Jmorrison721's Weblog » Responses to Readings

Spoilers

jmorrison721 — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 04:52:19 +0000

In Convergence Culture, Jenkins describes the important role participants have in the world of television. Media circulation is in large part due to consumers – they determine what products to buy, brands to trust, and what tv shows will be popular. It is clear that without consumer responses via blogs online and websites, producers might not be as successful.

The concept of spoiling a show is described as a group of viewers or an individual who is participating in the active process of tracking down information that has not yet been released and publishing it online. Producers have become aware of this and often read the blogs and make changes to the show so that the audience is suprised in the end. So is it really that bad that there are spoilers? I think that everyone at one point or another has been so obsessed with a reality tv show and searched to find out what happens. We all want to be the source of knowledge when it comes to knowing the outcome of the next episode. Plus, if people don’t want shows to be spoiled – then they shouldn’t go online looking for information that might lead them to such an outcome.

Reading Response 10/14

jmorrison721 — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:10:14 +0000

Author of article

In Jo Ellen Fair’s Francophonie and the National Airwaves, A History of Television in Senegal, she discusses how the content of television and the spread of it in Africa can be correlated to media imperialism. She states however, that media imperialism is too simple of an association to make and that it is necessary to go more in depth and analyze televisions’ political and cultural history in Africa.

While reading this article I wanted to know more about the author, I did some research and found that most of her research has examined U.S. media images of conflicts in Africa. SHe explores how race shaped the telling of African catastrophes and conflicts. http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/users/jefair

Africa

Also while reading I learned that there has been a lot of study of the African culture, traditions, and the ways in which they have been transformed through the interaction with foreign cultures. (Planet TV, 204) However, the study of media and its influence in Africa has not been explored in great detail. Considering how over the past thirty years, television shows, cartoons, images, and magazines have become a more popular medium for Africa, there is more of a reason to explore this.

Cultural Studies (John Storey)

jmorrison721 — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 01:25:56 +0000

In Cultural Studies & the Study of Popular Culture by John Storey, I found the section on media consumption and repertoires to the be most interesting. It first addresses how magazines can act as ‘friends’ for women by bringing women together in their pages – “and yet by not providing the knowledge to allow women to see the history of their common social condition, sadly and ironically, they come between women, expecting and encouraging, them to do alone what they can only do together” (98). The section explains Joke Hermes and her study of women reading magazines and the affect it may have on them. She addresses the false depictions mediated by women’s magazines. (99)

(100) media consumption: in other words, rather than begin with a cultural text and show how people appropriate it and make it meaningful, or begin with the contexts of cultural consumption and show how these constrain
(100) repertoires: the cultural resources that speakers fall back on and refer to.. moreover, texts do not directly have meaning.. reps make them
(101) Hermes identifies the four repertoires: ‘easily put down’; ‘relaxation’; practical knowledge; and emotional learning and connected knowing.
She relates them into the way that women read magazines and then apply what they have learned into the real world.
the study identifies the many problems with women magazines because they provide a very inaccurate representation of the female body and include stories that are very unrealistic and is somewhat of a ‘fairy tale’