Media and Politics

I feel that the media has a negative affect on politics. This becomes extremely apparent to me during the presidential elections. Politicians have found that the best way to get through to voters is to use T.V. Instead of simply using the T.V. to state the political position, they use it to appeal to the voters in a different way. They use certain tactics to make themselves look more appealing to the voters. A politician will speak differently to the people watching them in rural Iowa that they would at a huge televised convention in New York. In my opinion it is the voters duty to vote for the person whos political stances they agree with. They should try to make their opinions represented in the government. Instead you will find people voting for the candidate they "like" the best. Not becuase they feel this candidate would be the best man for the job, but instead becuase he was able to make himself appealing through the media. Studies show that more attractive candiates tend to be more appealing to the voters. Without T.V. I doubt the attractivness of candidates would have any affect on who gets elected.

Suicide Girls

The suicide girls is an interesting web site. It is taking an industry, that has proven to be very succesful over the years, and bringing it to a very specific market. I find it hard to beleive that the suicide girls help feminism in any way. To me this website is no different than playboy. If feminsits want to argue that playboy objects women they must argue that the sucide girls site also objects women. The only difference between playboy and suicide girls is the standard of beauty that appeals to the viewer. They both only select models that meet their standard of beauty. Playboy models have to be blonde and made out of plastic. Suicide girls have to die their hair and made out of ink and peircings. They both objectify women, and therefore suicide girls is in no way a feminst web site. One comment brought up in class that I found interesting was the idea that the suicide girls website gives the viewer a justification for looking at naked women. They can say to themselves that this website is artistic and these women are intelligent. Once again playboy does the same thing except for they target a different market. Someone looking at a playboy can say to themselves this is classy it has jokes, movie reviews, and recipes for making the best martini.

Big Businesses Control of Radio

In class we learned that all of the radio stations are now owned by only two different companies. I think that this is a good example how media, and in turn big business can affect culture. Radio influences culture by providing us music to listen to. We then purchase music based on what we have heard and whether or not we like it. Obviously their is a profit to be made in this industry. Record companies have learned that they can make more money off of a few extremely
succesful aritsits, than they could off of alot of moderatley succesful artists. Using this strategy they limit the variety of music you can hear on the radio. The lack of varitey on the radio indirectly affects culture. Music is obviously a big part of culture, limiting the amount of music that is available can affect how rich certain culutres could be.

Video on Internet Influence

In class we watched a video high lighting different ways the internet can affect the youth in America. In this video their was a mother who constantly monitored what her children did on the internet. To me this mother seemed to be over protective. Kids are going to find a way to rebel. In this day and age the internet could be one of the outlets for teenage rebellion. If the internet didn't exist they would find a different way to rebel. One part of new generations coming into their own is, their will undoubtedly be apects of that generation that older generations find offensive or distasteful. In order for this cycle to continue the media aimed at the newer generations must be more offensive than the media aimed at older generations when they were younger. A good example of this is Elvis. Elvis seems tame to teenagers now, but their grandparents found his dancing to be provacative and offense. On the same note teenagers now enjoy rap music, which more offend than not offends their parents. But those same parents were the one who listened to Elvis when they were teenagers.

Football

I love Football.

Blog number one

This is my first blog. I'm trying to figure out how to use this for my mass comm class so I can get all fifty points and graduate college.