How do media professionals "Know" their audiences?

With the very wide range of new technologies, it's actually not that hard for media producers to know their target audiences, and also to make targets of their unknown audiences. With the rise of digital prominence, with the Internet, computers in general, digital cable, digital cellphones and things of that nature, in each of those products a record is kept deep within of your activity. In this record is logged every site you ever visit, every show you watch, every call you make (and from where and when), etc. When put together, or even viewed separately, these logs can paint a very clear and defined picture of you, and as you can imagine, this is very useful to the media producers.

What they can then do with this information is categorize you with others as certain types of audience members. Maybe it so happens that you only watch TV at night, and only a few shows on Comedy Central. Knowing this, they can make it so that to this target audience, only a certain type of commercial is played that works in tandem with both the time of day and the programming you usually subject yourself to. You leave behind a digital fingerprint wherever you go, and just like certain advertisements will pop up if you visit certain sites online, as these other fields become more and more open media producers, the same thing will happen there.

But there is a more open practice that media producers go through to identify your particular niche as well as your response to their texts. They can hold things like focus groups to discuss the feelings of an audience toward a certain TV show, commercial, event, etc. In this way they get first-hand access to your responses, and are allowed to see how these play out and are affected in a group-setting. Interviews are also a good method, if the subjects are too taboo for a group setting or they want more indepth responses. By using methods like these in unison with the logging methods more and more common today, media producers get a good idea of both who is receiving their texts and how they are being received.

Bitmap and Vector Graphic Quiz

Money as Debt

The concepts presented in "Money as Debt" were very informing, but also pretty depressing. As someone with admittedly no financial knowledge, it surprised me that the banks could simply create money on a whim (or, as the video puts it, take the borrower's promise to pay as money in itself). The fact that all of this hypothetical money is floating around is pretty unnerving, especially if the film-maker's prospect, akin to something out of "It's a Wonderful Life" (a run on the bank), becomes a reality. Without enough actual money to pay off all of the hypothetical money out there, banks would effectively shut down the economy if this were ever to happen.

With the parable of the Banker, the video did a good job of presenting for us the key concepts of the issue and the process that led to it. What started out as a simple way to get more money, however, based on real money existing SOMEWHERE, has become a very flimsy system and the foundations of our entire economy, seemingly balanced on a hair over the precipice of total depression and utter ruin. This isn't exactly the way I think anyone wants to live.

While I'm definitely not a conspiracy theorist at heart, you can't help but feel that this entire system has been engineered to keep a few people on top with the rest rushing to pay their debts to them and fuel the economic fire, but it's not even that simple. Those people at the top, too, have a heck of a lot to lose and very high chances of losing it, just as our own chances of seeing the entire economy swallow itself whole are pretty up there. As it stands, this isn't really a system that works for anyone, even those at the top, in the long run. It's more like everyone is working to feed the system, a grueling, tiresome process with no end in sight.

One possibility the video offered as a possible solution is a system based on merit and work (essentially communism) where people are rewarded based on how many hours they put in, and these hours could be turned in for goods or services. It's a little strange that he did not mention the ideology by name, but being a system that works in theory but has never been effectively realized elsewhere, it's very hard to believe this would actually work.

A possibility I did like, however, and forgive me if I'm wrong since the video itself is a little foggy in my memory, is the idea of money from debts being held by the state and going toward paying for actual utilities and useful structures like bridges and roads, which will eventually end up paying for themselves through tolls and things of that nature. By putting this money to good use and not creating the money through debt, but by leveling off this debt with actual things, I think we'd be on the road to a more productive and stable future.

Conglomeration Animation

For this projectI chose the Time Warner corporation, since they're a pretty excellent example of media conglomeration. To do this I started out with three of their subsidiaries (an example of horizontal integration). Warner Brothers they use for film, and through this company they license and produce their movies. Time magazine they use as a news influence and AOL is their territory on the internet. In this way they have integrated these different fields into themselves and become much more far-reaching than even the original merger of Time and Warner Brothers.

So in the GIF I have those three media companies coming together and being overshadowed by their larger influence, Time Warner. Then I just have some text "Media Conglomeration" to put forward the idea through the GIF even more concretely.

Illustrator Studio

Originally I was going to do a French magazine talking about the premiere of Batman in theaters, but this idea was much more interesting and much more fun to do. Basically, as you can see, I made a TIME coverpage as if it wer ebeing published in Gotham City, with stories pertaining to the story as it is at the end of the second Batman movie. I then went over it on a few other layers and graffitti'd it up as the Joker would in accordance with the styles used in all the movie media. It was actually pretty fun doing this and I feel I learned a few important things about Illustrator while doing it (mainly through mistakes I made throughout the process).

Blog Quiz - Chapter 2

1. The increasingly deregulated environment in which these media organizations operate.

As the media giants grew larger and larger they began to eclipse their competition. In a capitalist society, regulations really only survive beside competition, so with a lack of it, regulations became more and more lax. Soon these organizations began controlling their own regulations, to some degree, outsourcing to different countires where the United States government has no jurisdiction. Examples of this can be seen anywhere, from McDonalds having its toys built in child-labor facilities in Asia to the shameless advertising of these media giants, intruding even into the most private lives of consumers across the globe through the internet, television and now even text messages.

2. The promotion of the ideology of consumerism, which is therefor bound up with the capitalist project.

With the intrusion of this new and more and more unlimited advertising, the message being projected to consumers is "buy buy buy". New items are deemed necessary to live a status quo life, and even more to live one of disctinction or admiration. Celebrities are praised on their expensive clothing and accessories, and the following day those same products and cheaper knock-offs fly off of the shelves. In a rapidly changing technological society, it is no longer enough to buy a single cell phone or refrigerator or even a vacuum cleaner. There is always a better model or a cooler accessory. These media giants are sustained on their ability to make the general public buy from them, whether it be in the form of goods or services. We are taught to trade up, to supersize for those few extra quarters, because not doing so would be a supreme waste, right? It is in this way that our lives are not complete until we own the best product AT THAT MOMENT. As Tyler Durden put it so eloquently, "The things you own end up owning you." And since the media organizations own them, they do, too.

3. The use by these media conglomerates of new information and communications technologies.

To do all of this, the media organizations utilize the latest of their own products to assail you with even more advertising. Besides the government or military, the first to move on to a new technology is usually one of these media giants. By getting a foothold there and staking out their territory, it is possible for them to gain an influential position in a new and blossoming digital world. Even those corporations who before were not involved in certain areas are getting involved now. No one wants to be left behind, every useful demographic has to be hit and pounded into the ground from every direction. More and more organizations are sending text message advertisements, with some companies even specializing in local advertising through your phone based on systems that can tell exactly where you are. The internet is capable of logging your general patterns of visitation, and catering the advertising that pops up onto your screen to your perceived tastes. The same can be said for some digital cable advertising. All of these new technologies seem to be centering around personalization, negating a lot of wasted advertising dollars but creeping a lot of people out while doing it.

Concerns and Worries

The largest concerns about media globalization seem to be a loss of local culture in exchange for a global one. I can't say I agree here. What I see instead is an enhancement of local culture with global elements. Rather than erase the local experience and awaken the user into a more universal culture, what globalization seems to be doing is giving people new information and new topics to then interpret through their localized lense. Their interpretations are in no way separate from their original ways, but are directed by them. A young man in Amish country when suddenly, unwillingly and unexpectedly bombarded with Hollywood images of Las Vegas and neon signs is not going to forget he's Amish. Rather, he will view it through his cultural lense and more likely shake his head and turn away, those things unacceptable in the way he's been brought up.

Another concern is the indoctrination of the audience of these new forms of global media into staunch consumerists whose only goal in life is to buy the next big thing. Again, I think this concept severely underestimates the human capacity for rejection. Each audience member, regardless of whether he lives in a globalized society or not, is an autonomous being. He has his own likes and dislikes and values and goals. If the message being brought to him is against these things, he is extremely likely to reject it. People are not sponges, as some theories of globalization would like to assert, and while they may be affected by the media they view, they are definitely not always bent by it.

Finally the worry arises that not all members of the global community have equal access to the channels of communication within that globalized society. This is an obvious point, and not a correctable one. Levels of economic and social opportunity will always exist in human society, and so to declare it here as an alterable or even a new problem is somewhat ridiculous. While it is unfortunate that not all sides can be heard on every level of media organization, it is an unfortunate fact, and while efforts can be made to limit or alter the nature of that separation, it can never be completely dealt with.

Media Globalization Remix

The music industry, especially in the punk-rock/pop-punk genres is a very clear example of media globalization. The first few processes are very independent and DIY. Bands get together and play music for crowds. To get more of a reputation, these bands will do two things, sell merchandise in the form of t-shirts, stickers or self-made CDs, or create Myspace music or purevolume.com accounts on which to post their songs and make them available to a wider group of people.

After this, if the band is successful enough and they get lots of traffic on those sites or sell a lot of their merchandise, they usually go on tour and play shows again (if the band is not successful the process usually ends here). At times the success is so high that they may get radio time, being interviewed or just having their songs played on air, reaching an even larger market and making a whole different demographic aware of them than the scenesters scanning the internet forums and band pages for something new to listen to.

The next step is getting signed. Usually these bands are signed on a smaller label like Fueled By Ramen or Drive-Thru Records, but occassionally larger labels will sign them and market their music to very different and spaced out locales (Japan has always been a huge consumer of anything new, cool and American). At this point, with new CDs out and a bigger hype, these bands begin being talked about by people on internet forums, etc., across the world. These people will have varying exposure and knowledge of the bands, but are related in the fact that the name is known to them and the interest is there to discuss them.

Usually at this point more shows are played, huge tours are booked and the merchandise skyrockets. With interviews and posters and TV appearances, what was at first a small garage band has turned into a globalized medium, appearing across a number of different types of media in a wide variety of places.