REFLECTION!!

Finally, we have come to the last blog post. Although this is my first time blogging, i must say that this will be my last too. I’m quite a lazy person, so to make an effort writing a journal or blogging is really not my style. It is a good experience though but still find it troublesome.  x:

Well, what have i learnt? After attending many lessons, i can see that media really is a very powerful tool. A tool for communicating, publicising, advertising, influencing and becoming commercialised and traivalised. It is also a tool that have been blame for many negative consequences (which i still feel that media should not be holding on all the blame as there are also external factors such as cultural, upbringing and the person or company that advertise through the media that lead to it) yet we still can’t live without it. Also, we cannot always fully believe what the media is conveying to us regardless whether is it private or government owned. Below are a clip of example of how usually company advertise their poducts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeoBUUgh6BA

So what does it have to do with psychology anyway? In my opinion, I feel that this module link to psychology in a way when we are counselling or talking to someone, the words that we use, our body posture or sometime when we use pictures to communicate is very important. As media text can be anything, even we as a person can be consider as a media text. Therefore, it is very important on how we convey our message because people can connotate and denotate differently with the same message given. We wouldn’t want our patients to feel even more worse by getting the wrong ideas do we?

Overall, i do find this module very interesting. For example, those very interesting clip that our leturer shown us and also how and what media can do really give me an eye-opening experiences.

THE MAURY SHOW!!!!!

Maury or also known as The Maury Povich Show is tabloid a talk show that is hosted by Maury Povich himself. Previsously, Maury povich was a well-respected journalist. Later on, he was being hired by Rupert Murdoch to anchor his news program called ‘A Current Affair’. Maury left after spending 4 years and started his on talk show.

During his first season, he focused on serious debate such as social and political issues. As competition raises, he start to cover more taboo subjects and encouraging guests to raise the level of debate such as physical conflict in some cases just to maintain his rating. For exmaple, guests will publicly rebel against their parent refusing to listen to their pleas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAl-MBwXPZI

He cover topics like sexual infidelity, teenage pregnacy, paternity test results, ‘out of control’ teenagers, domestic violence, little people and many more. Below are a clip of ‘out of control’ teenagers whereby she had sex with many strangers and also had a strong desire to become pregnant as they feel that they are ready to become a parent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6kFKWfPW7U

The controversy and criticsim of this show is that he used the guests serious problem as an entertainment for the audience and sometime treated with insincere sympathy. He also use polygraphy test in some of the episode to test whether the guest is speaking the truth about their infidelity relationship. How realiable is polygraphy evidences? Without any concrete evidences and just relying on polygraphy evidences to just say that the person is lying when he might not be may affect their life from then on. An example of the show using the polygraphy to determine the result.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R66Kupg9aQA&noredirect=1

It is also being mocked in one of a South park episode called ‘Freak Strike’.

Therefore, i feel that most of the mediated public sphere in this case is being too commercialise and trivialisation. 

GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE MEDIA OWNERSHIP!!!

Media is a form of communication which provided us with different kinds of information and data that are happening around us. Therefore, it is very important to know who provide us with the informations. Basically, there are two type of groups that are controling the media. One is the government or state media ownership and another is the private media ownership. Both have their positive and negative qualities.

Government or state media ownership means that the media is being control and funded by the government or state. Some examples are North Korea, Singapore and Malaysia. This also means that the media have to be approve by the government before beening publish or release to the public. As a result, the government may use this opportunity to create biasness by promoting their political supremacy during election. This also lessen the debating of government actions which might lead to unforseen loopholes or least improvement in the systems. Thus, leading the govenment into the wrong path.

However, there are also some positive impacts. By gaining the public support, the government can work hand in hand with the public by lessening unnecessary debates and concentrate on the developing of the nation towards peace and harmony. Also the govenment are able to implement censorship to media that are violence such as movies or TV shows in order to prevent the teenages to carry out dangerous act.

Private media ownership means that media is not own or control by the government. This meant that they are able to provide informations that support or against the policies. Thus, giving the public more informations to compare. With the well-informed and objective choices, the public are also able to choose whichever they are comfortable to. Private media also able to prevent government from presenting out bias informations to the public.

Nevertheless, there are also the negative part. Due to many wide range of informations, some people might be confused about the policy or couldn’t get the exact message which resulted in poor choices making. As a result, this might slow down the nation progress as there are too many unnecessary debates.

LOBBY GROUPS

Lobbying is a form of advocacy which act often by a groups such as lobby groups, advocracy groups, pressure groups, campaign groups, interest groups or special interest groups. These groups use various forms of advocacy that include activicties like media campaigns, public speaking and etc to influence public opinion or policy.

For example, the diagram below show that the European car lobby group ACEA (European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association) represents the major European car manufactures and lobbies European politicians to prevent growing carbon dioxide emissions from cars being effectively curbed by regulation. Another example is a lobbying group called the Internet Association which consist of Facebook, Google, eBay and Amazon.

But that doesn’t mean that everyone can get the same information the sender wants us to because signs (e.g words, phrases, texts and etc) can be connotate differently due to the values, emotion and to the specific audience. For example the word ‘economy’, people who has suffer or affected by the economy may connotate it as crisis or downfall and people who gain or benefit from the economy may connotate it as growth or strength. Thus, a message can be polysemic as different individual bring in their own experiences and cultural background to interpret.

This resulted in three different types of readers. 1) Response to how media producers want or expect them to (Preferred reading). 2) Partly agree to the message (Negotiated reading). 3) completely disagree with the message (Oppositional reading).

MEDIA EFFECTS!

During this lesson, we talked about the concept of ‘media effects’ whereby how media influence the way we think and behave. Although there are theories that explain how media affects us, I still think that the media only affect a small certain part.

One example will be when companies are advertising their products, they tend to come out with simple and attractive slogan or phase to capture buyers attention. But this doesn’t mean that everyone will go and purchase the products. Only a handful which need or believe it will be hit by the advertisment. (The hypodermic needle theory – suggest that media could influence a large group of people directly by ‘injecting’ them with appropriate messages.) Another example called the ‘panic broadcast’ show that only the passive and gullible can be manipulatet by the media. It can be read in this link.

http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Mass%20Media/Hypodermic_Needle_Theory.doc/

     

I believe that many of us had watch cartoon like ‘looney tunes’, ‘tom and jerry’, ‘superman’, or other shows which are violence as a child (Cultivation theory – suggest that the media is responsible for ‘cultivating’ viewers’ conceptions of social reality) but that did not result us to hitting each other with dangerous and harmful objects. People who are affected by the television show may be a heavy viewer. But then again we can ask ourself why are they expose to television so much? Maybe they lack of family attention which resulted them to bind themselves to the television or cultural influence just like the example of ‘bowling of the columbine’.

In conclusion, i feel that we cannot blame totally on the media because there are also other factors that contribute to the outcome such as the upbring, cutural influence and many others.

If not, what say you?

HELLO EVERYONE!!!

Salutation!!! I’m Yijie. This is my first time writing a blog actually. Well, anyway, my dream is to travel around the world. Looking at all those beautiful scenery and natural phenomena such as lying on the cold ice at north pole staring and enjoying the aurora. Meeting a polar bear in their natural habitat would be even best.^^ I not sure about the rest but I feel that since I have already arrive in this world, no matter what, i have to experience the many wonders of the world at least once. In fact, if possible, I aim to travel around the world without coming back to Singapore. I hate being stuck in the ‘rat cycle’ where everyday in the morning i have to wake up, go for work, sometimes even OT, reach home, sleep and the next day same cycle repeat again.

I graduated from Republic Poly with a diploma of Biotechnology. After that, I went to serve my National Service as a Guardsman at 1st Guard Battlion. Currently pursuing Psychology degree in SIM. It consist of one core and three electives for the first semester and media and communications is part of it. Honestly, before the lesson start, i don’t seem to understand what does media and communications has the connection with psychology. But after having a couple of lessons i do see how media affect people in a certain extent. As for media habits, i spent most of my time watching entertainment shows like Running Man and videos which are interesting that can be found on Youtube or posts from Facebook.