Looking Back

            Over the past semester, I have slowly become aware of how much media I consume. I directly consume around three or four hours of media every day through social media or going on to the internet or related things. But even this doesn’t even begin to show the media exposure I have through indirect methods, such as guerrilla advertisement. But, the overall effect of this media on my life is that the media begins to almost build up a culture of its own around me, surrounding me with ideas that benefit the media rather that society. It desensitize me to certain things, as shown in the Miss Representation documentary, and it can also cause me to have positive reactions to certain things, even if they don’t actually mean anything to me.

            But, my awareness of the media around me and the techniques they use will help me to look at situations the media presents to me and actually analyze them to see if they make any sense. This will primarily help with advertising and being able to look beyond the brand name and high concept to see what the product is actually selling – the product. I can then tell if I want to buy the product based on the product rather than the company. It will also help with politics and elections, as we learned about the large amounts of connotation and word play that go into creating speeches, as well as the bias against certain groups of people. This course will help me to look beyond this and judge candidates for their character and their actual policies. Overall, this course helped me to be able to see the world that media presents clearly and in my own view, rather than the one that they want me to see.

            My media consumption habits have changed this semester. I have begun using much less media than I used to, but that was for reasons not having to do with critical thinking (not enough time). But, more importantly, I actually looked into any product that I was buying or any media scheme I was going along with to make sure that I wanted the product itself rather than the high concept that the company was presenting. This media literacy is very important in order to have a clear view of what’s happening in the world around us. Without media literacy, we allow for the media and those who control it to control what we see of the world around us as well as how we see the events that we do see. It essentially analyzes situations for us and gives us opinions unless we have media literacy. There is a similar effect with becoming an educated consumer. Becoming an educated consumer helps consumers and buyers to see beyond the high concept that the company wants you to buy and see the actual product that the company is selling. This can lead to more educated and wise decisions when it comes to buying products, as well as possibly actually buying better products rather than buying products from the company that happens to have a higher advertising budget. This can have a dual effect, because as advertising has less effect, companies will likely invest more into making their product better in order to make it more appealing, creating more competition in creating good products rather than advertising.

            From this journal, I became more aware of many of the issues surrounding today’s society, such as the evil brought by Nestle, the unfortunate necessity of high prices in the pharmaceutical industry, the discrimination of women in media, how we are exposed to media in almost every aspect of our lives and the importance of words in how we view a certain idea. The journal simply made me more aware of what was happening, helping me to form my own opinions rather than those that may be formed by the media.