Critical Thinking Media Blogs - Jayson Matsuura

Recently I was on my Xbox One playing games. Then I noticed multiple things that stuck out to me as odd. I noticed that a majority of the Home Screen is just a bunch of ads. I also noticed that a lot of my games have downloaded able content. Now, I have been aware of both for a long time, but this fits well to what we have been learning in class. Let me go over the topic of the Home Screen. Most of you know what a home screen is. In this case, it is the first screen you see when you turn on the console and login. This is where you start, and can access the game you have put inside the console. That seems logical. The first screen you go to should be the screen where the game you loaded. The weird part is, you have a bunch of other things on there. You have ads for games, saying that they are on sale. You have ads for games that are being developed. There are ads for movies on this screen. Then, if you have Xbox Gold, you have ads for your free game of the month. The other games you h...

Again referring back to the documentary Miss Representation , I would like to address another key idea of theirs. They presented that we mistreat females because that is what we have learned from the media. In simplistic terms, they are say that our identity is influenced by the media. Is that true? Quite honestly, yes. I am forced to believe that our identities are not defined by ourselves, as much as we would like to believe, but by the media. The way we are supposed to act, things we are supposed to like, the way we are supposed to behave all comes from the media. Let that sink in, and then continue reading and hear what I have to say. Someone once asked me an interesting question. "If you are alone in a vacuum do you have an identity?" Now after you have stopped groaning because you remember who said this last semester, answer the question. The answer no. You do not have an identity if you are alone in a vacuum because being in a vacuum there is nothing but you. There i...

In the documentary Miss Representation , they talk about how in the United States women are miss represented and under represented in everything from politics to science fields. It describes how there is a difference between the things men do and the things women do. It brought up a bunch of statistics saying that more than fifty percent of the United States population is female, but then it brought up how in these jobs they are not even close to a majority. For example Congress, only seventeen percent of Congress is female. They then went to say that the root cause of this is the media. The way the media portrays women gives us the idea that this is the way life needs to be. Where females are under represented and forced to do only certain jobs. It also briefly touched on the subject where it also makes men feel that they have to be masculine, and it defines what is and what is not masculine. I agree that women are still at a disadvantage when it comes to men. They are miss represen...

Just recently I had to travel out of state. That required the use of air travel. Throughout the whole process from going through the airport to the flight itself, I was constantly bombarded by media. In the airport there are constant ads for travel and eating at the different places in their terminal. On the plane itself you have those magazines in the back all advertising for the airline company. This whole process is just one big marketing campaign. Looking at the airport terminal, it is just full of ads. They are all trying to get you to buy something related to travel. Everything is being marketed in this place. You have reading material such as books and magazines being advertised. There is also technology such as battery packs, ear buds, and phone cases being marketed. They have advertisements for pillows for travel. The eateries they have in the terminal also trying to get you to buy food from them. Advertising for your stuff in an airport terminal is a great strategy becau...

From watching The Merchants of Cool we heard a lot of concerning things. One of them was hearing that the there are five companies that have a lot of smaller companies that they own. Another concerning thing was that they market what the teen wants. One final thing I would like to focus on is that they outright said that they do not care the standard of the ad decreases as long as it is effective. Let's focus on those five companies. They were Disney, Time Warner, News Corp, Universal Vivendi, and Viacom. Let me give you a summary of all of these companies. Disney has the greatest net worth with 55 billion dollars. They have Pixar, ESPN, and Marvel just to name a few. Time Warner is 28 billion dollars, with HBO, CW, and Warner Bros. News Corp is 33 billion with 21st Century Fox, 20th Century Fox, as well as many more. Universal Vivendi 697 million Euros, with Gameloft and Universal Music Group to name a few. Viacom is at 1.3 billion dollars with Nickelodeon and Paramount Picture...

In The Merchants of Cool it describes the methods used by companies to market their product to teenagers. They go through the typical research of talking to the average teenager, asking them what we like. They use focus groups to try and understand teenagers, how we work, how we get attracted to news. The bottom line is that we are interested in this thing called cool, which in their definition was a thing that was a little bit out of average, it was something new that drew attention to teens. Their plan was to try and find those things that were cool, and market them to us by appealing to those twenty percent of kids that set the trends which causes it to spread to their groups. The problem with that was once it was big and everyone was part of it, it died out. These marketers believe that they are only giving teens what they want. Their belief of the cycle is that they see teens doing what they typically do, and then all they do is just market what the teens want. Here is what I h...

A lot of my old posts have been about how all of us are at risk of something bad due to media. It has been about how hackers could use your information against you, or happy your keystrokes are being tracked by companies. All of that sounded very menacing, putting media, specifically the internet, in bad light. I would like to address that there are good things with the media as well. I am pretty sure that we have all heard about Trump's recent firing of the FBI director, and how he is displeased with the media coverage, so what not get rid of them? This is the very reason I like media. At its center, media is supposed to connect us to information and to people, to improve our communication, especially the communication of information. This is an example of media at its finest. From the news of Comey's termination to Trump's reaction to the press, this is all how it is supposed to work. The spread of information is fast and efficient and people know about what is going on...

Typically we think that cookies are a good thing, but when it comes to technology they are not so nice. They can ruin the use of the internet in my opinion. They are annoying, and when you really understand what they are, I can become something frightening. What is a cookie? A cookie is a file hidden on your computer, so your browser and other companies can track your online sessions, looking at what you look at and saving bits of information that are useful. Are you a little less excited now? You should be. If someone hacks your computer, they can use those cookies for less than virtuous things, putting it mildly. Bluntly, if they hack your computer or any device for that matter, and they know how to use those cookies, you are in a world of pain. Now let me explain why I brought this up. I had this habit, that every week, I would go into my computer and wipe it clean of cookies and other files that attached itself to my computer. However, I have been very poor at keeping up with thi...

We are in a new age. We have entered the digital age of the twenty-first century, as many say. Those who grow up in this time will have a very different outlook on life as our parents who grew up in a different time. Most of us already have different views of our parents. The fact is, if you were born anytime in between the eighties and the early years of the twenty-first century, you are in a very different world than those who were not. That means many things that were big and worked before, will not work now. The truth is we do not know a lot of things that our parents grew up with. Many of us do not know what film, or video tape is. We do not know what a landline is because many houses now only have cellphones. Our parents do not know what an MP3 is, nor of they understand how the internet works. What does that mean? That means there is a huge disconnect between the two generations. That huge disconnect means we all have to change the way we do things because of the difference. T...

Most of us have access to technology. We use our phones, tablets, and computers for everyday purposes such as school work, gaming, and communicating with out friends and family. The access to media we have is extensive. It has enabled us to do so many things in our lives. We can make the argument that it has made our lives easier and better. I am also sure that you are all vaguely aware that the flip side of a better life, is that all these companies are making profiles of us based on what we do with our media. If you are not aware of that, you are now. However, I am not sure that we know the extent of what they do. As you use media, you are being profiled. As you look online you are being profiled. You going about town with your phone, you are being profiled. GPS, Wi-Fi, your browsing data, all provide these companies with an insight to your life. The whole reason for these companies doing this is because they wanted to improve our lives by giving us better communications, access to...

In PBS's Frontline episode The Persuaders , the idea that marketing for a product has moved to the psychology of a person is a big point brought up throughout the episode. The idea that in order to sell a product to a person it is all about understanding the people you are selling it to, their like, their dislikes. That idea of understanding humans is key. That same idea is applied to so called free to play video games. This idea is presented in the article, "The Fascinating Psychology Behind Free-To-Play Mobile App Games." The article states that: ego depletion, reciprocity,  intermediate currency , price shrouding, and illusory discomfort are how companies that makes these games get people to spend money. Ego depletion contributes towards us spending money on the game because our self-control to not spend money on a game eventually will use up the finite amount of mental resources needed in order to maintain that self-control. Companies utilize this weakness by consta...