Anna


 * Anna

The chapter Defining the Media is full of information and ,reading it, it was not a piece of cake for me to find the quintessence. Every statement was confirmed\explained by the examples of history or the extracts from other books,which is very helpful for deeper understanding the topic.

It was interesting for me to read about the way how political parties control the media, because in Ukraine nobody discuss this topic openly and people truly believe everything, which was told on TV. The same point was also raised in the book of Frédéric Beigbeder 99 franks, so it was fascinating to draw a parallel.

I was happy to find a phrase global village ,which I actually know and use in my everyday speech,though I would never connect it with media.

What I disliked, was the amount of dates and names,which was and is difficult to remember,though I understand that it's important to mention them.

At first I did not understand what is meant by  the media are shrinking the globe,uniting us and bringing us closer together as different countries have different newspapers and magazines (Chinese Esquire, for example, differs a lot from russian one), TV programmes and ads, but I've seen the live example how my roomies were connected by the same soup operas,they had watched in childhood.

Hannah:

I thought your last point on the media being a unifying force was really interesting. It made me think that although we might not be able to see how this is true by examining different newspapers, once we look closer we notice the similarities more than the differences and see how globalisation is occurring all around us. Using your two examples, China and Russia may be involved in a sporting event and both papers would cover the same topic. In this way, people all over the world are hearing about things happening in other countries, especially because most papers will have a world news section.

Sana: Anna, I also think it is interesting to think about how politics can control the media. I think that there are many countries where this is not discussed but I find it interesting that people in Ukraine truly believe what they see of TV. In some countries, I think that although it is not discussed openly, many people are aware of the fact that the media is biased. For me, I know in the back of my mind that the media is full of bias but I find that I still have a tendency to believe things that I hear. I think we constantly have to remind ourselves that there is more than one perspective to every issue.

Alan: Anna, I think that is the biggest disadvantage of the media, that non-educated, non-critical thinking people believe everything they see on it. Everyone is to some extent prone to the influence of the media because it is impossible to live without it on the developed, modern day life. It is up to us though, to judge what we see by ourselves and let others be aware of the problem. I think that with "shrinking the globe" they are talking about globalisation, something where the media does absolutely take part in. It is difficult to tell whether globalisation is a "good" or "bad" thing though. I think the example of your room-mates connected by soup operas illustrates one of the most important advantages of global media: the sense of unification, it gives people something to have in common. Winnie:For the point on political controls over the media, it's not surprising to know it when i read through the text. That's because even in Hong Kong, a place where it emphases on freedom of press so much, the media will still be influenced by political parties. For example, the June Forth incident (do you have any idea of what it's about?), some of the news programmes on television are not allowed/advice to mention about the June Forth incident as it hurts the reputation of China. The problem is especially serious in the mainland, people are not even being able to get accessed to facebook. The media is strictly controlled by the central government and most information that the public received are chosen and accessed. so....yea, political factor affects the operation of media quite a lot, in fact.

Martin

I also come from a society where the majority of people, let me say, are stupid and naïve. I am not saying they are not stupid in the way that they don’t know how to tie their shows or that they cannot get across the street safely. They are stupid in the way that they would believe in anything if they believe that others believe it. And that is the lemming factor. And, that enforce indoctrinating ideologies, overthrowing democratically elected government, victimizing victims, thoroughly damaging opponents and so on…

__The advertisement, I liked the most__


The first thing, I’d like to mention, that the first goal of any advertisement is to grab people’s attention. Thanks to a big variety of products, it is not as easy as abc. The pictures above are not trying to persuade us to buy something - they want us to visit a website, which is written on the black background with white letters and, what catch our eye more, is the motto, written on the bright red fond. I can’t say that the creators use humour, as a way to attract attention or to retain interest, but the image, which the pictures left after, is the question “Is it really MY profession? Do I really enjoy doing that?’’ In my opinion, the target audience includes all of us: students, who have not made their choice about the field, they want to work in; students, who have already chosen (to make them hesitate); people, who are in search of job; people, who are already working, to make them demotivated with words ‘’Life is too short for the wrong job’’. Who actually thinks about doing the same job during all the life? And who actually is left beside? Kids? I, personally, can imagine my little cousin asking her mother : ‘’Mommy, why this lady is so sad? How can she eat there? Can we help her to get out?’’ So who left beside? No one. Perfect, isn’t it? Outlooks of people, who got stuck in cash machines and cannot get out there, and are forced to do the job, they dislike – that is the thing, which persuades you to write the link of the website down. By the way, it’s not difficult to remember it - ‘’jobsintown.de’’, it already speaks to you : ‘’Hey, I’m not only going to give advice for you, I WILL find you a job’’. In the crisis time, this words are sound like a spell. To my mind, I was always interested in advertisement and the way mass media can influence our life, but as we were not studying that in my high school, my vocabulary wasn’t used in that way and of course I wasn’t always analysing them. I actually was needed time to think about advertisement, which can really be effective for every country and background. Consequently, I find the advertisement above effective, because it:
 * · catches the eye
 * · makes us hesitate in the choice, we made ( or still didn’t make)
 * · is easy to remember.

Reflection on the previous lesson:

Due to the Western European norms of etiquette, such themes as sex, religion, health and financial problems are unwanted to be raised, though as forbidden is most desirable people keep raising then and mostly not in the correct manner. What I find exiting in LPC, that people from different countries make you feel engaged with the problems, they are faced with, and this fact gives me hope, that representatives of the whole world will find a solution to solve them. At the last lesson we had a discussion about discrimination of spirituals (Muslims and Christians). The fact that people still can’t accept the freedom of belief sets our world apart from the democratic society. In my opinion, there can’t be any right or correct point of view, discrimination is wrong anyways. The two religions have two very different founders and two very different holy books. Their view of God, salvation and the future are very different—radically different, but is the difference so bad? Some people think that, if the conflict continues, it may cause the Third World War. People are so brainwashed by the stereotypes, that some of them seriously think that Muslims in USA should have ID card, which specifically identifies that you’re a Muslim. ([] ) According to the Pew survey,38 percent of Americans believe Islam encourages violence more than other religions. As a consequence, I believe that religious tolerance is not enough, because don’t need to have solely permissive attitude, but what we need is mutual understanding.

Hello Anna,

I have been lucky enough to get the opportunity to study both Islam and Christianity in a somewhat very thorough way. You would be surprised at how similar the 2 religions are. I take it you are Christian.Did you know that Islam has Adam, Lot,Noah,Moses,Aaron,Joseph. . . . .and even Jesus.And their stories are similar.Did you know that?The only major difference is that Islam has Muhammad(Peace Be Upon Him) and does not have the Holy Trinity. But you never get it from the media about how similar the two faiths are. That would not be sensational enough to make a story huh? I agree with you on the tolerance bit.Tolerance is putting up with something you do not like. What we need is celebration of each other.

Cheers, Salma.