This post is due by Tuesday, February 25 @ midnight for full credit.
Email late posts to rob.williamsATmadriver.com for partial credit.
Read our MEDIA@SOCIETY book, assigned chapter above.
In a SINGLE blog post below, provide for the chapter:
1. A single sentence, IYOW, that captures the chapter's THESIS (main argument).
2. THREE specific pieces of supporting documentation - ideas, concepts, stats, data - to bolster your thesis for the chapter. (Use 2 - 3 sentences for each.)
3. A single PERSONAL story of 3-4 sentences that connects the chapter directly with your own personal media experiences.
4. A SINGLE specific question you have after reading and blogging on the chapter.
Game on,
Dr. W
ReplyDelete1. The narrative of a news story is extremely influential within our own lives, creating a story of real life “characters” that makes the line between entertainment and news increasingly blurred.
2.
1. Essentially, the entire construct of our lives is dependent on storytelling. As discussed in media and society, “this book acknowledges the centrality- and limitations- of stories in our daily lives and how they provide the models through which we understand the world” (Media in Society, 80). The media combines news and entertainment in a way that is potentially dangerous.
2. Within presidential campaigns, portrayal is everything. Presidents depend on, “...symbolic ties to common values connect the powerful to the everyday, making their interests appear common and shared. They are like us” (Media in Society, 83). In this regard, “celebrities” or politicians who are slightly removed from us, are trying to make a connection to every day people in order to seem more real, tangible, and likable.
3. However, although anyone reading a book such as this one must try to be wary to media’s attempt at convincing us one way, it becomes increasingly difficult. “As citizens, our responsibility lies in understanding this process in order to “resist, limit, alter, and challenge” those stories that we think are misrepresenting actual experience, our interests, and democratic practices” (Media in Society, 87). In general though, this is easier said than done since stories come at us so fast and often cannot even be processed outside the subconscious mind.
3. Personally, I have noticed that within my lifetime people treat presidential campaigns as a sort of “reality” television show, except just like those tv shows, the reality is skewed. I feel as though with the invention of mass media, presidential campaigns have become increasingly reliant on having “good” media coverage and being represented through the media in a way that primarily tries to convince the people that they are a good, likable person, not even necessarily a good leader.
4. Why/how has this similarity between movies/tv and real life media come to be?
1.) A narrative formula is used in news accounts in order to sell a story to the public.
ReplyDelete2.) Presidential candidates present themselves in a way that’s most familiar to voters. They “espouse their connection to Middle American common sense and shared values.” (82) In the 2012 presidential election, Romney and Obama followed narrative strategies of the average family man in order to align themselves with the values of their constituents. Politicians sell a story in order to connect with the general public and eventually hold positions of power.
Various common narrative forms are developed into stories for viewers to consume. These stories follow epic, romantic, melodramatic, and satirical forms. These narrative cycles are the “chief symbolic way people make sense of social experience and articulate common values like individualism or compassion.” (97) Dramatic television shows follow melodramatic threads to enthrall and capture the attention of audiences throughout the country. Newsrooms now follow suit in order to increase viewership.
Although narratives help interpret experiences and information, many times words fail to narrate an event. Media in Society cites 9/11 as an occasion where reporters were unable to fit it into a narrative because it “fit into no narrative we knew.” (99) This is when democracy is at risk. Producers can package news into an unimaginative, conformist narrative that leads to hegemony, ruining individualistic ideas and pursuits in America.
3.) Especially in the 2012 election, I noticed the main thread of news coverage was the “who’s winning/who’s losing” racehorse format. It definitely becomes less about the issues and more about who’s swaying the public. It seems really superficial to me that this is what American politics is becoming. It’s almost like candidates need to trick constituents into voting for them by trying to relate to people they have nothing in common with.
4.) Will the political cynicism of my generation ever put a stop to narrative formulas and storytelling in politics?
1. Narrative is the basis to the success of people believing a news story.
ReplyDelete2.
a. The “celebrities” of political campaigns use a narrative perspective when it comes to putting on the perfect act to attract voters. They use similarities and “shared values” to connect themselves to the voters (82).
b. A lot of the narratives were based off of the idea that they want to interest people through different genres. ‘Romantic, melodramatic, satirical’ forms are all introduced as ways of encouraging people to watch shows, or read certain books (97).
c. Storytelling is a main way that the news takes a story, uses narrative, and attracts people to continue watching. Although, when large news stories occur it is hard to use the narrative approach. The book uses 9/11 as an example as to when it is difficult to change the story to intrigue people (99).
3. I see many personal media narratives throughout the day. I am always exposed to news stories and news reporters. Any time you watch the news you are subject to bias.
4. How does personal bias affect news reporters stories?
1. Thesis: Stories present themselves in our lives in many different ways, but they are essential to our survival, because without them, we would be lost.
ReplyDelete2. One example of how media are tools of our survival can be seen mirrored in some the major genres of stories: epic, romance, and melodrama. All of these types of stories are meant to reflect our lives and cultural values in their classic rise and fall story arcs. Each of these genres has a specific story “path” they follow in order to be classified in that genre, and this is very important to us because without a goal, we would be lost. “Epic” stories are meant to be about the beginnings of heroes, and therefore relate to our regular lives via their moral values and their story development. Romance stories further the epic stories’ beginnings by focusing more on relatable characters and what they do, and how they do it. Melodramas are also made extremely relatable by inviting the audience into the view of a lone hero, who we can appreciate for their trials and tribulations, and eventual success. Each of these genres offers a unique story perspective, but ultimately, we always find ourselves drawn to these types of stories because they each offer the audience a guiding path.
3. Film and literature professor Frank McConnell says, “… stories matter, and matter deeply, because they are the best way to save our lives” (page 80). I think this rings true for many people worldwide. I think stories offer us an escape from reality, and so stories have become very important in some peoples’ lives. Stories play major roles in most of our lives, for numerous reasons, but most importantly, I believe we like stories so much because it’s parallel to having the adventures we could never have.
4. Is it possible to create an engaging story that does not fit into the four major genres of storytelling (epic, romance, melodrama, and satire)?
The way a story is narrated is based upon the interests that a viewer has and what the viewer connects to.
ReplyDeletePolitical Candidates tell particular stories to generate a connection with the Middle Americans. “These symbolic ties to common values connect the powerful to the everyday, making their interests appear common and shared. They are like us” (83). Overall, political candidates adjust their narratives so people are able to associate themselves with the story.
Consensus narratives target the middle ground people by using a language that is familiar by the majority of people. The reason for doing so “is to articulate the culture’s central myths, in a widely accessible language…” (84). Therefore, these consensus narratives are able to reach out and connect to an abundant amount of people.
Another way a narrative is altered to capture people’s attention is by categorizing daily uses such as tv programs and radio stations which is known as grouping media “texts” (87). “…media “texts” are grouped together because they share common features that allow media industries to sort them for consumers…” (87). This narrative form helps attract viewers because it rearranges the media texts to a more acceptable and easier way for the viewer to use.
Whenever presidential elections are coming up, there are numerous advertisements to promote each candidate. I have noticed that these advertisements are directed more towards what the viewers want to hear, rather than who the candidate actually is. Unfortunately, presidential candidates use advertisements also attack one another to display to the people who they should not vote for rather than who they should vote for.
Will common sense ever become natural instead of based off of socially constructed views?
ReplyDelete1.The formulation of narratives involve precise articulation on the media’s part to make sure their message is how they want us to perceive it rather than how we should perceive it.
“Hegemony, then, as it used here, means that the predominance of elite classes and the acceptance of the dominant values in the culture by those who are subordinate and less influential than those who hold economic, cultural, and political power” (p. 81).
The media is the dominant force in our society and we are mere subordinates. They try and usually succeed in casting their values on us via the internet, news and other media.
“So when political candidates run for office, the stories they tell about themselves espouse their connection to Middle American common sense and shared values…” (p. 82).
During presidential elections, the candidates will try and put themselves on the same level as their voters. This makes us think that the candidates are doing things because they see society as we do, Middle Americans, but that is not the case. They do this to try and persuade us that they are making their decisions for us, because they are one of us, everyday, working Americans.
“…Narratives do matter—they are the chief symbolic way people make sense of social experience and articulate common values like individualism or compassion... Ultimately, narrative forms provide symbolic and familiar containers for the nuances of cultural and political experience that always want to spill out” (p.97-98).
Narratives group us into a target market that the media can project their ideas to. It limits individualism because everything is narrated to us of how we SHOULD think of something rather than how our individual minds depict it.
3. Watching the past Presidential elections is very enlightening on the topic of narratives. I noticed the constant attempts to make connections with the Middle Americans because that is the majority of the voting pools. They would word their debates and connect stories to make a connection with us, the one that stuck out the most to me was, Joe the Plumber.
4. How do we distinguish what is true and factual from biased and manipulated in the media?
Narrative forms, defined by the cycle of storytelling, are used to shape the formula with which Americans receive their information and provide a sense of familiarity for things we may not understand.
ReplyDeleteFor example, an influence of commonsense allows people to come to a consensus decision, even if it isn’t exactly what they believe in. During the 2000s, commonsense presidential policies sold the “idea of homosexuality as deviant and unnatural” (82). To define narrative forms, the cycles of storytelling incorporate the four seasons as a means of explaining what occurs in that specific narrative form. For romances and the tales of summer, the narrative portrays a “world where love and friendship are possible” (91). Often, people take a media narrative and run with it, without doing their own research. This blind faith can lead to a demise of the middle/lower classes themselves. It was seen in the early 2000s, when the middle class in Tennessee opposed a “state income tax, relying mainly on a high sales tax,” which was actually just putting less of a burden on higher-income people (85).
I’ve always found it frustrating when political elections are discussed by the news as having two clear-cut sides without any overlap or third or even fourth parties. They seem to focus a majority of their attention on the Democrats and the Republicans. I hope that my generation, which grew up watching satire shows and is already wary of political agendas, can change the way Americans are given political information.
The narratives that are used in political elections perpetuate and imply the saying, “there’s two sides to every story,” however isn’t that unfair to the public, especially to those who aren’t as informed? More often than not, there are more than two sides to every story, especially in the world of politics.
1.) Chapter four discussed how companies or rulers over time have used certain tactics to make people act a certain way and how stories affect a culture.
ReplyDelete2.) The word hegemony was new to my vocabulary when I read this chapter. Hegemony was the idea of convincing a group of people that life is the way it is instead of economics or violence. This reminded me a lot of Hitler’s tactics. I found the second part of the chapter far more intriguing; romances and tales of summer was interesting to read about because I didn’t know there was difference between heroes in romance and epic story lines. “Like the season of summer, the narrative cycle of romance promotes a world where human nature is ultimately viewed as decent and good, full of possibilities.” (91) The next section that caught me eye was satiric stories and tales of winter, I was never aware of there being a section of stories that related to the end of societies. Once I thought about there were plenty of these films 2012, The Day After Tomorrow and Evan Almighty. “Satiric narrative are about endings, about worlds and cities that are so dysfunctional, corrupt, or lawless that they need to start over.” (95)
3.) I read the book The Road back in high school and that it was a fantastic use of my time. When I sat down to read this chapter I had no idea that I would learn of a new specific storyline. Stories will forever be the most important form of communication so we can’t forget about them.
4.) Why are people stupid?
1) This chapter explains the effects narratives have on society and how higher powers can make us think a certain way and forces us to perceive information
ReplyDelete2)
• This chapter talks a lot about hegemony and how people of power get you to buy what they are saying. “It is why every four year our two main political presidential candidates/ characters spend a billion dollars or more in national elections, trying to tell and sell stories about themselves that align them with the main values of the constituencies and the bulk of Americans who would vote” (83). We are subject to these types of things every day –it is people telling us what we want to hear whether it be because they want us on their side, or what have you.
• Another example of politicians telling us what we want to hear is the ad that the book talks about on page 85: “political ads for Barack Obama seemed to replicate and articulate our own view of the world.” This technique makes us feel connected to whoever if trying to sell this to us, and if we see that they agree with our thoughts, we will be more likely to vote for them; this is an example of advertising what the public wants to hear in order to get their vote.
• Even stories of heroes and princes and princesses use a type of manipulation to make it seem like our world is less corrupt than it is. “the narrative cycle of romance promotes a world where human nature is ultimately viewed as decent and good, full of possibilities” (91). As it explains earlier in the text, a lot of these stories tend to only focus on the heroic figures – not a king or a head of a government (“founding figure of the king recedes into the background”(91)), which makes our society seem more genuine in a way
3) I feel like we see things like this happen everyday, where we don’t even realize that we are being forced to think a certain way about something. It is like seeing a commercial for a big mac; McDonalds wants to portray the best version of it that they can –one that viewers would want to eat. Although the big mac looks nothing like it does in real life as on the commercials, people still want it because of the ideal version of it that has been burned into their brains from seeing it in ads all the time.
4) On the political side of things, will there ever be a stop to the false advertising and just telling the people what they want to hear?
Good work, DIG MED posse.
ReplyDeleteLet's dig down in class,
Dr. W
1. Stories help media consumers understand and relate to what is being broadcasted, keeping us interested though not entirely informed.
ReplyDelete2. “Epic tales and characters are about beginnings, about the founding of cities and the establishment of law. McConnell tells us that the epic is the narrative form through which cultures and authors ‘imagine…how things must have come to be the way they are.’” (p. 89).
Before modern science, nearly all cultures believed in a God or gods who ruled over the universe and various aspects of life, such as the sun, moon, and seasons. There were also cultural folktales that taught morals to children, such as The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Through these narratives, we gain a kind of understanding about the world.
“Downton Abbey is [a] narrative about duty, loyalty, and friendship… But it is mostly about love…But this story is also about Downton’s decline and the threats to romance and old rules precipitated by it” (p. 92-93).
Even though the majority of Downton’s viewers are not familiar with Downton and are from extremely different places, they can likely relate to the characters interpersonal situations. Nearly everyone has had experience with “duty, loyalty, friendship…and love,” and can sympathize with and relate to the characters.
“Perhaps the biggest lack of narrative imagination, which has the most serious implications for democracy…has to do with our national political life and the ways campaign managers package our leaders. At one level, of course, many Americans make final judgments about who they will vote for based on thirty-second TV spots…” (p. 99)
Politics does not have so much to do with having the correct stance on issues in the eyes of the public as much as portraying oneself or one’s opponent in a certain way. This mud raking will influence the population much more than facts and data. Politics is all about reputation, and commercial narratives are a prime example of this.
3. In my Intro to Sociology class, my professor was explaining the importance of socialization on societal norms and expectations. When discussing the pros and cons of assimilation, my professor referenced Star Trek, the wildly popular TV show. He explained that there was a species, the Borg, who implemented “The Prime Directive,” which sought to make every culture they came across the same. This narrative was relative to our society, and made sense to us as students, even if we had never seen the show.
4. What kind of narratives are the most influential on us?
(1) The main thesis of this chapter is that humans are fully enveloped in a narrative-driven culture. Stories are the way we make sense of things and how we express our beliefs onto other people.
ReplyDelete(2) The chapter classifies different types of narratives into genres, all forms that compile into our overall belief about what the ideal society should look like and should NOT look like. The first form is labeled, “Epic Stories and Tales of Spring,” which are stories that discuss the birth of a civilization. “In narratives dominated by epic concerns, ‘the hero is the kind, the City is seen as it is founded’” (89). Examples of Epic Stories include: Homer’s Illiad and The Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Superman, etc. The second form is labeled, “Romances and Tales of Summer,” which are stories that discuss the rules and social fabric of the new civilization. “Historically, the heroes of romances are most typically knights and princesses - the children of the father/king of the epic world, carrying the work of father/king figures.” Examples of Romance Stories include: Disney princess movies, Grey’s Anatomy, philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, etc. The third form is labeled, “Melodramas and Tales of Fall,” which are stories that introduce chaos and corruption into society, making it a dangerous place to live. Examples of Melodramas include: Sir Lancelot in Arthurian legend, High Noon, The Gunfighter, etc. The final form is labeled, “Satiric Stories and the Tales of Winter,” which discusses the fall of society and the need to start over. Satiric stories are not necessarily comedies. Examples include: Jesus in the New Testament, Unforgiven, The Mentalist, The Daily Show, etc.
(3) One thing that really stuck out to me was the whole story about NBC (87). In the 1990s, NBC took sports commentators off of one football game to see how the fans would react to just watching the game unfold on its own with no narration. However, “views and fans, even those annoyed by the inept or offensive commentation, missed the narration, and NBC’s experiment lasted for only one game” (87). I think this is interesting because even when I go to a live Red Sox game, I still crave the commentating. Often times, I’ll either comment aloud to whoever I’m with on the game or I’ll walk back inside and watch the game on one of the hundreds of TVs being broadcasted throughout the stadium. Although there is a considerably long lag for a play to carry out on the television, it’s nice to hear Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy calling the play-by-play.
(4) Is there a system that can portray the honest facts about prioritized news, such as presidential debates? I feel like it’s not fair to the American public to only see these candidates through a narrative lens.
1. The main thesis of this chapter is that narrative formulas are used to recount stories in a way that is believable.
ReplyDelete2. Politicians use the narrative perspective to act in a way the will appeal to their voters. They try to connect themselves to the voters to seem more relatable.
Storytelling is one of the ways new stories are told. The stories are told in a compelling narrative. “9/11 was explained in reflective new stories in film and in TV documentaries”.(99)
In some stories “the central narrative tension of epics often features the conflict between …representing evil and chaos.” (89) This way of narrative makes the story believable and compelling.
Narrative formulas were used in TV shows as a way to keep people interested. “The mentalist melodrama has to do in part with the appearance of familiar characters doing familiar work aligning their values with ours” (98)
Any time I watch the new or someone tells me a story they are using a narrative form that makes the story compelling believable.
Is it wrong for politicians to use forms of narrative to get their voters to like them?
The thesis of this chapter is focused on narrative formulas and how that is the most effective way to tell a story.
ReplyDelete2. The chapter defines different narrative forms such as epic tales, love stories, and melodramas and how they shape our understanding of those who consume them. For instance before the modern day many people believed the fairytales and myths of the time because that was the narrative of the day.
The chapter also focuses on the importance of understanding narrative cycles and says, “they are the chief symbolic way people make sense of social experience and articulate common values like individualism or compassion.” (97) Narrative cycles are crucial to society as a whole and who they are.
There is, however, a limit to the marrative cycle. The book provides the example that a kid will come home from school and his parents will ask him what happened that day, and the universal response would be “nothing”. (98). Nothing didn’t happen, but often times words can fail us.
3. I think narrative cycles are an interesting way to look at societies. I took an anthropology course last semester and it was really interesting learning about different narrative cycles of other cultures. What we believe to be true is not necessarily a universally thought, and many were raised on a different cycles as our own.
4. How can we distinguish a true narrative cycle from one that is constructed to make the public think in a certain way?