Month: August 2019

Hola people!!

For this post, I will be sharing my group’s sub-advertisement as well as an example of mediated public sphere!

FEMINISM

Feminism is still a present day social movement where women continuously fights for gender equality. With this idea, our team decided to use an advertisement from Mr. Clean that was published in 2011 to celebrate mother’s day.

The advertisement can be seen to be targeted at women, specifically mothers. The tagline to the posters ‘this mother’s day, get back to the job that really matters’ makes a connection between women and cleaning chores. It sends out a sexist message that even during holidays, women should be carrying out their responsibility of cleaning the house.

The idea of our sub-advertisement circles around the idea of Father’s day and the job that they should be doing. We wanted to bring across a message that males can also be subjected to more ‘feminine’ jobs such as cleaning at home instead of an office job and similarly a women’s job does not have to be limited to cleaning or house chores and instead could also be doing jobs that are done by males.

MEDIATED PUBLIC SPHERE

Public sphere is a concept that was introduced by Jurgen Habermas in 1962 which he defined it to be a virtual or imaginary community which does not necessarily exist in any identifiable space(Jürgen Habermas and the Public Sphere, 2007) that is democratic and open where citizens can debate about common concerns. With the constant advancement of technology in our society, public sphere is now referred to as ‘mediated public sphere’, where mass media plays a central role in our current public sphere.

Early this year, Singapore blogger Xia Xue posted a series of Instagram Stories calling out a driver with ghostly decals on his windshield, which alarmed her mother causing her to almost collide with the car. In her story, she included a poll for her followers to share their thought on this issue.

Many people share the same thought as her regarding this issue and some even reached out to her to share their side of the story.

Based on this scenario, we can see how a mediated public sphere allows the public to address common issue on a media platform. With Instagram acting as the central media in this case, people are able to share their side of the story in this “space”.

That’s the end for this week’s blog!! Thank you for spending time to read the post and see y’all in the next one 😊

References

Jürgen Habermas and the Public Sphere. (2007). Retrieved from https://www.media-studies.ca/articles/habermas.htm

Xiaxue calls out S’pore driver’s ghostly car decals after mum experiences near-accident. Retrieved from https://mothership.sg/2019/07/xiaxue-ghostly-car-stickers/

Hey everybody!!

Welcome back friends!!😊 We have finally made it to our 4th entry!!

For this week’s post, it’s gonna be different from the rest as it’s reflection/summary time! Before I move on, shout-out to my members Beatrice, Bei Xi, Fathin, Nandhini & Syafiq! You guys did so well, so proud of y’all!!

Okay, moving on to the main point.

Media

Media is being simply defined as ‘ communication outlets or tools used to store and deliver information‘. It includes an extensive range of component such as our newspaper, television, Internet and many more.

As we’ve all learnt, the ownership of media can be classified into 2 categories – public-owned media and private-owned media. Let’s take a look at how the different ownership works!

Public owned media

A media that is publicly owned is financially and editorially managed by the government. Singapore’s media is an example of a public owned media. Our media outlets are regulated by the Singapore Government through the Ministry of Communication and Information (MCI). MCI supervises our country’s media censorship and enforces laws pertaining to mass media.

The commonly used media in our country are Mediacorp and Singapore Press Holdings(SPH) and what we see through these outlets are intentionally filtered due to MCI’s regulation.

What are some pros and cons?

Pros

1. Financially stable as its funded by the government.
2. Promotes the nation’s values and serves public interest. For example, if you are awake early enough to catch the first show broadcast at 8am on TV, you may have noticed that Mediacorp plays the National Anthem before commencing the programmes for the day.

Cons

1. The government censors any content that is unsuitable for broadcast so this may shortchange the audience as we do not get to see what is actually happening on TV or the news.
2. The contents may be manipulated, thus reduces its credibility.

Private owned media

Private owned media is financially and editorially controlled by a non state-linked organisation. Such media are independent and are able to chose their contents without the intervention of the government. In Hong Kong, it uses a combination of private and public owned media. Unlike Singapore, Hong Kong’s Freedom of Press is protected by their Basic Law, therefore, there is no media censorship in their country.

What are some Pros and Cons?

Pros

1. Independent from government and is not politically influenced
2. Able to provide viewers with more insights by offering perspectives that are non-governmental

Cons

1. Not financially stable as revenue depends on viewers.
2. Focuses on contents that are sensationalised or superficial to draw viewer’s attention.

My thoughts on media ownership

Personally, I would prefer a media to be public-owned. Although private owned media allows a freedom of speech and its able to publish any content without the government’s intervention, I feel that sometimes the content may raise problems that could spark conflict. Growing up in Singapore, the media content that has been provided to us through a public-owned media has actually benefited us in a lot of ways such as safe-guarding our values and exposing us to contents that promotes ‘Nation Building’

That’s it! We have come to the end to another lengthy post. Thank you for reading!! Cheers friends!! 😊