Bulworth

In the movie Bulworth, the main character has run for the president in the U.S. He has tried a new campaign compared to others. His new kind of campaign which was to sing hip-hop music and wear clothes that is not "suitable" for official places. However, his campaign turned out to be a success.

He appealed to many people who were not the rich or socially famous people, he instead appealed to the normal people. The way he acted in and the things he said really came to the minds of these people. While all the others were busy trying to settle things down with the famous CEOs and politicians and have meetings, Bulworth instead didn’t have any of these and even denied them. He criticized how the government was not working for the people and the reality of the politicians how on the outside they looked like they were working for the people but inside they were actually getting benefits for themselves. Also he told the people on talk show the reality of blacks who were on the streets that people don’t know about.

I think that reason Bulworth could have gotten a big support from the petty bourgeois is because the media spot lighted him and made him familiar to them compared to other candidates. If it wasn’t for the sake of media no one would have gotten interested in him. The media had a spotlight on him because he was different and not following the so called “normal” way of running a campaign. He was a revolution in the campaign running since who wears teenager fashion at official talk shows and who criticizes his own policy? He must have left pretty impressive feelings on people who watched or heard his speech. Even I think I would have gotten impressed by Bulworth if he was a real politician since he is so new compared to others. If it wasn’t for media no one would have known that he was so different from the others. Media had a big role in this movie and I think it does have the same effect on reality too.

Social Media

what is social media? I think that social media is a media where an individual can create it's source. Such as the Facebook (the movie we saw is all about Facebok), twitter, youtube and all other kind of sources. I think that social media can be stated as a media that is created not with really PROFESSIONAL informations but sources that an individual can get easily. Social media is not more of telling others about information that is very big size, such as an information that all people in a sociaety cna use but for small groups. It can be used to share one's feelings or ideas that one has. I think that social media cna be said in one word all the media besides news that we use on the internet, such as twitter, youtube and facebook etc.

I personally think that weakness of the social media is that there is no privacy. Most of social media that we know is all internet based. If someone posts a writing on their blog or update their status on facebook or twitter or even put up a video on Youtube everyone will be able to see it in few seconds. People who don't know you will be able to see it and it maybe invading another's privacy that they want to keep. Also their is another problem related to it which is that these informations that are from social medias can be misused. Informations that are mostly used in social medias are not FACTS but more likely a feeling someone has or somethings they have experienced. Those things put up on the internet without thinking could ruin one's  life. Such happening is shown  in the movie "the social network" when Zookerberg posts about his ex-girl friend it have ruined her image and it couldn't have been fixed again. So these informations or other things found in social media can hurt or ruin someone with out the person knowing it. It can also be used in the wrong way.
However, there are always the good sides of the social media not only the bad side of it. Good side is that information in social media could get spread fast and widely. For instance twitter is used widely by companies such as airlines so they could post things on their twitter account which will make the customers able to see if their airline has been canceled due to bad weather. It makes other able to know the information quickly. Also other things such as terrible earthquake that happened in Japan, for instance, wouldn't have spread so fastly among people if it wasn't for Facebook, Youtube and other social media sources. By posting things on those sources other people were able to know how serious the disater was. If it weren't for those social medias things would not have spread that fast. There are both cons and pros to social medias. The good thing is that it makes informations spread fast to other people while the bad side of it is that it can be used in the wrong way to critisize others or mock them and also the fact that there is no privacy.

Assignment #3

It is said that the movie ‘Heathers’ is reflecting the uncontrolled youths of the time. The movie itself was quite a shock to me when I watched it, but I think it is reflecting the uncontrolled wild personalities of the generation. It is kind of a movie for generation X which is a generation born after the WW2 and nobody really knew their path. It is described that generation X as ‘sleep together before they are married, were not taught to believe in God as 'much', dislike the Queen, and don't respect parents’ which is the situation of the characters in the movie. The main character Veronica, consistently calls her dad an idiot which shows that she doesn’t have respect for her parents. Also much of those socially not adjusted people; high-schoolers are depicted in the movie. Also it is said that this film changed the type of character girls are depicted in the movies as more dimensional character rather than boring old same concept. I think the media sets up the criteria for the people to follow. For instance, if they want to be popular girls should be pretty, and mean. Also it depicts the reality of the people living daily lives in a way sometimes that is shown but sometimes it is hidden and one cannot find it easily.

Assignment #2

I think that the state of media is as really as bleak as it is portrayed in the movie. Nowadays I think the mass media is controlled by big corporation behind the scene and also the government. Sometimes things that should be the headline are pulled down by such some “unknown” forces. There was once news about Samsung which was pulled down from the main. It was about Samsung workers getting cancers from the materials they worked with. And it was pulled down from the headline. I think this kind of bleak media existed since the big corporation and Korean government appeared. I personally think that Korean mass media was controlled ever since after the Korean War. It was controlled by the dictator Park Jung Hee, and Jun Doo Hwan. They restricted the freedom of speech which obviously led to the fact that the media would have been bleak. Writers who tried to write the truth would not be safe and even if it was written it would be bleached. Governments would not like people to know about everything they do would they? It is not like that everyone likes to tell their top secret out and they probably would do anything to stop their secrets from getting out. Also the big companies would not like their stories getting published in the front cover of newspapers if it is something that can attack their companies financially and damage their image. Such as the case of Samsung I had shown above. They had removed it from the headline and made the news become a small article. I think this occurred as people got greedy and as it became to modern times. People wasn’t used to believe everything they saw, but as people got used to more information they got used to believing everything they read. Also as people got greedier since the society became a free economy, they started to want more profit and in order to earn money they had to do ‘dirty things’. Companies did immoral things in order to make more profit and news paper or broadcasting companies got money from these companies so they will not broadcast it. So it is not just society’s fault but faults of people. I think that everyone is responsible for the media becoming like that. If people weren’t greedy these kinds of thing would not have happened.

In order to achieve true democracy in mass media, I think people need to not think about the profit they will earn but the good things will do to society. People need to feel the importance of the truth without getting censored or being bleached by some corporation or government. This can only be started from changing the thinking of people who have only thought about themselves.

First Writing Assigment

The mass media was appearing in the 19^th century when the mass newspaper started to get circulated in cities. This mass communication allowed people to get information more Easley than before and mass media at this time served the purpose of getting more information around people I think. Before the newspapers were printed out in massive quantities there was almost no new news or information going around people. Due to the circulation of the newspapers people started to get new information and other things, such as advertisement etc. After the inventions of newspapers there a=came the radio and other technologies that helped mass media get developed in incredible speed. The mass media helped information go around people in the inception of the United States History.

The media in the film takes a big part of it. The main character’s job is a lobbyist. However, he is not only a lobbyist he is also a speaker for the research of tobacco. As the movie goes on, we see how well this character uses the mass media. He goes out on talk show and convinces people that tobaccos are not harmful. In this part, the mass media plays role of persuading people to do something, or to think in a particular way. Mass media able people to persuade or spread out their opinion faster and quickly than any other sources. In the movie his opinion gets spread out among people very quickly and since it is media that he is on, it gives more persuasiveness to his speech. If he weren’t on television and just talking to a person by person it would not be that persuasive. But since he is on television I think that it gives him more persuasiveness and makes people accept his ideas. Another thing is that mass media is the source that creates big issues out of small ones. As the movie goes to its climax, the main character’s plans and his secrets are written by a journalist. It creates a BIG issue with his life. Like this, media is an issue-maker. We can see this in our own lives too. If some famous star is getting married to someone it is on television and internet that creates big issues. Or very big issues such as elections are the big chunks of pieces that will make a big issue in society by the media.

In manufacturing consent, Noam Chomsky argues that corporate owned media like the radio, television or print are subject to commercial competition for revenue and profit. In the beginning of the mass media the books were printed in massive quantities so everyone can share new information and get more knowledge than they have. It started from a very genuine reason. However, as time passes the mass media changed into some profit making machine. Even in the movie, the more issue the headlines create the more profit journalists get. The more response you get from the public and positive view you get end up in money in the end. Every media is related to one thing. Money. For instance, I heard that every time some words that are the most searched for that day is say a corporation. By creating this issue of being searched the most for the day, the corporation gets some kind of profit. This is just an example of organizations getting blinded by money that they forgot the real reason for the existence of mass media. I think that Noam Chomsky is right about the fact that news businesses favor profit over public interest. As time passes public interests are lost and instead the corporations’ interests are what people think nowadays. People are so obsessed with things the media show that they just fall for it instead of thinking if it is any help to the society and eventually if it is helping the public interest.