Kiwi, 11/7/09

In class we talked about the five essential ingredients of our propaganda model which I thought was very interesting to learn about. I think that Rog did a really good job of explaining each one in a way that we could relate to what he was talking about. The first essential that we learned about was size, wealth, and concentration of the media ownership. Rog explained to us that this is when one company owns many others; therefore they give out the same information. We talked about this in class and how for example Abercrombie, and Hollister are both owned by the same person but we still think something say from Abercrombie is better then Hollister when really they are all the same thing made by the same person, just with different labels on them.
The second essential that we discussed in class was, advertising as a primary income source. Rog explained to our class that this is how the audience is targeted. For example, back at home by my house there is a billboard sign that is written upside down. The advertiser obviously does this to target his audience being interested to find out why the heck everything’s upside down, and what it says.
The third essential that we discussed in class was the reliance of media on institutional info sources. No matter what there seems to always be some sort of subconscious that we think that the media is telling the truth and is not biased. We trust everything that the news tells us and that is how our society is shaped.
The fourth essential that Rog discussed with us is flak, something that I thought was very interesting… Flak is simply what is being feed to the pubic, it is a way to be outside the norm and thus get more attention. For example, about two years ago Brittany spears buzzed her head and went bald. I think that the reason why she did this is because she knew she would get more attention and publicity (which she did) and this was simply because she did something “outside the norm”.
The last essential of propaganda is anti-communism (now anit-terrorism?) as a control mechanism. We label communists/terrorist as evil. This is when companies will push to have something to have conflict with. This is to get more trust from people as well as more viewers and more money, which is always the main goal of media.

As we approach our second exam I can say that I am very confident I will do just fine due to the great discussions that we have in class :0) and I look forward to the next theorists we will learn :0)