Mass Communication

As the Red classes prepare for our test tomorrow, I thought I would post about one of the most important topic that we went over so far this year.  Mass Communication. Mass communication requires technology so it has the potential for everyone on Earth to see the post/song/video at any point in space and time.

There are Five Steps of Mass Communication
1. Stimulus- Thinking and coming up with an idea
2. Encoding- Projecting the idea you were thinking
3. Transmission- The idea traveling through space and time
4. Decoding- The idea being processed (ex. decoding literacy in a book or picking up a frequency on the radio)
5. Internalization- Retaining or understanding the idea

There are also things that can get in the way of this five step process.
Filters (interference with decoding)
-physical: Not being able to read a book because you are blind
-informational: Not being able to understand a song sung in French
-physiological: Not wanting to understand the information given

Impediments (interference with encoding)
-sematic noise: Not being able to hear a song because of a jackhammer outside your window
-channel noise: Losing wifi in the middle of reading an article
-environmental Noise: a little sibling standing in front of the tv

Hope I helped some of my classmates with this overview of Mass Communication.

Binary Models Lecture: Hot-Cold Models

As I pour over my notes for our upcoming test, I was reminded of my favorite lecture we have had this year. The lecture on Binary Models. Now I know that this topic seems kind of boring, but it just really clicks with me. But out of all of them, the hot and cold entertainment was the hardest for me to remember (yet I have no idea why), so I thought I would post about it to jog my memory.

Hot entertainment requires your full attention. Like a book. You can't read, watch TV, and listen to the radio at the same time. But if you can, I would love to see it sometime. Even if you told me you could do it, I would be highly surprised if you could really take it what you were reading, follow a plot line, and sing the same verses constantly.

 Cool entertainment, you don't have to be focused on that single thing to fully understand it. Like TV, you don't need to watch the news all day long to get your information. You can check in periodically, because chances are they are just saying the same thing over and over again. 

Now there are  exceptions to these rules, especially in cool entertainment. Some TV shows or movies, really do need your full attention. For example, if you were watching Cloud Atlas and you decided to leave the room for five minutes, when you came back you would be at an utter loss. Cloud Atlas has so many different points of view that you could get confused even if you didn't leave the room.

Classmate Blog

One of my classmates, Alyssa had a very interesting post on an important subject in one of our lectures: Conglomeration. I thought it was intriguing to see that she was sort of split down the middle, not being able to decide if conglomeration is good or bad. She showed both sides of whether it was good or bad, so potentially the reader could decide what they thought on the issue. I also really liked how she summed up our lecture very nicely. It was helpful for me because as I study for our upcoming test, I could see an abbreviated version of conglomeration, which will help me remember.

http://fhblove.blogspot.com --Take a look!

Classmate Blog

Anyone who actually reads my blog, should seriously visit the link below. The author, Lauren, just posted a really well rounded media critique. It talks about the banning of children under 16 to enter beauty pageants in France and it being on the website of an American site. Her argument is very valid and I agree with her all the way! It seems like an newsworthy(ish) event if you lived France, but when you live in Louisville, Kentucky this piece of news really is not going to effect you. She made good reference to the Seven Basic Yardsticks of Journalism and has an interesting perspective.
Check it out-- http://laurenrose01.blogspot.com

Media Critique 1

Over the weekend there was an odd and intriguing headline on Fox New’s home webpage. The article was titled “Florida boy, 7, finds ancient canoe while scuba diving”. The article was about a boy who was scuba diving with his grandfather and together, over the course of several days,  were able to uncover this canoe and bring it to the surface. Many scientific officials and archaeologists went to see the canoe at Owen Lake. They determined that the canoe dated back to prehistoric times and Julia Byrd, one of the senior archaeologists, noted that these types of discoveries are the kinds they can really learn from.

Though one can appreciate the interesting historical aspect of this article, it seems to break one of the Seven Basic Yardsticks of Journalism: Actually being newsworthy. This story is considered a peripheral or a human interest topic, so why would it be on the homepage of an international news corporation? With all the things going on in the world, why was this particular story chosen over say, the molasses spill in Hawaii. The spill in Hawaii is going to affect the environment and people there, in possibly major ways, over a long period of time. Meanwhile, the story about this prehistoric canoe may only affect a few scientists. Now there could be some ground breaking information that they could take away from analyzing this canoe, but what are really the chances of that? This story will not have a stretched out and direct effect over the course of the next six months, the canoe itself may be sitting in a museum warehouse, as you read this, just gathering dust. The actual impact is very little, and one could go as far as saying it has no impact at all. It appears that Fox News was the only national/international news corporation that reported on this event. There are a few local news companies in Florida that had information on it, but even then, they were not on the homepage.

It is obvious to see that this story is like many, where it is only for fluff and filler. I understand that any and every news company is going to have some fluff, but does it really have to be on the front page?

Music Lecture

So on Friday in class, was I the only one who just loved the lecture? I'm a huge lover of music, but there was a lot about that lecture I had never heard before. Like that news used to be spread in song that travelled from town to town. And I thought it was really cool to hear about the progression of music as technology became more advanced. In the early days of music, there probably wasn't a ton of variety, you just listen to what was there. But after there could be recordings of music, things got more diverse. I really like how Miller can associate things that happened then, to things that are happening now. Sometimes I think certain people get really bored by sitting and listening, but it is probably my favorite class. He actually tells us information worth knowing and that we will actually use outside of school. I'm just already having a ton of fun in J+C!