Assignment #2

As of right now I could not think of any more ways that the internet could provide more people with a voice. Some examples that come to mind are Facebook, Myspace and YouTube. The internet allows a variety of people to show who they are and what they believe. When I first made an account on Facebook they didn’t allow people that were still in high school to sign up, but now after having an account for only a year and a half, my little brother has one and he’s only fourteen years old and still in middle school. Also, when I first got a Facebook, they didn’t have all of the special applications and extra things they have now. The internet is changing at such a fast pace that who knows how people will be able to express themselves online within the next year. Myspace also advanced at a quick pace. These sites are a good way for people to network. I know that on Myspace there are a lot of bands that have an account so that they can keep up with their fans and post pictures and songs so that the fan can interact. Another example of a way that people can express what they have to say is blog sites. Quite a few of my friends write for sports blog sites and I couldn’t really think of any other way to truly express yourself than by writing it and posting it on a website. My friends write on important issues in the world of sports and people that read them comment about how they agree or disagree. For someone who would like to pursue a career in writing, blogging is a cheap and easy way to start. You don’t have to pay to post a blog and you don’t have to worry about hiring anybody to help you. Even by commenting on a blog I believe you have a voice on the internet, because you are expressing your reaction to what the author of the blog said and you are letting your ideas be known to the whole world.
I do not think that corporate domination will take over and limit public dialog, because if they were going to do it, they wouldn’t have allowed for these sites to grow so much in the first place. We live in America, where people speak their opinions and aren’t afraid to do so. Whether the outcome is positive or negative, no corporation will limit what people have to say. If a corporation tries to control what people do, the people just find another way to do it. For example file sharing sites like LimeWire. I don’t know how many times I heard that people were going to go to jail if they illegally downloaded music off of the internet, but I know that I have been doing it and nothing has happened to me. If one site gets in trouble for doing it, another site will emerge and it will continue, because people do not want to pay iTunes $1.00 for every song they want to download when they can download it for free. Corporations will not take over unless they feel an extreme threat, and I do not see that happening in the near future.

Assignment #1

I think that overall, most media content increases your level of media literacy. By most, I mean media located in respected newspapers, magazines and on respected television news programs. These sources tend to give you the facts unlike Us Weekly which gives you gossip about celebrities and make a big deal about pointless topics. If you were to pick up an issue of the USA Today you would not find continuous articles about how a certain female celebrity keeps gaining weight, because in reality she is still skinnier than a normal sized woman. If you were to read TIME magazine you would not open every issue to find pointless gossip that fills each and every page. I’m not saying that some people don’t think that these things are important, because I know they do. I’m saying that if you only read the tabloids and nothing else you are not increasing your media literacy. To increase your media literacy I feel you need to be familiar with more than one source. If you only read the tabloids, then you should try watching the news every night or pick up the business section of the newspaper and read a couple of articles. I feel that you need to be well rounded in order to increase your media literacy and you can’t just stick to one type of media. Technology has become advanced that you can have every aspect of media at your fingertips anytime of the day, so it isn’t very hard to broaden your horizon.
One reason you should be familiar with different forms of media is that you may not be able to portray the same message from a magazine or newspaper article than you would from a commercial or news program. If an article is printed that I describing an event that took place, you might not be able to understand it as well as if you saw the news and there was a video clip of it taking place. This might lead to confusion, because if two people have a discussion about an event and one person read an article and the other watched a clip on the news, the person who watched it might be more educated about the story. Not only did this person hear the news, but they saw the event take place where the other person did not. If one person were to read an article about a certain celebrity in the Life section in the USA Today and another read one on the same celebrity is Us Weekly, the person who read Us Weekly could be miss informed, because the articles tend to stretch the truth and contain gossip. If these two people were to have a conversation about this celebrity, the person who read Us Weekly could give the other false information and not know it is not the truth.
There are many different forms of media in the world to choose from. As an educated college student you should be able to choose which forms give you truthful information and help increase your media literacy, like the World News and USA Today and which forms confuse you and decrease the chances of becoming more literate, like Us Weekly and other tabloids.