In the movie 12 Angry Men, it is clear that the majority’s thought is not always the correct thought. Have you ever been in a class where the teacher asks you to raise your hand if ____ is the correct answer? If a couple people start raising their hand, soon the entire class is going to shoot their hand up as well, regardless of whether or not they know the answer or even if they think this answer is incorrect. This is what we see in the movie. And just like what usually happens in this classroom scenario, the teacher says no that is not the answer, you are all wrong. So, even if you were pretty sure this answer was wrong, once you saw everyone else starting to raise their hands, you convince yourself that you must be wrong and you should side with the rest of the class. Yet, no matter what you thought at first, once you raised your hand, you were wrong too. Now, in the movie, the consequence of siding with the majority is much more severe than a teacher telling you you are wrong. You may think that with such high stakes such as the death penalty, you would think for yourself, and ignore others’ opinions. But this is harder than it seems. But, as we see in the movie, going against the group and being confident in your own thoughts can be a heroic thing to do.
This class has been fun. I loved being able to write in this blog style where I feel less confined to being so structured and refined. I think adding opinions into writing allows me to learn more. I also liked being able to read what my classmates thought about the topics we learned about this semester. I learned a lot about myself by seeing how I compared to my classmates in terms of the ways our generation consumes and critiques media.
My favorite topic we covered was the news. Especially this year with the election going on, it seemed so difficult to escape. I do not care about the news very much or go out of my way to watch it like I know I should. But this semester taught me that the media will find its way to me whether I am looking for it or not. And that I should be careful about how I consume my media. Thank you for this semester!
Fandom, like a lot of the things we talked about this year, brings people together. However obscure you think something is, I am sure there is a group of fans who bond over their love for whatever obscure thing is. One of the reasons for this widespread fandom for endless things is the unlimited access to these things. You can’t be an avid Star Wars fan without seeing or at least hearing of Star Wars. For example, Mary Franklin was fairly removed from the rest of the world in her small fishing town in Alaska, somehow the Star Wars movies found their way to her even in the early 90s.
Now, if we think about the access to movies, TV shows, books, stories passed along by word of mouth or by word of podcast, imagine how easily and quickly the fandom world grew. The media has an influence on what it throws in front of us which also plays a role in what we become a fan of. However, it does not have complete control. We do still have some free will about what we consume. Then, we can actually use the internet and media to connect with others about what we care about.
When people are true fans of something, hopefully at a healthy level, lead to people creating some pretty great things. As Henry Jenkins explains, people spend the most time and exert the most energy and even learn the most on things they care about outside of school rather than what they are forced to learn in school. School is important for a baseline, yes. But I think most acts of genius are inspired by fandom.
The media is so important because the only way democracy works is if the people have information. One of the best ways we spread that information through the news. The news is a place where people can go and trust that the information has been fact checked. The news also has the most up to date information. However, it has its fair share of bias. The information is only a small part of what they produce. If you watch CNN and then flip the station to FOX News the stories they choose to talk about or not talk about are different. The way that subjects are talked about are different. The “experts” they bring in to give insight on certain topics are different.
The show “The Newsroom” tells a story of an ideal journalist team and news station that searches for the truth. They try to spread the right information. When the character McAvoy explodes at the college student who asks why America is the greatest country in the world, he gives explicit reasons why it is not. However, he has an important message, it is not, but it could be! The way he thinks it can improve is by providing better news. Making sure that the population of the United States has a place where they can get what they expect from the news: fact checked, unbiased, important information. They provided a place for both sides to debate important issues while also exposing corrupt people.
However, as we see play out in the beginning of this pilot episode, even News runs on money. If you are not getting the ratings, you will have no show. So, there is a constant battle between keeping people interested enough to watch your show and also making sure they are getting all necessary and correct information.
Facebook is a social media platform, created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 while he was a student at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Zuckerberg wanted to connect the world. That idea is what sparked the Facebook we know now. He started small with just Harvard and now he has achieved connecting people all over the world. But how did he achieve this? How much did he have to sacrifice to make it to this point? Is Facebook still an innocent way to connect friends around the world, or is it hurting society? I will argue that Facebook has turned into something that hurts society. There are good parts of the platform. Yet, the bad outweighs the good.
Similar to most forms of social media, Facebook can make people feel lonely. In the article, “Is Facebook making us Lonely?” by Stephen Marche, he argues that Facebook, while connecting people, also makes people more disconnected. The wider your social circle gets, the more shallow it becomes as well. With Facebook, along with constant communication, constant access to News, and the ability to see so much about so many people’s lives, comes alienation. This is the same across all forms of social media, but Marche argues that Facebook is at the center of it. Facebook is the most widely used social media and brings so many people together from all over the world (2).
One reason for this loneliness is the possibility of connectivity that does not always happen. This also causes anxiety which is bad for society as well. The possibilities are endless. If you have an old crush you wish to connect with, you can click on that friend request button. But there is no promise of that friend request being accepted. This can lead to obsession, anxiety, and a deep loneliness. Always checking your screen and refreshing, waiting for a response that may never come.
Facebook is also the perfect place for someone to go to find out they are being left out. If not actively left out of social gatherings by people who were thought of as your friends, you can also see aspects of other people’s lives that you wish to have but do not. This can cause jealousy, FOMO (fear of missing out), anxiety, and of course, more loneliness.
Being lonely is not a good thing. Obviously we do not want all of society to be lonely. But it is important to note that loneliness leads to other bad behaviors as well. When people are lonely, they have less of a desire to workout. This leads to obesity. Loneliness also leads to a lack of sleep, lack of motivation, hormonal issues, depression, worse health, and so on (2).
Using the Like button on Facebook does a lot more than add another number to the likes on a post. It affects people deeply. It affects what society thinks about things. This seemingly simple button plays far too large of a role in our lives. In the article, “The social significance of the Facebook Like button” by Veikko Eranti and Markku Lonkila discusses the social aspects of using the like button. By using Facebook, the idea of the like button becomes ingrained in people’s minds. They become overly obsessed with others’ reactions and approval.
In James Mathews’ Ted Talk, “How the Like button is Shaping your opinions” discusses how the like button plays a role in us losing our ability to think completely by ourselves. Facebook has an algorithm that shows you things they think you want to see. The amount of likes something gets, determines it’s likeliness for other people to see it. While at the same tie, the more likes something has, the more likely you are to also like it. This leads to a snowball effect. The way that Facebook really started to affect society was through these algorithms. In the past, before this technology came out people went to search for their information. You would go to a search engine and look up something you wanted to know more about. But now, Facebook decides that for you (3). Instead of browsing through a search engine to find a credible source that you trust, Facebook just throws these sources at you. It has made us lazy in how we learn information and has given Facebook too much power. We need to be more independent and in charge of the media we consume.
So, I argue that Facebook is bad for society because of the loneliness it makes people feel, the anxiety it causes, the emphasis on other people’s opinions, and the ability it has to choose what information is presented to us on a daily basis. There are plenty of other negative things Facebook can lead to as well such as privacy issues, their focus on making money and growing, instead of on the safety of its users and so on. But we can not forget the positive things it does as well. Zuckerberg achieved his dream of connecting the world. So, while Facebook, the way it is right now has a negative impact on society, I think that if some changes were made to the platform, it could be something truly great. Because connecting the world is a pretty powerful thing. I have a hope that connecting the world could lead to more peace because once you start talking to and understanding people who are unlike yourself, you are able to learn and appreciate what you previously thought of as foreign and unknown.
Works Cited
Eranti, V., & Lonkila, M. (2015). The social significance of the Facebook Like button. First Monday, 20 (6). doi:10.5210/fm.v20i6.5505
Marche, S. (2012). Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? The Atlantic.
Human behavior is very interesting to me. It is something that I think about quite a lot. So, I found the video “The Human Behavior Experiment” very intriguing. This video showed many instances in which people demonstrate how outside forces can affect their actions.
We are easily influenced by many things, but especially the media. Due to our near constant consumption of it. There is so much information being thrown at us that seems legitimate. It is hard to be skeptical and critical of everything we see. So, as a result, the media definitely affects the way we think.
One way that the media affects the way we think is the pure amount of media available to us at any one time. The news is full of bad things happening every day. Now, this includes bad things all over hte world. Very little things go unknown. So, with the large amount of bad news we consume, we often think the world is a lot worse than it actually is. We even fear the world a bit.
Now, of course, when it comes to the bigger things or things we personally care about, most people know now that media is not always correct. You must be skeptical and critical of the information you trust. It takes time and multiple sources to really learn anything through mass media, in order to make sure you are getting the truth. But this can not be done with everything, and often, people don’t care enough to fact check anything. Which is okay, but then that can lead to trusting the wrong people, and being just like someone in one of these videos: trusting a man who is telling you to harm another person.
So my question is: how are you going to ensure htat you avoid any of these situations?
In This Film is Not Yet Rated it becomes clear that the MPAA’s ratings of movies can be seen as a form of censorship. While some ratings are used to give the audience a sense of what to expect, and to protect children from seeing something that they are not quite ready to see, it can also prevent certain films from even being seen in theatres. I wonder if there are specific standards that the MPAA has to look for to deem it such a rating or if it is just opinion.
What I found the most interesting, was the difference in the way that violence and sexual content were treated. And by sexual content, I actually mean showing the human body. It doesn’t even have to be explicitly sexual for it to be ruled inappropriate. Yet, violence seems to always slide past the MPAA. There are countless PG-13 movies with intense violence. I think that it is more important to be harsh on violence. Seeing violence can desensitize people to it or even encourage people to be violent in their own life. Yet, seeing the human body is not connected with any actions. The body is a natural thing that everyone has. I am not arguing that nudity should be shown in lower rated movies. But I do think that the ratings regarding violence should be more strict.
When I was younger, watching a movie was usually a pretty big deal. My whole family would go together. There are 4 kids in my family and we are all only one year apart. So, as you can imagine, a trip with 4 kids to a movie theatre was quite the adventure. It was basically impossible to pick a movie we all wanted to go see. So the process of picking out the movie would start days in advance. Each of us constantly making the case for the movie we really wanted to see, trying to convince the others to switch their opinion on it. In the end, my mom made the final decision. No matter what she chose, at least one person was very unhappy and grumpy for the whole day. Someone was always begging for a snack. I always asked for the big jawbreaker. But I think I only ever actually got to have the jawbreaker once or twice. There was always a lot of complaining and fighting, but those trips to the movie theatre stick out as a good childhood memory for me. My family was all together, and that almost never happens anymore.
So, as you can see, watching a movie used to be a communal experience. The whole family would watch together, and then we would talk about it for the whole ride home. Who liked the ending? Who didn’t? Who predicted the big plot twist? And it always left us with some inside jokes or lines we would like to quote consistently for the next month or so. Now, as we grow up, going to the movies is not as much of an adventure. It is something you do with a couple close friends when you have nothing else to do. Most of my movie consumption in the past couple of years has been a solely individual experience. Just me and my computer, sitting on my bed, watching on a streaming platform.
This is funny because this is where movies started. We finally came in a full circle. When Edison invented the moving image, it was made for a single viewer. This then evolved into the big motion picture which allowed for multiple users. Now, we are back to a single user medium.
Facebook was created to be a way for college kids to find other college kids. In the documentary, “The Facebook Dilemma (Part 1),” Mark Zuckerberg begins by explaining that in order to make this work, he needed people’s information. So, he needed to make the website interesting enough that people wanted to become a part of it and thus sharing their own information. As we all know, facebook took off. However, now it has become a corporation. It was no longer the innocent and useful tool Zuckerberg created it to be. The issue soon changed from, keeping it interesting enough so that people want to be a part of it to keeping it interesting enough so that people want to continue to use it.
As a result, more and more information was required and then shared. Keeping it interesting for everyone evolved into creating algorithms to make sure each person has their own personalized Facebook where they see what is interesting to them.
The goal of Facebook quickly became a large driver of the company. Zuckerberg’s goal was to connect the whole world. The technology was there, and he made it happen. Facebook was created by this young man who did not think far enough into the future to see this dilemma coming. The assumption was that the more technology, the more connectivity, the better. Yet, we are starting to realize that there is a threshold that we have passed at some point.
The internet is a crazy thing. Because what is it? It can be anything because it can be used for anything. It can be a place for streaming music, watching TV, texting friends, reading a book, reading the news, watching the news, watching sports highlights, playing fantasy sports, adopting a dog, purchasing train tickets, buying shoes, directions, looking up a recipe, learning how to draw. You name it, it’s on the internet. So, what does this mean for us? As the video, “Digital Nation” points out, this means many things.
One of which is that, since we can get all of this at the touch of our fingertips, why not do a bunch of it at once. Multitasking makes us feel more productive, even though it actually makes us less productive. But even with this knowledge that multi-tasking isn’t the best way to do things, we still do it. It’s just so easy to pick up your phone while watching the news, it’s so hard for us to resist that urge and only focus on the news. The result is that we half take in the information from our instagram feed and half take in the information from the news, and end up with very surface level knowledge of many topics.
Another thing that makes the internet crazy is that anyone and everyone can see pretty much anything you put on the internet. This causes privacy issues. Hackers steal information and companies use this information to sell us things. And then, there are things that go viral. What leads to something going viral? To me it seems completely random. For instance, a couple of months ago, the show “Tiger King” was being streamed in pretty much every household across the nation. And it seems like there is no clear reason why. What I do know, is that viral media spreads very far and very fast due to the nature of the internet. Going viral is an odd thing that unites us all.
Now, getting into social media. There is so much wrong with social media I think we should just get rid of it. I never post anything and rarely use any social media unless out of pure boredom. But, if social media was not there, I am sure I could find something else to alleviate my boredom. It is addictive and affects our brains in far too many ways.
TV has been and continues to be a space for change. The medium itself inherently comes with change. Before TV the world of media was written word or spoken word. Yet, TV brought visuals into people’s homes in a way that was never seen before.
Watching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, “Hush” highlights how important these visuals can be. When the characters lose their voices, they must communicate without words. We see them do this through physical touch, eye contact, facial expressions, and more.
These other modes of communication can share so much information even in the absence of words, as we see for the majority of the latter half of this episode.
Now, let’s think about how this episode is teaching us. TV pioneered a new medium in which lessons can be taught. And this medium is constantly available (for those who can afford it) in almost every home across our nation.
TV allowed women to step out of their role as housewives. In the video, “Pioneers of Television: Funny Ladies,” we see how these amazing women broke through barriers to do something they love. Having these first few pioneers’ faces on screen, allowed other women and men to see that women are good for more than house chores. They are equals to man.
However, as this video highlights, women were first introduced to the world of TV as “Funny Ladies.” They were used for comedic relief, something to laugh at or laugh with in some cases. But what they did was pave the way for women to be seen. As time went on, the roles women played evolved. And now we are able to see young women as not only the main character, but a strong hero like Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
A lot can be learned from studying the evolution of women in television. Just as a lot was able to be learned about communication by watching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode. Yet, it is important to note that a lot of traditional education does not include TV studies. In fact, reading is the main way people learn. Watching TV does not feel like learning because we are taught that it is only a form of entertainment. Yet, I argue that I learn just as much from watching TV and movies than I do from reading.
With that being said, the level of importance of what I am learning depends on what I am watching, but, the same thing happens with reading.
Mass Media and American Life 
