Vacations

Now that everyone has returned from home and travel for the Thanksgiving break, it seems worthwhile to examine vacations as media. There are a few different reasons for vacations and different types of vacations satisfy these reasons. Sometimes vacations are to relax, which beach vacations, cruises, and resorts are good for. However other times vacations are full of information. Cultural and historical information can be transferred from country to visitor, host to guest or guide to tourist. This makes locations as well as vacations to them an interesting type of media.

Throughout the semester we have repeatedly seen how technology and our digital age evolve how news is delivered via media. Similar ideas apply to travel. It is much easier today to physically travel far distances because of speed and ability to overcome distance, similar to the ability for a message to travel quicker today than in the past. Rather than having the message come to us via media, travel is the media which delivers us to the message.

While you can get messages by going on vacation in the form of learning things the type of vacation can be the message as well. This is similar to how we started the course; the media can be the message. A relaxing cruise or beach vacation has different meaning from a safari full of learning. Regardless of the type of vacation, it can revitalize people for when they return. Thanksgiving break is a nice tease as to what is in store for us during winter vacation a few weeks from now.

Breakfast

Food in general can definitely be seen as a medium but breakfast is much more telling about a person and therefore is a more specific medium that contains a more detailed message. Originally I said media was anything that transmitted a message. Breakfast can do this in a number of ways.
First messages can be transmitted over breakfast. If you eat with a group of people it becomes a social activity. In this sense stories can be shared, news exchanged, and friendships born. For me this has been an especially important part of breakfast in college. Especially at busy times, meals become a chance to see friends when we otherwise do not have time.
Second, the breakfast itself can be a message. Initially there is whether or not a person eats breakfast at all. This can say a lot about a person in itself. It can show that they are a healthy person or that they get hungry easily throughout the day. It can also demonstrate whether or not they are morning people, willing to get up early enough to go to or prepare breakfast.
The third piece of breakfast which sends a message about the eater is what they person chooses to eat. This is where breakfast becomes the same as any other food. The person's decision about what to eat tells a lot about them. Are they a toast person? Or do they like a more filling breakfast of eggs, sausage, and two strips of bacon? Perhaps they're more of a yogurt and granola type?

Next time you're in Trim for breakfast, try to notice what those around you are eating. See if it fits in with what you think they would eat based on what you know about they're personality. You'll probably learn more than you think.

Looking in the Window

Few things are more important to stores than their displays and product staging areas. This is most noticeable when walking along city streets or through well-decorated malls.The settings that retailers create are getting more and more elaborate and emphasize attributes and ideals of products which they are trying to sell.

More than anything stores want to embody the lifestyles their products are supposed to give people. They have to put up an ideal and create an image that people want to see themselves as a part of. In the summer, beach scenes are particularly noticeable and make it easy to imagine perfect family beach days with a cooler, umbrella and all the items required to outfit a group for the beach.

The storefront window is likely the inspiration behind all types of retailing advertisement. Magazine images, electronic ads, and tv commercials all try to stage some kind of ideal, similar to storefront windows. Old Navy even took it a step further and made manequins, the primary means of displaying their product in the windows, into the main characters of the television and print advertising.



This also goes back to the reading that we discussed about media being the message. Setting up something physical and three dimensional drastically changes how people interact with it. Old Navy tries to bring this into their television advertising with some success but makes it more of a character situation than a setting. The setting is the emphasized part of store windows to try to make certain aspects of that setting appeal to consumers.

In The Bedroom...

Don't get too excited. All I am about to say is that the bedroom is just another type of media. I have rarely, if ever, distinguished between whether or not my artifacts are mass media. Obviously the bedroom is not mass media, at least for most of us (just kidding).

The bedroom is media because it sends a very distinct message about its inhabitant's personality, life, and lifestyle. Some people hang massive posters with favorite celebrities, role models, video game characters, aspirational objects, or sports teams. Other people may put up posters, blankets or display accomplishments in the forms of trophies or certificates. Of course, there are many other possibilities of how people can send messages about themselves through their habitats.

The bedroom is especially important for students in college. This is the only space in our lives that is actually our own so we tend to make it more personal with our own effects. This drives us to be more individual and unique in our own rooms, partially because the actual rooms themselves are so similar. This is similar to the formulaic nature of mass media today: all the TV shows are very similar, as are movies. Examples could include television mystery shows like all the CSI shows, Law and Order, Bones, House, etc which all follow the same routine. In terms of movies, romantic comedies seem like the best examples. All of our dorm rooms are very similar, if not the same, and we find our own ways to differentiate them in the details. These details then send messages to others about our inner selves.

Another aspect, a less permanent one, of our rooms is how presentable we keep them. Are we organized and put together? Is everything neat and put away? Or are we disorganized and messy so no one can sit in our room comfortably? The answers to these questions are part of the message that our rooms send about us. And this is what makes the bedroom a type of media.

Location

Location , location, location applies to more than real estate. Location is its own medium because it makes implications and determinations. Certain purposes can be impossible without a location designed to meet them, messages can only be transmitted with this proper location. Photographers need just the right angle of a certain event to send the intended message. Thus location becomes their medium for a specific photograph.

Similarly, billboards are inconsequential and fail at their mission without correct placement. Although a large number of people don't need to see a billboard, if less people see the advertisement, it must be seen by the right people. This is usually not the case and it is more successful to target a large quantity because the chances of the intended audience being among the large number is better. However strategic location has the same potential for success as large audience exposure.

Location gives messages relevance. Our book mentions location of news stations, but makes a more interesting point about where national news does not have locations. It also determines the messages that can be relayed to news readers or viewers. My original thesis and inaugural blog post was that anything that can send a message can be media. Location sends select messages about what is important. 

The Chapter even uses location as a metaphor for ranking importance of manuscripts for publishers. The chapter uses metaphors of piles and lines. Some piles go straight to the top while other authors stand in line with little hope of being acknowledged. This metaphor shows how location determines deliverance of a message about importance. Location can send the message or render it undeliverable.

Facebook in the Context of Old Media

I was trying hard to resist doing a post on Facebook and I hope this one isn't boring. I want to highlight an aspect of traditional media (TV, print, etc.) that is fairly typical and apply it to Facebook, where this aspect is examined less.

The aspect and role within media that I am looking to examine is the editor's job of deciding what gets published. This is easy and typical to examine when it comes to television, magazines, and newspaper. What TV shows do viewers want to see? Who is the target audience of a specific time slot, television station or specific programming? Similar questions can be asked of newspapers and magazines. What kinds of stories will appeal to the people the writers are targeting? Going deeper, what kinds of stories will appeal to the audience of the advertisers? Thus is the double role of old or traditional media-- appealing to their target audience and the target audience of advertisers. This goes back to questions raised in the chapter about stereotypes in media. If middle-aged, upper middle-class white men are determining programming, there is a good chance that programs will be about this group of people.

However, fast forward to today's saturated media world where web 2.0 (and what I will call media 2.0) and a new parallel set of questions can be asked. When you publish a facebook status, what is your motivation? This is just as much a rhetorical question as it is something you're welcome to answer in the comments. I know that I have different purposes depending on the status. Sometimes I share things on facebook for me, to fulfill my own need to share with people. Other times I post statuses because I want other people (sometimes specific people, sometimes anyone) to see them. This is very similar to the choices publishers and editors make with traditional media. What gets published and why?

With this question in mind I would encourage you to visit Facebook and look over three things. First, read through your newsfeed and ask why each post got published. Second, do the same thing for your own profile and third do it for a close friend's profile. This may seem like a new level of "facebook stalking" but it raises entirely new questions. It also seems like a great reason not to use Facebook and was one of the many reasons that I deleted my account for a month over the summer.

I will conclude by asking for your reactions. What do you think about this? Are my questions over analytical or do they raise good points about what our generation wants peers to see/know about us? Will this change how you use facebook at all in the short or long run (for me it might change how I use it today or this week, but overall I'll continue to use it just as I always have...)?

Technology Changing Media

There's no doubt that as technology develops media changes. In fact, many media have arisen because of technology and other media are technology. Because most, if not all, media is technologically driven, the actual mediums often change. For instance, television is in many ways the successor to radio. Although radio still exists for music, its use as primary mode of entertainment and news reporting is very different because television has replaced radio for many people for these purposes. However, it is often more interesting to look at specific mediums and how they change and evolve because of technology.

My example for this is again the radio. Due to the rise of the internet and technology, radio has drastically changed. In part, the definition of the radio has changed. The world-wide web has given rise to internet radio. Some may argue that this is not radio at all, but I believe it is. But this is getting off topic. My point is how the internet has changed radio. My media artifact for this week is internet radio such as Last.fm. Most people are more familiar with Pandora, but Last.fm serves my purpose and argument better in this case.

For both examples, technology has greatly changed the way people listen to radio. Internet radio, like these two examples are vastly different from what most people are accustomed to from radio stations. There are three distinct differences which technology has caused.

First, these types of radio have made radio customizable. This is the main attraction of websites like Pandora and Last.fm. Users/ listeners can customize their radio stations to guarantee the music that is played is all to the listeners' liking. This can be accomplished in a number of ways. Whether it be by selecting a preformed station based on genre, entering an artist name to emulate, or a specific song to match, technology drives all of these.

Second, because they are hosted on webpages instead of airwaves, the advertisements can be on the website rather than interrupting the music between songs. Last.fm has no auditory ads, while Pandora has greatly fewer than traditional radio. Without technology of the internet this would not be possible.

The third difference is that it can be accessed anywhere in the world that allows access to the internet. This is in stark contrast to traditional radio which can only be accessed within range of the broadcast. Last.fm allows people to listen to its service anywhere they can access a computer with the internet.

Technology drives much of the change in society. Radio is just one example. In many cases it makes media more interactive, a much cooler media. Previously radio had almost no interaction, but websites like Last.fm and Pandora let people interact with the music, saving preferences, radio stations, and even favorite tracks.

Without technology media would be much slower to evolve, if it could evolve at all. Luckily, technology shows no signs of stopping, making the media world a fascinating social experiment in how much society can alter the way it receives information. Benefiting listeners everywhere, consumers should be grateful that technology enables radio to advance. What will happen to traditional radio is less clear in the long run, but also raises an interesting argument that I will save for another blog post.