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Final Chapter Response

I thought the final chapter of the book did a great job wrapping up what Kidd was getting at overall as well as covering the importance of being able to express yourself in your own way without being worried what other people think. I believe having your own identity and not conforming to social norms is pivotal in learning who you are as a person. As well as finding people who you want to affiliate yourself with for your life and not pretending to be someone else and hanging out with people who are not interested in the same things. We need to get past this weird social norm of wanting to fit in with a specific crowd of people because that’s what pop-culture has always told us is the normal thing to do. Kidd does an awesome job stating that you shouldn’t want to be normal and don’t strive to be normal.

The matrix of culture industries can be incredibly difficult because it involves groups who thrive on creating a specific culture that has the ability to limit people to who they want to be. This group also influences people’s matrix of identity which can cause people to question if they are doing the right thing or if they are considered the outsider in many situations where pop-culture makes them appear that way. This really is a sad concept; however, this is the exact idea that Kidd is talking about in his final chapter. Don’t allow your matrix of identity to be influenced by the culture industries who are attempting to make money by relating to societal norms that many people believe in. While many movies and shows have actually begun to work towards being accepting towards all and not displaying certain people as being weird, but being their own kind of person is incredibly important, but is not quite finished yet. While there are industries out there attempting to bank on peoples identities of who they are and determine how they are supposed to be perceived it cannot be done. Kidd finishes his book with the simple statement, “Reader, let your freak flags fly!” He is pushing people to be different, and don’t let pop-culture stereotypes influence you to be someone who you aren’t.  

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Advice

For this class, I would definitely have several pieces of advice to give. First off, make sure to always maintain an open mind. Throughout this class, there were multiple times where I didn’t realize that media did such a poor job of representation or didn’t care to represent certain groups and ethnicities at all. This was something I found to be very interesting and I even caught myself questioning why media had such a hard time ensuring that there was a decent amount of diversity throughout different movies and television shows. I really didn’t even think that there was an issue until seeing the statistics and learning that in reality there is a really minimal amount of representation for a lot of minority groups in our society.

Another piece of advice I would give to anyone else taking this class in the future is to do every little assignment. Even if that 5 point doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, it can have some major influences on your grade by the end of the semester. What many people don’t tend to realize is that once you decide to skip several of those small 5 point assignments it can really take a dent out of your grade in the long run. When it comes down to it, the assignments really aren’t that difficult and you're better off just sitting down and getting them done in the short amount of time that they actually take.

Finally, I would say to embrace and learn as much as you can in this class. With the amount of pop-culture that we do take in today, it is important to have a better ability to analyze what you are watching. So many people just go in and watch a movie without thinking about anything else. There is nothing wrong with having a little bit more input on the actors and actresses involved, as well as the number of minorities that are shown having their own legitimate parts in them. Stay aware of what you are watching and don’t fall into media bias and think that there is nothing wrong with the movie world.

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Understanding of Cultural Diamond

The Cultural Diamond was constructed by Wendy Griswold to help people better understand how pop-culture is influencing everything around them and the impact it has. The Diamond is made up of social world, creator, receiver, and cultural object. These four aspects help us break down something in pop-culture to get a better understanding of what we are watching, reading, listening, etc. too.

Social world involves the social context that is occurring all around us. This can include anything that is involved with the topic. Let’s use Lord of the Rings for example. In the social world, there was a time when people couldn’t stop talking about this movie series coming out and it brought many people into this fantasy world that everyone wanted to be a hero of. Many children and adults love the movies and the movie was world-renowned.

The creator is quite simply just the person that created the item. In this case, there really are two different creators, the author of the novels, J.R.R. Tolkien as well as the director of the movies Peter Jackson. These two men made a fantasy with words and movies that many people have fallen in love with and still love to this day.

The receiver is essentially everyone who has ever read the books or seen the movies. This can include all sorts of people and basically involves everyone who has ever taken the time to read Tolkien’s books as well as everyone who ever went to watch the Lord of the Rings movies in theatres, through streaming services, or bought the movies through DVD.

Finally, we have the cultural artifacts. This is essentially anything physically related to the movie itself. At the time of the release of Lord of the Rings, there was so much being distributed throughout the world in the shape of toys for children, collectibles for adults and everything in between. Anything that reminded people of the books and more specifically the movies, would be considered a cultural artifact.

Overall, the cultural diamond allows people to better understand a piece of pop-culture and really take in what it has to offer. It also helps to understand why people are taking in that pop-culture more than other things as well.

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College Analysis Summary

My college analysis paper covered the television series Blue Mountain State. This television series followed a group of collegiate football players who basically came to college to play football, but party harder than any college student that is in attendance anywhere. While it does show them practicing very often, it shows them partying about three times as much as they ever practice or play games. I made the connection that many students watch this show and could easily get the wrong impression of what college is like and the importance of education and other aspects. While many say getting out and having an active social life is important, maintaining a positive education and take part in things other than partying hard is also very important.

In this television series, the partying includes all sorts of extensive alcohol and drugs being used by athletes which could also have a drastic effect on their ability to play in the long run. I wouldn’t say that many college students live that kind of lifestyle let alone a whole football team on a regular basis. This show without a doubt displays a very unrealistic lifestyle for many college students that hardly anyone could actually uphold. For the analysis of this television series I used the Schudson’s Cultural Efficacy Theory and broke down the four different aspects that allow for a better understanding of the show and how it influences the consumers of the show.

Overall, I would say that the college analysis paper went very well and allowed for a great way to analyze a television series that drastically oversells what the college lifestyle is actually like. By reading through the analysis many students could learn that Blue Mountain State isn’t what it is portrayed as through the television series. And this is very important because students attending college or even attempting to follow suit and do what they do in the movies is a horrible image for them to be taking in from our pop culture.

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Link

https://pudding.cool/2018/01/chyrons/

Here is an awesome link that allows you to search different amounts of time words, phrases, and words relating to specific topics that have been discussed over MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN. It allows you to search and see how different things have been discussed and even shows some obvious skews between networks. Once again, we see the political divide between networks. 

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Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F0g4N415uw

This link takes you to a Crash Course about media and how it relates to politics. He does a great job explaining how media is influenced by the political climate and how other people are influenced by media partisanship.

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Critique

With so many underlying issues within today’s society, especially political rhetoric, it can be difficult for people to fully understand the scope of either side of the political divide. So many people have sided with one party or another even though many of those parties may only have one or two ideas and concepts you believe in on the entire platform. We are so stuck in this political rut that you have to be either Republican or Democratic that nobody is allowed to even consider another idea without being reprimanded for not believing in the exact same thing as someone else or the party. We have become so divided as a nation and the news and media sources are not beneficial to anyone. Because of the fast and easy access to all news around the world today everyone believes they are informed, when in fact they are informed of the political agenda of one party because a majority of news sources are shaped that way today.

I will speak out against it, media sources like Fox News and MSNBC are way too partisan on almost all the topics they cover. They are constantly pushing for the right or left’s agendas and have lost their way of being a news source and turned into a political party consumer collector. I see so many people share stories from these two news sources on social media or tell stories about what they heard about so and so on the news the night before. I am completely for the freedom of speech and everyone should be allowed to speak and defend what they believe in. However, the news has gone from a factual reporting source to a politically charged agenda that supports pushing ideas on viewers and never allowing for the other side to speak on its ideas.

These shows bring on opposing viewpoints only to speak over them and have their live crowds boo away their guests if they are speaking out against anything the host doesn’t agree with. These “news” channels have gone away from reporting on factual politics and gone to more of a game show style of a network. What will rile up the crowds more and get more viewers, factual reporting on current events in Congress and the world? Or hosting someone and getting into a go-nowhere argument just so people can believe that they “won” that argument with someone who only got to speak for four or five minutes?

I believe its time for news sources to return to the good old days when they reported on factual evidence based news and informed the public of what was going on and stopped trashing opposing political party members to get more views from people who already agree with what they're saying. I believe these shows are just making more radical party members and not doing anything to further their political understanding. It’s a sickening line that must end.

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Academic Research Findings

The first academic research article I found was “Internal, External, and Government Political Efficacy: Effects on News Use, Discussion, and Political Participation.” this academic journal did a great job breaking down the political efficacy and how it has drastically affected the news and media. Because we are so focused on getting our own opinions out to the world we don’t stop to think about what we are saying or whether it has any substance. The major views on this aspect were how people consume the news and how it primarily affects their political actions.

The next academic journal I looked over was “The biological roots of political extremism: Negativity bias, political ideology, and preferences for political news.” In this journal they looked at how many people perceive a political ideology and how it immediately draws them towards dramatic outcomes on either party side. The constructive idea that we draw from negative bias from one side which draws us into believing in the other side with stronger passions and beliefs. This strongly relates to watching major network television in the fact that when we consume media that has drastic bias or listen to media that may have a strong bias against our beliefs we are drawn to the media that agrees with us so we can feel good about ourselves.

In “News Media, Knowledge, and Political Interest: Evidence of a Dual Role From a Field Experiment” I got to actually see an analysis of how people gain their information and what draws them into believing in that information in the first place. By giving people politically one-sided information and asking them to read it they found that many people did say they learned something new it didn’t have any kind of influence on what they would prefer to watch and read opposed to sticking with the new information source. This study goes to show that no matter what you show people they usually already have a perspective that is incredibly difficult to change in the long run.

 The next journal I took a look at actually didn’t relate to American news, but looked at how Greek journalism affected their country with political discourse since 2000. The academic journal, “Mediated conversation and political propaganda: A discourse analysis of news practices on Greek prime-time news” takes a look at how as the financial crisis that Greece grew, the media turned into a conversation based reporting opposed to fact based reporting as all news sources should do. Journalists began writing pieces calling out Greek politicians for who they really were and it allowed for the media to have a strong manipulation factor on citizens political ideologies.

Finally, the last journal I looked at and one that I found the most intriguing was “Social media mixed with news in political candidate judgment: Order effects on knowledge and affect.” This took a really interesting idea of presenting candidate information and beliefs about a subject as well as just showing the subject on social media news feeds as well as other media outlets to see how different people would react to the media that had been shared. The findings were interesting, but not something that surprised me. When taking in media about politicians and their beliefs many people found it interesting, but didn’t correlate any form of emotion to those beliefs. However, when shown just the information without the political relation many people did become emotionally charged. This goes to show that when it comes to politics many people may not completely agree on different subjects.

Overall, I felt like these five scientific journals did an amazing job of analyzing and allowing me to get a better overall understanding of how political climate and ideology is swayed based on media and how media is consumed. I think that there are some very clear bias laid out when it comes to the media and I think that it does have a much stronger hold over people’s political views than they may actually know or understand.

   References

1.     Gil de Zúñiga, H., Diehl, T., & Ardévol-Abreu, A. (2017). Internal, External, and   Government Political Efficacy: Effects on News Use, Discussion, and Political Participation. Journal Of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 61(3), 574-596. doi:10.1080/08838151.2017.1344672

 2.     Keene, J. R., Shoenberger, H., Berke, C. K., & Bolls, P. D. (2017). The biological roots of political extremism: Negativity bias, political ideology, and preferences for political news. Politics & The Life Sciences, 36(2), 37-48. doi:10.1017/pls.2017.16

 3.     Lecheler, S., & de Vreese, C. H. (2017). News Media, Knowledge, and Political Interest: Evidence of a Dual Role From a Field Experiment. Journal Of Communication, 67(4), 545-564. doi:10.1111/jcom.12314

4.     Patrona, M. (2018). Mediated conversation and political propaganda: A discourse analysis of news practices on Greek prime-time news. European Journal Of Communication, 33(2), 185-199. doi:10.1177/0267323118760321

5.     Robertson, S. P., Semaan, B., Douglas, S., & Maruyama, M. (2016). Social media mixed with news in political candidate judgment: Order effects on knowledge and affect. Information Polity: The International Journal Of Government & Democracy In The Information Age, 21(4), 347-365. doi:10.3233/IP-160388

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Observation

For my topic, I want to take a look at how news networks have become so heavily politicized over the course of many years and how watching and paying attention to one specific news network can heavily skew your political views. We have so many different news sources today and initially, we only had the station networks to present news. However, nowadays we can get news from hundreds of online sites that offer different insight on different topics as well as receiving our information from different social media sites as well as television networks. While these different online news sources work for receiving some form of information, the potential for the information to be skewed in one direction or the other is too high to ever take the articles completely serious.

Now many people would believe that because online news sources have the potential to be so skewed for one political side of the other, people would rather go out and find other information to attempt to get a full view and understanding of the political climate and situation that you have been informed about. Now many would believe that it would be at least somewhat easy to get an understanding of what is going on in the political world by watching television. However, television is just as bad and potentially picks sides even worse by only bringing on one-sided guests or completely lashing out and shutting down guests who have differing views by using audience action.

While don’t get me wrong, there are several news sources that do a great job of giving out positive information on both sides that is not partisan in any way. However, those sites are few and far between. I would say that the most common place to get news, the television networks, should have the fairest and honest reporting, but all we have seen is corrupted networks taking sides and building up those networks to make ideas and concepts much more radical. Television networks have radicalized the political landscape when it comes to reporting and I really do believe that we need to get back to the roots of reporting; reporting on the news with no influence to one side or the other. Just general information representation to be interpreted and researched further by the person receiving the information given to them.

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Pop Culture Biography

I have always enjoyed pop culture and thought that it was a great way to learn about societal norms while also having a strong narrative to get behind and watch. As I was growing up I felt myself wanting to fit into the pop culture norm more and more by doing anything possible to keep up with the fads that took place. Whether it be having the toys that were in at the time, or imagining games with kids on the playground that had to do with current movies and video-games, I was always on board to be involved and take part in these different activities.

However, as I grew older I noticed that I didn’t want to fit in with a majority of the pop culture norms that were becoming popular. One of the most prominent ones that I can think of is when Jersey Shore became a popular concept. Everyone loved the new style and wild antics that they brought from that show and many people I knew wanted to be just like them or live the wild party lifestyle like them. I never really could get behind this aspect and really didn’t like the constant hostility that came with the group. It became very prominent though between groups in my school to act in similar fashions that these people were acting on the show which caused a lot of issues with friendships and other aspects of school life. It was at this point that I decided to go against the pop culture norms that many people tried so hard to be a part of.

I have always loved Pop culture and two of my favorite series that I had the opportunity to watch with my family were Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. These movies while very stereotypical for many younger kids, allowed me to open up my mind and really dive into the adventures of a story. There was nothing like pretending to be the characters in the movies and fighting against evil to save the world. It was something that I could use my imagination with and being that I was the oldest by five years usually I was forced to play by myself for the majority of my younger years. However, I was very capable of coming up with just about everything possible and I do have to admit that I never ran out of something to imagine.

Pop culture was such an inspiration for my imagination as a child that I hope to show my own children some of these amazing movies some-day. While I am sure that they will have the opportunity to watch their own movies and series, I am excited to see them out and imagining up their own adventures outside and experiencing what it is like to grow up in a world that you can make up on your own. I am thankful for my parents for allowing me to run free outside and come up with my own ideas and play freely from all angles. It truly helped shape who I am today and I am still kind of a nerd at heart when it comes to some of the old movies I used to watch. #comm435 #popbio