Rettburg Article

So we have come to the last blog entry of the semester---kind of bittersweet if you ask me.  As much as I can not wait for this semester to be finally over with, I'm glad I was able to do this for homework assignments throughout the semester.  I've never blogged before, and it was a nice change in pace to not have to write so formal all of the time.  Now, on to the article.

I was a little confused after reading the title of the article, and then reading the article.  I thought it was going to be an article about Barack Obama and how he used social media throughout his ad campaign back in 2008.  While, the author did mention that briefly, that is pretty much all she said about it.  This article focuses on her experience with social media and how our culture, with the help of social and mass media, have created stories for ourselves; and we represent ourselves on social networking sites like FaceBook, Twitter, flickr, etc. (453).  After going into an explanation of how we represent and create ourselves identity through these sites online, she broke down organizing our stories into 4 different organizational categories:
1. Temporal Organization
2. Social Organization
3. Semantic Organization
4. Geographic Organization

I think that the most popular of these is the social organization, and you may be agreeing with me when the first thing that pops into your head is FaceBook or Twitter.  First came Facebook which at the very beginning had a very limited access to it--only college kids were able to get on it.  Now, everyone can get on it, you can update what you're doing throughout the day if you want, you can show the world the thousands of stupid drunken pictures you take every weekend in college, or high school....

Twitter has even become so popular in social media that all you have to do on twitter is tell us about yourself...any time of the day, and you can change how you feel any minute you could possibly want too.  Now I am on facebook, but I keep my pictures to where only my friends can see them, I don't have a twitter account, and I think documenting every single step in our lives is a bit much for these social networking sites.  Call me old fashioned but people can do what they want because these networking sites are just going to get more complex, bigger, and less private...and me?  Well, I personally like to leave a little mystery still to a person that I meet without him knowing every single detail of my life, what about you?

Luder's article: Conceptualizing Personal Media

This article wasn't the most exciting to read for me, maybe it just may be because it's the 2nd to last article I have to read/blog about in the semester and I just have Christmas break on my mind--who knows! 

This article pretty much just talks about the main characteristic of personal media and then comparing it to mass media and what the influences are.  Personal media includes things like Ipods, Ipads, blogs on the Internet, etc.  I think that in maybe the long run, and in the future, personal and social media will have a drastically changing effect over what we consider to be mass media, but I think that for now, mass media will still consist of watching television shows on an actual TV in someones house, or watching DVDs in a DVD player.  social and personal media are still fairly new (within the past decade) and haven't taken the huge leap yet at affecting they way we view mass media.  In time though, only some aspects will change with mass media.  In particular, blogs, and webisodes I believe will have a strong impact on mass media, because they are already starting to take a big jump in being viewed (i.e. YouTube).  We talked about in class a couple weeks ago that YouTube was just celebrating their 5 year anniversary of being up and running, and a lot of blogs, amateur videos, etc have been added to it.  Even in class last week, we watched Neil Patrick Harris' Dr. Horrible movie that was released in 2008---only 2 years ago.  It had started out as a webisode and pretty much set the groundwork for future webisodes to come.  With that being said, all of this is less than 5 years old, so I would say for now, we're ok with the changing ways of mass media, but within the next 10 years, we will be looking at a whole new way of looking at mass media, and connecting it with social and personal media.

Dawson Article

In this article that I read for my class today "Little Players, Big Shows" I found it very interesting to how popular watching TV series and short videos on cell phones have become.  I probably am the last person who should be talking about this, because I should admit right now that I am one of the last few people in the world that doesn't own a smart phone, or have Internet, or anything like that on my cell phone.  I know, shocking right?  I actually have never once had Internet on my cell phone...my roommates have the iPhone and I don't even know how to work the stupid things.  Yes, you can say I'm behind on the technology.... anyway, Dawson in this article asks a question that I started thinking about yesterday and it was "Do these smaller, handheld screens even qualify as televisions?" 

I would have to answer that question as a big fat NO from me.  First of all, why would anyone want to watch TV from something that small of a size?!  I went home to my parents house over Thanksgiving break...where my dad has his precious 65" TV.  It so happens that on Monday night, the bulb goes out, call on Tuesday to order a new part, and the guy says it won't be delivered to us until the following Monday.  I'm freaking out, my mom is freaking out.  How am I going to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday!? The answer to that question is :  My dad brings in the old 13" TV we had stored away in our garage.  How sad I had to sit so close to the TV to see what I was watching.  A cell phone screen is even smaller than 13 inches!  I believe that TV was made so that people can enjoy watching them on a normal size from the comfort of their home.  When you're out and about and not at home...don't watch TV.  Watching webisodes, and YouTube, and reg. TV shows on the go has become so much apart of our life because we are too busy in today's world.  If I am out of my house and running errands...I'm going to run errands or shop, or whatever without feeling the need to be on my phone watching the latest webisode from college humor.  When I go to work, I work...I don't feel the need to watch TV or surf the web on my phone.  It's become an addiction to people!  TV should not become a "mobile lifestyle" because anytime that I want to watch TV, I will do so comfortably on the couch, in my parents living room, with their 65" TV.  I'll keep my cell phone to talking and texting only, thank you.

Burgess and Green Article: YouTube Pop Culture

I will be the first one to admit that I am a YouTube fiend.  Yes, a fiend.  I could spend hours upon hours watching the ridiculous videos of stupid people and funny dogs. This article talks about YouTube in general, and the popularity between how much is user created with how much is traditional media.  When discussing the ones that were watched the most, they broke it down into categories which consisted of most responded, most discussed, most popular, and most recent.  The only time that I ever watch YouTube for the traditional media, is when we watch a clip from a movie or something like that in one of my classes.  Other than that, I'm all about watching the user created :)  In the article, it says that "user created content makes up more than two-thirds of the content coded in both the most responded and most discussed categories" (51). I believe that the only reason YouTube is as popular as it is, is because of all of the people who watch the clips.  Who would have thought there would be over a million hits for the little girl who thinks the monster is "gonna kick my asssk."  What happened when there were millions of hits with her?  Ellen DeGeneres brought her on her show to interview her because she was the cutest thing in the world.  It makes me think about how YouTube is similar to facebook.  Facebook is so successful and so popular, and making so much money because of us, the consumers who tag pictures of ourselves, who post on each others wall, who update our statues, etc.  We comment and watch a million times over hours of YouTube videos, and people become popular because of it.  Bottom line:  YouTube is the greatest thing to do when you're bored since sliced bread.  OK, I may be exaggerating, but it is still awesome to see people make fools of themselves.

Lewis/Mcmurria Artielces- Makeover TV

Today's articles that I read talked about the history of Makeover TV in the US, UK, and Australia, as well as "Good Samaritan Reality TV".  In the Lewis article, she does exactly what the title is:  she talks about the History of makeover TV in those three countries listed.  at some point through the article, she brings up the Moran essay that we read the other day about format TV.  Personally, my favorite kind of reality TV is the makeover reality TV.  I like watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition-----even though Ty Pennington gets on my last nerve, I usually only watch it once they move the bus, and you see the after house.  That's not terrible, right?  Lewis also goes on and talks about how the HGTV and TLC network channels helped the US with the success of makeover reality series.  It seemed to me that she was talking about how the UK had the biggest success with it, and started it first before the US and Australia got the format.  As for Australia, she says that the development of makeover format had been shaped by international formats and ideas (455). 

In the Mcmurria article, it talks a lot about what we call "Good Samaritan Reality TV" like for example, the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.  ABC started this whole line of good Samaritan TVs shows post 9/11 that seemed to really take off and become a huge hit.  Some people argue that networks are just exploiting these people for good TV...which makes me think of what we talked about in class the other day on whether or not Oprah overall helps these people on her show, or exploits them more just for TV ratings.  Like I said, I really like EMHE, and I was fortunate enough to go to the set when they helped with the Indiana man because he lived about 25 minutes from my house in Indy...and you know what, he submitted his video to get help, he is a great guy, and what they did was amazing for him....so I think in the EMHE case, it is not exploiting of the people.  I know in the article that they don't show how some families sue over the poor quality of their house being built, but you also have to think...they have professionals build these houses...do you really think they did a poor job?  Maybe, but maybe some families are spoiled now with what they got, and they want to try and get as much money as they can...as if what they already was given to them wasn't enough.  If you are helping a family in need by doing something good for them...I just say go for it.

Makeover TV- Moran/Peck Articles

So in class we are still on reality TV, but we've gone into talking about make-over television series.  The two articles we talk about today have to deal with 1) how reality TV is created, and 2) Oprah's secret to her success.  Now, I will be honest and say that I wasn't expecting Oprah to be considered in the category of a makeover reality series, but after reading the Peck article, I can see how people can classify her as being in that group.

In the first article by Albert Moran, he talks about the format of reality television becoming a huge success around the nation.  It all started out as a country creating a format in one nation, and then selling the format and "license a re-broadcast of the programme in other parts of the world" (461).  By doing this, you have the same cheap format of reality TV that could be popular in any country, but with just buying the format, the other countries can tweak it to their appeal which would be better suited for their type of audience---and it is still cheap to make and sell.  Moran goes on to say that "Format trading has become serious business at the international round of television trade fairs" (465).  I think that is absolutely right, because reality TV is becoming and still is such a huge success from when it started 30 something years ago... it makes networks a lot of money because they are so popular, and yet, the format is cheap to buy!

In the Janice Peck article, I had told you at the beginning of this post that I was a little skeptical on whether or not I thought that Oprah's talk show was considered part of the "makeover" reality TV shows.  They call her success the "Oprah Effect."  Back when her show started in the 80s, she was a part of the trash talk TV shows that never lasted.  Knowing that she had to do something to stay successful, she decided that she would talk about positive things on her shows....that she wanted to help people on her shows become good people.  Around this time, there was this "new thought" religion going around where everyone just wanted to believe that happiness is all about how you act and behave.  Oprah took advantage of that and started this whole "mind cure religion" by telling people that happiness starts within yourself, and that once you become happy, is when you can start living a successful and happy life.  By saying this, the millions of viewers watching her, decided that she was right and wanted to follow her.

I can't say that I am one of these "cult followers" of Oprah.  I really don't like watching her show that much anymore like I used too.  The only time I ever watch Oprah is when she does her "favorite things" episodes.  Because I like to live vicariously through the audience members that get all of the cool things on her show for free!  Not fair...too bad I will never be able to go on her show for her favorite things.  Maybe in another life....

Reality TV- Collins/ Murray Articles

In the Sue Collins article, she talks a lot about what it means to be a "celebrity" in today's society.  She talks a lot about dispensable celebrity and celebrity as a commodity.  I really found it interesting to learn about how reality celebrities only get picked to appear on talk shows only when the shows can't find A-List celebrities to be on that night.  In her article, Collins says "Reality celebrities might make it on The Tonight Show, or The Late Show which primarily book A-level talent, but they are unlikely to displace stars looking to be booked or become part of the stable of regular guests needed to sustain the shows" (104).  She also went on to say that they typically need around 4500 celebrities to interview...so I can see why they need the reality celebrities to filter in between the A-List celebrities.  Personally, I think that it is ridiculous to see all of these celebrities...if you can even call them that, make so much money with just promotions, and stuff.  I remember watching an interview with Mike "The Situation" from Jersey Shore, and hes expected to make around 5 million just by doing promotional stuff, including taping the series.  Hopefully, reality TV doesn't overcome "regular TV" in the future where we start giving prestigious awards to people like the situation, or to someone who's nickname is "Snooki."

In the Murray article, she basically talks a lot about documentary TV versus Reality TV and weather or not they are the same.  She talks about how networks and the viewers get confused when watching either type of shows because they are so closely defined similarly that they consider them both one of the same.  Documentaries, however, are to be defined in the past as being educational and informative.  Murray talks about also how they are described as being "serious historical or social significance" (43).  I agree with her concluding argument because you can distinguish between the two because of how closely each are related to each other by definitions.  You pretty much determine what they (the shows) are based on what the networks say that they are.  If they think that the demographic of their audience will watch the show more if they think its a reality show vs. a documentary, then that is what they will call it.  I completely agree with that.