What a great semester!

Dear Media Decal Class of Spring 2009,

Can't believe we had our last decal session today! It's been a fun and challenging semester and we've learned so much! Seeing all of your presentations was so awesome because they represented taking all our knowledge about media's harmful effects and actually doing something with it. I hope that can be your experience time and time again as we continue to be bombarded by the media.

We've really enjoyed getting to know you all through our discussions and dinners this semester and we sincerely hope to continue these relationships (and ot just on facebook -___-). So good luck on your finals and remember, don't be a stranger--ya'll are welcome to drop by the decal or join us for dinner next semester...just send us an email to find where we're meeting!

- Josh, Stephany, Gina and Calvin

Last Decal Potluck!

Main Entrees (bring at least 10-15 servings):

1. Emily and Pauline
2. Daniel and Wynn
3. Josh
4. Stephany
5. Calvin
6. Gina
7. 
   

Salads (bring at least 10 servings):

1. green salad with dressing: Kevin
2. pasta salad:
3. fruit salad or fruit: Monica
4. potato salad: Lily
5. some other interesting salad or a repeat of the above:

Appetizers:

1. Suceli
2. Mirna
3. Susan
4. Jessica Fuh
5. Christina
   
   

Desserts (bring at least 10-15 servings):

1. Jessica Tsai
2. Ali
3. Bianka
4. Nancy

Drinks (bring at least 2 types):

1. Vasso
2. Jenny
3. Stephanie
4. Anna

Utensils, Cups, Plates and Napkins (bring at least 30 count):

1. forks, spoons, knives, and plates: Stella

Cups and napkins: Vijayta

Week 10 Homework

Please do the following readings. They're short but good.

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/10/65365

http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2008/PIP_Teens_Games_and_Civics_Report_FINAL.pdf.pdf
(only read 1st 9 pages)

http://www.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7Bb0386ce3-8b29-4162-8098-e466fb856794%7D/CIVIC_POTENTIAL_VIDEO_GAMES.PDF
(pgs 5-10)


Presentation Guidelines:

• 10 minutes for a group of 1-2 people, 20 minutes for a group of 3 or more people
• Please email me your presentation (i.e. powerpoint) by Sunday afternoon of the day BEFORE your presentation date.

Presentation Calendar:

• April 20th (next week): 1) Daniel, Kevin, Wynn 2) Jenny, Lily
• April 27th: 1) Susan's group 2) Vasso's group 3) Pauline's group 4) Jessica's group
• May 4th: 1) Bianca's group 2) Anna's group

Random interesting picture:

Reminder: Bring your Time Logs!

Reminder: Bring your time logs tomorrow!

Week 8 Homework

Please print out the lyrics to a popular song and analyze them, paying special attention to issues we've discussed in class: gender roles, violence, views on romance, etc.

Analysis should be minimum one page, double spaced.

Also, please read the follow article.

Week 7 Homework

As usual, please answer the following question with at minimum a one page, double spaced response.

• Choose a movie or TV clip that depicts a situation you have experienced in your life. (ex. college life, dating, work, etc)
• Did the clip accurately represent your experience or did it miss the mark?
• Can your experience only be explained through the relation of the clip itself (ie "...it was like that movie...")
• Do movies/TV accurately represent everyday life or do we model our lives after movies/TV ?

Please read the following articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/arts/television/02stan.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-alderman/shame-tv-why-humiliation_b_86500.html

More than a Face Presentation

Come and check out "More than a Face" ! It's sure to be a very thought-provoking talk and you'll get a free homework pass for going!

Week 6 Homework

1. Bring in a print advertisement and do a one page, double-spaced write up describing how the advertisement you found portrays women or men. Is this portrayal positive or negative? Is it clear what product is being sold?

2. Read the article below.

Expert from “Meaning and Ideology” be Judith Williamson

But it is too simple to say that advertising reduces people to the status of things, though clearly this is what happens when both are used symbolically. Certainly advertising sets up connections between certain types of consumers and certain products; and having made these links and created symbols of exchange it can use them as ‘given’, and so can we. For example: diamonds may be marketed by likening them to eternal love, creating a symbolism where the mineral means something not in its own terms, as a rock, but in human terms, as a sign. Thus a diamond comes to ‘mean’ love and endurance for us. Once the connection has been made, we begin to translate the other way and in fact to skip translating altogether: taking the sign for what it signifies, the thing for the feeling.

Advertisements are selling us something else besides consumer goods: in providing us with a structure in which we, and those goods, are interchangeable, they are selling us ourselves. And we need those selves. It is the materiality and historical context of this need which must be given as much attention as that equation of people with things. An attempt to differentiate amongst both people and products is part of the desire to classify, order, and understand the world, including one’s own identity. But in our society, while the real distinctions between people are created by their role in the process of production, as workers, it is the products of their own work that are used, in the false categories invoked by advertising, to obscure the real structure of society by replacing class with the distinctions made by the consumptions of particular goods. Thus instead of being identified by what they produce, people are made to identify themselves with what they consume. From this arises the false assumption that workers ‘with two cars and a colour TV’ are not part of the working class. We are made to feel that we can rise or fall in society through what we are able to buy, and this obscures the actual class basis that still underlies social position. The fundamental differences in our society are still class differences, but use of manufactured goods as a means of creating classes or groups forms an overlay on them.

Week 5 Homework

1. Please write a one page, double-spaced response to the following prompts:

Are video games today too violent? If so, give examples.
Have you ever felt like you (or a friend) play too many video games?
What are some positive aspects about video games? Are there any?

2. Read the article below.

The Attraction Factors of Online Gaming, by Nick Yee

There are three main Attraction factors of MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online role-playing games, i.e. Everquest or World of Warcraft) that encourage time investment and personal attachment. One of these is the elaborate rewards cycle inherent in MMORPGs that works like a carrot on a stick. Rewards are given very quickly in the beginning of the game. You kill a creature with 2-3 hits. You gain a level in 5-10 minutes. And you can gain crafting skill with very little failure. But the intervals between these rewards grow exponentially fairly quickly. Very soon, it takes 5 hours and then 20 hours of game time before you can gain a level. The game works by giving you instantaneous gratification upfront and leading you down a slippery slope. And it overlays different reward cycles so you're always close to some reward - whether this be a level, a crafting skill, or a quest. One interviewee stated:

"The game is set up to make you want the next best thing. "Oh look what that guy has! How do I get that?" The answer is always to spend more time online either getting higher level to go camp the item, or to just go camp the item (or slight variation, camp the quest items that result in the new item). But you are rewarded for playing more. Better items, more freedom on where you can go." [male, 21]

A more elaborate analysis of the rewards cycle can be found in the Virtual Skinner Box essay.

The other main Attraction factor is the network of relationships that a player accumulates over time. There are several reasons why relationships of a platonic or romantic nature occur so frequently in MMORPGs. The anonymity and computer-mediated chat environment facilitates self-disclosure, and many players have told personal issues or secrets to online friends that they have never told their real life friends or family. The high-stress situations inherent in the game also help build trust and bonds between players very rapidly. Of course, another important reason is that the games were designed so that you have to group to achieve most goals. You can find a more elaborate analysis of the formation of online relationships in the Online Relationships presentation.

A network of online friends encourages players to invest more time to the game for several reasons. First of all, a player now plays to catch up or remain around the same level as their friends. The pace is set by the player that increases their power levels the most, and oftentimes causes a chain reaction of others trying to catch up. Secondly, a playing schedule, whether tacit or explicit, may be created and there is an expectation that each player will show up to join the group. And finally, the more friends you have, the more obligations you have to fulfill. If you play as a "cleric" character in the MMORPG called Everquest, you have the ability to heal other players and will often be asked for help by other players. If you play as a "druid" character, you may be asked for assistance in teleporting them around the virtual world. Many of these requests take a substantial amount of time, but this is all part of the normal expectations of what friends do for each other. Being in a guild (the term used to describe a team of online players) is one way in which these obligations become structured and recurring. Thus, having a network of friends encourages both a higher level of personal attachment and time investment.

The third, and final, Attraction factor is the immersive nature of these virtual environments. This factor works by encouraging players to become attached to their characters and the virtually valuable items that they own. The immersive nature also encourages players to become personally invested to what happens to their characters, and to be empathetic towards their characters. In the same way that a movie or fairy-tale enchants you, the immersive quality of MMORPGs tries to enchant you with a fantasy, and make you feel that you are part of something grand and extraordinary.

Clearly, these three Attraction factors are not equally attractive to different players. Data collected for the Facets study showed that individuals who are competitive, aggressive and rational are more likely to be interested in the achievement and rewards cycle of the game. Female gamers are more likely to be interested in the relationship aspect of these games. And gamers who are imaginative and open-minded are more likely to be interested in the immersive quality of MMORPGs.

http://www.nickyee.com/hub/addiction/attraction.html

Week 2 Homework

1. Please write a one page, double-spaced response to the following prompt:

Choose a form of media and discuss how you represent your identity through that medium. How does this compare to how you represent yourself in person?

Do these mediums have a positive/negative effect on your relationships?

2. Read the article below.

Friend-o-nomics
By Scott Brown















Thanks to Facebook, I never lose touch with anyone. And that, my Friend, is a problem.

Hey, want to be my friend? It's more than possible; it's probable. We may already be friends—I haven't checked my email in a few minutes. And once we are, we will be, as they say, 4-eva. A perusal of my Facebook Friend roster reveals that I, a medium-social individual of only middling lifetime popularity, have never lost a friend. They're all there: elementary school friends, high school friends, college friends, work friends, friends of friends, friends of ex-girlfriends—the constellation of familiar faces crowds my Friendbox like medals on Mussolini's chest. I'm Friend-rich—at least onscreen. I've never lost touch with anyone, it seems. What I've lost is the right to lose touch. This says less about my innate lovability, I think, than about the current inflated state of Friendonomics.

Think of it as the Long Tail of Friendship—in the age of queue-able social priorities, Twitter-able status updates, and amaranthine cloud memory, keeping friends requires almost no effort at all. We have achieved Infinite Friendspace, which means we need never drift from old pals nor feel the poignant tug of passive friend-loss. It also means that even the flimsiest of attachments—the chance convention buddy, the cube-mate from the '90s, the bar-napkin hookup—will be preserved, in perpetuity, under the flattering, flattening banner of "Friend." (Sure, you can rank and categorize them to your heart's content, but who'd be callous enough to actually categorize a hookup under "Hookup"?)

It has been argued that this Infinite Friendspace is an unalloyed good. But while this plays nicely into our sentimental ideal of lifelong friendship, it's having at least three catastrophic effects. First, it encourages hoarding. We squirrel away Friends the way our grandparents used to save nickels—obsessively, desperately, as if we'll run out of them some day. (Of course, they lived through the Depression. And we lived through—what, exactly? Middle school? 90210? The Electric Slide?) Humans are natural pack rats, and given the chance we'll stockpile anything of nominal value. Friends are the currency of the socially networked world; therefore, it follows that more equals better. But the more Friends you have, the less they're worth—and, more to the point, the less human they are. People become mere collectibles, like Garbage Pail Kids. And call me a buzz kill, but I don't want to be anyone's Potty Scotty.

Second, Friending has subsumed the ol' Rolodex. Granted, it's often convenient to have all of your contacts under one roof. But the great thing about the Rolodex was that it never talked back, it didn't throw virtual octopi or make you take movie quizzes, and it never, ever poked you. The Rolodex just sat there. It was all business.

Third, and most grave, we've lost our right to lose touch. "A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature," Emerson wrote, not bothering to add, "and like most things natural, friendship is biodegradable." We scrawl "Friends Forever" in yearbooks, but we quietly realize, with relief, that some bonds are meant to be shed, like snakeskin or a Showtime subscription. It's nature's way of allowing you to change, adapt, evolve, or devolve as you wish—and freeing you from the exhaustion of multifront friend maintenance. Fine, you can "Remove Friend," but what kind of person actually does that? Deletion is scary—and, we're told, unnecessary in the Petabyte Age. That's what made good old-fashioned losing touch so wonderful—friendships, like long-forgotten photos and mixtapes, would distort and slowly whistle into oblivion, quite naturally, nothing personal. It was sweet and sad and, though you'd rarely admit it, necessary.

And maybe that's the answer: A Facebook app we'll call the Fade Utility. Untended Friends would gradually display a sepia cast on the picture, a blurring of the neglected profile—perhaps a coffee stain might appear on it or an unrelated phone number or grocery list. The individual's status updates might fade and get smaller. The user may then choose to notice and reach out to the person in some meaningful way—no pokes! Or they might pretend not to notice. Without making a choice, they could simply let that person go. Would that really be so awful?

I realize that I may lose a few Friends by saying this. I invite them to remove me. Though I think they'll find it harder than they imagine. I've never lost a Friend, you see, and I'm starting to worry I never will.

Week 1 Homework

Read:

1. http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/family/tv_affects_child.html

2. The excerpt from "Amusing Ourselves to Death" entitled "The Huxleyan Warning."

Also, write a one page double-spaced reflection which answers the following questions:

1. Describe your interactions with media when you were a child.

2. Were these interactions positive or negative?

Spring 2009 Syllabus

Welcome to the Media Decal, Spring 2009! We're all really looking forward to getting to know you and talking about these media-related issues.

You can find the syllabus for Spring 2009 here.

See you in class!