Month: July 2019

Hey friends!!

It’s a new week and we are back with another topic to explore. For this week’s post, we will be finding out what the ‘uses and gratification’ theory is all about!!

First off, let’s start with some introduction to this topic. The ‘Uses and gratification’ theory was primarily created by Jay Blumler and Denis McQuail in 1960, based on the assumption that people interpret and incorporate media differently into their lives.

What does a U&G research look for?

As this theory is an audience-centered approach that mainly focuses on what people do with the media, how and why do they use it, as well as to understand how individuals approach technologies. Therefore, a ‘user and gratification’ research will look for the reason to why an individual seek the media and what do they gain out of it.

Unlike the media effects model, that studies the effects of media on individuals, the ‘uses and gratification’ theory speculate that individuals have power over their media usage and consciously seek out to it to achieve certain needs or goals.

In short, the theory believes that people actively select the types of media and content to fulfill various psychological needs.

Types of needs

According to the theory, there are 5 types of needs that people seek from the media.

#1. Cognitive needs

People uses the media to gain knowledge or answers to their doubt. Surely, we all have this need to fulfill as we are always searching for answers on google.

#2. Affective needs

Media fulfills our emotional needs as we could be watching comedy series on some days and sad movies on other days, depending on our mood.

#3. Personal integrative needs

This need is all about our self-esteem. People uses the media to reassure their status, gain credibility and stabilize. Media can be a medium that allows people to keep up with the latest release of products and allowing them to be in trend if they own it, thus boosting their self-esteem.

#4. Social integrative:

This is the category where social media falls into. People uses social media to keep up with their friends, or basically anybody when they are not hanging out together.

#5. Tension release

The last need people gain from the media is to help them temporarily ‘escape’ from reality to relieve their tension and stress.

Lobby groups

Oh god, we are finally at the last section and it will be on lobby groups!!

A lobby group campaigns for favourable public policy changes by trying to influence politicians or those in position of power to carry out the change. Such interest group includes the Animal Legal Defense Fund, who are currently fighting for better animal protection law.

Denotation

1. ‘Warning’ written in caps highlighted in orange
2. Picture of dog in car
3. ‘Don’t leave dogs in hot cars’
4. ‘Call 911’ written in caps and red.

Connotation

1. The picture of the dog in the car without an owner further emphasises the message that the poster wishes to address.
2. ‘Warning’ written in caps and against an orange background stands out more compared to the white background in the other parts of the poster.
3. Lastly, red is usually used to emphasise importance/urgency. The fact that ‘call 911’ is written in red states a strong need to report such a situation.

Mythic level

Dogs are often witnessed being left in the car alone while their owners step out to run errands. It was reported than during summer, most dogs that were left in the car alone tend to suffer heatstroke, or even die due to the heat. Through this poster, the Animal Legal Defense Fund hopes to raise awareness on this issue, and hopefully have a law legislated to prevent such events from happening.

Finally we are at the end of this extremely long post!! (I swear I tried by best to shortened it but its still long) Thank you for spending time to read it. See yallz in the next one!! 🙂

Hola friends!!

For this post, we will be looking at some arguable issues that the media effects model has led to, with reference taken from an article on media effects studies by David Gauntlett.

Before moving on, let’s find out what a media effect model is all about!

The media effect model is defined as ideas that explains how an audience’s attitude and perception is influenced by the mass media.

However, this model has garnered numerous disagreements from the public and got them thinking if the model is really credible, so shall we take a look at some of these issues?

I: Tackles an issue ‘backwards’

The first issue raised was that the use of the media effects model tackles a problem by putting the blame on the media first, instead of other possible factors such as a person’s background or surrounding environment. Like what was previously discussed in class, is the reason for a person to be anorexic mainly due to the media? As media is widely used by everyone, the theory would naturally derive at a conclusion that the media has led to the person being anorexic. But, is the media the only influential factor for a person to be anorexic? Will this reasoning be valid for all cases related to the media?

II: Study subjects are belittled

The second issue raised is the choice of participants for a study on media effects. Based on the model, media studies are often carried out with children or people who are deemed as ‘unstable’ individuals. The model discriminates against the social hierarchy of people by assuming that the educated or working-class people are less prone to being affected by the media, and thus the ‘lower-class’ people as their study subjects.

III: Not supported by theories

The last issue I will talk about is on how the effects model is not supported by any concrete pieces of evidence that shows the effects of media on people. The model gives us a vague explanation on how the media affects people solely based on the researchers’ assumptions, and also due to the studies being carried out only on a selective group of people, the results of the study is not entirely credible and thus leading to a poor rational interpretation of media effects.

Thoughts on media.

What are some interesting questions to ask about the role of the media today, in the shaping of mass opinion (In the age of the Internet)?

Some questions that my curiosity has led me to are:

1. Is the rapid advancement of technology more beneficial or harmful to us?
2. Will the exposure to media continue to influence our thinking?
3. Will people’s opinion about media change in the future?

Here we are! The end of my second blog post. I hope you guys enjoyed reading some of my thoughts and maybe, share the same thinking as me?? See you guys in the next post!! 🙂

Hello everyone!! Its halfway through 2019 and we have all started another chapter of our life. The first week of school felt really really foreign to me and its probably because it’s a totally new environment and everybody are new faces. So! To break the ice, I shall start with my introduction 🙂

My name is Cynthia, and I was born on 29 December 1999,(yes, it’s 2 days before new year’s). I am turning 20 this year and the reality of being an adult still hasn’t hit me yet. OMG HELPS I am so not ready to adult.

Before I continue, here are some pictures of the young me trying to ace my photo shoot HAHAHA: (fun fact: My mum once told me that I was rejected as a child model for being too chubby. Oh wells)

Anyways, more about myself! I have a carefree and optimistic personality, and look like I have absolutely no worries about anything. But actually, sometimes I freak out on the inside HAHA. I’m kind of a procrastinator as well, actually no, it’s all the time.(Honestly, my new year’s resolution was to procrastinate less but I think I failed on the first day of the year), so if you ever hear me procrastinating, please scold me thanks. Also, when there’s free time to spare, I mostly enjoy being outdoors, with my friends, and just spending the day chilling at a cafe or occasionally doing something thrilling for the adrenaline rush.

I graduated this year from Republic Polytechnic with a Diploma in Pharmaceutical Science. The 3 years of studying pharmaceuticals was fun, but it wasn’t totally enjoyable and that’s what made me realised that pharmaceuticals wasn’t what I wanted to pursue as a career, and this brings me onto my next point:

Why psychology?

My interest in psychology started out when I had a volunteer opportunity to help out at MINDS. After spending some time interacting with the kids there, I had a lot of questions about mental health and illness and it kind of sparked my interest towards psychology. I found myself wanting to understand more about these special needs kids and what can I do to be able to help them out in the future.

I hope that through this course, I will be able to understand more about the mind and behaviour of people and hopefully be able to help them out as a child psychologist.

BCM 110

As technology has been constantly advancing along the years, the media has became an essential in our everyday life. With this advancement, it has impacted our communication level as well as mental health in one way or another.

I believe this module will allow myself to see the bigger picture of how technology has impacted people and understand more about the connection between technology and psychology, and hopefully aid me in my future career.

With that, I shall end my blog here. Thank you for taking the time to read this post and I hope we will all be able to get along well with each other for the next 3 years.

Cheers to the start of our 3 years, friends!! 🙂