Okay, so maybe I was wrong about the media being that powerful. I forgot to be humanistic about everything. So basically things are still a bit blurry now about who the stronger entity is; media or the audience. First off, the audience fights with ‘opinion leaders’, second degree expert mediation with goals not to capitalize but to criticize. And these opinion leaders come in many forms from complex advertising/marketing to everyday people around you that know a little bit more about what television is trying to sell.

Then you have economics psychologically innate in every person. By psychological economics I mean that tendency of people to conduct a cost-benefit analysis about their every decision. A larger picture would be peoples’ need for psychosocial subsistence and goal-orientation. Really, people aren't as dumb as media infers. We are dealing with individuals who are different from opinions and preferences down to fingerprint and DNA structure.

Then again maybe it is because of that diversity that media is given power. I mean, not everyone is as smart or as critical as, let's say, the Atenean (hehehehehe). So those people are still subject to whatever the media feeds them. Yes we have opinion leaders like endorsers who are so called 'experts'. Aren't they part of advertising and selling beliefs in commodities to make a quick buck? And who's to say that the opinion leaders at home aren't swayed by the media themselves.

I think that's what the Political Economy of the Media is trying to get at. You basically have elites who have a whole world unique to themselves. And those on the bottom half of the pyramid, of course, kick and scream to try to get to that status. I think that's part of why media is influential; even socio-economically it feeds on mere mortals. Media relays to people what they are and what they should be.

Concrete example is, I would say Lady Gaga. She is insane completely unorthodox. And her ideas are not mainstream at all. But because she is marketed so well, her radicalism makes millions. Our Sociologist teacher would call it Marketed Radicalism. Who did that? Media did. It takes anything pure and individual and markets it and makes it mainstream and makes it wanted by everyone; telling us what to be.

I'm sorry I'm ranting about who controls who and why media is so capitalistic. I think it's high-time I find out. It's really hard to say. Even the diversity of human thought is at question. Maybe that's why it's so hard to say because media changes so fast and people are very complex and varied. Or maybe no one is the enemy. Maybe media is just as important to culture and society as language. Maybe the real enemy here is capitalism? Maybe, i mean that is where people get high about inequality, injustice and everyone goes on a rampage and protests. Then the media broadcasts about it and labels it as deviant. Then everyone watching gets the same idea and the deviance becomes mainstream. Then doesn't that make media the more powerful player? Then again that deviance was concocted in the minds of human beings themselves. Okay, I'm seriously confused. I wonder if we'll ever get to theory that would answer my question: who says what?

As of now, I'm still siding with the humans in the whole humans vs TV thing. Because after all, media is only a gateway. it doesn't formulate ideas and conepts; it relays it. Humans create the ideas. Humans receive it. Media only stands in between to disseminate. Is that a theory?

I love these old pin-up girls doing commercials for everything from Coca-Cola to the U.S. Army.
http://www.nogw.com/images/press_obey.jpg

This week in Comm, we talked about two theories; The Cultivation Analysis Theory and Agenda Setting. After a brief overview of the two theories in my notebook, I realized that the two are actually interrelated in a way but before that, let's look at the two concepts individually.

Cultivation Analysis is basically about how the media, television in particular, cultivates concepts of social reality. It creates and magnifies certain realities that were never real in the first place. The source of the artificial reality is unknown, it could be from the media itself or a mere mirror of the viewer's and their tastes (what I talked about in my last blog). The point is television brings about a whole new reality. It's most probably because television is so visual and auditory that people could almost relate to what's happening. You know what they say about seeing is believing? That's very true. From the very prime of our lives when we were on Thomas the Train, Blues Clues and all that kindergarten stuff when we thought Santa Clause was real to the peak of our perceptive ability where when we see certain stuff happening on the news,we instantly become prejudiced about the social context that news was involved in. We see the war on terror and we think all Muslims are bad. And just recently, we see incompetent policemen fail to save the lives of a dozen Chinese tourists and the Chinese instantly socially stigmatize us as a people. Let's face it, we can all be judgmental and prejudiced especially when we gaze upon something so picturesque, emotionally unstable and critical.

The other theory, the Agenda-Setting Theory, is about how the media imposes itself upon the viewers. It selects topics and material, inserts arguments and opinions whether unknowingly or intently and allows that biased look on certain topics to spread and circulate among its viewers. How it's a three step cycle is very appalling. Who knew that the media, which reflects current events, changed the public and public sectors whose motions it reports to the people. It's confusing, but basically, blame it on the Media. How it effects change is because of the injection of opinions, points and arguments that shift the public perception of the material in one way or the other. And 'people' is a very powerful thing. When I heard about the politics in the media in class, I instantly though of Jambi Madrigal. In the presidential race, everyone counted on Noynoy, ERAP, Manny or Gibo. Why? Because they had the most publicity. Everyone was advocating them. I know it isn't clear, but their advocacy actually strengthened the bias. Let's not look at it as a 'candidate vs candidate' thing but as a 'well-publicized candidate vs the nobody candidates' thing. All the other presidential candidates were thought of as jokes. Even for me and my friends who were in fact Ateneans. When someone would ask who we would vote for and someone let out a 'Jamby', we'd all laugh. It's bad, I know. But that's all thanks to media exposure. Or lack of it on Jamby's part. Moreover, you ever see the presidential candidates' commercials? Let's face it, the top four contenders had the best commercials. They were very clean cut, inspiring and cutting edge. I think this theory still holds true up to today even with the user-generated content of media. Why? There was no change in the effects of the media or what it did to the viewers. Only a change in the 'who'. I mean, users may not be big media corporations, but they are still made of minds set to kill. So there is not much change in effect. Only the partition of who controls content and arguments. After all, media corporations and small time users are all people made of body and a super massive, capable mind.

How the two theories come together is very simple. The media controls content and inserts opinions and instantly, the people perceive these as 'real' or worse, their own. Take for example the presidential race. The media controlled who had the most air time and who had the prettiest infomercials and best interviews and the people perceived the character on screen as the 'real' presidential candidates. It's pretty simple really. MEDIA IS A POWERFUL THING; maybe even more powerful than the people. Or just as with the continually growing user-generated media culture. Or the media and the people could be becoming one. Media or people or both, whoever puts the stuff on the newspapers, on the radios and on the internet are very powerful people that change minds, policies, societies, governments, international relations and so on and so forth. (Allow me to swear, because I love this line from the movie, 'Fight Club') The people we're after are the people we depend on. So do not f*** with them.

The merchants of cool made a lot of interesting questions pop up out of my head. One very important question I'd like to raise was that one when it asked, "does the media really shape the youth or does it only act as a mirror."

About this question, I'd like to talk about our own youth here in the Philippines; more specifically, those in the mainstream cluster.

I mean we Filipinos are so used to colonization be it direct or latent. I mean, our teenagers aren't really influenced by their own ideas and creativity. They are shaped by whatever the superpowers (America, England, etc.) inject into the media. We are but copies of copies of copies. Then again, we here in the Philippines are so good at emulating that even our media takes Western contexts in everything and tries to sell it to our youth. I'd say here in the Philippines, media shapes us. In the West where the superpowers are richer and, in turn, more free to create and are not bound by socio-economic or cultural factors, their media are mirrors. Their youth reinvent and the media only mirrors it back to them. With that, their teenagers get even crazier ideas and the media still mirrors it back to them. It's a never ending cycle of reinventing and redistribution.

I think that socio-economic-cultural factor says a lot about what the teenagers do. Let's face it, the Philippines is not the best place around. Most of us aspire to live the American Dream. That is why our youth, so ambitious and easy to corrupt, are easy sell outs to foreigners. I can say that even for myself. We laugh at 'jejemons' but fail to see that they are of our own flesh and blood. And we praise the Brad Pitts and Lady Gagas that the American media so greatly endorses.

With this entry I can only say that the influence of media depends on the context that it is put in. To our Filipino teenagers, all things American are good and amazing and spectacular and 'cool'. To our American brethren in the West, it's just another day in the great U.S. of A.

I guess this is pretty much a take on Sociology and Comm. Media sells sells sells what is cool. But that 'cool' is still subject to numerous factors like culture and context. Because I thought about it and realized that you really can't see our youth in one perspective only. There's so much social conflict and difference that restrain us.

'Cool' is different in so many contexts. And to the media, that's only their next paycheck. That's why it's so complicated.