Day 5

We were sitting at lunch today and my friend Ben walks up and sits down with his food and a USA Today. He starts eating and reading the paper and a minute or two later mutters under his breath “I don’t care… that’s what the sports section is for.” My friend Stephen who is absolutely obsessed with sports and who is also sitting next to Ben immediately perks up when he hears the word sports and asks Ben what he is talking about. Pointing at the headline “He's back: Tiger rallies to win Arnold Palmer Invitational,” Ben says something about how “we don’t need useless things about sports on the front page when there is more important things in life.” Immediately Stephen gets defensive and the two start bashing each other’s preferred styles of media and the argument eventually ends with Ben calling Stephen a “deushbag.” I thought their skirmish was kind of funny and it made me think about the versatility of the media around us. Illustrated by their fighting, even just one newspaper like USA Today can cater towards a wide audience by printing articles for sub groups like sports-lovers, moms, and businessmen.

Day 4

Today was a Sunday and I already did all my homework so there wasn’t really anything pressing that I had to do. My friends Jana and Stephen were watching TV in Jana’s dorm room so I wandered over and watched a bit with them. When I first came in, they were watching a movie called Nim’s Island and Stephen was complaining loudly about how awful it was. The cast included Jodi Foster and Gerald Butler but even their talent couldn’t make up for the plot. Stephen finally burst out how he couldn’t take it anymore and told us to look up the ratings for it on rottentomatoes.com and we found that it was ranked a five point six out of ten. Every once in awhile the movie would cut out to a commercial break and the station would advertise that the movie 10,000 B.C would be coming on next. Again Stephen complained that he hated that movie so once again we checked rottentomatoes.com to see if it was worth watching and it came up as a three point two out of ten so we didn’t bother watching it. We just put in Mel Brooks' Spaceballs instead (Which is ranked as a six out of ten).

Day 3

Last night we finally had our Mardi Gras and it was a lot of fun. Before it was about to start, we sent two of our members out around campus to do some last minute advertising. One of the guys was riding a bicycle and the other was riding a 5 ft tall unicycle. They both carried beads around there necks and threw them at any and all students that they passed and invited them to come to the party. After the party began, the DJ we hired blared music from 8 o’clock until midnight. As I watched all the people in attendance, I started noticing that during certain songs everyone would flock to the dance floor and during certain songs they would all leave the dance floor. The media pervasiveness impressed me because everyone in attendance seemed to know the majority of the songs and which particular songs are fun to dance to and which songs are not. Because of the constant bombardment from the radio, CDs, and the internet, everyone seemed to be familiar with the same types of music.

Day 2

I am done with classes for the day and I only have one class tomorrow. I am happy to finally be on the home stretch for the weekend. My roommate tells me that she has a test to study for but she has been studying all day so she wants a movie break. We decide to pop in Twilight. I personally think the movie is a tad overrated but I find it interesting that it has half the American teenage girl population obsessed with it. Its author Stephenie Meyer did an impressive job writing just what every girl wants to hear. The control and the power of manipulation that the media has over our lives is astounding. The media always goes for the sensual and the exciting and the more we see it on TV the more we think that the stories the media portrays are the norms. We are slowly letting the media rip out our traditional values and define who we are as men and women and as a culture.

Day 1

I am on the Humphreys Hall Hall Senate and we have been preparing all month for our annual Mardi Gras celebration and tonight we began preparing our advertising. First we made a huge yellow paper banner that we plan to hang up in the union. The banner had Mardi Gras on it in big bright letters and then other details about the even like time and place. We also made sure to add that we would be giving out free t-shirts (which I personally designed) as well as a Wii, and IPOD Nano, and gift certificates. We also painted ads on plywood which we then screwed together and place d at strategic locations around campus. I think it is interesting that media isn’t just all around us, it comes from us. We aren’t just its victims, we are its creators. The media invades are very being in that we all have a message to share with the people around us and we all want to have an effect on out audiences.