Signs

After class on Thursday and doing the reading on signs, signifiers, and signified I started thinking about all of them. What if all we had were words and no symbols? For example, if we just had the letters d o g that we know to form dog but no image or anything to go with it. We even did the exercise on finding symbols in media texts. We rely on symbols for everything. We have words that we automatically put a symbol to it. How would we know what things were? Or what if we had symbols but no words or meanings to put with them? It's amazing how much we rely on symbols and signs to put things together and find meanings to everything. Just imagine life with no signs/symbols. We would not understand everything, probably not much of anything actually.

Would you change your media?

I recently had an assignment for a class that required us to think about the media in our lives both previously and present. One of the questions was how would you change the media habits you had as a child? As I thought about this question I began to think about how the media from my past has affected me now. I would say the main source of media in my life as a child was television. I was way to active to enjoy wanting to read or listen to music (besides in the car). However, now that I reflect back on it I wish to some degree that I would have been more involved in other media sources such as reading because I feel like sometimes I missed information I should have gathered. I don't know... it's hard to imagine what it would be like if I had not watched so much TV or if I was more interested in something else. Would I know the same things? Would I have the same views I do now? What opinions or ideas did I get from watching so much TV? Would media still mean the same thing to me today? Or would I be impacted by a different source of media more instead of the computer's different media sources? I previously wrote posts that explained how media affected me now and what types had the biggest impact on me. I think it would be interesting to change the types of media I make dominate in my life for a little while and see if I still am as impacted by the ones I mentioned before. Or if my views on things would change. Just something to think about.

Myth in Mass Media

I have really been into music lately. It's been really soothing to listen to and has given me some interesting thoughts lately. As I was listening to music tonight I heard the song Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone) by Christ Tomlin. As I listened to this song I realized that it was part of the myths we discussed in class on Thursday. I think it best fits into the Coming of the Messiah myth the best. I know it seems original but there have been a lot of songs that have been touching me a lot lately and this is one of them. Anyways, I feel like this song is falls into the Coming of the Messiah myth because it talks about us all being lost and wretches but then we have a great God who comes to save us. We would not be able to continue life without someone willing to be our Savior. I also think that this song could possibly fit into the Pull yourself up by your bootstraps myth because Jesus knew that we were the reason he was going to have to die even though he was sinless. The song talks about him coming to save us and to some degree when he went through and died on the cross for our sins he was able to pick us all up since we can now be forgiven of our sins. However, if he would not have chosen to come and save us we would till be stuck, lost, and drowning.

Personal Media Insights

After looking over my media experiences from the past few days I have noticed a variety of things. My main outlet of media is my computer, whether its talking on aim, facebook, e-mails, and so on. I can even have the tendencies to talk on my computer while I do my homework. While I know some people who do the same thing, I have noticed that my suitemates, who I am around the most, are not the same as me. When I see them taking part in some form of media it is usually television or reading. Whereas I only read for my homework usually and that is not even as much as my media use through my computer. As I look over the past few days I am kind of surprised at how much I rely on my computer. I grew up not having my own computer in my room or available to my use anytime so therefore, I would watch tv and do my homework of just do homework without anything. I have even tended to rely more on my computer for everything with school rather than writing it down on paper or cards. However, I think many people within this society will have some of the same media involvement as I do. Our society is slowly becoming more and more technology involved. We want the easy way out of everything and many things, paying bills, numerous forms of communication, work, research, and entertainment, are now accesible on the internet whereas before we would have to use paper or even telephones to complete these tasks. I don't know it's not really new information because it has been happening for years but I realized 100% as I looked back the past few days how lost we would be without the internet or computers for anything. I know I probably would not be able to stay in contact with many of my friends especially my older ones because I have no connection to them besides aim or facebook. It's just an interesting swing of media use.

Aim's affect on me

Aim is another media text that has impacted my life in a variety of ways. I am affected by the conversations that I have with my friends on there in a variety of different ways. I am extremely connected to this media text because for some this is the main form of communication I have with them. Therefore, Aim is a pretty important text for me so that I am able to keep in contact with my friends. However, I do not think of Aim as just another form of communication but rather something that is a part of me to some degree. Aim in some ways, even though it sounds funny, has changed my life. I think that it has opened me up more to telling people what I think and getting help with problems that I am facing. I have been impacted in more ways than I can even begin to list but it changing my life and helping me form who I am today is just a start. What I feel when I talk on Aim and throughout the experience itself is almost inexpressible. Many times I leave a conversation feeling overwhelmed, in shock, and sometimes just relaxed and relieved. There are even some times when I leave speechless and I end up thinking through the entire conversation and wondering if I could have said something different. So the plain and simple version of my experience on Aim is I feel speechless.

Problems and Possibilities in MMS

One major problem that is well-known to most people is the idea of the transferring of wrong information. There are many examples of this in different types of media. One example would be the news. There are news stations that are bias toward one political view or just in general they could be more conservative than liberal. When stations are more one sided than in between they are going to share information that leans toward their view whether it is correct or not. There have also been times when there are errors in newspaper information. This is usually corrected if it is brought to the attention of the writers but there is still the time lapsed that people have the wrong information. Or if they do not see the rewrite or correction in the next paper they will continue to have wrong information. These situations can affect people's opinions on things and how they go about things to some degree. I think one major possibility within media and society is for media to lead someone into making a mistake. Media could have such a great affect on someone that they want to follow what is happening on the source. For example, if a child grows up playing video games that are all about killing people then they may begin to think that that is an okay action to take part in. This is not true for all people but it can be a possibility for some.

Formative media's affect on me

I think one major media text that has affected me a lot lately is music. The song that has been affecting me is Give Me Jesus by Jeremy Camp. This text is Christian based and is very simple. It says basically the same idea throughout the entire song, which is no matter what all I want is Jesus. This song connects to me in the sense that even when I am going through some tough issues like I have been now that if I just ask for Jesus and his help I can handle it. That is kind of how it has impacted me as well. I have come to realize that no matter what the issue is or how many problems I feel piling up that if I have Jesus working right along side me then I will be fine and I can take on this world. I had not heard this song for a long time until this past week. When I did hear it come on out of all my other songs on my itunes, it was like an overwhelming sense of peace. I am not sure that I can fully explain the peace that I felt but it was similar to a rock or something of that nature being lifted of my shoulders. It was like all my problems and worries were gone and I could just live my life. It was almost like I did not even have problems in my life but they were someone else's that I was trying to claim for my own. It was definately a point of relaxation in my life rather than stress or any other feeling.

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