Semester Projct

HI!

So for the semester project I worked with Lena in creating a fashion oriented blog. While her dealings were based on makeup, I focused more on the fashion/clothing aspect.

Today, everywhere we look celebrities are embraced and highlighted! So for my posts on fashion I wanted to embrace and highlight an everyday girl. I wanted to make the posts VERY playful and easy breezy so that it could be appealing to read and incorporate my love for fashion and photography. I started off looking at the newest trends online and searching magazines and online for inspiration. For the most part girls popped up in the head that I knew had different styles but yet appealed to everyday girls. My main objective was to interview girls that had different styles from one another but bring them together to show how these girls were all brought into each other based on their fashion sense. I wanted to make sure the reader got the gist of the trend that was being highlighted, how the girl of the week was deciding what to where and where her inspiration came from. Most of all, I wanted to convey how the media and celebrities influenced their fashion decisions.

In all, I truly enjoyed this assignment. I’ve always LOVED fashion and I feel like this assignment combined all my interests into one, fashion, writing and photography. I really wished this assignment were the entire semester so I could have completely indulged in it and have seen a longer process. However, I do believe I will continue on with my blog. I have gotten some amazing feed back and have so many other trends in mind to touch on. Going further I cant wait to connect with other females and possibly feature men as well. I’d love to be able to do a comparison on the influence of the media and celebrates differs between sexes. I’m so glad to have been able to reconnect and get to know some of these girls and I can’t wait to see where else I can take this blog outside of our classroom assignment. 

Please check out my blog and continue to do so to see what changes and what other trends I’ll cover.  

http://bisouschicxo.blogspot.com

 

Research Paper

My topic for my research paper is : How Ads and Media influence and promote woman’s body image issues and diet trends. For my research paper I wanted to focus on something that I’ve thought about myself and what I’ve personally experienced. From a young age I’ve always been interested in fashion but being a plus size woman, I noticed that boundaries were set on woman who aren’t a “sample size.” The media influences our thoughts, ideas, in essence our lives! Through my research paper I will analyze ads and the print and digital media world to see how trends are discussed and what sort of woman the world characterizes as “beautiful.” I also will discuss the movement of embracing different types of woman by means of campaigns such as Dove.

So far my research has proven my point that the stereotypical women is portrayed in the media and it greatly affects the choices of the everyday woman, down to what she will wear, what diet she will do, and what snack she will eat! It’s easy to say that the media influences women but reading studies that have been taken where women said they would rather be skinny to be attractive although they would’t be healthy is truly sickening. That’s just the type of society we live in.

Trigger Warnings

This week on One The Media the segment on Trigger Warnings was extremely time worthy. Trigger Warnings on the Internet prepare people for disturbing subjects. What was primarily intended to warn of graphic images for those experiencing Post Traumatic Stress has now become a regular part of mainstream media. An example given was of a women writing complains that there should be a trigger a warning on things that have to do with pregnancy for those who cant conceive. But the request to have a trigger warning on a site resulted in women not posting about pregnancy all together. The outcome of women not posting at all shows just how much on an influence our comments have online. It also shows the misuse of trigger warnings today. Any an every subject can be controversial or oppose someone’s ideas and thoughts, thus trigger warnings can be posted on just about everything! I think that today trigger warnings have lost sight of the original purpose and now are overused to cater to everyone’s feelings. What was once a warning is now a compulsory emotional correctness. Students in California also requested to pass a resolution where trigger warnings are mandatory included in offensive syllabi. The issue with this is what is meant to be educational will now be censored or removed all together due to this resolution. This has become an ongoing issue with books, some which have been famously used for years in the curriculum but are not being taken out due to topics such as rape and racism. Trigger warnings continue to undermine intellectual exploration and will keep people in a bubble. Speech, journalism, and art can trigger emotions intended to promote emotional reactions and having a trigger warning on just about everything controversial will limit the number of reactions.

Public Satire examples

Public 

Culture Jamming Examples

Epitome of what America has become.

Open Source as Culture

The “Open Source as Culture” essay really expressed a different perspective in comparison to the essay “Our Intermediary is Our Destiny.” Rather than proclaim how necessary copyright laws are, this essay seemed to support and promote a society or culture without copyright when it comes to software. “Software is special, though. It’s not just expression. It is functional. It’s not just information. It’s action. In some ways, the inclusion of software among the copyrightable forms of creativity has complicated and challenged the intellectual-property tradition.” This statement in some way shows that in order to create something “new”, the “old” has to be the basis to work from and copyrights impedes this from occurring. Throughout, I found myself agreeing with Stallman who felt that copyrights on software’s didn’t allow him to improve the software and devices. Using someone’s codes could lead to the development of better software that could correct or update areas that were overlooked in the first place. The terms and ideas of sharing and building were fittingly touched on. Seeing as we al make up society, working together leads to building together which will affect and benefit all. When it comes to software, having access to codes would lead to unending developments. What stands in the way is the need for credit for everything we’ve done. Granted, being acknowledged for hard work always feels good. However, contributing to an overall difference doesn’t merit credit of each individual. “While copyrights acknowledge the interests of the public, it omits the voice of the public itself.” Freedoms of speech and creativity get loss in the world of copyright. It’s not unlikely that more than one person can have the same or similar idea. But once copyrights are involved, the creativity tends to get loss and rather what’s focused on is the pursuit of a lawsuit. 

Your Intermediary is Your Destiny

In chapter 12 of The Social Media Reader entitled ‘Your Intermediary is your Destiny’ Fred von Lohmann speaks of a clearance culture, ‘the expectation that express permission will have been obtained for every copyrighted work that appears in a video.’ Throughout the online and offline media worlds are compared amongst their obligations to uphold copyrights, specifically towards video content. While offline intermediaries are viewed as doormen, having to be satisfied with the work before its broadcasted, online intermediaries are comparable to bouncers, involving themselves after a complaint rather than being consulted before hand. In reading the points highlighted in the chapter it seemed that both online and offline intermediaries are on opposite sides of the same spectrum. While one nitpicks each detail, the other barely does anything until rights have been breached.

The best result would be to find a balance between the two extremes, finding a way to pay attention to infringement while not being over baring and punishing the guilty and non guilty parties. While I do believe that copyrights are necessary in order for deserving ones to benefit from their labor, I strongly believe that online intermediaries serve a tremendous purpose, allowing us to see the full scope of things that aren’t shown offline.

The strict boundaries emplaced by copyrights, holding intermediaries legally responsible even if they were unaware that were rights were infringed upon, sets the tone for online intermediaries and its users to rebel and post things they shouldn’t. At the same time, the leniency of Congress in their Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, enacting a copyright safe harbor that allows online intermediaries to ‘store and transmit video on behalf of their users without suffering the kind of strict liability that offline video distributors face, sets the stand for copyright laws to be so strict to compensate.

While I wouldn’t argue that modern video is more or less influenced by preexisting copyrighted work, I do believe that taking an idea with the primary intent of making it your own does change the work. Numerous cases in music deal with copyright infringements such as Vanilla Ice’s popular song ‘Ice Ice Baby’ and the recent success of Robin Thicke’s song ‘Blurred Lines’ are just two of the many cases filed against musicians under copyright infringement. I think the line between copyright infringement and inspiration has yet to be defined in detail.

Lack of Freedom of Speech in Russia

Listening to the podcast on Russia was truly enlightening while still shocking! I found it interesting that news coverage in Russia was to be covered as if one was speaking of a deceased person, in positive light or not at all! Stories were actually “spiked or changed to fit this directive.” Just the idea of a journalists report being altered in order to portray Russia the way their government sees fit is appalling. With news coverage that is overly looked after, I’m not sure why the Russian people would even adhere to anything the media has to say. On one hand, restricting what goes out to the public could see most beneficial. Letting the public know what they should know rather than every single detail, could contribute to society being less fearful and skeptical. Waiting for an entire story to develop and then release it would lower the chances of things getting lost in translation. On the other hand, restricting information to the public keeps the, in the dark and that may be more fearful than knowing too much. In Russia’s case it seems that they do neither. Rather than looking out for the interests of the people, Russia seeks to portray their country in a perfect manner rather than let anyone question the actions of the government. The drastic measures of a non paid constructor sewing his lips together just to grab hold of the attention of journalists was another shocking part of the podcast. In the United States it seems remarkably easy to reach the media over matters that don’t even compare to the controversial events taking place in Russia. Listening to worldwide events that occurs shows just how different media coverage is worldwide. I could never imagine a time where news coverage wouldn’t consider the opinions and voice of the public but solely those approved by the government. Reflecting on the circumstances of others living in such a controlled environment will truly make one appreciate the way matters and news coverage are handled here in the U.S. Although WE progress as a nation and more and more rights are considered and passed, other countries have far more advancements to make.

New Frontiers to Porn Law Reaction

Listening to the podcast on the online child porn was very shocking. Besides the point that Amy’s uncle raped her at the age of eight, posting photos online was even more appalling! Seeing how online child porn is a multi-billion dollar industry, I would think the court system would be able to agree that the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 should apply to Amy’s case in order to receive restitution. The podcast posed two important questions: 1. Does every viewer of the online pictures owe Amy restitution? and 2. How do you assign value? As sickening as it is for all those perverts to have viewed Amy’s photos, I don’t believe all those who viewed the pictures owe Amy restitution. In this case I primarily blame her uncle and all those who initially post the photos. However, I do believe that if a law was implemented where all viewers of child porn would have to pay restitution if caught, that would create an incentive for fewer people to take part in these sites. The second question was trickier to answer. Enduring not only a rape but then having to deal with your photos online and then having to sue 700 people for restitution is hard to put value on. I’m not sure how Amy was able to calculate her total losses at $3.4 Million dollars. On one hand I would expect a whole lot more zeros for having endured such painful acts not to mention the psychological damage. On the other hand, no amount of money could erase the damage done in Amy’s life. In the event that a future law is created that includes online child pornography, guidelines would have to be extremely specific in determining how much someone is owed. This entire case shows just how far behind our government is in issuing laws to keep up with our technological advances.