Blown Away

I was doing the reading for tomorrow earlier, and I just found myself completely shocked over the insane amount of conglomeration that has been going on. Looking at the exhibits from C&H page 41-43 just completely blew me away. I for one, had no idea that AOL and Disney alone own so many different sources and kinds of media. It just seems completely ridiculous how much power they have by owning so much of the media production, on so many levels. My roommate knew, but I had no idea that Disney owned ESPN, and for me that was extremely surprising as it seems so... not Disney-like.

As mentioned in the book, these companies can do some intense promotion of their own products, through their own media outlets. When Harry Potter was released by Warner Brothers, (owned by AOL Time Warner) was then promoted on tv by all AOLs channels, given ads in their 64 magazines with around 268 million readers, and then promoted further on websites such as moviefone, also owned by AOL. Reading these lists of all these household names and finding out that they are all owned by just a handful of huge corporations is quite mindblowing, and one begins to wonder if there are certain cross-media strategies that these larger corporations could use that could truly influence us all in ways beyond what has already been seen.

In Germany during WW2, Germany's Joseph Goebbels was a propaganda mastermind - even his official title was minister of propaganda, and what other way to spread it than through the media. It seems pretty clear from what happened in the prewar years during Hitlers rize, that propaganda had an enourmous effect on the German people. So the question arises if this could be happening today as well, but perhaps in a much less radical way. Who can say that we are not being affected in any way? And with conglomerates such as ours, that own pretty much every aspect of the media, it is easy to imagine them all trying to affect the largest amount of people in a way that promotes their own ends, obvious ones being sales of their products etc.

But what if they are all promoting specific political agendas, that benefit them in some way. Promoting specific political candidates, because of views that could promote the particular conglomerate's interests. It's certainly food for thought. What if your opinions aren't ur own, but a mix of a few different conglomerates' views that have affected you through their many media outlets?  

Just a little fun.

Since I mentioned The Dailty Show earlier, i figured I'd share a link to one of my favorite moments. All about my home country, which I left about 3 years ago now. What's the Matter with Denmark?

It's always harder than you think, once you have to..

Do something for the first time, that you've seen others do so many many times before you. A blog. How hard can it be? You're basically just putting out some information about yourself, an experience, a story you heard, or just something completely random. I have read several blogs and the truth is I thought it would be easy to create my own. Especially with Mass Media as the topic of discussion, as I believe the media to have pretty much shaped my personality, but it really isn't very easy to just start writing. I guess I'll just start off, with some of my own media interests.

I have several shows on tv that i follow. Ranging from True Blood (missed the season finale yesterday, damn you Boston College, for not offering HBO!), to It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (new season on thursday!) to an older show, that most people my age never even heard of, called Twin Peaks. When I'm not watching a show, I might just be watching the news... which fills my head up with either republican or democratic opinions, depending on what channel i choose to watch. CNN keeps getting called out on their mistakes on the daily show, and that pretty much goes for all the other news channels as well, so I guess from now on I'll stick to Stewart and Colbert for my news. Video games are always a good source of entertainment when hanging out with friends, and without music, the world would just be such a dull place to be. Imgaine a party without music.

Mass Media, in pretty much all its forms, really makes our world what it is - for good and bad. It provides us with endless entertainment, and who could really imagine a world without it? But it obviously has quite a bit of control over us, i mean just look at what the annoying "Head On" adverts did. They actually made everyone go out and buy it. The company received a 234% increase in sales after beginning their advertising campaign.

Apply directly to the forehead? Apply directly to the forehead!
...Seriously?

That, and commenting on other examples of the media's control, and just random stories about it, will be the aim of my blog.

Hope you'll follow along as i post.