, “The Walking Dead” TV series focuses on the elements of emotions and relations.

                                           Originally rated for the viewers to be “TV-14,” the demographics for the audience is “18-49” year olds.  The targeted audience of “The Walking Dead” series can be basically anyone who enjoys zombie flicks or, as a matter of fact, it can be for anyone who enjoys gore.

                                           Analyzing particular episodes and analyzing characters within this series, you can get a better idea of the values or beliefs that this series wants to present. In the first season of the series you find a redneck character named Merle. Merle is seen as a very tough character in this series. We see him being this figure who “doesn’t beg” in front of anyone or in fact even God. In a particular episode, when chained on top of the rooftop, Merle takes the situation into his own hands and saws off his own hand in order to survive from the zombies that were coming towards him. He has this hard shelled personality in him that seeks no help from mankind or God. Further into the series, Merle had also become a villain. Despite Merle being portrayed as someone who was a “bad guy” from the start; by going on a suicide mission in order to kill the Governer, Merle proved the thory that even a bad guy can become a good guy at the end. This character appeals to the audiences who have also had a rough childhood and feel helpless to their own situation. They can change for the better.

                                           Another concept that “The Walking Dead” series examines is the concept of racism. This again is seen through the character of Merle. In the first season, we see T-Dog, the sole African American character in the majority surviving group of white people.  Merle in particular detests T-Dog because he is not white.  The concept of racism is seen when Merle constantly makes T-Dog feel inferior by ordering him around and using the term “nigger.” Later , when T-Dog and Merle got into an argument, you see Merle beat T-Dog and spit on his face. Rick then takes control of the situation by cuffing Merle to the rooftop telling T-Dog to watch over him. When the sudden outbreak of zombies is released and everyone was trying to escape, despite Merle’s attitude towards T-Dog, T-Dog attempted to save Merle. This shows the value that despite the racism that Merle showed towards T-Dog, there was still humanity in him to attempt to save Merle.

                                           The values in the Walking Dead surface when you start to looks into the relationships of the survivors during the crisis of the zombie apocalypse. A particular relation that spawned from the series was of Carol’s. She represents the figure of a perfect wife. Her husband Ed, is a individual who likes to have authority. Carol’s marriage with Ed gives him the authority he wants by him constantly pushing around Carol. For instance, there was this one episode, where Carol was washing the laundry with other two female characters of the series and when she began to open up and joke around with the other two females. This catches Ed’s attention and he tells the ladies to stop conversing and wash the laundry properly. This upsets one of the females who reacts by talking back to Ed. This angers Ed and he tells Carol to come with him. When Carol refuses to do so, this in effect leads to Ed slapping Carol on the face. The by standing character Shayne in response, starts to beat up Ed for his behavior. At the end, Carol still tends to her beaten husband. Throughout the series, you notice that the relation between Ed and Carol is abusive. Regardless the abuse, she still cares for him. In the series, we see Carol cowering in front of Ed but once Ed had died she became more of a braver woman who could stand her ground. The relation with Ed was limiting her and she became a victim of battered wife syndrome. She was so dependent on her husband, that she became entirely submissive.  This uncovers the belief that woman have when they stay in an abusive relation. They think that the abusive husband will change when in fact the woman has changed herself.

Advertisement Tracking Trends

Advertisers these days are constantly attempting to increase their sales and do so by using advertisements. But to the viewer itself, it feels as if each advertisement is endeavoring to fulfill a desire one has. Each and every one of us has had a fantasy to become someone we already are not. These fantasies vary from achieving an physical attractiveness, an adventurous journey or just plain rich.  Advertisers display those fantasies in their advertisements and try to affiliate that particular fantasy to their product. But when those advertisement start to hinder our web surfing, the question of privacy instantly opens up. Because we use the World Wide Web on a daily basis, the many of the sites we use are being tracked through cookies. This enables the advertisers to see what the surfer is interested in , and therefore the advertisements that pop up while surfing are relevant to us. Most of the people don’t even have a clue that they are being tracked. The issue of targeting can be argued as a positive or a negative.  But I feel that there are more cons than pro. It makes an individual vulnerable when someone has access to their personal information. What sites they have been visiting, what they buy, what things they have googled on the web should be something that the individual is only entitled to know. This information can get into the wrong hands and you would have serious problems such as being scammed. The invasion of privacy may destroy opportunities for people who search for jobs or apply for educational institutions. The tracking is no longer limited for companies to reach their customers; it is now accessible by anyone. My main point being that even though internet tracking may make it convenient for buyers to have discounts and coupons on things they continuously buy, I certainly am not willing to give up my privacy for it. 

Unit 1: Advertising Analysis (Poison Control)

Not sure of what I should analyze and tired of looking for latest ads to analyze from on tv, I  decided to google the term “advertisements” and save time from going to waste. At first I saw a picture of a water grenade that caught my eye. Wanting to analyze it further I visited the page, the grenade picture was on, and I saw multiple brilliantly captured ads, and one in particular caught my attention. Considering the fact that I have younger siblings, I could easily relate to this picture. I think it was really clever on the advertiser’s part to use lenticular effect (showing two different images viewed with different angles) to render his point. My initial response to seeing this ad was disbelief. I really couldn’t envision the bottles being something as so contradicting as to the right side of the picture. This ad is really persuasive because of the comparison of an adult’s mindset to a child’s. This picture really illustrates to the audience of the minds of children and how they visualize certain things. People are unaware of the dangers of swallowing these lethal chemicals. According to the National Capital Poison Center stats, 17,622 Children Poison Exposure cases were found in the year of 2012. About 1,691 cases were for cleaners alone. The targeted audience for this ad can be defined to any households who have children, but seeing that mostly these cleaning chemicals are used by females it specifically pertains to Mothers. Because women handle a lot of what happens in a household, they can easily be careless of where they are placing cleaning chemicals. I can easily understand why and how a child might mistake something as so dangerous as cleaning chemicals as something to eat or drink.  What we see as laundry detergent, in a child’s cognizance, is snow. It makes me truly feel like I should be careful as to where I place such cleaning substances.  

Link to the advert I am analyzing: ( 3rd one )
http://www.rsvlts.com/2012/07/19/35-brilliant-advertisements/ 

Stats:
http://www.poison.org/stats/

The Rising of Popular Culture: A Historiographical Sketch

 Insia N, Ali 

The article of “Rising of Popular Culture: A Historiographical Sketch” explained the transition of popular culture throughout US History. With the thought that popular culture was once a way of the concept of “top to bottom” where the elite social class imposed its powers and views upon the audience into a “bottom to up” concept where it was actually people’s values are expressed through forms of mass Medias. Theodore W. Adorno claims that the culture industry we have mainly is just “Corporate producers were exercising control from the top down,” through commercials of persuading a person to buy their product. But with further studies, the scholars finally figured out there was also an aspect of the “bottom to top” theory. Pop culture of entertainment really pushed the “bottom to top” concept through mediums such as radio, television, movies, and dime novels.  The “bottom to top” concept was analyzed by the scholar Robert Sklar who saw entertainments such as movies to be “first medium of entertainment and cultural info to be controlled by men who didn’t share the ethnic or religious backgrounds of traditional cultural elites.” It was a way people could express their own cultures and became more popular as the audience saw how much of the entertainment that was produced could be relatable to their own lives. Additionally, Scholar Neil Harris, points out that the “culture tries to make a sense of major transformation in American Society.” For example it can focus on the racist appeals that shape the whites’ misunderstanding of black life and culture.” The Black culture that was expressed consisted of the folk stories and music entertainment such as jazz.  This in a way was a rebellion of minorities such as blacks at the time, to create their own culture. In the end, the popular culture not only contained the “top to bottom” theory but additionally had the “bottom to top “ concept had risen. By reading this article, I have come out of the thinking that the popular culture was only a way the elite class can enforce their opinions upon the less powerful groups and have realized that indeed there was actually an opportunity for the less powerful to express their views and culture.