This project emerged from our collective interest in how media influences young people. Our ideas ranged from the consistent bashing of women to advertisements allowing themselves to enter our insecurities and profit off of them. We all agreed that there should be a different way that advertisements could sell their product without negatively affecting anyone and so within groups we began to come up with solutions. Some solutions including using media itself to fight off media; meaning using social websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. to show how something should be advertised. We first began this project individually and did the Ad-Busters project and then shared them within groups and did a critical discourse analysis on these ads. We weren't really looking for anything, these ads were things that we saw in our everyday lives and some of us didn't notice how much ads we see just in our own neighborhood. After we collected the advertisements and did an overall analysis we looked at one ad of our choice to analyze more in depth. When we analyzed that one ad we noted the more broader themes that advertisers were using for example using female/male body parts or just sex to sell. After we did this we discussed within the class if there could be another way to advertise and discussed all the negative messages that media has upon us and the Social Action project emerged. Now that we have all presented it is a must to reflect. What exactly did we all learn from this? If we all take action to generate solutions so we can make a change?
10 Comments
Emely
12/23/2013 08:31:38 am
This unit has significantly changed the way I view advertisement and the media in general. It also brought to light the lack of gender diversity in the media and in government, which I didn't really consider prior to this unit. This also encouraged me to investigate what I am shown and what I am told is the truth.
Reply
Marija
12/25/2013 04:57:38 am
Advertisements are everywhere around us, and they often affect us in ways that we would never suspect. This unit and our Ad-Busters project really opened my eyes to that problem. How can we escape it? How can we lessen advertisement's hold on our lives and our so called truth?
Reply
AJ
12/26/2013 12:01:47 pm
After this unit I did some internal reflecting on advertisements and it continued onto the next day when I was supposed to be having fun with friends in Macy's Santa Land. I went, but I was like a dead mush, giving a full smile only when it was time to take a picture with a heavily cologne smelling Santa who firmly held onto the sides of two of my friend's butts with his silky, white gloves (what do you think influenced him to do that?). Do any of you feel like you need to help everybody and try to fight for everything, but then you have those moments where you know you can't and it's really overwhelming and you just want to curl up in a ball and punch something and yell at the top of your lungs? But you just don't because it won't help the world. So instead you stay silent and start to isolate yourself (which, yes, doesn't help either). This is what happened as I reflected on this unit.
Reply
Jennifer Garay
1/25/2014 04:44:04 am
Throughout the process of both the Ad busters project and Social Action unit I was a bit frustrated. I was unaware as to how to collect data or how this would even help in the long run. As both projects progressed I realized they were tied together and that the beginning for change is through awareness. Prior to these projects I was well aware of the advertiser's techniques, I had heard the expression "sex sells" and yet found nothing wrong with it. After realizing all the ads that are around me it was a bit frightening that I had become so accustom to them that I never really stopped to take a real look and think critically about them.Rather than being okay with everything around me I have now learned to be more analytical because it is in regard to what I call my environment.
Reply
Darlene V.
1/27/2014 12:54:19 am
One thing I learned from this project is how hard it is to choose and create a project that gives out a message. An issue I had was trying to wrap my head around what and how to do what I had in mind. The assignment was fun also because we had a wide range of ideas, there really wasnt a limit on what we can or cannot do.
Reply
Hillary
1/29/2014 08:24:23 am
This unit has had such an impact for me! I was quite oblivious to advertisement and their sneaky hidden messages. I think this unit has taught me to stop and really see what society is having us think and just how much they could have an impact on us.
Reply
Brandon
1/30/2014 02:07:59 am
I think I could speak for us all when I say that this project has changed our thinking. The project was very moving, and personally now I see the public world a bit differently. I have started to look at advertisements more critically (Yes, Ms. Bellino wants to hear us say this!) and it has changed my mindset. Are we, as humans, products ourselves? Are we just products buying more products because we either feel the need to do so, or are compelled to do so through advertising? I feel as if we are products to these corporations. They don't look at us on an individual scale, they look at us as one societal whole.
Reply
Mohema
1/30/2014 02:13:46 am
This project changed my point of view on advertisement and media. I never knew it had such a critical impact on individuals. What i've learned from the ad buster's project was that they do more than just sell products, they sell image. This basically means that they tell us who we are and who we should be.
Reply
Emily
1/30/2014 04:31:12 am
Reply
Katarzyna
1/30/2014 05:18:10 am
Likewise, I entered this unit less aware of the media's influence than I did finishing the AD busters project. I saw how some posters and advertisements were completely off, marketing something that had absolutely nothing to do the the image they were sending to the public, but I never stopped to think about how this affected so many teenagers and ruined their futures by making them feel insecure when they couldn't fit the look the media was placing on a pedestal. During the Social Action Project, my group found it so difficult to actually create a video on the negative influences of social media without making our own video look like an advertisement. We tried to appeal as much as we could to the class' emotion to make them aware of how media hypnotizes people and to encourage them to continue to be aware each time they look at an advertisement of the media's attempt to make all of us perfect clones. Ultimately, our end product came out to be an informative but creepy video intended to scare our audience with the truths behind what the media is sending out to consume and buy and consume even more.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorYou are all authors of this shared space. Please use it to comment, discuss, question, challenge, identify ideas. Archives
April 2014
Categories
All
|