How Do media professionals "Know" their audiences?

The question of how media professionals know what to sell to their audience has been looked at many times over the years. Of course all types of media are looking for ratings because these ratings then help the people who are putting the media out know what people like and more importantly what people will buy. Some of the ways professionals “know” how we feel about products are by taking surveys and getting direct feedback from people. Another way is by putting devices in or attached to things like TVs so it can measure directly what and when people are watching it. One other thing that can be looked at is how much are ‘the people’ talking about something in the media. The internet is an easy way now to learn what people think about any type of media because things like blogs and other website are put up online with people voicing how they feel about everything. Even on store websites with every product there is a section where customers can leave comments about the produce (a movie, TV show, book, CD, etc.) As much as we want to say the media asked us what we want to see in reality the media controls so much of what we think that as long as they do a good job selling it people will buy it. We see things like ‘the most watched TV show’ but then again about 10 shows are saying that and they cannot all be the most watched. This is because the professionals are selling us this “idea” that it is the most watched show and therefore why are we not one of the ones watching it? These are just some of the ways that media professionals can try to “know” their audiences and how the audiences feel about the media and how much the media prefessionals control it.

Quiz on bitmap vs. vector graphics

“Money As Debt”

After seeing, "Money As Debt", I was amazed how much could be done with the programs we have on our computers. Along with the fact that I learned so much more about our banking system than I ever knew. I did know some of the things the film talked about but never in the much detail. As much as I was impressed with the information in the short documentary, all the details that went into the graphics amazed me. I had no idea so much could be done with just a few programs. The movement that was made by the characters was well done and helped make the information in the film not so dull, all the animation made the film "come to life". I also liked how the animation was broken down into a few different parts with the quotes in between. It helped tell the story better I think. I also liked how it looked like the "camera" was constantly moving. Again the ability to make this animation with programs on a computer is just amazing. Overall I thought the film was well done and I hope one day to be able to make something like it, on a different topic of course.

Media Ownership: Concentration and Conglomeration

For this assignment I looked online to find some media conglomerates and found a website that had a few different companies listed and all of the other companies they own. I decided to look at what AOL Time Warner owned and found they own many different types of media including Film, Internet, Music, TV, Publishing and Recreation companies. Out of all of these I decided to work with all the different magazines that they owned. I looked up covers of a bunch of the magazines AOL Time Warner owns and from that made a collage over a sign that said the company’s name, “AOL Time Warner”. For my animation, I then had the magazine covers open like curtains on a stage to reveal who owned all of them. Overall I used 15 magazine covers and that was not even all of the magazines AOL Time Warner owns which is amazing. I enjoyed doing this project because it was interesting to see who really owns who in this big world where we think nothing about how many own all of these media products we love.

Website link:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/giants/aoltimewarner.html

Media Parody - Magazine Cover

As can be seen I did a cover of TIME Magazine. What I did was tried to replicate the cover the best I could in photoshop and illustrator. I did use some different images at the top but left the wording all the same as well as all the wording on the side. The only big thing I changed was the letters of the iPhone which originally spelt out “BEST INVENTIONS OF 2007”. Going along with the theme of doing a parody I changed the words or letters to say, “OK HOW DO I USE THIS THING”. I did this because the iPhone is so new and high tech that it is hard to use at first. It has all of these special features on it when in the end it is meant to be a cell phone. I just thought it would be funny to change the message on it to show that not everyone thinks the iPhone is the best new thing.

Ch 2 - MEDIA GLOBALIZATION

Out of the 6 main features written in chapter two, three of them I looked at a little closer and thought about examples of these main features. Below I have the main feature listed with my thoughts and an example with it.

1) The emergence of and continued dominance of the global media industry by a small number of transnational media conglomerates.
This main feature is mainly talking about how big companies own many little ones under it and we do not even realize this unless we truly look back at who owns some of these businesses. The example in the book talked about Time Warner and how it owned many different companies and unless we know what they own we could never tell the difference. A down side to one company owning so many things especially in the media is because it influences us is many ways. All different types of media impact us so the fact that one company controls all that means that they can control how we think about things without us even knowing it. These companies are growing to be so big and are spreading all over the world through media globalization that it seems like they are taking over the media worldwide one way or another.

2) The use by these media conglomerates of new information and communications technologies (ICT's).
This main feature points out that the rapid growth of technologies is changing how we see the world and how the spread of media globalization can grow even faster than before. I see this mainly as how so much can be done on the internet today and then thinking about how many different countries have access to the internet to look at what others are posting, selling, and what new is happening in the world. The fact now that anyone can go to yahoo.com and on the main page click on a video links to watch the latest news story is crazy. The clip online can be on news from anywhere in the world also as soon as a new crew can put something together it can go right up on the internet for all to see simply with the access to a computer with the internet. Even though many in the world do not have the Internet, still many countries do have it even if just in their main cities. I think any news website is a good example of this main feature.

3) The promotion of the ideology of consumerism, which is therefore bound up with the capitalist project.
This last main feature I will be talking about had to do with the media being a form of advertising and how that advertising then is all connected to the capitalist project. In other words the media is used to sell its viewers something. This is not only in one place but all over the world which is why it's a part of media globalization. This media advertising is used all over the world to help sell a consumer product and therefore is all about making money and adding to the growth of capitalism. Examples brands selling to the consumer all over the world are companies like Coca-Cola and Nike. Ads for these companies' products can be seen all over the world and they are selling to countries all over the world to try to grow and make more and more money.

There are some concerns and worries about all of these main features and what they are doing to the media and media globalization. As our book says, "North American mass media industry in the postwar period has now given way to growing worries about the domination of the global media industry by a small number of powerful, transnational, vertically integrated media conglomerates." This does tie back into the first main feature that talks about how big companies are taking over so much of the media and are such a big part of media globalization that bad things may come of it. It is not good that so much power is in the hands of so few corporations. If these corporations are controlling so much of the media then it just shows how everyone all over the world will be influenced by this mass media. It is hard to say what can be done about such things though because we are a world that feeds the media like crazy because all we want is more of it. The more power we give the media, the more the media, will control what happens in the world.