COM250 Top 10 Countdown
This course is one of the greatest courses I have taken at URI, coming from a senior student about to graduate this month. I was fortunate enough to be able to enroll in this unique course and learn everything I wanted to know about Digital and Media Literacy. COM250 has taught me how to be a professional digital media author. Going into the real world this summer, I need to be as literate and professional as possible to work in the event planning industry I plan to pursue. Everything from this course is essential in the future of PR professionals along with all work fields. Here is a list of my favorite top 10 takeaways from COM250 with Renee Hobbs:
10) Search Engines: There are advertisers, government regulators, platform companies, and activists behind all of your online searches. There are people trying to sell products to online users and this is done through search engines on your mobile devices. Google is the leader of all search engines and dominates online search and advertising, and its competitors need some of Google’s business.
9) Uses and Gratifications: This theory is one of the most important theories in the media world and it revolves around why people chose to use media. People use this theory to fulfill their own physiological needs and to satisfy their needs. This asserts that people are active media users who are motivated to select media to gratify specific needs. I learned that the way I use my social media such as instagram, snapchat, and tiktok is associated with what my physiological needs are and there are reasons behind the accounts I follow and what I want to see.
8) Propaganda in the Media: Propaganda is in everyday life. However, there is a dark side to propaganda and that is because it is fueled by our own fascination with it. Politics have taken over the use of propaganda and use it to influence the media and change their opinions. We experience a mixture of feelings when encountering potential harmful propaganda, including excitement, discomfort, disgust, and even raw pleasure of encountering content that mixes in with our unacknowledged beliefs, fears, and desires.
7) Advertising and Children: Advertising is more than harmful to children because as time goes on, the children are being exposed to advertisements at younger ages. Being exposed at a young age, makes these children believe what they see and hear in the media advertising is the normal way of living and makes them materialistic. Since children are media literate right away, what they see on television or ipads through advertisements is what they associate to a normal life and they grow up thinking that is normal. In our class, the video on “How Advertising Rewires Kids Brains” discusses how it is very harmful for young children being exposed to these advertisements and it convinces them to believe everything they see is the real style of life.
6) Framing: Journalists select some aspects of perceived reality and make them more salient and accessible to the reader, expressing them in a way that connects with the existing knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes of the audience. This creates stereotypes in the news and how people perceive the way people are viewed and looked upon. This adds that all media messages are selective representations of reality and the content we receive contains values, ideologies, and specific points of view.
5) Stories Shape Our Minds: The science behind storytelling is what tells us how they shape our minds. Assimilation is what psychologists call it when the reader takes on the qualities of a fictional group. Identification occurs when the reader takes the perspective and identity of a story character. There has been research that suggests that transportation and identification may be related to the ability to empathize with others in the media.
4) McLuhan’s Theory to Online video: “The Medium is the message” is one of McLuhan’s most famous quotes to this day. He taught the audience the difference between hot and cold media and I found that to be a very important tactic in our everyday lives. All media creates a physical environment around us and our brains don’t actually understand what it’s like to watch tv.
3) Internet Censorship: Censorship is the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are offensive towards the readers and viewers. I found this lesson very fascinating to hear how people are chosen to choose what is censored and what is not. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as corporations and other groups. I gained knowledge on the censorship in the United States including current digital media revolving around Ukraine and what is and what isn’t allowed to be seen by the public.
2) How do songs get popular? : Coming into this section, I was intrigued to learn how our minds lean us towards specific genres of music or what we even watch on television. Songs that were popular years ago, have a higher chance of becoming even more popular now by having it shared and streamed on social media blowing it up all over again.
1) Neil Postman: In the first lesson of COM250, I was introduced to who Neil Postman was by watching his youtube interview video from 1995. In this video, I knew that I would not only learn what digital technology is, but I would learn the ins and outs and all the inbetweens of what digital media is. Postman stated in 1995, that when you are in cyberspace, you can be anyone you want to be. He provided many examples of how he sees the media turning and a lot of what he said came true. Postman made it clear that the internet is a good and bad place that is only going to continue to grow and expand in ways we can never imagine. He stated that the world will become a “media globe” and that stuck with me through this whole course.
