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privycommblog3p18-blog · 6 years ago

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Audience Studies (3P18) Blog Post #3

Throughout this blog, I will be discussing how I have been an audience to social media and seen the way it frames stories. I watch as it takes information, manipulates it, and makes people believe things that are both deceiving and ignorant. This happens in all types of media but I find that this happens most specifically when referring to news and politics.

Lately I have been feeling really frustrated while being online. Part of the reason is because I am, more now than ever, realizing how much of a minority opinion I have in comparison to what is being most broadly showcased through social media. This would not be such a big issue if I felt my voice was, in some way, being heard. The problem, is that my opinions are not heard and I can guarantee I am not the only one who feels the way I do, yet I seem to be one of the few people that is willing to stand up against this. Earlier in the year we discussed a topic called spiral of silence which is essentially the idea that people will stay silent when they do not share the opinion of the majority. This not only leads to people’s voices not being heard, but calls into question how democratic our society truly is. I think that a big reason why this could be happening is because of the transfer from “producers” being the dominant producers of content, to “procumers” who are the consumers who are also influencing the production. This is very much related to symbolic patronage which provides one measured example of a way in which audiences now have a greater ability to influence production and industry decision-making (Navar-Gill, 2018). By giving people the ability to control content, we loose the ability to censor what is true and what is not.

Even though I do not agree with the way that our media is evidently one sided, I am still able to understand that in order for producers to be successful and for them to be able to continue putting out their content, they need to be producing for the masses. With this means producing for the dominant ideology in society. This is unfortunate for me because it will in turn make me feel like my opinion is not valid. On the other hand, it is unfortunate for the masses because they are now only being exposed to one side of things which limits their ability to have a fully rounded view of the topic.

Going a little further into my rant about how frustrated I am, I want to talk about the idea of Alchemy. Alchemy is when “A base metal is being transformed into gold, or at least mundane data are being transformed into a virtual currency unit” (Athique, p. 64). This is important in audience studies because it is our ability to create value from our essentially worthless data through aggregation of details. The reason that this relates to my topic, is because it exemplifies the idea that people are able to take useless information that no one is affected by, put a twist on it and make it blow up on the internet framed as something it isn’t. Antique expands on this and is able to relate it to how people use this for advertising, marketing and consumption purposes. Just because I love ranting SO MUCH.. I am going to give a personal experience with this. Two weekends ago, I had the honor of attending the Provincial Conservative Convention in Toronto as a delegate representing Brock. With being a delegate came the responsibility of voting on proposed constitutional amendments and other possible propositions. One of the things that I had the chance to vote on was Policy Resolution R4—Education and Community Safety. Essentially what this was trying to get across was that as of right now, the educational system teaches and promotes “gender identity theory”. If it is nothing but an ideology or theory and not fact, it is not something that the conservative party wants to be taught until it is defined so that there is no confusion to the children who are learning it. If Gender is defined more clearly then the conservative party would fully respect it being taught, but an ideology is not enough for them. When the media got a hold of this policy resolution they went crazy. A big thing that we learn about in our Audience Studies class is the idea of framing, which is “the selection of certain aspects of reality in order to make them more salient in a bid to promote a desired interpretation” (Entman, 1993). With this specific situation, framing is what completely misconstrued the masses. The way that people began to see this story was that Conservatives hate LGBTQ which is not true at all. More specifically I saw a post that a woman made on Facebook as seen bellow. She utilized the theory of Recontextualization which is when gaps are filled in texts by adding in stories or missing scenes (Good, Lecture), She did this by making her own content up to give a false context. When I saw what she wrote, I was filled with rage because I am beyond tired of seeing people who are not educating themselves on topics, becoming prosumers and putting false information out to the world. When people do this, they often use a catchy title and draw people in. The worst part is that people who are using social media are often not interested enough to do research or explore the topic and they believe the headline which is almost always exaugurated and opinionated, not fact. In this situation, the woman is attempting to say that Conservatives are trying to erase people’s existences which is so incredibly far from the intent its actually comical. I attached my response to the post to give you guys an idea of how I tried to interject while staying somewhat respectful.

I believe that the comment I made could add to a potential moral realignment. This is when the original narratives moral universe is inverted. What happens is the villains’ adapt their own stories and become the protagonists (Good, Lecture). By me being respectful and showing her that she can not blabber on, I opened up the doors for her to change perspective and possibly do some further research. I, being the villain here, because I share a different view, could now become the protagonist because I have made a stance that could entice people to look further into me and other things I believe in.

Feeding off of this post, I want to briefly mention “SME” which stands for social media editor’s. Overall, “SMEs emphasized technology and human interest stories while downplaying the conflict and economic impact frames” (Wasike, 2013). Evidently this woman could not be more clear with acting as an SME.Going away from my own example but looking at the topic as a whole, SMEs can relate, especially when talking about politics, the stories that make it big on social media are based entirely on progressive issues relating to people and technology. The second that economic impact is brought in, the story becomes boring or seen as ‘ignorant”. This is why it is so hard to talk about facts online. To quote my favourite political speaker, Ben Shapiro, “Facts don’t care about your feelings”. The reason that I love this quote so much is because I believe that people today are way too hung up on the way that they feel and become micro aggressed by everything that they see to the point that people are ignoring facts to compensate for the way that people feel. This can become dangerous, especially online because it increases the chance for false information to be spread just because it makes people feel good.

During lecture, we discussed data mining and how “The primary motivation of the data-mining process is to create value through the aggregation of details which in their raw form are largely worthless” (Good, Lecture). I find this idea really interesting because often when there is a lot of information on a topic, the pieces that seem the most interesting or shocking become the main focus similar to clickbait. This is done by combining several smaller points to create something bigger. The problem with this is that a lot gets left out and people become uninformed.

At this point I know I have been ranting quite a bit but I want to finish off this rant by discussing a few more issues that really urg me at times.

A big part of the Navar-Gill article was understanding the difference between transformational and affirmational fandom. Transformational fans are primarily those who want to celebrate women, queer or minorities who feel underappreciated by the media (Navar-Gill, 2018). Affirmational Fans are seen as male, white and heterosexual. These are people who are unaware of their own media privileges (Navar-Gill, 2018). Right now, there is a big push in the media to see only the progressive voice, but a question that I must raise is “at what point are we progressive enough, and when are we going to far?”. I understand that transformational and affirmational fans are using generalizations to define them but it bothers me that we are told that being male, white, and heterosexual also means that you are unaware of your privileges. As if it is impossible to have a different opinion. The point I am trying to make here is that this leftist ideology is even in our education system. Refocalization, which is when the focus of the character shifts to secondary or minor characters, is often done to allow minorities and women a chance to be heard (Good, Lecture). It is something that I am happy that has been implemented to allow those voices to be heard. I will not argue that we need to be accepting and celebrate our minorities as the transformational fans do, but I do not think that this should mean hating on affirmational fans as they each serve a different purpose.

My rant is over, but I just want to leave you with something to think about. Please, when you are on social media, do not allow the first thing you read to leave a lasting impression of the topic. Do some research and educate yourself to give yourself your own opinion and a voice. Stand up for yourself when you see people spewing false information and only share factual information.

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