Meaning

Words are like blank sheets of paper. The paper will remain blank until we put something on it. They do not have meaning until we give them meaning. We take advantage of meaning. For instance, a chair is a seat, especially for one person, usually having four legs for support and a rest for the back and often having rests for the arms. Someone else who doesn’t understand our interpretation of a chair may think a chair is a type of footstool. The chapter was talking about meanings. Different things may mean different things to different people. To a florist, flowers may be beautiful natural creations, but to me it’s just another plant with a foul odor.

I agree that people have shared definitions for things, like in the United States, we know that a stop light has 3 colors (red, green, and yellow) and we know what each color means. But when a person send a message, their message has its own meaning, but that doesn’t mean the receiver is going to understand what the sender meant. The receiver is going to understand the message in their own way. And with sending messages, sometimes the message gets misunderstood and we have to correct it saying, “That’s not what I meant.” If a person was trying to really understand, they would look for confirmation by asking questions. Misinterpretations comes from words we choose to represent the ideas we have in our heads. There are so many words in the world, you have to select the best words to explain the message you’re trying to send. So it can be the sender’s fault, also, if the receiver doesn’t understand the message.

The reason I like writing is because you can hide messages and challenge your reader to attempt to understand what you’re trying to say. Not only do writers do this, songwriters, musicians, artist, and actors. We do our art to communicate. We use it to send a message for others to understand. And even if they do not understand, they have been exposed and will probably investigate the message they have been to expose to so they can attain an understanding.

Ideology

I looked up the word 'ideology' up in my dictionary and the definition is "the body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture." Now what does all that have to do with mass communication in society? Marx and Engels (1970) says, "the dominant ideas of society are the ideas of the dominant class." The class that holds the power attempts to impose its ideas, its version of reality, on the rest of society.

This gives a misrepresentation of a culture. There are sub-cultures that abide within the whole. Giving the perspective of one sub-cuilture cannot represent everyone. The capitalists class, of course, has different ideas, views, needs, and aspirations than the working class. The working class has their own truth. The problem is that the representation the capitalist class offers is universalized and naturalized then offered as the truth for everyone. This is why we have social conflicts.

In the book, it talks about humanistic theory of ideology. It describes the struggle between attempts on the part of subordinated minorities to define a part of their life outside of the control of the dominant majoirty. You see this everytime a "Rags to Riches" story is broadcasted. It's an individual who has moved through the class system from lower to capitalist, and wants the popular class to know about it. But the problem with this is that the capitalist doesn't care, they only care about what representation you can bring to make the whole look good. For example, we glorify athletes who are very skilled at their sport, but give them no credit for the hard work it took to get there. As long as Lebron James keep dazzling crowds with his basketball skills, as long as Kanye West keeps giving us memorable music along with drama so we can keep talking about him, the popular culture doesn't care about anything else.

Social constructionism denies that there is any access to a reality outside of representations that would allow one to measure the truth or falsity of representations. That's not true. It denies it because people are scared to expose the truth because it will give another representaion that will jeopardized the one that was provided before. The consequences would be that more people know about the truth and will re-act in ways the capitalist didn't want. I believe that people tell you what they want, so they may recieve the reactions they want. That is what's wrong with the media today, there are so many versions of one thing, you don't know which one to believe for truth.

Chapter One

After reading the first chapter, there are some things I agree with that I think are very evident in our culture. The first being on pg. 3, "Some of our most powerful, most intensely emotional, and most important moments are intircately bound up with the media." This is true and Grossberg, Wartella, Whitney, and Wise give excamples of things that has happened in and to this country that has largely effected people because of the media. The most recent is the death of Michael Jackson. I was working a Pre-College Camp and we were on a skating field trip when someone recieved a video text message of a news station reporting that Jackson was admitted into the hospital. The owner of the rink, turned on a television inside of the rink's office and some of the staff including myself gathered around the t.v. for the latest news on Jackson's condition. I instantly began to cry when they announced him dead. If not for the text message, I wouldn't have found out about Jackson's death probably until I got home.

On pg. 6 it says there's a difference between media coverage and actual events. Grossberg and the 3 W's gives a good example of this by using the Setember 11th event. A more personal and evident example of this would a news coverage that was done in Milwaukee, WI by Channel 12 News about the a large fight that occured between my high school and another one downtown. The News Coverage reproted that the fight was started by my school and only showed footage of students from my school being arrested. When actually, students from the other school came on our buses picking fights with selective students and more students from the other school was arrested. But due to the covergae, everyone believed that my school started the fight and we lost some of our bus priveliges provided by the city transportation.

Another thing with all this popualr use of technologies, the media use all kinds of channels to spread their news. CNN has a Facebook, Twitter, and a few others, I believe. These internet sites are being used to communicate and reach an audience that has adapted to a new source of attaining information. On pg. 10 it says, "New media technology threatens other, more traditional, forms of popular culture." These traditional technology includes television, magazines, and newspapers, especially, due to the internet. It's becoming a cultural norm to be an active internet user. If you don't believe me, tell someone that you don't have a MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, or that you don't watch YouTube; you will get a facial expression of disbelief. That's how largely the technology game has changed and the media has to go with the flow.