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LAST OF THE LAST

Hey everyone! Welcome to the final installment of my blog, and in this post I will be sharing on User Generated Content & out team’s parody video!! 🙂

User Generated Content (UGC)

UGCs are contents that are created and put on social platforms by anyone with the aim to promote a particular brand. It could be pictures, videos or even blogs.

In the past, before smart phones and social media came into our lives, our source of media mainly circles around the TV, newspaper and the desktop computer, which isn’t that friendly to use. The contents exposed to us at that time by Mediacorp focuses more on current affairs and there’s only a limited amount of promotional contents that are usually put out there by the brand themselves. UGCs hardly ever exist in those days.

With the advancement of technologies these days, we have more access to media 2.0 which includes various interactive media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and Youtube. Through these platforms, we often come across posts and videos about brands like Apple, Netflix and many others by content users and those are considered as UGCs.

UGCs can also come in the form of events that are carried out by brands themselves for content users to give them extra promotion. For example, Starbucks has a yearly Christmas event called the Red cup Contest where they launch red cups during the festive season and buyers have a chance to win a pricey give card when they upload a photo pf their cup on Instagram with the hashtag #Redcupcontest. (unfortunately, its not in Singapore ☹)

Overall, my thoughts of mainstream traditional TV has changed significantly with the availability of UGCs. I feel that mainstream traditional TV offers limited contents and focuses more on contents that are more suited for Singaporeans, whereas UGCs offers a wide range of contents that allows me to be more exposed to the ‘outside world’ and keep up with the latest trend.

Parody

For our video, we have decided to focus on the Uses and Gratification theory as it is a topic that we can all relate to and it kind of shows the way we use the media.

The 5 points showed in the video are:

1. Cognitive needs: using the media to acquire knowledge, information, etc.
   – Syafiq watching a makeup tutorial before trying out the look.
2. Personal Integrative needs: using the media to boost self-esteem
   – Beatrice watching lookbook for the last trend and then gaining idea for her outfit.
3. Affective needs: using the media to satisfy emotion needs
   – The 3 of us watching a funny video for comedy.
4. Social Integrative needs: using the media to socalise with people
   – Syafiq texting Sara, and she replies with a meme.
5. Tension-free needs: using the media to relieve tension and stress
   – Sara listening to an ASMR recorded by Beatrice as a form of stress release.

We have finally reached final blog post guys!!! 🙌 🙌 Thank you for reading my post all this while 💞

References

Uses and Gratification theory. (2019). Retrieved from : https://www.communicationtheory.org/uses-and-gratification-theory/

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!! 😊

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!! 🙂