1F25 Response 1: Media Impact on Others

I spent a good part of my morning today perusing the blogs that my classmates posted about their feelings regarding the media and I have to say, it was surprising how many of us are on the same page on the matter. In all honesty, I expected to see a number of blogs that argued only for the positive aspects of the media, but a number of them touched on similar views that I did. Shawn Poulin's blog (http://shawnpoulin.blogspot.ca/), for example, mentioned the way cartoon shows such as Sailor Moon had affected him as a child, much in the way I mentioned as well. He, too, spoke of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, that drove him into a place of fear. I took the following quote from his blog, which really illustrates my point: "My view of people became somewhat distorted after that because I felt like you couldn't really trust people for whatever reason and it took me awhile to actually get over this."

Something that I neglected to do, that some other students did really well, was to look on both sides. I used my allotted word count to drivel on about how mass media has harmed me, but I completely disregarded all the good it has done for me. There were a number of students who were able to casually bring up both sides of the argument. For example, the author of one blog (http://noubayan.wordpress.com/) wrote that "...advertisements such as celebrity magazines and television shows like “Jersey Shore” or “Miss Universe” give us a false idea of what men and women are “supposed” to look like and it’s because of this kind of mass media that men, women and even teenagers feel bad and insecure about themselves." This was something that first came to mind when I wrote my own blog on media impact. The same author also wrote the following: "...the news helps us gain knowledge about life around the world. It keeps us up to date on the economy and things we can expect in the future." They go on to mention the other ways that media benefits us, including media outlets like the internet. I enjoyed this blog because the author was able to display both sides of the spectrum without taking any of the strength out of their opinion. Rather than seeming uncertain or wavering, which is something I feared would happen to me were I to include arguments for and against the media, the author seemed both open to the media and informative about it.

I enjoyed the aforementioned blogger's perspective so much that it did, indeed, make me reconsider my position. I am definitely open to the idea that the media isn't all bad. While I still stand by my previous opinions on it, I do agree that the media has some pretty wonderful effects too. I seem to forget that I use Facebook every day to keep in touch with family and friends, Microsoft Outlook to send and receive mail regarding my work and school, and I use Skype at every opportunity to be able to see and hear the ones I love who, in some cases, live extremely far away. There are definitely factors that add to the positive side of media impact that I overlooked!

1F25 Post 1: Media Impact

How significant do you think the impact of the mass media is on your worldview?

When I was younger I would watch shows like Sailor Moon and I'd feel inadequate, even at only eight years old, realizing that I didn't look like those girls. The more I matured, the more I realized that the women on television and in movies were nothing like me. No one wants to watch a television series about a chubby fourteen year old girl who goes to a crumby high school in an even crumbier town. Nobody wanted to read a book detailing the life of someone who pretty much did what everyone else did to get by. I wasn't beautiful, I wasn't special, and do you know how I knew that for sure? Because the media was always quite apt to make it known.

Body image and the way I portrayed myself was hugely impacted by the media, all throughout highschool and even now, when I so readily will tell you that I do think I'm a stellar individual who has the ability to get past what the media says. I love to think that I'm a strong, independent woman who can form her own thoughts and opinions, free from media-related influence, but that'd be a lie. I still get down from time to time knowing that I'm too tall to be a runway model, too thick to wear the cute dress that Zooey Deschannel wore on the cover of Cosmo a few weeks back, and that my skin is too pallid to even bother trying to put cover-up on every day. That's all just under the one category, too. We've only scratched the surface on how the media has skewed my worldview. 

My self-esteem and my body image are my direct worldview in the sense that they affect me the second I wake up and step in front of a mirror. But there's so much more to my worldview than that. The media has helped me be afraid for the future, it's helped me hate people (hordes of people) for reasons that I couldn't even rightfully explain to you now. I grew up at just the right time (sarcastically speaking) to learn why everyone but us is bad. I was in the fourth grade when those terrorists hijacked those planes and crashed into the World Trade Center. Grade four. I was nine years old when I first learned just how scary and ugly the world really was. Nine years old when I learned how to hate a whole group of people (wrongfully so). Nine years old when I started letting the media speak for me.

It has taken me until now, just about, to really separate myself from the media. I sound like a conspiracist or a crackpot when I say this, but really think about it, for so long we've let the media speak for us. I have my own opinions, I'm sure in some ways they're still skewed, but at least I know enough now to really look into things and not just take what the Global News anchors tell me without question. I read up on things, I look at different angles, both sides of the story, everything that I can do to free myself of that one-sided, fearful, hateful mind frame I'd been living in for so long. 

TL;DR: The world is weird and everyone is all messed up sometimes :/ myself included.