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Sadphones

In the article by the Atlantic, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” the author suggests that modern teens (iGen) near constant use of smartphones is directly linked to the recent spike in teenage depression. The evidence presented in the article makes a lot of sense and was even enough to make me start noticing how this might be true in my life and the lives of those around me. It’s no mystery that smartphones have become a very normal thing and most people (especially those in iGen) are on them VERY excessively. Just look around you, almost anywhere you go people will be “glued” to their phones for one reason or another. The author suggests that this might be linked to depression mainly because people have become so ridiculously unaccustomed to face to face interaction. So rather, they just stay in the comfort of their home and text one another, cause why risk embarrassing yourself in front of a cute girl when you can carefully calculate the perfect thing to say safe at home? However, this trend began when texting was first introduced to the world, which is also when phone calls also began to become foreign and “scary”.  

This article made me think about what we talked about in class with Gerbners Cultivation Theory. I believe that what the author presents in this article fits very nicely into Gerbners theory, especially in accordance to the “mean world.” The mean world suggests that long term exposure to TV (or just screens) in which violence is frequent cultivates the image of a mean and dangerous world, but I believe that this can also be used to explain the depression spikes. I know from personal experience that the internet, and more specifically social media, are constantly presenting the viewers with relationship and emotional messages which can range anywhere from “perfect” to very situationaly relateable. The three main parts of mean world are:

1. People just look out for themselves

2. You can’t be too careful with people

3. Many people would take advantage of you

In terms of the Atlantic article, these three sections can be related in this:

1. People are always seeking personal emotional fulfillment

2. You never know what is true on the internet, things may lead you wrong

3. People will indirectly beg for comfort for personal emotional gain (as harsh as that sounds, posting vague messages about something just to get comments is what I’m talking about)

This is mainly how I believe the article relates to Cultivation Theory, there are other ways in which you could relate it, but I thought this fit nicely with the information the author presented.

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Blog Post #6

There are many artifacts in our culture that have either adapted to the needs of society or changed to aid in the convenience of a task. One of these artifacts is the gaming controller. From the first version of the controller we have seen similarities no matter what generation it comes from. A few of these similarities are that they have all had joysticks of some sort as well as buttons and a power source. These have always been the common and most widely accepted components of a controller but that just may be because these components are just what we’ve always been accustom to, since the first version of the controller. There have only been a few different developers who have strayed from the norm and developed something that really introduced  the people to something new. However, even these new and different controllers somehow incorporated the essential and original elements in some way. Controllers have taken on many different shapes and forms throughout the years, whether it’s something handheld or something that you set on the ground to get a better grip on the joystick, controller have adapted through many different phases (I guess you could say) to fit and intrigue the target audience. The biggest player on this front is Nintendo. Nintendo has always been trying to bring new innovative ideas to the gaming front, whether it be in how their consoles look, or how their gaming experience differs from the rest, they have always just been trying to mix it up and break from the norm of things. No matter how different or unique a developer formats their controllers, they will always have connections to the originals in some manner.

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How Secure is Secure?

In our modern and more digital age, technology has grown to become the hub for the majority of the average persons personal information, entertainment, way of keeping in touch with family, etc. But people don’t often think about what they should and shouldn’t be typing their information into, I think we can all relate to this to some degree. I know that I for one do check to see what is asking me for my information to see if I trust the webpage, before typing anything in, but I don’t really read into it enough to see if the page that came up is actually from the webpage it references. I came to realize that this might be an important precaution to start practicing when we watched the videos on hackers the other day in class. A portion that really got to me was from the first video, when Kevin asked the security researcher, Dan Tentler, to hack him just to see how much information Dan could retrieve in two days. When Kevin met up with Dan to see what he had retrieved, Dan got everything. All of his accounts, passwords, social security number, birth certificate, literally everything that made him who he was in society, just because Kevin typed his password into a fake system pop-up. This tactic is called phishing, it uses bogus emails or other notifications to get the user give a hacker sensitive information. This type of thing could happen to anyone and we wouldn’t know it. Hackers put a lot of time into these things to trick the victim into giving over their info, and no after seeing how real they can look and how much information can be obtained by such a simple thing. I know  that I for one, will be checking any “tailored” looking emails just to make sure that the information that I’m giving over is truly safe.

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Collective Memory

When I think of the concept of collective memory and all that it entails, the first events that pop into my head are definitely things like September 11th, the holocaust, the Cuban missile crisis, huge events that really resonate with us as people. Collective memory refers to memories that a group of people witnessed and can share in that memory, which are then passed down to other groups/generations. One event in particular, which I believe is definitely growing into this category, is the recent shooting in Vegas. This event spread like wildfire over social media, mainly through videos that witnesses of the event captured on smart phones, interviews at the hospitals with victims of the shooting, and some stations went as far as broadcasting live from Vegas during the event. I’d say that it was definitely a positive thing that this event was covered so broadly and spread nationwide pretty much as it was happening, but this also has some negative connotations. For instance, I don’t believe that it’s really morally permissible to be recording an event such as that and broadcasting it live while it’s still ongoing, or even the interviewing of victims is iffy. Some people might see that in a bad light, but if they give consent and show interest in actually having an interview, that sort of solidifies it being okay. Although the concept of collective memory may be foreign to some, when people hear about it, they can definitely relate and find a memory which fits in the category whether it be from years ago or very recently.

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Media Artifacts

In class the other day, we were asked to find three media articles that stood out to us and featured notable language or imagery. The first that I chose for this task was titled “Trump vs. NFL Players Who Kneel” and was posted in The New York Times. The second article was published in a local Detroit news site and was titled “Eurofighter jet crashes into ocean during Italian air show; pilot killed”, it didn’t have many words in the article but it did contain a video of the event and that was imagery enough for me to pick it. The final article I chose was an article posted on the UN news center and was titled “The only world safe from use of nuclear weapons is a world completely free of them.” 

In Trump vs. NFL Players Who Kneel, the article is comprised of various letters to the editor regarding the subject and peoples thought on the matter. The article gets its umph from grammatical syntax (due to there being no pictures or videos in the article), and each of the letters have a different feel to them.

On the flipside, The article in regards to the Eurofighter pilot is based around a video of the event which occurred. The video was obviously shot by a civilian witnessing the event and you can clearly see many other onlookers watching in horror as the jet crashes into the sea. This articles syntax comes visually, with the participants being the onlookers and the jet, the vectors being the civilians watching the jet crash, and the narrative being the split thumbnail which shows the jet on one side and the people with the jet impacting on the other. This article resonated with me the most because of the video, how you could actually watch the event for yourself and feel the horrified reaction of the onlookers of the event. In regards to the connotation and denotation of words used in the article, many words like horrifying, tragic, fails, were used int he article but I believe they were in a dennotational context. The writer of the article obviously wasn’t trying to draw readers in (the video is enough to do that), the writing of the article was simple and precise.

Reading the article The only world safe from use of nuclear weapons is a world completely free of them, I actually found out that the UN marked the 26th of September the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. This article is an obvious example of grammatical syntax because they later say that the aforementioned day is actually annually celebrated due to the vision of a nuclear weapon free world being universal. But because they began the article by saying “they marked it as” that day, it gives the reader the sense that this was a new thing when in all actuality it isn’t. 

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Blog Post #2

A media artifact that has really made it’s rounds, through Meredith Davis’ Message Cycle, is the cufflink. The cufflink originally originated as just a ribbon (of some sort) which would be tied around the ruffles on the wrists of a shirt to hold them closed and to make the wearer look more formal. As the use of “puffy shirts” became less and less common, the ribbons became two little buttons connected by a small chain, which held the two sides of a shirt cuff (not ruffles anymore) closed. These buttons sometimes contained little paintings of people, animals, objects, etc. This made cufflinks expensive, becasue they were hand made, which means they were only worn by men of wealth for the time. As people began to dislike the two buttons, the design was changed to just one main link with a little button on the back. Thus they became more like the modern shirt cuffs, that we know today. The only difference was that they still had the button on the back. Around the time in which they became more like modern cufflinks, men often used starch on their cuffs so that they would retain their form and look more proper. The starch, however, made the cuffs very tough and it was hard to get a button through that little hole, so jewelers invented the movable rod on the back, like cufflinks have today, so that they could be placed and removed easier. Due to the growing advances in machines, they became less and less made solely by hand, which caused their price to go way down. 

  This artifact has impacted culture in such a way of making it easier for the common man to look formal in his wear, and make sure that his sleeves won’t fly open in public. 

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Blog post #1

Hey there! My name is Mike Hess and I’m a sophomore communications major this year.

I started out my time here being an undeclared major and not really knowing what I was interested in, so I began asking around and seeing what the different majors entailed. My cousin was a communications major here and she told me all about it, which actually led to my interest and eventual decision to declare this major. I plan to declare a minor in sociology as well in the near future, because I have already met almost all of the requirements for the minor.

The media has become one of the most distorted and convoluted presences in modern society. From social media to national news channels, it’s very hard to know what to trust nowadays. The media is meant to be (in my eyes) an outlet for people to keep in touch with what’s going on in the world and with friends, family, etc. and in some aspects this does hold true and is a very reliable resource, but in some other not so much. A lot of media outlets nowadays have a way of just saying what people want to hear, or posting “click bait” articles just to draw in more viewers. However, the media is also a very central and connecting part of our society in 2017. On pretty much every advertisement or billboard you look at, you’ll see something that says, “facebook.com/…..” or “#fillintheblank” just showing that you can go on social media (or something along those lines) to find out more information or to contact the company. Most people that you know have an account on some type of media outlet, whether it be facebook or even an email account, pretty much everyone is connected/involved in the media in some way.

The media has become a binding force, a mold for our present day culture. And our advances in progressing in it’s technology are changing our lives every day for better (majority of the time) or for worse (minority of the time)