Veterans Day

I celebrated veterans day with my roommate. He recently ended his contract with the Navy. We celebrate Veterans Day because we need to honor all those who fought while serving our country in the military. We celebrate Veterans day because we honor the valuable people who did their part in helping to make the USA a better and safer place for us to live. We celebrate veterans day because, the date November 11, originally celebrated the anniversary of the official end of World War I on that date in 1918 (commemoration of the armistice that ended World War I). In 1954 it was renamed from Armistice Day to Veteran's Day, honoring both fallen and living military servicemen and servicewomen. 

Will Evolving Forms of Journalism Be an Improvement?

After researching, reading, and thinking about it I decided that evolving forms of journalism will not be an improvement and it will actually cause more of a mess. For example, now-a-days twitter, blogs, and facebook are all new forms of journalism, but these all are very common ways of misleading and untrue sources of news. Participatory journalism is an kind of network at the hands of a professionals and amateurs, or journalists and citizens, and users and producers benchmarked is called commons based peer production. A lot of the time people will post things on their websites without actually knowing or having information to back the truth. When this happens people then read or see the false information and will believe it, then pass it on causing problems for the real truth to be discovered or reported by actual news reporters. Also issue 10 asks us to talk about how journalism can be improved.  Journalism has so many different forms that they never seem to have the same story. I feel that when I turn on the TV to watch the evening news each station has a different view and opinion about the story they're covering, which makes it very difficult for the viewer, me, to follow what is really going on in the world. Whenever i open up my yahoo homepage, the top news will be about random stories and sometimes top important events. In some ways evolving forms of journalism has made an improvement, for example, the speed at which we get our information can be amazingly fast. Instead of waiting till we get home to turn on the news or waiting the next day to read it in the newspaper we can get mobile updates straight to our phones and computers. Even though these evolving forms of technology have made our information easier and faster to obtain I would still prefer to wait and get the real story about what is really going on and make sure the journalist and reporters are positive about what they are relaying to the public. Hopefully, journalism will return to its roots and start reporting stories with more precision and accuracy, but with so many different forms of journalism I can only see this problem getting worse. Fake news = real news.

Is Advertising good for Society?

Advertising is good for society because I believe that advertisements are informative for consumers on what they should know about stuff. After reading both John Calfee and Dinyar Godrej’s opinion and answer to the question, is advertising good for society, They made a few interesting points. Calfee’s main focus was how consumers benefit from ads and how they can learn about certain important issues. Godrej’s main point was that advertisements basically cause anxiety towards consumers because they stress on the idea that if they don’t buy the products shown in ads, they are making a huge mistake. Something that stood out after reading this issue is that Calfee had many more facts, information, and examples in why advertising is good for society and Godrej had only three main points. One of Calfee’s main ideas that I agree with is that individuals can learn about important issues in the world through ads and the example that he used repeatedly is the issue of health. Calfee stated that “advertising is a tool for communicating information,” and what better way to inform the public on a health issue then through advertisements. The example that Calfee used is how the Kellogg Corporation, a cereal brand did a campaign with the National Cancer Institute that focused on the idea that by eating Kellogg bran cereal people can prevent cancer because according to the NCI, fiber prevents cancer, and Kellogg’s cereal only has nine grams of fiber per serving. I thought this was very interesting because one, this ad was done over twenty years ago and Kellogg cereal still mentions how they have less fiber then other cereal brands, and secondly, the ad showed that cancer is a serious issue in the world, and by doing so (eating fiber) people can prevent cancer. The only main point that I found interesting from Godrej’s research is the idea of how advertisements make us question our choices when buying a certain product or before making certain decisions in our lives. Overall, Godjej made a good point by saying that advertisements can make consumers indecisive when buying a product, but on the other end, advertisements could also point us in the right direction in buying the right product for ourselves.

Hate Speech Video

Hate Speech Video

This is for entertainment purposes only. The views expressed are not the views of the speaker.

Music, Politics and Society.

Music, and politics in today's society are connected. After listening to a couple of the songs on the class website list, I noticed that most of the songs were made during times of unrest. People right music about stuff that is happening in their daily lives. Some of the songs were from the civil rights era. The songs talked about standing up for what is right. Black people we being treated like second-class citizens and the music reflected this. Other songs talked about wars. The sight of anti-war protesters being arbitrarily arrested disturbed Marvin Gaye. So him and a guy named Benson coined some lyrics. This song gained much popularity during the time. I do believe music is a strong medium to spread a message. When people feel strongly about a topic, they will spread the message. This can be seen by the occupy Wall Street campaign. It has gained so traction because the message is being spread. Pretty soon people will begin to write songs about it.