I really enjoyed the New Media Psychology class taught by Mrs. Holmgren this semester. The class taught me a lot about media and the way people interact with media.

The assignments I enjoyed the most were the capstone project, the guest speakers, The Social Network movie field trip, and the Starbucks field trip. However, I did not enjoy playing Farmville (I just never got into it), blogging for homework, or reading our textbook.

However, I can appreciate that Farmville brought other Facebook games to my attention like the amazingly awesome ESPN College Town. I did not enjoy the blogging format either. Something about writing on the internet makes my brain stop functioning. All of the blogs took me at least  4o minutes to complete when they could have taken 15 minutes. I’m not trying to complain about the workload in this class, because Mrs. Holmgren has always been extremely gracious about accepting late work, but I just want to point out how inefficiently I work on the internet. I find any and all distractions too hard to resist when they are just a click away.

I thought our textbook, A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication by Richard Jackson Harris, had a lot of meaningful things to say about media, human behavior, and psychology; however, I found the book way too repetitive. Harris pinpoints issues in the media spot on. However, his examples are never concise. I did learn a lot from the textbook, but I think they are better ways to explain media psychology.

We really did not solely read the textbook, which I wholeheartedly appreciated. Mrs. Holmgren was very creative with our in-class activities. About a third of a way into the semester, we started to have various Poly guest speakers come to talk about different issues related to media and art in general. The guest speaker topics ranged from “The Composition of Art” to “Ethics in the Media.” All of the guest speakers had something meaningful and different to say. I enjoyed hearing teachers talk about aspects of media that they usually would not talk about in their daily classes at Poly.

The most valuable lesson I learned from taking this class is that I enjoy practicing forms of media rather than studying the theory of media. I took this class because I want to write and produce television shows and movies when I am older. A very key aspect of being able to do this successfully is being able to understand why people enjoying watching the media they watch. I am glad I got a keen insight into the mental reasons behind why people use various forms of media for different things. However, I enjoy making movies like in my Film Production class more than talking about how people feel about movies.

I am extremely grateful that I have discovered this at such a young age because I think it will benefit me greatly when choosing my college courses. I hope this class continues next year because people often forget how much media affects our daily lives. This class gives students and teachers a chance to explore media in an academic, yet fun setting.

Do the tools we use to make our methods of communication easier really just make our conversations more complicated? In my opinion, yes. Today at school, the acting ensemble performed an assembly about technological miscommunication.

The acts were short, funny and very relatable. The skits talked about mistakes with iPhone auto-correct, hearing problems on the phone, and other awkward technological mishaps. I have experienced multiple technological mistakes with my mother.

Parents and teachers have a harder time communicating with younger people because they did not learn the same technology at such a young age level. As adults attempt to cross the technology barrier, there is a lot of room for misinterpretation.

My mom often sends me text messages with abbreviations that I have never used. For whatever reason, she thinks I know exactly what she means when I have no clue. These simple examples of technological miscommunication really do not hurt anyone, but they do require more time.

I believe the best way to deal with these miscommunications is communication in person. Yes, the old school method works the best. Cell phones and text messages work for making quick plans, joking around, and flirting. However, if you want to have a real, deep conversation with someone, do it in person! Life is too short to only use the technology that keeps us apart physically and sometimes emotionally.

I think the assembly gave everyone a good lesson and a good laugh about the horrors of technological miscommunication.

Can anyone in 2011 ever really say that they feels like their privacy has never been invaded on the internet? With websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, people can find you even if you don’t want to be found.

A simple google search can take you far into the personal details of someone’s life. When I searched my name on google a few things popped up. At first, it felt really cool to see actual websites pop up just from an internet search of my name. My basketball and track team profiles showed on websites like maxpreps.com and cif-ss.org. Maxpreps.com keeps track of prep school team’s stats, game schedules, and records. If someone did want to stalk me, they would be able to go to my game schedule and see what time, and where I was playing.

This remains something that I just think about in the back of my head; however, I wish I did have more control over such facets of the internet.

The other day, one of my teachers got really mad at a group of students for a series of Facebook posts about how they were unprepared for their acting performance that Friday. The teacher felt like the students made the theater program look bad, and they made themselves look bad publicly on Facebook. I agreed with the teacher because as much as their lamenting may have made them feel better, they should have considered how hundreds of people can see their posts.

Befriending teachers on Facebook stands as a very complicated issue that I will have to delve into later, but for now, I want to thank Mr. White for reminding all of us about internet privacy. We all need to think more consciously about what we write, post, and do on the internet; because on the internet, nothing ever really stays private.

Last Wednesday, our Media Psychology class went to Starbucks Coffee and Peet’s Coffee for a cell phone simulation. I had a lunch meeting, so Mrs. Holmgren and I went up after the rest of the class had been doing the simulation for half an hour.

When we arrived at Starbucks, we witnessed Jane mid-order. Jane choose to make the baristas as frustrated as possible by ordering while on her cell phone. Jane completely ignored the barista who took her order and continued to talk on the phone as the lady tried to ask her what she wanted, and what her name was.

The barista tried to wait patiently as Jane cluelessly continued to talk on the phone; the whole order probably took about 3 and a half  minutes when it should have taken 30 seconds.

When Jane’s order finally came up, the barista who made the drink blatantly yelled at the top of her lungs, “JANE!!!” Jane, still on the phone, took her drink and walked away. The barista passive aggressively added, “OH, I didn’t know where you were.” Even though she clearly knew where Jane was.

It was probably one of the funniest incidents I have ever witnessed. After Jane left, Mrs. Holmgren told the barista that it was a class experiment. They lamented about how good Jane was at playing the part, which made the whole situation even funnier.

This simulation reminded me how customers should act and think more respectfully about the time and patience it requires to work at a place like Starbucks. As much as we all love talking on our cell phones, the calls can wait. So next time you go to Starbucks, do yourself and the barista a favor, get off of your cell phones!

Ms. Davis came and talked to us about what social activism really means. We discussed what constitutes social activism as the lines have blurred since the new age of technology. With websites like Facebook where people can “like” activist groups to make themselves think they made a difference. People can feel like they are helping when in reality they are just clicking a button.

I wonder though, can one really say that support means nothing? What really counts as activism? Some people in our discussion argued that activism, like the word itself, requires some physical action to occur. I do not know if I agree with this though. Action means doing something; therefore, showing support stands as an action.

Maybe these actions are self motivated, and maybe they do not help the cause directly; however, support can influence others to act more.

With Facebook, I believe liking a group can encourage your Facebook friends to also like the group because it shows up on their news feed. So maybe you do not do anything more than like the AIDS Cause Event, maybe the first friend who sees it only glances at it, but maybe the third person truly gets inspired by it, goes to the event, and decides to learn more.

One might label this idea as far fetched, but all of the big social and political movements of our time began with small actions. The Civil Rights Movement did not start because Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat or because of M.L.K. Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech. People always talk about these significant events because they remain so influential, but we must not forget that small measures that were taken to advance the movement before either of these events occurred. One saying states that you have to learn how to walk before you can run.  I know that there are countless issues with starvation, poverty, aids, and cancer, but they are not all going to disappear overnight. So it remains imperative that little actions are taken to catalyze greater actions to address these issues.

Mr. Feldmeth came and talked to us about ethics in the media because he teaches the Ethics elective  for seniors at Poly. First he defined ethics as obedience to the unenforceable, which makes a lot more sense to me than it originally did. If one does something ethical he does the right thing even when no one else watches.

Mr. Feldmeth broke down the basics of ethics into various categories: right vs. right dilemmas, mercy-based dilemmas, ends-based dilemmas, rule-based dilemmas, and care-based dilemmas.

The majority of ethical questions in the media come down to end, rule, and care based dilemmas. Questions of what will do the most good for the most amount of people, what stands as the lawfully correct thing to do, and what will cause the least amount of  emotionally pain often come to play.

After we got the gist of what the principles of ethics are, Mr. Feldmeth described how significant and difficult ethical dilemmas can be in the media. He showed us a series of photographs from tragic events. The three pictures that resonated the most with me were the falling man on September 11th 20o1, the mom falling to her death to save her daughter from a fire, and the family members crying over the loss of their young son in a tragic river drowning.

If I were in any of the families of those people I do not know that I would have wanted any of those pictures printed.

The 9/11 picture does hit some soft spots because of the tragedy in the whole event itself; however, I think that this picture does more good than bad. The picture’s composition comes off as very beautiful because of its symmetry. Even though we all know the man falls to his death in the end, in the picture, he looks like a graceful hero.

In my opinion, the picture of the woman committing suicide to break her daughter’s fall stands as the most controversial. I believe that the picture sends out a significant message about safety measures that clearly need to be taken in this neighborhood seeing as how this family could not escape a fire via the fire escape. However, the picture remains so painful that I do not know if I would want the public to see my daughter, sister, or mother coming to her death even as admirable as this act remains.

Finally, I believe that the picture of the dead boy and his family over his dead body does too much. I can literally hear the family screaming just from looking at the picture. I think the picture hurts more people than it helps. Sure it might save lives if people who go to the Kern River see the picture. However, this tragedy will stay with the family forever and having this picture in the media will not help them get over their pain.

“Do you prefer texting or talking on the phone?” Mr. Donnell asked us to send out a text survey with this question. I have already done this sort of survey for my English class with Mr. Donnell, and I have found that most people do not respond by choice.

The responses that I did receive varied somewhat. Some of the responses just said, “Text.” While most people said that it depended who they were talking to, what the conversation was about, and the conversation’s length.

The general consensus – texting goes by faster and remains the more convenient method; phone calls consist of long conversations and complicated stories. Personally, I prefer text most of the time, but texting can get extremely frustrating when one person does not understand the other person.

My conversations usually start off with a series of texts and then culminate in a phone call to finalize plans and details. I wish that more of my friends talked on the telephone more often. I do not understand why talking on the phone feels so burdensome and annoying to some people.

Even though you feel like you are having a faster conversation while texting, most of the time you could probably have the same 20 text conversation that might drag on for an hour that you could have in 2 minutes talking on the phone.

We also discussed how addicted most teenagers and people in general are addicted to their cell phones. We talked about how people text in class even though they know that the teachers know they are texting. I just find this completely disrespectful, and I’m sure teachers do too.

However, it amazes me how many hypocritical things people do. I was surprised to hear that teachers use their cell phones and laptops during faculty meetings too, but I guess people just cannot resist the irresistible cell phone.

Mr. Goodman came and talked to us about labor issues that exist in industrial modern society. Before he came, he gave us a few articles to read written by the fabricated authors “Faber and Oskar.” The articles were actually written by Karl Marx, and I want to say Joseph Stalin, but I might have been mistaken about the latter.

A lot of the issues regarding labor in a society remain the way that they have since the beginning of time – an essential argument of the individual vs. the community. Does one do what his country needs him to do or does one do what helps him the most at that point in time?

The articles discussed how a division of labor must exist for a society to function properly. I believe that the authors meant that a distinction between levels of power. Someone must take the role of the ruler, and other people must follow orders.

Halfway through his presentation, we got to watch the cartoon movie Wall-E. Wall-E focuses on a future planet separate from Earth where people do not move or function on their own. On this planet, the division of labor stands evident – technology does all of the work for the humans who control it.

The movie reminded me of a quote that Ms. Davis talked about in our English class last year, and she actually brought up the quote again when she came and talked to our Media Psychology class. Henry David Thoreau once said that if societies continues to operate in the same manner, we will live in a place in which “men become the tools of our tools.”

Wall-E stands as an extreme example of what can happen when the human race lets technology takeover their lives. In this case the division of labor does not work because it exists between humans and technology rather than between humans and humans. I saw this movie as a very relevant caveat to what can happen when this type of labor division exists.  I loved the movie and could not wait to see more; I’ll have to rent it sometime.

Mr. Barry came and showed us how to use “DaFont.com” for our capstone projects. I found the site very interesting because I never imagined that so many fonts even existed.

I found the technology more difficult to use than I expected. I am not the most keen technology learner, but I still usually can pick things up pretty quickly. However, in this case, I needed a lot of assistance from Mr. Barry.

I appreciate the fact that he took his time to come and show us the process step by step because without him I probably would not use the fonts from “DaFont.com.”

I picked the font titled “Christmas Lights.” I choose this Christmas themed font around because of the time of year, and I felt like it went along with the my capstone project website, “Picmeup.com.”

The “Christmas Lights” font ascends and descends like one’s mood. I want to focus on this metaphor for my website, which focuses on making feel better when they feel bad. Over the course of the semester in this class, we have talked a lot about metaphors on websites. With internet sites, metaphors remain an effective method of gaining an audience’s attention and keeping the audience’s interest.

Another key facet of making a website exists in the website’s personality. Every successful site needs to have a personal logo that people will instantly recognize when they see it. For example, when people see the logos of google, youtube, and facebook they associate the logos with each individual website.

Mr. Barry’s presentation and instructions enabled us to create our own logos. Creating a logo stands as one of the most impotant aspects of starting a website, and I’m very grateful that he came to help us with this significant step.

 

Over the course of the Media Psychology class we were required to blog about our readings and guest speakers almost every night. I admit that I have not always stayed on top of completing my blogs, but I would like to explain why.

I find blogging extremely difficult because I feel like no one really cares what I have to say. I always get stuck on what to say. The fact that the rest of the internet remains right in the next tool bar to tempt me does not help either. I cannot resist that other tool bar. I wish I were stronger, but I’m only a technology obsessed teenager in 2010.

I find most of the topics that we read and learn about very interesting, but for some reason I struggle to express my ideas when writing. I also feel a little bit censored because I am worrying about writing with the wrong verb or grammar rule when I should focus most of my attention to content. I usually write my most productive blogs when I just go through and write completely free flow with typos, to be verbs, and grammatical errors. Then, I go back and completely change my sentence structure.

I feel like people talk more casually on the internet; therefore, the nature of blogs should be casual and free.

When I do take a significant amount of time (over 30 min) and think about what I want to write before I write it, by blogs usually come out pretty well. I think that some of my blogs about the reading have been particularly strong when I connect the ideas in the text to my real world experiences. For example, in my blog about Chapter 6 I wrote on one of Harris’s quotes about the social effect of the Cosby show.

I wrote, “this belief about black people’s laziness standing in the way of their success remains one of the most inaccurate ideas around. Most people do not realize that for the first 300 years of American history a form of affirmative action was given to white males as they were the only people allowed to get an education.” In this case I connected an idea I formulated because of Dr. Terrence Robert’s speech about affirmative action last year when he visited Poly.

I also enjoy reflecting on our guest speakers. I found almost all of the guest lecturers interesting, and I like responding to what they have to say whether I agree or disagree. In the case of Mr. Hatridge’s discussion on the “Digital Divide,” I agreed with and understood his reasoning with a lot of his points; however, I disagree that technologically divides people more than it brings them together.

In my blog about Mr. Hatridge’s lecture I wrote, “I really enjoyed the article that Mr. Hatridge gave us about how in most African American and Latino families the new technology primarily serves as a way to download music and text. I agree with this article completely, and it’s a sad, true fact. However, these kids will text, listen to music, and watch television no matter what. But now, while they are texting, watching, and facebooking, constant advertisements about education, scholarships, and job opportunities pop up. Media serves as the key into the future and now media gives people from lower class backgrounds a more level playing field in life.”

I believe that these two reflections remain some of my best blogging of the semester, and I hope to improve my blogging skills in the future.