Zoë's Media Blog

Throughout this ongoing assignment, and this class, I have learned a lot about media and my experiences with it in the past and present. I consume a borderline insane amount of media on a daily basis. From the point I wake up, I go on my phone to check Snapchat and Instagram, and then I go on it to watch TV, communicate with people, and do other often useless things on my phone. On average in the past week I have spent 6 hours and 36 minutes on my phone per day, and that’s 13% less than last week. That daily average will realistically only go up during the summer. This constant media makes me procrastinate way too much, makes me get distracted very easily, makes me feel like I need constant stimulation, and makes my work quality a lot lower than what I know I am capable of. Being aware of this high, unhealthy level of media consumption has not affected my use of it at all throughout this semester because for some reason I managed to trick my brain into thinking that it was no bi

As I’m sure you’ve seen somewhere by now, June is pride month. While this month dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community is important and celebrates the impact of LGBTQ+ people on the world, many companies are turning it into a branded holiday. Brands including Nike, JCrew, SoulCycle, McDonalds, H&M, Lululemon, Nordstrom, Adidas, and Bloomingdale’s. Additionally, President Trump tweeted a pro-LGBTQ+ tweet that basically goes against everything he has said about the community in the past. In my opinion, I do not think companies should be taking advantage of the pride month for profit if their proceeds from the products that are pride themed do not go back to the LGBTQ+ community. I think that companies are using this month as a way to gain credibility with their consumers and become viewed as a good, inclusive brand rather than because they truly care about the LGBTQ+ community. And, while not all brands are using this month and pride products for extra publicity, I think that th

Last week, several large media companies made statements addressing the restrictive heartbeat-bill that is being considered in Georgia right now. The companies announced that they would consider pulling out of filming in Georgia if the law was put into effect, something that would greatly affect Georgia’s economy. The companies who joined in with this, as of now, are Netflix, Disney, WarnerMedia, and Comcast’s NBCUniversal. Production companies like Killer Films, Blown Deadline Productions, and Duplass Brothers Productions. If this law makes it through court and gets passed, it would take effect on January 1st, 2020. This law restricts women’s rights over their bodies and their right to choose to keep their baby or not. The law would make it to where women could not abort a fetus after 6 weeks, when a heartbeat can be detected. The problem with this, though, is that this is a mere two weeks late off of a woman’s period, which can be normal for a large number of women with irreg

Earlier this week, youtube Cody Ko was featured on another youtubers channel, Jeff Wittek. He went on Jeff’s channel expecting the usual to happen, Jeff would interview him and they would talk about some personal and funny topics while he got his haircut. This is how the beginning of the video went, but as the haircut came to an end, Jeff had a surprise for Cody: a visit from Jake Paul. Jake Paul is a very controversial youtuber who is more often than not involved in some sort of drama. From lighting his backyard on fire to being awful to his employees, Jake is a complicated and arguably awful person. Seeing as Cody makes videos poking fun at cringy or bad media, Jake has obviously been featured on his channel many times before. So, Jake took that anger from being made fun of (in a light, joking way) and attacked Cody for it. He set up a camera and then used the footage for his own video. In the video, Jake runs up to Cody and tells him he bullies little kids and that he’s an aw

In the film, MissRepresentation , there were many parts that stood out to me, but only one that affected me the most. That part affected me the most was where the film talked about how when young boys see sexualized women or women being less than men in the media, it leads them to treat women that way in real life. While this was not something that I didn't already know, it is still something that hit me because of how much I experience it in my life. This is noy just something that people experience in stories or movies, it is something that affects real people every day. At a young age, from playing video games or watching movies where men abuse and sexualize women, boy will reciprocate those actions onto their female peers. On playgrounds you will see boys being physical to girls, their actions defended by adults by saying it just means that the boy “likes” the girl. But those defensive adults are just another reason that boys grow up continuing to be affected by the media.

In the PBS documentary, Merchants of Cool , the concept of media using a “mook” or a “midriff” to draw in teen viewers is brought up. A “mook” is a character used to draw in teens by appealing to their immature nature. They are usually crude, misogynistic, loud, and angry, and are usually found to be funny by teens. We have a lot of these kinds of characters in the current media landscape and I would say that the best two examples are stand up comedians and youtubers. Not all stand up comedians and youtubers and mooks, but there are definitely a lot of them that are. I do not really watch a lot of stand up comedy because I never know where it is streamed, but I have seen a lot of clips of comedians on Youtube and Instagram as well as seen a few specials that Netflix has put out of stand up comedians acts. The kinds of stand up comedians that I am talking about are ones like Seth Rogan, Kevin Hart, Hasan Minhaj, and Ali Wong. They tend to focus on funny, sexual, or crude things tha

I’m sure you have heard of the huge media company, Buzzfeed. On their various platforms (their website, instagram accounts, youtube channels, twitter accounts, etc.) they put out a variety of different things out there. They report on important topics that a brand like CNN would report on, but they also post about more trivial things like DIY’s, challenges, story telling, and people testing out tiny houses. One of the more addicting and unimportant things that Buzzfeed puts out there is their quizzes. Buzzfeed quizzes have their own tab on their website and I am fairly certain that it is impossible to do every single one of them. There are so many ranging from titles like “Pick 5 Pizza Toppings and We’ll Tell You What Your Most Desirable Quality Is” to “Are You Snobby, Introverted, Or Just Sad?”. These quizzes are very unnecessary, so why are they so popular? It all comes down to how Buzzfeed markets these quizzes. I imagine at some point, Buzzfeed launched their first handful of q

I watch Youtube an almost unhealthy amount. I tend to watch it while I do homework or while I am procrastinating doing said homework, so I see a lot of advertisements each day. One ad that had recently caught my eye for a number of reasons is the new Olay skin care commercial featuring several empowered women. In the ad, Youtube star and activist Lily Singh is the narrator of the ad and throughout its entirety gives a small motivational speech telling women that they are not “too anything,” that instead they are just the right amount of whatever they want. Then, multiple other strong female influencers come on screen dancing, smiling, and being casual, showing off what they stand for (be it body positivity or their stereotype-breaking career). I would say that this ad appeals most to a need for affiliation and a need for autonomy. Although affiliation and autonomy are basically two opposites, they work together in this ad to make it impactful to its target audience: women. The

For months I have been seeing advertisements and commercials for the new movie about Ted Bundy, “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile”. I have a passion for watching crime shows and movies, especially on my Netflix account that I use almost daily. So, naturally I have been counting down the days until this movie came out on Netflix. The day after it’s release, I began to watch it while I redid my bedroom and in this post I am going to explore my thoughts on the movie in how it made me feel, how the advertisements for the movie reflected the final product, and why this controversial movie was made the way it was in the current political climate. While I actively enjoy watching and reading true crime related things, each one that I take on still continues to add more and more caution to my life. This movie, for example, went in to detail about Ted Bundy’s life and how “normal” it all seemed despite him being capable of murdering over 30 young women and injuring many others. Bun

In The Persuaders the marketing concept of Lovemarks are brought up, essentially a company building up love and respect with its clients so that that client will always see that brand as something positive just by instinct. This is the marketing technique that I feel I have the strongest connection to. I have several brands that I believe are lovemarks for me including Converse, Annie’s Mac n Cheese, Clif Bars, and Kanken. The biggest brand that I feel shows the concept of love marks in my life and the lives of so many others is Ikea. In my experience, I have grown up with Ikea furniture. I remember from an early age getting to go to the ikea store and just loving getting to walk through the store and pick out which staged room was mine for the day. And then of course there was the kids section which was full of all kinds of toys that I begged to go to the entire time we walked around. Then after that there was the cafeteria where I could get spaghetti and meatballs with a classic

  Earlier this week, my mom got a notification on her phone for a New York Times article while we were watching a movie together. She looked down at her phone to see if it was anything worth reading later, and upon reading it, lifted up her phone to show me. The article is titled “How an Abuse Victim’s Nerve and a Hidden iPhone Led to the Arrest of a Sundance Founder. I found this article to be significant in a number of different ways. First, both me and my mom were not that shocked that a person of power had been outed for sexually assaulting not just one, but two young people. At this point in the whole movement to allow everyoe to speak their truth and come forward about sexual assault in a safe environment has shed light on the truth behind so many people in power that at this point it does not suprise me at all. I find this to be extremely upsetting because I do not enjoy living in an evnironment where sexual assault cases are so common that hearing about them doesn’t increa

Brandy Melville is a popular Swiss apparel brand aimed towards young women. They are one of my favorite brands to shop at and I have spent more money than I am proud of shopping on their website and in their stores. They are a brand that has a generally positive connotation in my mind, I think of their products being of a generally high quality, and their website and stores are very put together and sophisticated. Aside from all of those positive thing about the brand, though, I do have a big problem with the company's advertising. And I don’t mean the pop up ads they pay for other websites to display or the influencers that they send packages to to show off their new products, I mean the models they use to display their clothes. Brandy Melville tends to use a wide range of girls on their website to model their clothes and then they will have influencers or models send in pictures of themselves wearing Brandy Melville outfits to post and promote their Instagram page. Again,

On April 22, 192 countries join in recognizing and celebrating Earth Day. This holiday is celebrated by more than a billion people every year and is the largest secular holiday in the world. Despite our apparent love for this Earth, it is dying because of our pollution. The human race is leaving irreversible marks on the planet and we are running out of time to right enough wrongs to even have a planet to call home in the near future. Unfortunately for our planet and for us, though, many people have different opinions on, first of all, is our planet is even in jeopardy, and second of all what we can do to help. Two articles from two very different media outlets published articles on Earth Day and the messages each one conveys and the language used are drastically different. The first article I came across was one published by the media outlet, Fox News titled “Rich Wilkerson, Sr.: On Earth Day, remember that taking care of God’s creation is not a political issue.” Fox News is a

Media is something that in the lives of me and my peers is almost unavoidable. I interact with the media for the majority of the time that I spend awake in a day. From the time I wake up and check my phone for notifications that I missed while I was asleep to the time I go to bed and plug in my phone right next to me, moments after I check for notifications one last time. Since media is such a huge part of my life, the different types of media I interact with effect me in how I think, act, and feel. There are three main places I interact with media the most on a daily basis: Snapchat, Instagram, and VSCO. Snapchat is one of the forms of media I used the most in my everyday life. I am constantly sending pictures of myself and what I am doing back and forth with friends which had both a negative and positive impact on me. Negatively, constantly showing people what you’re doing or what you look like and seeing what other people who you respect are doing or look like can make you strive t