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The last chapter of Pop Culture Freaks by Dustin Kidd really pulls together everything that we have learned all semester. All throughout the book we talk about these different groups such as women, minorities, people with disabilities etc. But Kidd says that we are all freaks. We are not passive consumers and everything we consume can have an influence on what we like, who we associated with or how we view certain situations.

It is very interesting to dive into the matrix of popular culture and instead of just consuming it, actually critically thinking about it. Taking things at face value can sometimes hurt more than it can help because you are not being fully aware of how it may be affecting you. This class, and the whole Pop Culture Freaks book gave me a skillset that I will not be able to learn anywhere else. Kidd pulls all these concepts together well in the last chapter of the book. He says that freaks can be a matrix for the privileged and the oppressed. When we start to label people based on their race, class, gender, interests, hobbies etc, we are creating these systems of power and oppression. It is important to realize this when we are consuming because that is how companies get people to buy into what they are selling. They are constantly showing you the things that will make you more “powerful” or less of a “freak”. Knowing the difference and being conscious of the decisions you are making is a major step in the right direction.

The biggest take away from Pop Culture Freaks for myself is to be conscious when consuming popular culture and to use the cultural diamond. Making sure to realize that there can be under representation, over representation, misrepresentation all over the place. To be able to enjoy consuming while also not letting it subconsciously build stereotypes in my mind. As Dustin Kidd says, we are all freaks in our own way so we might as well live the way that we want to!

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To incoming students taking Comm435, be prepared to see many shifts in perspective. This class will come at you full force if you are a close minded person who is very stuck in their ways. I really enjoyed this class and the opportunities it presented. Melissa does a very good job of making the class interactive and engaging while throwing in some fun activities. Being able to recognize that we are active consumers and everything we take-in effects our thinking process is a very important perspective to have. It allows you to take a step back and analyze things in a more critical manor.

There were many units throughout this course that will stick with me throughout the rest of my life. We were assigned to watch a documentary called “The Mask We Live In”, it was focused on young boys and how they feel society defines them as men. Young men are four times more likely to commit suicide than women, showing that there is a gap in mental health and stability somewhere along the lines of raising boys. Most of them disclosed that they feel alone or angry but they have no one to talk to. Expressing these emotions only shows weakness and the las thing these boys want to do is appear weak. Is there a link between bottling up emotions and suicide rates? This is one example of the critical thinking and analyzing skills this class will give you.

If the class is still offered as a hybrid, make sure to pay attention to how blackboard is set up. Pay attention to the due dates, it can be very difficult to navigate at first but Melissa does a wonderful job of keeping the same schedule of due dates throughout the semester. She even offers a one week extension on any of the major assignments in the class because she understands that sometimes every test/paper/project can land in the same week. Make sure to do the reading and try to contribute to class discussion, it can be a lot of fun when there are a lot of people are engaged. Be sure to have an open mind and don’t be afraid to share your observations or perspective, it can create a very beneficial learning environment! Good luck!

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The cultural diamond four points to it. The four points include the world, the cultural object, the audience and the creator. The world and cultural artifact are across from each other in the diamond, where the other two points are the creator and the audience. The world and cultural object are examples of what is going on in our world that relate to the artifact itself. The creator and receiver are looking at the demographics of who made the artifact and then in return, who consumes it. You can use the cultural diamond when evaluating any pop culture artifact. In class we used the cultural diamond and applied it to Breaking Bad many times. I will use Breaking Bad as an example of how to use the cultural diamond.

Breaking Bad is a hit TV series about a high school chemistry teacher, Walter White, who has a wife, Skylar, and a son. His wife is expecting another baby soon and money is tight as it is, then Walt gets diagnosed with lung cancer. He is left with the pain of not being able to provide for his family so he does whatever he can to make sure that he doesn’t let his family down. Walt pairs up with one of his high school students and starts to cook meth on the side in order to pay his hospital bills and provide for his family. Through the series there are tangles of lies and deceiving cover stories as he falls deeper and deeper into his own ego.

The creator of Breaking Bad is Vince Gilligan, an upper-class, white male. He made Breaking Bad in hopes to reach a certain audience. In doing so, Breaking Bad was a major hit among middle-class, white men right away. As the show progressed the diversity of the audience grew, especially as characters of different races started to have more prominent roles.

The show was released in 2008, right after the recession, the housing market crash, end of the drug war and heightened health care charges. All of these issues were going on within our society (world) and that helped make the TV series more relatable. People took to the series very quickly, making a very highly potent cultural artifact in past years. The artifact itself was very easy to relate to and it drew people in, having them see an everyday family struggle financially and play the system to their favor. This is just one example of how the cultural diamond can be used when critically analyzing the pop culture we consume.

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I wrote my college analysis paper on the movie Pitch Perfect. Pitch Perfect is a movie that follows an all-female college acapella group and their major struggle (and yet triumphant) road to the National competition. The college analysis paper was to use all the dimensions of cultural potency. There are five dimensions that contribute to cultural potency, retreivability, rhetorical force, institutional retention, resonance and resolution. Throughout my research I found that Pitch Perfect is not a culturally potent artifact due to its moderate retrievability, low institutional retention and low resolution.

Retrievability is the access that the audience has to the film. Pitch Perfect is available for purchase online through many different streaming sites. From Youtube to Hulu to Amazon you can watch pitch perfect for the low price of $2.99. It can also be viewed if you already pay for a Netflix, Hulu or Amazon account. Not only is it retrievable online, it continues to show on television as well, on the CMT channel. Unfortunately, not everyone in the Unites States has access to the internet, lowering the films retrievability.

Institutional Retention is how the movie was carried on after its initial release. Pitch Perfect has moderate retention because they ended up making three more movies after the original. Each movie happened to go down in rating as they continued to build on the acapella story. It is also a movie that is not used in schools and some parents think is inappropriate for young teens, according to reviews on imbd.com. This shows some restriction in the retention that the movie had on the audience, it is not a classic that will be raved about for years to come.

Lastly, the resolution of Pitch Perfect has the opportunity to leave an imprint. Though this is a funny, tough love film, the girls are constantly humiliated when performing. The only reason they were given a chance to compete at Nationals was because another team got disqualified. It wasn’t until these girls were at Nationals that they finally connected and put on an award winning performance. The ending of the movie shows this group of girls who have repeatedly been embarrassed, failed over and over again, come back and win it all. Overcoming their differences and their obstacles, they were able to achieve a goal. It gives you a feeling of ease and accomplishment, it doesn’t make you want anything more. This can also come around full circle to the movies low retention.

Through this assignment I learned how to utilize a pop culture artifact by applying all five components of cultural potency. I now can take a cultural object and evaluate its potency within our society.

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This link brings you to the brandwatch.com website. On this site they have many statistics about how man and women use different social media. Many statistics are very close in range but all in all it shows that women tend to be more active on social media than men. Women’s usage numbers were higher on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, where men’s usage numbers were higher on LinkedIn, Youtube and Google. It shows that both men and women use the internet but for different driving reasons.

https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/men-vs-women-active-social-media/

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This video is a TedX Talk, published on April 23rd of 2015. In this video Ulrike Schultz comes out and gives a presentation on how social media shapes our identity as people. Schultz is an associate professor at the Information Technology and Operations Management at Southern Methodist University. During the video she tries to explain how social media is constantly showing us who we should be. She brings up, for example, that when we post online we tend to do it for likes, comments and shares. When we do not get the response that we had expected, we think that people do not care about what we posted so we should not post about it again. Every time this happens, we reevaluate who we are and what we stand for, casing a shift in our identity. Over time we create a “second-life” identity where we may be a different person online then we are in person. This idea can be generalized over the subject of gender. If a man posts about the “gender wage gap” and no one likes, responds or shares his post, he may jump to the conclusion that no one is interested in the subject so why post about it again? Why not post something that people will enjoy seeing? Or if he gets negative backlash from other men around him, he will not want to post about it again to save his ego. This is an example of how social media may shape us in a way that is not true to who we are and it is something we also experience in everyday, face-to-face life, showing that maybe social media isn’t such a safe and open space after all?

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In my personal experience with social media, I can agree that I have framed myself differently than who I truly am. For a long time I would only use my social media rarely and only share things that I thought were important or funny. Going back to my original encounter with social media after Jack Jablonskis injury, I definitely used it as a comfort zone. It helped me validate my feelings it was a way to feel accepted without having to disclose how I was feeling to the people around me. I can agree that being a women you are supposed to be quiet, petite, nice and modest. I felt this way my whole life, especially with a father who always said I was going into the monastery to become a nun.

It wasn’t until college, when I found my feminist voice that I decided, I did not want to be this modest and fake women. I did not want to wear this mask anymore, I wanted to use my social media for the truth and speak my mind. After using social media and gaining support from women and men around me, I started to take a stand in my everyday life. It can be so much easier to express myself online where I don’t have to deal with people’s backlash right away and to my face. It is a learning process but social media helps that transition because you know you are not alone.

Using the article, Social Media Movements that Prove Girl Power is the Greatest Force in the World by Angelia Roggie on AdLibbing.org shows me that I am not alone on my stance to use social media as a voice. There are many campaigns used online that are helping give women a chance to stand up and fight against the things that are causing their oppression. There are many hashtags within the article such as #SheInspiresMe #LeanIn and #MeToo. All of these online hashtags are meant to help women speak up against the social norms we are placed in.

Not only did I find that female’s use social media as a voice, males use social media as a way to express emotion. According to a time.com article posted in 2014 titled, What Men Share on Social Media but not with you, men will use social media to express emotional sides of themselves so that there is less backlash. They tend to share more personal things online because it is a sense of security and most men do not know how to have these kind of emotional connections in person. This ties into the social construct of what a man is and who a man should be. One thing a man is never supposed to be is emotional. It is no secret that both genders use social media as a safe space and hopefully someday it will transfer over into everyday life, where everyone feels comfortable using their voice and being emotional with those around them, face-to-face.

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This study was conducted in April of 2011 by the Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology. The research was done by professors from Hacettepe University, G. Mazman, Y. Usluel and A. Turkey. They aimed to dissect the different ways that males and females use Facebook by sending out an online survey to 870 Facebook users. These researchers defined social media as a “body of applications that augment group interaction and shared spaces for collaboration, social connections, and aggregates information exchanges in a web-based environment”. Throughout the research they found that social media use can be categorized into four different purposes; maintaining existing relationships, making new relationships, academic purposes and following a specific agenda.

74.4% of participants were ages 18 to 25 and 73.6% were students attending university. Of the 870 surveys, 863 were returned and of people who participated, 443 were male and 420 were females. The survey created consisted of two parts, the first portion was to collect demographic information on the participants and the second portion had questions with optional answers that ranged from 1 (never) to 5 (always), using a five point Likert scale. Once the data was collected an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to uncover the underlying structure of the variables in the survey. There were twelve questions, each contributing to different overarching concepts of why people use social media. For example, the statement “I use Facebook to find my old friends” belongs to, maintaining existing relationships where “I use Facebook to support my academic work” contributes to academic usage.

This data was then used in a t-test and that is the picture added below. In this table you can see the values given to each usage purpose based on gender (male and female). From the table, researchers concluded that females use Facebook for “maintaining existing relationships”, “academic usage” and “following agenda” more than men. Men use Facebook for “making new relationship’s” more than women. These results suggest that women have social media to keep in touch with old friends and not make new ones, researchers conclude this may be because they do not like to disclose information about themselves to strangers. They also tied this reasoning into the social construct of what is expected of a woman and how she is supposed to act in relation to what is expected of men. This study found that males are (likely) more social than females based on the fact that they use social media to meet new friends and share common interests.

This research was done in April of 2011 and only includes people who used Facebook. Social media has grown into a world of its own and more studies need to be conducted to be sure of the differences in social media usage. At this point in time, you may even be able to conduct research on how different generations use different social media(s). It will be interesting to see what the future has in store for us as we continue to grow and have a place to speak our minds.

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My topic for these Tumblr posts is going to approach gender and the use of social media. The first social media site to ever be created was called Six Degrees and it was released in 1997. It was a website where people made profiles and could connect with other people. Popular sites such as LinkedIn and Youtube came out in the early 2000’s while Twitter and Facebook were made available to the whole world in 2006.

As of today, two-thirds of Americans, roughly 65%, use social media. Young adults that are ages 18-24 are the most likely to use social media and 90% of them do. Compared to the 35% of people above the age of 65 which tripled from 11% in 2010. Women are more likely to use social networking sites then men. Though the difference is slim, 68% of women use social media compared to 62% of men. There is no breakdown of how they use their platforms, just the statistics of how many users there are based on gender.

On twitter it was found that females tended to have a larger following then men. There are a lot of different reasons why this is possible, one being that women tend to be more open on social media. While they express their emotions to the internet, they attract people who can relate which can cause more followers. The ratio of followers for women is 1717 compared to 643 followers for men. One the list of the top ten most followed twitter accounts, five of them are women, three are men and two are companies. This just goes to show the kind of pull women can have on the internet (twitter in specific).

Within a Pew report on social media use, women were more likely to post their own photos and videos over the internet than men were. Not only were they posting their own pictures or “selfies”, they also posted outside videos and pictures from the internet and/or youtube. This is another assumption as to why women have a greater following online because they are able to use all the resources on the web to interact with people that follow them.

The reason women thrive more on social media has many different theories behind it. One being that it is a safe place for them to express their emotions without ridicule. I can say that this is why I personally thrive on my twitter account because I let it all out. I don’t hold anything back and my followers love that about me.

RESOURCES:

http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/

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All About Me (#1)

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My family didn’t get internet connection until I was a freshman or sophomore in high school. Club Penguin was where I reigned and spent most of my free time. As I got older and received a smart phone, I took a strong stance against using social media. It wasn’t until Jack Jablonski became paralyzed during a high school hockey game that I took to social media. Having two younger brothers who played hockey this situation rocked me to my core and I didn’t know how to handle it. I felt so silly, feeling so sad and hopeless for a boy I didn’t even know but when I got on social media I realized I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. There was a lot of love and support from all different people, all over Minnesota (and some outside of MN).

Once I opened my mind to social media I realized how funny and informational it can be. I started to follow all different kinds of accounts including some feminist, LGBTQ+ and anti-racist pages. I continue to use social media this way. I have a good mix of funny and useless memes but I also can get informed on what is going on in the world around me. I know that social media is something I will have to give up one day because I don’t want to neglect my family and what they have going on because I have my eyes glued to a screen. For now it is an easy escape and that is what I have noticed for a lot of people my age.

I have made numerous friends through my use of twitter and Instagram. When I share my views and experiences with a funny twist on how I approach it, people tend to be drawn to that. When they can relate to the story being told or the emotions being felt, they feel a sense of comfort and stability, which I have experienced first-hand multiple times when using social media. I feel as though my twitter is full of women who are very liberal and agree with my viewpoints and a few men scattered in there as well. Most of the men that I know who use social media only use it to see funny memes, keep up with sport highlights or follow their favorite modern rapper. Is it a coincidence that all the men I know that do this are white, middle-class?

I don’t want to be one to jump to conclusions but I know that the LGBTQ+ community uses social media more than heterosexuals because it is a safe space for them. Though it may sound a bit reaching, I think this can go for most groups when we evaluate how different people use social media. I want to evaluate the use of social media by different oppressed groups because, like other areas of the patriarchy, there may very well be a pattern.