How are we influenced?

How, in our society. are we influenced by our media, advertisements, and other forms of propaganda we are constantly bombarded by? What influences the way you see the world?

One of the ways media, ads, and other propaganda can influence us is by repetition. You know those commercials that play all the time on TV? That is an example of ads constantly shoving itself in our faces, playing on our subconscious and conscious mind slowly until you get the song from the commercial in your head. Advertisements can use popular or famous music to provoke memories (for example, a commercial might use an 80's hit for its soundtrack, or if a politician uses a popular song to end a speech, which might make someone think "Hey, I remember this song"). It influences our decisions by deciding and pushing the perceived norm. For example, an advertisement that plays constantly can have people spraying each other with a hose, because they look like they're having fun, which might make people subconsciously or consciously think "That looks fun, let me try". This can be used to make someone buy another one of their products as well, even if the ad is for another product, or if a politician is trying to make a statement, product placement might be used. Emotion provoking can affect the way we see the world. War, murder, and other disturbing footage can easily make someone think "Wow, the world is really screwed up and i'm ashamed of the human race" and amazing footage and happy things can make someone think "The world is an awesome place and i'm happy to be apart of the human race". Governments can do either one of these to shape how we see ourselves and everyone else, and get people to change their way of living.

How to Read an Advertisement

Advertising manipulates a certain audience to prefer a certain service, or product. It can also imply a certain message throughout without stating it in the ad, by playing on your emotions, desires and/or morals. For the assignment, I have to find an ad, and answer questions dealing with who the ad is catering to and what the underlying message is to the advertisement. For my advertisement, I picked a 30 second ad for Mountain Dew.

1. Who is the audience for the advertisement? How can you tell? What assumptions do the advertisers make about the audience?

The intended audience for the ad are basketball fans between the ages of 12-24. The reason I think this is for basketball fans is because the commercial involves NBA point guard Russell Westbrook, a basketball player who plays for the Oklahoma City Thunder. The advertisers assume the audience is told what to do and what to think by someone else, suggesting the ad is for a younger, more impressionable audience. Another possible reason this is for a younger audience is due to the product itself, which is constantly marketed for teens and young adults.

2. Is this a populist advertisement? Or an elitist one? How can you tell? What traditions or standards does it rely upon to be understood in these terms?

This is an elitist advertisement, because it caters to a specific audience, in this case fans of the NBA and basketball players. Why I think this is because the ad has a NBA player (Russell Westbrook) and it references things people in basketball would understand (for example, pregame music)

3. What is your prior knowledge of the product? Of the advertisement? How does this help you understand the ad's meaning?

Mountain Dew is a soda full of caffeine and sugar made by PepsiCo. I had no prior knowledge this ad existed, since I have never seen it on TV. The caffeine in Mountain Dew gives you an energy boost, so the advertisers are using that to their advantage by suggesting you drink it to keep you energized for playing sports.

4. In what ways is the ad designed to manipulate you into buying the product? What emotions does it play upon? What desires does it commodify?

It commodifies the desire to win and be great, and the desire to be unique. The advertisement plays upon determination, and confidence, since that's what a good basketball player's mind-state is, and Russell Westbrook is a very good basketball player, so it's fitting that he conveys the message. It manipulates you into buying it by marketing Mountain Dew as a sports drink, something that can get you energized. Well it does energize you (it has caffeine), there's a crazy amount of sugar in it which is not healthy in the slightest, and afterwards you can suffer from caffeine crashes which make you feel like garbage.

5. What unstated message does this ad convey? What themes does it employ? What does the ad tell us about American culture?

This ad's unstated message is "You don't have to follow others to be great." The themes this advertisement employs are rebellion (going against the grain), being a daredevil, and greatness. This says something about North American culture. We are told to be the best, and to make a dent in the world enough that a lot of us are determined to make that happen. This ad is designed to motivate aspiring professional sports players, as well as advertise Mountain Dew, which is the most important part of the whole advertisement.

Excel

My experience with Excel was positive. Data collection is interesting to me, so this was kind of cool. Spreadsheets (especially Excel) are definitely a very useful tool for budgeting and mortgages because it is very flexible (for example, it accepts quite a lot of different types of data, from time to currency to fractions) and not very hard to use. It's very easy to calculate a lot of numbers and other formula very fast using excel and very fast to graph.

Film and Film-Editing

My movie unfolded mostly as expected, but I had to shorten the storyboard to fit the time I had to film, and the quality of the video and sound is not very good, so I had to work with that and try to make it so we can actually hear what they're saying. When I was filming, a challenge was explaining my scene to the actors. I'm not very good with explaining things so it was a little difficult. My favorite part of making the movie is editing it, because there was so much I could do with the footage we had. For my movie, I used Windows Movie Maker to edit.

Fake Identity Generator

This website can create a fake identity for many purposes. It includes everything, including blood type, phone number and username. All of this is fake, so there isn't anything shady and illegal on here.
link

My Favorite Video Game

https://www.moovly.com/gallery/user/3c9c76e3-9a42-3ac6

Piracy: Good or Bad?

In early 2014, The Pirate Bay was seized by the Swedish government due to a complaint by a Swedish anti-piracy group. The Pirate Bay is a popular pirating website (ranked the 89th most popular website on the internet) where users can download and post music, TV shows, video games, movies, documents, and more for free using a peer to peer file sharing system called BitTorrent. The site has been in legal trouble many times before, one in early 2009 where the original owners: Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm were all charged with copyright infringement, fined 46 million kronor ($6 822 856 CAD, split up and divided between a number of corporations) and were sentenced to one year in a medium security prison (which was then shortened). This trial was one of the most serious file sharing trials to date. Which leads to a question: Should illegal downloading sites be punished this seriously and is it fair to do so? For this post, I will focus on pirating music, but TV shows and movies are similar.




When you buy a CD, buy an album or song off of iTunes, or stream music from a music streaming service such as Google Play Music, Spotify, or Tidal, a portion of the price you paid or a set price is paid to the artist (Even if you bought a CD or cassette from a garage sale, the original buyer paid the artist through the purchase). When you pirate music by torrenting it (quick note, a common misconception is that torrenting in and of itself is illegal when it isn't, and in fact, some visual artists, video game developers, artists, and bands use it to distribute their work) and or streaming it illegally, you are taking earned money from them. Pirating media on the internet is very popular, due to its ease and distribution. It is not hard to find a torrent of your favorite album or a whole band's discography on websites such as The Pirate Bay. The pop creates a downwards shift in revenue for artists. While they try to make up for it by distributing merchandise and touring, the albums should be their main revenue. This can also decrease record label revenue and can lead to some pretty desperate things that aren't good for the artist, the record label, and you.




Everyone who uses the computer semi-regularly at the least and has an internet connection has pirated some sort of media at least once. Again, it's easy and efficient but the loss of money going to the artist, if big enough, can cause problems for the artist and or record label. If this problem was transferred to the real world, it would be like stealing a CD or any other physical copy of the music, on a massive scale.




Which then goes back to my question: Should illegal downloading sites be punished seriously and is it fair to do so? If what happened to TPB was serious, then no, at least not quite. The people who run these sites are not terrorists, nor they want the world to burn, they believe in a completely free world without these laws, and they create these sites to give free things out to everyone. I don't agree with adding prison time, but what I do agree with morally is the amount of money they were fined and gave to the owners because that money is pretty much owed to the corporations and record labels who distribute the media the owners distributed illegally. 

The reason it took so long to charge them (TPB was created in 2003 and the owners were charged 2009) was because their identities were concealed and users only knew them by their usernames: brokep (Peter Sunde), TiAMO (Fredrik Neij), and anakata (Gottfrid Svartholm). The fact that concealing identity is easy on the internet can lead to very illegal things being done that harm another person, or worse being done. Pirating is morally and obviously bad, but many do it. A good reason is, on the surface, it isn't bad, in fact, it's quite awesome. Free music? Heck yeah! But if you go deeper, it causes problems as you read above that can outweigh the good it can give, depending on how you look at things.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay

http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-pirate-bay-cofounder-fredrik-neij-worth-prison-time-for-torrent-site-2015-7