Initial Ideas and Definations

Image Analysis

Laura Callaglion

The illustration shows a girl making track for celebrities, by searching on the Internet, reading a magazine and putting some poster on the wall. The image looks busy with so many information about celebrities around her. The celebrity-obsessed world and popular culture have long been associated with youth. ‘Culture, especially popular culture, into the primary educational site in which youth learn about themselves and the larger world’ (Giroux, H. A. 2000) Pop culture enable youth to understand and participate in the representations that help to construct their identities. It affects the way teenagers think of themselves, how they connect with others. Teenage are the main group to follow and make pop culture and also they have a strong ability to accept new things. Which makes the pop culture with a strong inducement influence young people's traditional values and moral consciousness. As the backbone of future social development, the selection and judgment of pop culture by adolescents will also affect the development and trend of the whole social culture.

In addition, self-definition plays an important role in every teenager’s maturation. Self-definition can be defined as the way you see yourself. Celebrities can provide benchmarks with which teenagers pin their self-definition. Popular culture is not only about media; it is about identity, commodities and their connection with education. In fact, the study of popular culture assists youth, and all of us, in being less constructed, more constructing and allows us to see the obstacles in our path towards a more democratic and egalitarian society (Reynolds, W. M. (2012),

Female role in media

Tate Modern

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/guerrilla-girls-do-women-have-to-be-naked-to-get-into-the-met-museum-p78793

This is one of thirty posters published in a  portfolio entitled Guerrilla Girls Talk Back by the group of anonymous American female artists who call themselves the Guerrilla Girls. Tate’s copy is number twelve in the  edition of fifty.

Since their inception in 1984 the Guerrilla Girls have been working to expose sexual and racial discrimination in the art world, particularly in New York, and in the wider cultural arena. The group’s members protect their identities by wearing gorilla masks in public and by assuming pseudonyms taken from such deceased famous female figures as the writer Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) and the artist Frida Kahlo (1907-54). They formed in response to the International Survey of Painting and Sculpture held in 1984 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition included the work of 169 artists, less than 10% of whom were women. Although female artists had played a central role in experimental American art of the 1970s, with the economic boom of the early 1980s in which artwork prices rose steeply, their presence in museum and gallery exhibitions diminished dramatically. Dubbing themselves the ‘conscience of the art world’, in 1985 the Guerrilla Girls began a poster campaign that targeted museums, dealers, curators, critics and artists who they felt were actively responsible for, or complicit in, the exclusion of women and non-white artists from mainstream exhibitions and publications. 

Word vomit

Liza Donnelly

Triangulation &Harrard Referencing

My quote is 'Modern-day pop culture is a mass culture, spread widely through the mass media and mass communications technologies. Pop culture would not have become so widespread without the partnership that it has always had with the mass media.'- Danesi, M. Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives. Lanham, USA: Rowman and Littlefield.

This essay is discussing the negative effect of mass media in society to people. Firstly, what is culture? The word culture suggests ‘a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group.’ It can also refer to ‘the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activities.’ Culture plays an important part in how human societies communicate with each other. ‘An obvious starting point in any attempt to define popular culture is to say that popular culture is simply culture which is widely favored or well-liked by many people.’

The Internet provides us with infinite amounts of information, drastically impact our mind. Our screen always filled with overlapping windows, we follow them, chase them and discuss them. An hour passed in a flash, but in the end, we cannot remember any of the information. This world has a dizzy feeling, it is colourful but be amazed at the same time. The Internet makes the world smaller; we can know the instant news quickly. The mass media has been deeply combined with the whole society, which has become an important public opinion carrier, the carrier of information, the carrier of culture and a major cultural existence. The mass media quickly spread, wide coverage, strong penetrability, and for the decision of the government publicity, social ethics construction and for the people's values and way of life of remodeling have not underestimated the influence.

In all the impact of various media, the most controversial topic is the Internet Network to the teenager. Mass media is a ‘double-edged sword.' Teens outside the world are full of curiosity, eager to get new knowledge, understanding of new information, becoming a member of the social identity, associate with others and express their thoughts and feelings. So they became the most enthusiastic readers of modern mass media because it is the way they think of themselves. For example, people try to seek their identity by changing the look of themselves to be like supermodels in the television or magazine. Mass media can also provide negative feelings and information. For example, violence which can lead to some illegal activities. Research by psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann, Leonard Eron, and others starting in the 1980s found that children who watched many hours of violence on television when they were in elementary school tended to show higher levels of aggressive behavior when they became teenagers. The report and a follow-up report in 1982 by the National Institute of Mental Health identified these major effects of seeing violence on television:

-Children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others.

-Children may be more fearful of the world around them.

-Children may be more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways toward other.

Therefore it is important to have a self-maintaining mind, keep a cool head,

Not only when we were dealing with violence on media but also some other negative information like fake news and the spread of misinformation, never blindly follow the media.

Patricia Greenfield says‘’ Most visual media are real-time media that do not allow time for reflection, analysis, or imagination,’’. People receive tons of information, the media is more and more cater to readers, so that people can only read what they want to know, but they forget to stop and think. "Critical thinking can be accelerated multifold by the right technology." On the other hand, "The technology distraction level is accelerating to the point where thinking deeply is difficult. We are overwhelmed by a constant barrage of devices and tasks." Worse: "We increasingly suffer from the Google syndrome. People accept what they read and believe what they see online is fact when it is not." By Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University of Science and Technology. In today’s Information Age, all kinds of high-tech products in our life. As people more and more rely on their electronic devices to solve problems, it makes them have difficulty concentrating, memory loss and the ability of humans to think for themselves will surely deteriorate. "Reading enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media such as video games and television do not," Greenfield explains. "It develops imagination, induction, reflection, and critical thinking, as well as vocabulary." So now, reading is a prerequisite for success in life. It is not the best opinion for people to solve a problem, but it can make us think, constructs rich self’s inner worlds and the culture life. The articles from media are fragmentation reading; it is hard to learn and think deeply. There are many articles on media but most of them people just give a hurried and cursory glance, because the reader is more and more impatient. There are many authors, but just a few can be remembered. Look back in times when we read a book; some fantastic article remains fresh in the memory.

Bibliography:

Danesi, M. Popular Culture: Introductory Perspectives. Lanham, USA: Rowman and Littlefield.

Giroux, H. A. (2000), impure acts: The practical politics of cultural studies, New York

Anderson, C.A., Ihori, Nobuko, Bushman, B.J., Rothstein, H.R., Shibuya, A., Swing, E.L., Sakamoto, A., & Saleem, M. (2010). Violent Video Game Effects on Aggression, Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior in Eastern and Western Countries: A Meta-Analytic Review

Samuel Greengard, https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2009/7/32082-are-we-losing-our-ability-to-think-critically/fulltext

Triangulation & Harrard Referencing (development)

-‘Modern-day pop culture is a mass culture, spread widely through the mass media and mass communications technologies. Pop culture would not have become so widespread without the partnership that it has always and with the mass media.’

-As the development the Internet, today we live in the high-tech world. We can have access to all kinds of high-tech products such as television, newspapers, and the network to send us a lot of information, they all belong to the media.

-The Internet makes the world smaller, we can know the instant news quickly. 

The mass media has been deeply combined with the whole society, which has become an important public opinion carrier, the carrier of information, the carrier of culture and a major cultural existence. In all the influence of various media, the most controversial topic is the Internet Network to the teenager.

-The mass media quickly spread, wide coverage, strong penetrability, and for the decision of the government publicity, social ethics construction and for the people's values and way of life of remodeling have not underestimated the influence, especially for the teenager. Mass media is a ‘double-edged sword’. Teenagers outside the world are full of curiosity, eager to get new knowledge, understanding of new information, becoming a member of the social identity, so they became the most enthusiastic readers of modern mass media.

-This essay is the effect of pop culture in mass media in society to youth people. Firstly we need to ask; what is culture? The word culture suggests ‘a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group.’ It can also refer to ‘the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activities.’ Culture plays an important part in how human societies communicate with each other. ‘An obvious starting point in any attempt to define popular culture is to say that popular culture is simply culture which is widely favored or well-liked by many people.’

-Nowadays, whatever happened people always post it on media, let people notice. The direction of public opinion will influence the court judgment to some extent. In fact, people always make a judgement by moral standards but not everyone understands the law.

-Providing convenience to society is one of the positive effects of popular culture.

-Promoting the advancement of society is another positive influence of popular culture.

-‘’ Most visual media are real-time media that do not allow time for reflection, analysis, or imagination,’’--Patricia Greenfield

( Danesi, M. Popular culture: Introductory perspectives. Lanham, USA: Rowman and Littlefield.

Giroux, H. A. (2000), impure acts: The practical politics of cultural studies, New York

Storey, 2006.4

Strinati, 2004.6

Macedo, D. and Steinberg, S. R. (2007), Media literacy: A reader, New York: Peter Lang.

Reynolds, W. M. (2012),

‘Iron Man democracy: Militainment and democratic possibilities,’ in A. Abdi and P. R. Carr (eds), Educating for democratic consciousness: Counter-hegemonic possibilities, New York: Peter Lang.)

https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/internet/fake-news-conspiracy-theories-journalism-research