Reflection

In my first blog post, I talked about how much media I consume, but to recap: I consume a lot of media, particularly television, movies, comedy, podcasts, and music. This impacts my life because I’ve become very attached to these aspects of media which I consume. However, being aware of my media consumption has given me a new perspective on a lot of what I consume. Even though I still consume the same amount of media, I find myself thinking more often about the constructed messages of different types of media. Specifically when it comes to commercials, my new knowledge about advertising has given me terms and names for advertising techniques used to persuade me to buy a product. These are things that I experienced before this class, but now that I have more information about them, I am able to see through them more and not be persuaded as easily. Having this media literacy gives me the ability to analyze and deconstruct these hyper-constructed and often negative messages that companies have been pushing on me for years. I now have the knowledge and terminology to analyze these advertisements and discover the true message hiding behind all o the strategies and techniques. Being an educated consumer is important in order to protect yourself from being influenced by these negative messages being forced onto you. When you believe these negative messages about yourself, you become very insecure and vulnerable. These companies then take advantage of your vulnerability in order to make a profit. When you are an educated consumer, you stop these messages from making you feel negatively about yourself, because you are able to recognize that these companies are trying to take advantage of you. Over the course of keeping this journal, I learned that I am capable of controlling how much media I consume. My goal for the future is to limit the amount of unnecessary media I consume, and focus more on the media that I genuinely enjoy.