#comm106

Media wraps us up like a big bubble. Kind of like those giant hamster bubbles but for humans. 

 Every person has a slightly different central bubble of media but we all have one. Our bubble depends a lot on what apps we use every day to see what others are up to...

 depending on where we live...

and depending where we get our news from. 

With that, we gain these kind of ‘media goggles’, where we only see what we see from the medias that supply that information for us. These media sources differ for everyone, meaning that we have a different vision when it comes to our media and also our life. That bubble can sometimes be a good thing but with things like filter bubbles and fake news, our media goggles can be altered from actual reality.

First starting off with the public sphere, German sociologist Jürgen Habermas describes it as an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. 

He also discusses three different kinds of spheres. “These are the private sphere [consisting of family and economy], the sphere of public authority [consisting of state and judiciary], and the bourgeois public sphere” (Devereaux, 109). Social media is the perfect place for the public sphere to happen.

 We see celebrities posting all of the time on Instagram, Twitter, etc. about certain causes all of the time because they know they have an influence with their amount of followers. They post how one can donate to a certain cause and with that media platform, they discuss and identify societal problems and then influence action from that.

Going back to our discussion of ‘media goggles’, we also encounter ‘filter bubbles’. The term ‘filter bubble’ was originally coined by internet activist Eli Pariser whom first spoke of the term in his book. Pariser defined his concept of a filter bubble as "that personal ecosystem of information that's been catered by these algorithms". In longer terms, Eli Pariser is saying that an internet user's past browsing and search history is built up over time when that user indicates their interest in topics by "clicking links, viewing friends, putting movies in [their] queue, reading news stories", and so forth.

 An internet firm then uses this information to target advertising to that specific user, or make certain types of information appear more prominently in search results pages. 

These filter bubbles are easy to live in because the internet is forcing us to blend with people who like the same things and think the same way as the person viewing the content. It’s easier to find people who view the same things as you but you lose having a worldly view of someone who may not have the same views as you. Someone that could challenge your views. The largest concern is that internet users with have no ‘common basis for agreement’ or connection when their flows of information are so polarized. Basically what is happening is that our information is getting segregated based on what we may have past researched or simply Googled and that shouldn’t divide our information unfairly like that.

As well as our information being separated, we are also facing the challenge of ‘fake news’. 

You can’t go through an article about news without something coming up about the topic of fake news. Fake news is literally what it sounds like. News that is fake to deliberately push on misinformation and causes people with that misinformation to go about spreading that fake news to others, mostly via social media. It’s main purpose is for it to be written and published with intent to mislead others in order to damage the public image of something or someone. Recently, it has even been a part of broadcast news media as well, more than ever with the latest presidential election with fake news being slandered back and forth from both parties. 

Michael Radutzky, one of the producers of CBS’ 60 Minutes, has said that his show considers fake news to be “stories that are probably false, have enormous traction [popular appeal] in the culture, and are consumed by millions of people”. Big companies like Facebook are working to expel more and more fake news articles from one's’ Facebook timeline. It’s hard to balance how nice it is to report items on social media but also balancing how to differentiate the real from the fake. “The convenience and effectiveness of social media to reach the masses dramatically impacts the way journalists access information” (Devereaux, 289)

In conclusion, recently in the world of social media, we have had several things alter our perception of the outside world because of the segregation of our media due to ‘filter bubbles’ and also the false announcements that ‘fake news’ brings to our media.

I won’t be the first one to say that media are not like they used to be. We have gone from newspapers...

to digital news  and from conversing face-to-face to a more mediated approach. At this point, if you look at someones social media profile for just 5 minutes, you can probably find out more about them than you could in a 5 minute conversation.

 The internet has become a successful medium between verbal communication and media communication.  It’s also a key institution in a democracy. Mass media has become one of the biggest social institutions that we know today because it not only works but because it's universal. 

Media have assumed many of the previous social institutions like school, church, and family.

Now, advertisements use these institutions as a way to interpellate viewers. “Interpellation [in the media sense] is the way images and media seem to call out to us, catching our attention” (Sturken & Cartwright, 50). These advertisements seem to “hail” viewers as individuals even though so many more people are seeing the same advertisement. 

This makes the viewers feel like the advertisement is “just for me” though it reaches a bigger audience.  Through this process, the viewers of this advertisement are also decoding the images that have been encoded by the providers of the advertisement.

Encoding is a process done by the advertisement makers while the viewers of the advertisement are the ones decoding the image, video, or text. The relationship between encoding and decoding are crucial to the financial gain of companies using commercials and advertisements to evoke a certain reaction in a consumer. 

When advertisers want to sell their product, everything that they put in their advertisement is intentional. The producers want you to feel a certain way so they encode a certain “feeling” in their media. How someone reacts to what is encoded is called decoding.

When decoding the messages a company has encoded in an advertisement, Stuart Hall describes three types of ways people can decode an advertisement. 

The first type of way we interpret media is the dominant type. This is the desired interpolation. This is when “the viewer takes the connotated meaning from a television newscast [or another type of media] and decodes the message in terms of the reference code in which it has been encoded” (Hall, 515). The second type of way is negotiated. This is when “the viewer acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations while at a more restricted, situational level. It makes its own ground rules and operates with exceptions to the rule” (Hall, 516). The last type is oppositional. This is the type that advertisers want to avoid the viewer of feeling. The oppositional view is when “the viewer perfectly understands both the literal and the connotative inflection given by a discourse but to decode the message in a globally contrary way” (Hall 517).

In my media example above, you can see the Vitamin Water commercial. In this advertisement, we see the gym as an institution. Through this institution, it has its own discourses as well. It is like it has its own little subculture in society. It has its own type of people, slang, clothing style, and more. 

Companies then build their advertisements around certain institutions that their target audience is in. Vitamin Water, being a brand that supports a healthy lifestyle, targeted their audience of young adults and young adults that workout. They took the gym as an institution and hyped it up using their brand and their product.  

In conclusion, mass media are one of the largest social institutions to date. Those who use technology to socialize are part of this huge bubble of an institution. It has taken over previously larger social institutions such as face-to-face communication. Also, we’ve discussed encoding and decoding through advertisements and how the three different ways we interpret media are crucial to companies who then promote their product through commercials and other types of media.

Group together with some friends, smile for the camera and then click (just pray you look good in the picture). Add it to your story for all of your friends to see or send the picture to individuals. Snapchat is a HUGE and there is simply no way to deny it. 

According to a 2016 study by Forbes, Snapchat has roughly 150 million daily active users globally... yeah, you read what I said... 150 MILLION!

With the ability to connect to friends, read news articles and even transfer money, we can understand why it is the 7th most used app in the app store according to Business Insider. 

I interviewed a few friends of mine and asked them about their experience with  Snapchat while also using Stokes interview tips and suggestions.

When interviewing my friend Breanna “B” Schmitt, I took note of several of her thoughts about Snapchat. When asked why she thought Snapchat was such a HUGE media platform, she responded with how easy it was to use and how simple it was to communicate with friends in school and out of school. 

After this, I questioned that it was maybe a little too easy and accessible for everyone. The concern of kiddos downloading the app has brought awareness to the Snapchat community. With people using Snapchat daily and at a young age, it can be used for bullying and predators. Addressing the concern of children using media, Stokes writes that “fears about harm to children have existed since media studies began” (Stokes, 178). 

 I also asked Breanna how long she has had Snapchat. She told me she has had it for roughly five years now. Five years is a pretty long time to have an app and stick with it. 

I wondered why Snapchat was still on top after SOOOOOOO long. Breanna said that the reason she continues to use it is because a majority of her friends use it and it's an easy way to converse and keep up with others. She also said that the continuation of different features in the app also offered her a reason to stay on the bandwagon. 

I also interviewed one of the CA’s on my floor, John Flood. John is a junior with a major in chemistry. When asked how he first heard about Snapchat, he said he learned about it through friends. John also spoke about how much he likes to post on his story. He spoke of how much he liked people seeing what he was up to and doesn’t find it creepy that people can see what he’s doing and with whom. (Basically, he likes an audience that keeps their eyes on him)

When Stokes spoke of an audience, they used it interchangeably with “society” as well. “ But we also use the term [audience] to refer in a broader sense to people who are exposed to or who respond to media culture. Indeed, in its broadest sense, the term ‘audience’ is almost interchangeable with ‘society’, for it is used to refer to the many ways in which the media relate to the broader social world.” 

John said that he has roughly 250 friends added on Snapchat. In reality, he says he only talks to roughly 5 people daily out of those 250. He also says that he spends about 2 hours total on Snapchat everyday from looking at other people's stories and sending snapchats himself. I also asked John if he used Snapchats “Discover” feature which includes several news articles like Cosmopolitan, Buzzfeed,National Geographic, and CNN. He said that since he doesn’t read or watch the news on television, he somewhat relies on what he reads on the Snapchat articles.

Lastly, I asked both John and Breanna if they felt more inclined to give somebody their Snapchat first before their phone number or name on Facebook when meeting someone and wanting to connect further. Breanna said that she is more inclined to give out her Snapchat because everyone these days is on Snapchat and it is just overall universal. She also said it's easier to block people if they are annoying or rude.

John said that as a CA, he more communicates with people on Facebook’s Messenger app. He says that because he is a CA, people feel a little more hesitant to give him their Snapchat in case they are doing something they could get in trouble for that they have posted about (If we are being honest, I mean stuff like drinking underage or doing drugs).