Bitmap vs vector quiz

How do media proffesionals know their audiences?

The media organizations do not "know" their audiences. In the Political Economy Approach, many times when they are vying for viewers, they will use general tactics such as dumbing down content. Culture has shifted know that celebrities many times are important headlines, even when compared to government scandals or other more "intellectual" topics. Media professionals have played into this trend by giving the people what they want. Instead of giving real news, they will provide a story on Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan, and dish out all the celebrity gossip.

The Critical Theory Approach involves providing media to the majority of the local or national population. Professionals find stories which they believe to be interesting to the dominant group, hoping that many of those people will tune into their program. Also, media will many times play to the socially or economically powerful.

The Feminist Approach is based on providing headlines for women. Women have begun to appear more in the newsroom over the past quarter of a century and with that, media professionals try to make the headlines more human interest, or appealing to women to get their viewership.

There are also four codes which media professionals may use to gauge audience interest. The first of these is called the dominant/hegemonic code. If the audience responds positively to a certain story, then the news organizations will begin to put more of those types of stories up. In the professional code, the way the story is portrayed or production techniques used are taken into account. The negotiated code deals with the audience accepting only what they want to accept, usually what is prevalent or of interest to them. Oppositional code looks at how and why the audience responds negatively to a story, and how they can then fix it for future audiences.

Money is Debt

The video was quite interesting to watch from both an artistic and economic perspective. Artistically I liked how simple images were able to convey a complex situation. The imagery helped make the viewer understand more if he or she were not able to follow the narrative. The video also accomplished the feat of making a serious topic more lighthearted and bearable to watch if the viewer was not very interested in economics. For such a small budget and being done all by one man, the video still had a semi-professional feel. I liked that the viewer could tell that it was done at home though.

Economically, the data and reasoning was sound. He provided strong points with data and logic to back it up. No point left the viewer asking more questions or confused. However, I would have liked to hear more of the counter-argument to gain a broader perspective on the subject. I do not have a very wide range of knowledge on economics, so providing more perspectives would have been beneficial to help me make my own decisions.

My animation of media conglomerates is done so as to portray the all consuming nature of these industries. From the central GE, ropes lash out around different parts of the media and culture to make GE even bigger than before. In addition to owning one of the world leading appliance and machinery producers, they also control portion of movies and television. As GE holds onto the various parts that make up its whole, it gets bigger and bigger.

Magazine Cover

I have decided to do a parody of sorts for this project. The original Time cover was of Adolf Hitler. The new one I chose to do of Kimbo Slice to show how the mass media is becoming increasingly less interested in current events, and more popular in celebrity gossip. Time Magazine is known for its news integrity, but they too will become like other news magazines. Slice was recently called a fraud and in the Mixed Martial Arts world when he was beaten by a nobody, and the story has been circulating around the internet as one of the top searches.