Top 10
10. How do media messages help reinforce and maintain the status quo experience of social reality? How do they sometimes challenge it?
This was a section that I think was a good introduction to set us up for the rest of the course. Brought up in week 2, these questions were under the “Why are Media Important” section. By definition social reality is the “consensus of attitudes, opinions, and beliefs held by members of a group or society” (APA). With social media, we are always trying to show our best self, whether it’s true or not. This norm is something that is unfortunately perpetuated by media messages (likes, advertisements, social media posts, etc). It also relates back to cultivation theory: the more we see a certain type of message the more we are influenced to believe that it is the norm and we should stick to it. We also learned how media messages can challenge the norm. Sometimes, we’ll see ads or posts that go against the status quo. They’re often labeled like “real”, “reality check”, “body positive”, “no filter”, etc. The goal in these posts is exactly to challenge the norm to generate attention or incite change.
9. Propaganda:
This was a unique learning experience for me because I don’t often think about propaganda in a modern sense. I certainly never thought of memes as being a form of propaganda. I realized that there is a lot more propaganda than we realize in modern media, and that it is very different from advertising. Propaganda is something that aims to influence political beliefs and inspire action. Whereas advertising is geared towards spreading brand awareness and getting people to buy products.
8. How Stories Shape Our Minds:
This unit was really interesting to me. I previously worked as a content creator, and the main ingredient to a successful post and even a successful brand is storytelling. People connect through stories, but stories also shape our thinking. I’m a psychology minor, so the psychological facts that we learned about stories was something I found very interesting. First, reading is more immersive than watching TV. Stories fully immerse us in what we read and can feel like the things that happen to characters happen to us. Also, when we connect with characters we can form para-social relationships which can improve mood and satisfy social needs.
7. Social Comparison Theory:
This theory stood out to me because of how it applies to my own life. Essentially, social comparison theory explains how people make upward or downward comparisons of themselves to each other. This helps them form a sense of self worth. However, it’s not really a good thing. I think it perpetuates competition amongst people. I think in today’s world, where people share the best of their lives (false or real), it’s easy to compare what we have and to do what others seem to have and do. Especially for me, where there’s so much pressure as a young woman to be “that girl”. There’s this goal online that young girls in their 20’s have, and the goal is literally called “that girl”. It’s so hard to not compare myself to the girls that have “it” and the girls that don’t. I think that social media perpetuates social comparison theory so much, and its important to detox every once in a while.
6. The Medium Is the Message:
The most interesting points of this section for me were of course the ones connected to psychology. First, new mediums reorganize consciousness. I also thought the following point was interesting: that we engage with TV characters and stories but rarely do we understand what it means to be immersed in the medium itself. This stood out to me as well because I think we are so used to having media, especially TV, surrounding us at all times that we don’t often examine the outcomes of having it be so prevalent. On the one hand, for me, watching a TV show is something that brings my family together as a form of bonding. On the other hand, I wonder what conversation we may be missing out on within the time we spend watching TV.
5. Viral Media:
We were asked to choose a topic from chapter 8 to talk about and I chose viral media because of how prevalent it is in everyone’s lives, not just my own. I know we’ve all had experiences with viral media (Vines, memes, TikToks, even Instagram posts). I think viral media particularly affects young kids. Growing up viral media wasn’t really something I experienced until I was in middle school when social media became a bigger thing. Before that, there was still pressure to have certain things but it was much less of an expectation. This was a concept that really stuck out to me, that I only thought of because of this class. I think that viral media for me as a kid was mostly used to connect to other kids. It was a reference we all understood, so it was something that could be used to bond over.
4. Authenticity:
This was one of the last units we covered, but also one of the most prevalent in my life. Authenticity is something that is difficult to accomplish in today’s world. Just like social comparison theory, authenticity is difficult because of social media. There is a lot of pressure to be a certain way, which is why authenticity is so difficult to achieve. If your authentic self doesn’t match up to what society expects, you may feel pressure to try to be something you’re not. This is why I think it’s more important than ever to be authentic. One issue I came across in my own authenticity is following through. Not being all talk and no walk, as the video described. I am working on this every day, and because I now associate it with authenticity I think I will work harder to fix it.
3. Track Your Media Use:
This wasn’t so much a concept as it was an exercise. I thought this exercise was really cool because we got to compare our media usage to other students in the class. We were asked to talk about patterns we noticed in our media usage. I was actually surprised by how little time I spent on my phone. My average usage was about four hours a day, which is still a lot, but I was expecting it to be way more. I spent the most amount of time on TikTok, which was no surprise to me. I noticed that my usage of my phone was clustered. I would go on it for a couple hours at a time, rather than a little bit spread throughout the day.
2. Cultivation Theory
This explains how we are influenced so strongly through media. Cultivation theory explains that media can change people’s perceptions of reality simply by exposure. The more we see something, the more we believe it. Although I am aware that most of what I see online is fake or at the very least a grandized version of reality, I still feel like it’s the norm and that I am just not personally living up, or that I for some reason just can’t get it together. It is interesting to put a name to the phenomenon that I experience often through social media.
1. How Do Songs Get So Popular:
Finally, the most interesting video that we’ve seen so far (in my opinion). This video combined two of my major passions, music and psychology. The video was very interesting and there was a lot of content that I would have liked to discuss, but I chose to focus on the part I found most interesting which was when they talked about kids liking music that their parents exposed them to more than other music from the same time. This is called exposure theory: we are more likely to enjoy things that we have previously been exposed to. They did an interesting study with made up words that were randomly generated. The words that were familiar to the subjects (that they’d seen in the rounds before) were more likely to be rated positively than the unfamiliar ones. I thought this was interesting for two reasons. One, it makes sense because I listen to the same artists and music all the time, and have a hard time picking up on new stuff. This also makes sense, because pop songs often use the same patterns, chords and even words to create hits that everyone loves. I also thought this was interesting because it relates to the social media status quo experience and cultivation theory.
