Winnie

When reading the part of exercise commentary(p.6-7), i found it quite interesting in the part of comparing the pros and cons of mass media. And I agree with the part of "The media are shrinking the globe, uniting us and bringing us close together, creating a global village", and it is undeniable that the mass media has played a very important role in educating people and raising people's awareness on certain issues.

This also raised a question within myself, which is: what will the world be if mass media doesn't exist? Also, I dont quite understand the counter argument on the point of whether the media are democratic or not, because i think that have to be depended on the country's policy rather than the nature of mass media itself.

Anna's comment: Though I haven't raised the question about non-existence of media, i found it interesting to think about it now. The life without mass media will change our lives a lot: it will be harder to find friends and to discover the news around the globe and the development of countries will not be as rapid as it is now. But than we could say that we are living in a democratic society,in which people are making choice by themselves and not follow other people's opinion.

Jennifer: I can't really imagine our world without mass media. Nowadays everywhere we go we see some form of mass media around us, such as newspaper stands, TVs in train compartments and so on. If we didn't have mass media, we couldn't possibly be living in the developed world we currently enjoy. Without mass media, we wouldn't have communication and it wouldn't have been possible for the rapid changes in life we see today. We would all still be isolated countries, or even just isolated little villages, only dependant on word of mouth (not exactly the best form of communication), living in backward societies.

Tinny: I find your question "what will the world be if mass media doesn't exist" very intriguing. Our modern daily life is generally surrounded by mass media: TV, newspaper, music, radio... like Jennifer said, we even receive information while taking public transport. Mass media invades our life in so many ways that it's impossible to ignore - without mass media, we will not be updated about news and trends, and can hardly bond with people due to the lack of communication or shared information. Therefore mass media is not only essential to receiving messages, but also interacting with people.

Comments from Beanka It is quite interesting to see how most of the class find the comparing parts intriguing. Indeed, as Jennifer and Anna have pointed out, the media has become an essential part of our daily lives. However, when considering how the majority of population in less developed countries survive with the least exposure to media, it ought to make us think if we are relying on the media too much. Of course, the advantages that mass media have on our lives are undeniable, but so is the increasing awareness that we are affected by the mass media to such a great extent that might not be a good thing.

__ The advertisement I liked most __ __[]__

This is an advertisement that trying to promote the milk product of Kowloondiary. I was attracted by the child in the advertisement that keep making the sound “Gooo”, it aroused my curiosity on the action of the child. For instance, the setting of the whole advertisement, which was in the classroom, together with the bell rang, it caught my attention on it. There was no annoying background music neither any clumsy or annoying description on that product, which made me feel comfortable when watching the advertisement.

After having the classes, I started noticing more on its purpose, target audience...etc. Obviously, even the advertisement didn’t state clearly something like “This is your choice, you should buy it.”, it still included the persuading element that trying to get the consumers to buy the milk product. That was done by its emphasize on how good the taste will it be as well as how people were attracted by the milk product. In the reading of “Language and mass communication”, it mentioned that generally the generally purposes of advertisements are “attracting attention”, “convince us” as well as to “retain interest”. For this advertisement, i think it has achieved all as the kids already successfully attracted my attention and retained my interest on wanting to know what would be going next. It might has a smaller achievement on convincing me to buy the product.

During the class, there were some advertisement shown that didn’t get our interest to buy the good but gain a negative impression on the product instead (e.g. seductive pictures/messages). I believe parents and children are the main target audience for this advertisement, since it used kids and classroom as the main setting. It made people feel easy to look at it and it can also successfully caught the attention of children on it. In the advertisement, there was not much dialog, using “goooooo.....good morning miss chan” to show that people love to “Goooo” (drink) the milk. The simple and direct dialog can easily make the audience to get the message. Also, the repetition on this pronunciation also successfully aroused people’s interest.Therefore, it can precisely bring out the point that “Our milk taste excellently good, even the teacher wants it too.” instead of trying to make the audience to absorb more than enough information of the product which most probably turned out that the audience can get nothing from it.

Humour is always the key of catching people’s attention. Personally, i think the advertisement could be considered as greatly successful. First of all, after the advertisement was broadcasted on the television, everybody’s talking about it and imitating the kid. I think it is related to the humour sense in the advertisement, for example, the kids were just “Goo Goo Goo...”, the whole scene is kind of interesting and funny. Therefore, i think to a large extent, it is considered as a successful advertisement. __ Reflections on class discussion __ As a christian, I also feel disappointed with the religious conflicts. For i know, some of the so-called religious conflicts are actually occurred with political factors rather than purely because of religious divergence. And as read in the previous hand-outs, political parties might interfere the media. So it's not surprising to me that even if the media are not reporting in a neutral point of view. Right, the role of media might have done something that makes the whole situation became worse. Like the article of Alaa suggested, the news reporter his/her self has bias on the whole incident. When the readers read the news, the readers' attitude towards the incident will probably be affected a lot. As a responsible reader and global citizen, we should be aware of the sources of the articles and think before in-taking all the information from the news.