Amena
Neighborhood
After discussing our ideas of a neighborhood within our group, we came to the conclusion that we don't always have to have a relationship with our neighborhoods or feel some sort of connection to it. Although, our neighborhoods could impact us as we're growing up, they may not share a big factor of our lives. If our Neighborhoods don't have a lot of offer us, then we won't feel any influence or connection to it.
Community
When we discussed community within my group, we found that when we felt we belonged to a community, we shared some sort of mutual interests or felt comfortable being open with our "community". We all shared experiences where we didn't feel like we belonged to a certain community because they were not welcoming and inviting. I found that when we travel to other countries it may be hard for some of us to fit in and adjust into the communities.
I'd like to think we have an advantage of living in New York since we live in such a diverse environment. We learn to accept different cultures and create a more open-minded perception of the world. Especially in the city, there are numerous communities since people tend to join together and create a common place where you can go to gain support and have a place of comfort.
I'd like to think we have an advantage of living in New York since we live in such a diverse environment. We learn to accept different cultures and create a more open-minded perception of the world. Especially in the city, there are numerous communities since people tend to join together and create a common place where you can go to gain support and have a place of comfort.
Environment
I see my environment as my Neighborhood and Community emerged together. My partner saw it as "not just a physical but non-physical place as well". Meaning, that the environment can range from the very small things to the larger things as well as the things that aren't physically there but are still a part of our environment such as the actual interaction among living species/nature. Essentially, we are all a part of it and control how it it works, making the environment one of the most crucial parts of a person's life. Because we have the ability to affect it and basically control it as a whole, we are the biggest factor in the environment.
Nature
As nature derives from the word "natural", one can say nature consists of all things natural in the world. Not man-made. Nature is a beautiful thing, but unfortunately it is slowly being damaged by mankind and its ability to destroy it and manipulate it in order to take what we want from it. We have lost our older more traditional ways of living with our old customs and better connection to nature, and have transitioned to the modern era, where most things are man-made and have less value.
Mental Mapping Process
I found the mental mapping process to be very engaging and a chance for us to reflect on our neighborhoods and to analyze how it plays a role in shaping our identities. After going more in debt in how my neighborhood evolved and how strong the community is, I realized that there wasn't really much of a community at all. However, I also realized that building a community starts with yourself and that if I want to have a stronger built community, I should start with myself by contributing more and finding out ways on how to improve it. Some questions that emerged from the process were; what causes a (dis)connection between the person and their neighborhood, and what factors make a person attribute a negative or positive connotation to a specific neighborhood? If I were to share this research, I would share it to High School students just like me so they can gain a better perspective on how we view our neighborhoods. I would also share it with city council members or the people who design the structure of certain neighborhoods so they can see how our age group reacts to the way our neighborhoods were made. I would share this data in a way where we lay out the neighborhoods that hold "positive connotations" to them and ones that hold negative ones to see what exactly it is that separate them and how we can make our neighborhoods a more comfortable, peaceful, and safe place for us.
I thought the mental mapping process was a great way to show how we all felt about our neighborhoods and dissect the common themes from all of our maps. By noticing these similarities we can begin to answer some of the research questions that relate to all of us as teenagers living in New York City. I think the most beneficial thing I took away from this was that I was able to see what makes us have a connection or disconnection to our neighborhoods. The fact that this process underwent a series of different steps for us to gather research, I feel that this made our research more stronger and effective. For me personally, I think that physically making the maps wasn't as effective as discussing how we felt about them because we ended up sharing how we felt about our neighborhoods regardless. I realized that once we all shared our maps as a group and talked about them, we didn't ended up drifting away from the actual map and just focusing on how we feel in our neighborhoods which essentially was the whole point of this. A way I would improve this method is to focus solely on the different questions we had in the beginning of the process and trying to answer them collectively as a group. Making a map didn't seem that effective to me since most of us just ended up doing a sketch of our neighborhoods that didn't have any important themes. Other ways we can capture what we are interested in learning about our neighborhoods is to make a list of the positive influences in our neighborhood and the negative influences. We can also try to map out how our neighborhoods changed and if it was for the better of for the worse.
I thought the mental mapping process was a great way to show how we all felt about our neighborhoods and dissect the common themes from all of our maps. By noticing these similarities we can begin to answer some of the research questions that relate to all of us as teenagers living in New York City. I think the most beneficial thing I took away from this was that I was able to see what makes us have a connection or disconnection to our neighborhoods. The fact that this process underwent a series of different steps for us to gather research, I feel that this made our research more stronger and effective. For me personally, I think that physically making the maps wasn't as effective as discussing how we felt about them because we ended up sharing how we felt about our neighborhoods regardless. I realized that once we all shared our maps as a group and talked about them, we didn't ended up drifting away from the actual map and just focusing on how we feel in our neighborhoods which essentially was the whole point of this. A way I would improve this method is to focus solely on the different questions we had in the beginning of the process and trying to answer them collectively as a group. Making a map didn't seem that effective to me since most of us just ended up doing a sketch of our neighborhoods that didn't have any important themes. Other ways we can capture what we are interested in learning about our neighborhoods is to make a list of the positive influences in our neighborhood and the negative influences. We can also try to map out how our neighborhoods changed and if it was for the better of for the worse.
"Advertising is our Environment"
Methodology
Data Collection:
My advertisement images were gathered from my walk to/from school as well as from magazines/newspapers at home. From my walk to and from school I typically got advertisements from bus stops as well as restaurant signs and ads I saw on trucks. These were gathered in Midtown Manhattan (My Neighborhood as well as my schools neighborhood) At home, I found some magazines lying down so I flipped through them to find the advertisements that stood out to me the most. I also found some ads in fliers from shops and guide books to different universities. This caused my data to have a bit of diversity since it included the theme of "education" which I would say we see the least in advertisements since most of the advertisements were centered around buying their products or "looking the best."
Data Analysis:
Content Analysis: After I gathered a variety of advertisements I would use for the project, I organized my data by placing the advertisements into the most common themes they fell into or a common image (such as a female). The themes I came up with were: Money, Images of a Female, Education, Seasonal Ads, Consumption, Entertainment, Beauty/Fragrances, and Clothes. After doing so, I then created 2 graphs; a pie graph and a bar graph. They would represent the Image/Themes that appeared and the Number of times they appeared. The pie graph would show the relation of themes from one to another and the bar graph would more closely show which ones were more dominant than others.
My advertisement images were gathered from my walk to/from school as well as from magazines/newspapers at home. From my walk to and from school I typically got advertisements from bus stops as well as restaurant signs and ads I saw on trucks. These were gathered in Midtown Manhattan (My Neighborhood as well as my schools neighborhood) At home, I found some magazines lying down so I flipped through them to find the advertisements that stood out to me the most. I also found some ads in fliers from shops and guide books to different universities. This caused my data to have a bit of diversity since it included the theme of "education" which I would say we see the least in advertisements since most of the advertisements were centered around buying their products or "looking the best."
Data Analysis:
Content Analysis: After I gathered a variety of advertisements I would use for the project, I organized my data by placing the advertisements into the most common themes they fell into or a common image (such as a female). The themes I came up with were: Money, Images of a Female, Education, Seasonal Ads, Consumption, Entertainment, Beauty/Fragrances, and Clothes. After doing so, I then created 2 graphs; a pie graph and a bar graph. They would represent the Image/Themes that appeared and the Number of times they appeared. The pie graph would show the relation of themes from one to another and the bar graph would more closely show which ones were more dominant than others.
Critical Discourse Analysis: I chose the "seamless" advertisement because I felt that the whole idea of the company was the most relevant and has a huge impact on American society. This was also a very new and popular company so I thought it was significant in the sense that it attracted a large audience in a small amount of time.
Finding/Results
Content Analysis
As I began to look at the graphs more in depth, It was interesting to see that the two most common themes were "Seasonal Ads" and "Consumption". I expected Beauty or Money to come in first, but the data proved otherwise. I noticed that a lot of the advertisements had a "seasonal design" to attract the audience and also create products that could be gifts for the Christmas Holiday. It made me realize that each Season, the advertisement designers need to find newer ways to attract audience and one way is to keep it updated with the season to make it more appealing. "Consumption" was also a dominant theme seeing that my neighborhood is majority Restaurants and Buildings. I expected this to be a bigger theme since I live right next to 9th avenue which is known as "The Avenue of the Restaurants" of course there would be advertisements for the different restaurants or just advertisements for Food related companies on Bus Stops or Telephone Ads. I think regardless of the fact that I live in a neighborhood with a lot of restaurants, Consumption would've been a dominant theme anyway because of the society we live in, we always want to try to a variety of different foods and of course at reasonable prices.
Critical Discourse Analysis
This advertisement stood out to me the most because it not only was a more modern and innovative way to deal with ordering food, but it would make us even more lazier as a society than we already are. Since we now have the option of staying home and calling the restaurants to bring our order, (which already saves us time from having to go to restaurants to order and pick up our food ourselves) Seamless has made it so we wouldn't even have to call the restaurant, we could just go online, order, pay and wait for our delivery to come. We avoid hassle, hence the "No calls. No hassle." statement in the ad. Is it really that much of a hassle to make a call and order your food on the phone? Is ordering online going to make our lives a little less easier? I personally think it's just a way to make us even more lazier, and unfit and just another excuse to use the internet. And of course we can access it on the "iPad, iPhone, and Android" so we can just take out our phones and make the order right on there. Sooner or later, we wouldn't even have to leave our houses to do anything at all. It's new companies like these that are making us lack motivation to go out and go to school or work because everything is right there on the internet so why go out?
Discussion
After gathering all my advertisements and analyzing the data, I came to the realization that companies only have one objective, and that is: making money. Whether that means it'll influence the consumers negatively or not, that's not their problem. Advertisers spend billions and billions of dollars to attract consumers everyday, and we don't realize how involved we are in this. I learned that there are subliminal messages in so many advertisements but we just choose to not see them or simply don't because they are hidden. We should really look out for the true message the companies are trying to send out and evaluate where they are good effective messages are just scams to try to take our money. For an example, take a company like seamless, is it even necessary to begin with? If we just pick up the phone and call a restaurant ourselves to make an order or just go and pick it up, than there's really no use for anything to be done online. Which is why I would see this as a scam to get people's money. The way the advertisement is made, can trick people into thinking it's a much better product than it actually is which is something we should look out for.
I think that advertisements are sending out the message that young people need to be spending their money on the newest and coolest product out there to be up to date, and spend even more money on beauty products and clothes because we have of course we have to look our best too. Advertising promotes this idea of "perfection" and always needing to conform to society's standards. This matters because not everyone is the same, and of course perfection does not exist so why are we always pushed to try to fix our physical "flaws" and try to buy things to make us look "better"? Why aren't we encouraged to love our bodies and and the skin we're in? This matters because its one of the biggest issues in today's society, if not the biggest issue in young people's society. I think the pressure is put more on Women, and advertisements just make it worse by objectifying women and making them strive to be something they never will be, because its impossible to perfect.
Some new questions that emerged from this investigation were: Who monitors/checks advertisements before they go out into the public eye? Shouldn't there be some policy ensuring that no one advertisement is degrading of anyone, and promoting a bad cause? Shouldn't there be more authority on these things especially seeing that so much money is going to advertising? Why makes us not notice the subliminal messages in advertising, and when we do, why don't we put a stop to it?
I think that advertisements are sending out the message that young people need to be spending their money on the newest and coolest product out there to be up to date, and spend even more money on beauty products and clothes because we have of course we have to look our best too. Advertising promotes this idea of "perfection" and always needing to conform to society's standards. This matters because not everyone is the same, and of course perfection does not exist so why are we always pushed to try to fix our physical "flaws" and try to buy things to make us look "better"? Why aren't we encouraged to love our bodies and and the skin we're in? This matters because its one of the biggest issues in today's society, if not the biggest issue in young people's society. I think the pressure is put more on Women, and advertisements just make it worse by objectifying women and making them strive to be something they never will be, because its impossible to perfect.
Some new questions that emerged from this investigation were: Who monitors/checks advertisements before they go out into the public eye? Shouldn't there be some policy ensuring that no one advertisement is degrading of anyone, and promoting a bad cause? Shouldn't there be more authority on these things especially seeing that so much money is going to advertising? Why makes us not notice the subliminal messages in advertising, and when we do, why don't we put a stop to it?