Doing the Media Log this semester
has made me look at advertising and mass communication in a different way. I don’t really read the newspaper very much, but I’ve
watched a lot of television and movies in my life and I definitely use the
Internet. Advertising in the media is everywhere, so much so that we are hardly
even aware when ads are bombarding us. It’s like even product placement in
movies is advertising and we’re so used to seeing it that we don’t even stop to
think about it.
Mostly after doing these logs I
feel like we shouldn’t waste our time on very much of the media. But, in a way,
I’m kind of interested in looking at ads now to see who the ads are focused on
and what techniques and appeals they are using to win us over. These logs have definitely made me think more
about what media I’m consuming, especially with ads that are directed at people
like me.
I hope this will make me a better
consumer. I hope that I will look at ads now and wonder if I really need these
products. I feel smarter about the ways of media after this and I noticed this
as the semester progressed. On my first couple of entries I really had to think
hard about the ads, but it got easier as I did more, and I started seeing the
techniques more quickly.
What would be good, I think, is for
more people to learn about advertising so that they aren’t such easy marks. It
seems like ads directed at kids, for example, are really powerful because young
kids actually believe the things the ads say about the products.
One of the areas we discussed that
really stuck with me was about ethical decision-making and the test cases we
studied. I hope in the future that I will think about some of those when I am
considering buying something or I am drawn to a particular ad. I like the Role
Exchange Test, for example, because I think it’s a good idea to put yourself in
someone else’s shoes if you’re trying to figure out what decision should be
made.
Overall, media literacy is really
important and we should probably start learning about it much earlier in
school.
