Television is hamrful to children !?

I've been looking some articles talking about television is harmful to children and barely seen articles that fully support television is beneficial to children. I think that is a very yes or no question because not all the programs are containing inappropriate content and also not all has educational content.

Children are easier to get influenced by the surrounding environment or we can say children are more learnable than other age of people. Therefore, children who are at young age should have parents ruling the programs they watch. The inappropriate content such as violent, sexual can have a huge impact on children's behaviors because their brains are like a sponge absorbing fast. Their learning theory is what Rodman's "social learning theory", which they learn from observing and imitating others. Every news broadcasts shows what happened in the society such as accidents, murders. It is a social mirror to the audience, but it is a bad influence for children. A statistic shows that by the time children get to eighteen years old, "they witness on television 200,000 acts of violence including 40,000 murders." It is nothing to we adults, but this is sending out the messages to the children of how they should solve the problems. Also, the entertaining programs such as movie channels is constantly playing movie that contains violent or sexual contents. Children watch them when their parents are not around; it is difficult for them to distinguish between right and wrong since they haven’t received the formal morality education yet in their lives. It is, especially when children admire the “fantasy movie star as a hero, difficult to tell children the difference between fantasy and reality.

Terminator 2

Although television is harmful to children at some points, but television has a great teaching potential and it is also beneficial to children and parents. If parents do a good job on choosing and watching the programs, then parents are doing their young ones a huge educational favor. Dr Deuchar, a senior lecturer in Strathclyde University’s education faculty, said “Encouraging children to make links between what they see on the screen and the content of their play can do much to foster creativity, decision-making skills and opportunities for problem-solving that will be useful to them in their future.” A channel like “Sesame Street” is an educational channel for young children to learn language. It is fun and it attracts young children’s attention. Channels like this also increase the chance for parents interact with their children.

Sesame Street

It is a huge debate of realtionship between television and children. It can be positive and negative. It is everyone's responsbility to watch out for their children since the broadcasts have been entertaining the audience for long time. It is no one's right to tell the broadcasts what to show and hide.

PR

Every company needs public relation to stand out and speak for the company. A public relation person needs to have a well communication skill in order to represent a company in public. Another important role that a public relation playing is "solving problem" and "being responible for the company in front of public". Every industry has public relation to send out the message such as company or even government.
It is very difficult to communicate with public when the corporation is so huge. They need a specific person to speak out and deliver the message with a strong communication skill when they need to sell their products, grab attentions from the public or solve the problem. It is a seriuos responsibilties for public relation because it is not only representing indivisual, but a huge corporation which probably has over thousands of employee.
In public relation position, I found the most thing to deal with is "crisis management", public relation has to deal with the emergencies that the company causes and solve and explain to the public. If public relation doesn't do a good job, the company's goodwill will collapse.
The Tylenol case we learned in class was a successfull case of doing good public relation job. PR stand out at the first time to explain everything to the public, so make the public get clear of what happened in the case and make the effort of giving out coupon to make up the mistake they caused.
Another case shows us how bad the PR could be. Leaving out the problem instead of explain to the public.
Image to the public is important, once you break it and not repair it properly, the company will be in a bad position. PR has to be careful while dealing with public because it influences a company's incomes and employee. The good impression is very difficult to build, but breaking it down is very easy if PR doesn't do a good job.

Internet is a globalized information gathering center, but...

The technology had been growing fast. People used to read newspaper, listen to radio, or watch television to gather information or NEWS, but now, internet had became the trend, the main stream for diverse audience. Why Internet is so popular that "everyone" attract to it? And sometimes, it's an addiction. Internet is a huge technological convergence on different ways. People can watch NEWS, search information,chat, play games, and now we can even sell products or used items online. People can find almost everything just a few clicks on the keyboard. People have different demands on using internet, some of them like to do online shopping, and some like blogging.. etc. The most convenience I found is that we can find any kind of information online. Internet becomes so popular and it is so convenient, but it is also risky and sometimes unreliable.
Indeed, we have so much freedom in this fictitious world: internet. People can express their opinions or feelings like what we are doing right now. Moreover, people can share themselves such as blog, or photos. While people are sharing their lives, they forgot this "safe environment" that they assume could be also "dangerous". There are many smart computer users out there, and that's where hackers are starting from. Once we get to know everything, we want to know more. However, some people they keep some information private, so only their close friends can see what they are sharing. Most of the time, those hackers, they are out of curiousity. They can brake in people's account to see their sharing photos and stuff like that. For example, it was a serious NEWS back in my hometown Taiwan. A college girl who put up her "sexual picture" with her boyfriend on a online photo album and she locked that album, only people who knows the password can see it. However, the hacker crack her password and share her pictures on a very popular forum. That girl wasn't doing a smart move putting her private pictures online, but this shows us what risk privacy could face.
Sometimes I feel that Internet is playing with people's stupidness and sometimes people are just so easy to be played by it.

Important role of photography

In today's society, people have different sources to get the information that they want to know, such as politics, sports, or celebrities. Printing media hace changed from books, newspapers, and to magazines. The trend of reading media have been changing too. In early centuries, people gather their information from newspaper. Newspaper was an important resource of getting different fields of information or current events. "Magazines were the last of print media to become popular", but they are more toward national and international business. Magazines have wilder range or audience because magazines contain more contents in different fields. The audeince starts from teenage or even younger to 50s or 60s. Magazines specialize in specific field based on their targets, so they can guarantee to keep the readers.

One of the reason that magazines became popular I believe it is because of the photography. Photography plays an important role in magazine industry. Images have huge impact on people's brain these days. Photography always catches people's eyes to start reading the articles. A successful image is necassary. We can especially see this phenomenon on women. In chapter 5, Rodman talks about how women start to compare thmeselves with the models displaying in the magazines. Magazine industries find the professional models to shoot the photography and put it in the magazine and show to the reader, and of course, most of the readers are women. Models' unrealistic perfect figures influence women. Women start thinking that are not perfect enough, so they start purchasing cosmetic, maybe from the ads in magazines. This is how magazines and sponsors' making money. They influence audience's minds with the perfect images in the pages. I'm thinking maybe, the magazine industry should be more realistic to the audeince instead of exagerating the "perfect images"? From this point, we can see how important the magazine is in the trends. They are popular because they know what audience what to see. The gossip of celebrity's life.

Magazines are important. They target the right audience and influence them. Sometimes the information and images are right like those newsmagazines, but sometimes some specific magazines can have a negative impact on people's thought such as "playboys" magazine. It is very difficult to define what magazine is good or bad. It's all depending on individual's behavior.

Chapter One

Chapter one starts with introducing what "media" is. It analyzes different ways of using media on both individuals and business. The media history has changed from the simplest to convergence. For example, we used video to gather the information we want to know, until now, we can use internet through i-phone to check the worldwide news. The progress of changing has huge impacts on both individual behaviors and business style. The impacts can be positive and also negative.

I have a strong feeling while reading the part that Rodman mentions about: culture imperialism. Media are strong methods that directly influence people’s minds, even more into culture. It is sometimes good, but sometimes bad. As the example that Rodman give out in the paragraph of “media criticism”, the media tend to make smoking looks cool or other sexual scenes attracts to the teenagers. This is just in the United States. Students start receiving sexual education in their ninth grade. School has set a smoking area at school. It works fine in the United States since the students receive enough mature knowledge in their early ages. However, when it comes to other countries, it is different. In those conservative Asian countries, such as Taiwan, China, or Korea…etc, they learn to be very conservative in their early ages; otherwise, students can put themselves into big trouble. No dating or no smoking is allowed at school. That was the rules that the school has always been very strict. When the media come into these conservative countries, people think that “Wow, it is so cool that those Americans can do this and that.” The more the media come in, the more influence it can cause on the culture.

One more thing that I found it very true is that in horizontal integration: “concentration of media ownership can result in one company’s having too much power to sway public opinion” and after that Rodman is talking about “government control”. Actually, I found that sometimes it’s a combination. I don’t know if it works the same in the United States, but in Taiwan, there are two political parties; if the president of one broadcasting station supports one of the two parties, he will block the news of another or using language to insult another party; which I think it’s sometimes very unfair. In this case, to me, it is more likely the combination of “government control” and “horizontal integration” because once the broadcaster owns another company, they can use their power to block the information to the audience and it is a negative phenomenon. And I don’t think it’s a good role model for both of the society and individual.

My 1st blog is written while i'm starving

It is now 12:14 pm. I've been wondering "WHY" I have to take summer classes while my boyfriend is having fun and watching TV at home. That's NOT fair.

Moreover, isn't it suppose to be lunch time now!?
I'm in the computer at Knight Library being patient to post my 1st blog of my Journalism 201 class while I'm craving for PHO. However, I like this interesting class. It is SO MUCH better than my J101 grammar class at 10 in the morning.

Well, satisfying always brings good at the end, so I believe, my hunger really do worth it.

[Image]
I created this Mr. & Mrs. Ham when I was very hungry.I'm the bottom one because I'm never in a good mood when I'm starving.

I hope everyone will have a fun time during this course and lead yourselves to become a journalist! Nice to meet you guys :)!!