Online Assignment 4&5_Mogck

I think everyone knows that Google and Facebook keep information stored about them, but to find out the extent of that information is truly enlightening. Google had much less information about me than Facebook, but for the most part the information they did have was decently accurate. Facebook on the other hand, has much more information, some of which I knew such as my past messages and uploaded photos, but other content that I was unaware of such as detailed security information. It was rather interesting to explore what Google and Facebook consider my interests to be.

To Google, I am a 18-24 year-old female who speaks English. That is all correct, but what was truly interesting about Google's ad information was to see what Google considers my interests to be. Most of the interests Google identified made sense to me, if I wasn't actually interested I could understand why Google might think I am. A few however, I could not understand such as 'Parenting', 'Rock Music', and 'Urban and Hip Hop'. In my memory I can't remember searching much about either of those topics, but they still appeared in my interests according to Google. That makes me curious as to how they ended up there.

Facebook, as I mentioned before, had much more saved information on me than Google. Most of these weren't that interesting to me, because of course I am aware of what photos and videos I have uploaded to Facebook. What I did find interesting was looking at what Facebook considers my ads topics. The list of topics was rather long, and also rather specific.  While some of the topics I could definitely identify with, others seemed to be things that I may have only clicked on once, yet it still ended up as an ads topic for me.  Facebook also keeps a record of which ads you've clicked which consisted of actual page's posts as well as the advertisements on the side of the page. I find it interesting that Facebook considers pages you've liked as sources of ads. 

  This assignment makes it clearer that one must be careful with what they share on the internet, because it is likely to be stored somewhere forever. I am lucky enough to not have posted anything incriminating before, but there are others who have. Most people are aware that they shouldn't post certain details of their life on the internet but I think this assignment points out just how much information is stored on you and why you should be careful of what you post. I myself, will probably not change the way I interact with the internet much, because everything I found between Google and Facebook I was mostly aware of already. There are people however, who post to much about themselves that may think it wiser to put less information out there about themselves. It was interesting to see how Google and Facebook advertise to me, put I don't think this is too much of a problem. There will always be advertisements no matter what media you consume, so it doesn't bother me that internet advertisements are just more specific to what I like.

Online Assignment 4-5_Trainor

                 I have no doubt that most people will be very shocked by the results that they receive doing this assignment. However, I’m not really surprised at all with the accuracy that Google has predicted my interests and the amount of data that Facebook archives. I will never be surprised when I see the amount of effort that businesses put in to try to make a profit. If I was in their position, my stance would be that if we have the means to do it, then why not? Every business is looking for that added edge which will make them better than their competitors. In Google’s case, they want to maximize the effectiveness of their advertisement spots.  With Facebook, they want to store as much information as possible in the even t that it will be useful to them with future enhancements to their site. I am completely fine with both of these positions. Most importantly, you aren’t forced to go online and subject yourself to these companies trying to learn more about you. If you don’t like it, then don’t go on the internet. The internet is very useful to humanity and democracy, as we have learned, but the ability to utilize it is not an inalienable right that should be protected from these businesses.

                My personal interests presented by Google were spot on, with the exception of my age. It listed me as 25-34 which is frankly close enough. I was not surprised to see all the different sports interest that it assumed I liked. It listed almost every sport there is and similar activities that involve them. The most interesting interest that it gave me was the state of Utah. This may seem somewhat odd to an outsider, but it makes sense to me, even though I have never lived there and have only been inside its borders once. I am a beat writer for the Utah Jazz for Rotowire.com and consequently read Utahan newspapers almost every day to keep up with the team and their day to day activities. This was the only entity listed that caught me off guard and made me realize how acute Google is at determining what goes on in your life. 

                I don’t think that knowing these results will change the way that I communicate online. I think that I am already pretty conservative with data that I present for people to see regarding Facebook and I actually like that Google tries to peg me as a person. I think that Google has actually helped me find content online and even provided me with advertisements that I have been happy to be exposed to. My only problem lies with the potential for all this information to get in the wrong hands. As I have stated, I don’t really care that my profile is being kept by businesses, but I would really be discouraged if it caused me personal harm because it fell in corrupt arms.

Online Assignment 4-5_Burnham

It is really surprising how much the Internet knows about what you do and who you are. Even more disturbing is that a lot of the time their inferences are correct. I looked up my Facebook data first, because I thought it would be less surprising considering the data on there is all things I have voluntarily offered up. However, I could not be more wrong. Between listing the past relationships that I have ever been in and archiving literally everything that I have ever said or has been put on my wall, I got the sense that Facebook knew more about me then I thought. It literally had recorded everything that I have ever done on its site, and apps that I have signed in through my Facebook account. I never considered that all the information that I had offered up would be kept in extensive archives, which was certainly a reality check.

The next thing I checked out was the link to the Google ads analysis page. I wasn’t very surprised that it knew my age range and gender but the interests category in both columns shocked me. In the “Ads on Google” category I had banking and recording industry as my two interests. Now I would definitely say this is an unrealistic idea of what my actual interests are. I simply use the Internet for all my banking because it is easier, and as for the recording industry I am not really sure why that was listed. But when I went to “Google Ads Across the Web” column my interests were much more accurate. I had a list of 19 interests including movies, music, shopping, and various genres of music. This was pretty accurate to my actual interests I can see why Google had made these inferences about me. However, there was also some weird interests like product review and price comparisons, online games, and colleges and universities. These weren’t as accurate, but I am guessing that based off of my search history they are a reflection of the sites I use on the Internet.

Life in a digital society is extremely unique and different than anything we have seen before. Not only do we allow the Internet to gather personal information about ourselves, but we also allow it to take that information and guide us in our digital use. Some may view it as a direct interruption of human free will, but others simply don’t care or know that their lives are being recorded and shared with others they don’t know. This may seem disturbing to many people who never grew up with technology but for younger generations, it just seems a necessary part of life. This exercise really showed me the extent of what we are putting on the Internet, which really shocked me. I had previously learned about how big search engines record your data and use it to pick ads it shows you, but it was a whole different experience seeing how it directly relates to my online footprint. I think this is an exercise that every person should do because it really makes it clear how you are seen online. This footprint is becoming more and more central to our lives as more things go online. Younger generations communicate and put their whole lives on the Internet for anyone to see and think they are invincible. But the truth is, no one can predict how their information is being used or who is viewing it. Until our society realizes this, they allow others to control their decisions just through the click of their mouse.

Online Assignment 3_Johnson

Mickey Mouse Monopoly

Seen by many as a significant part of America’s cultural identity, Disney has been a part of children’s lives for generations. They are exposed to the characters and icons since birth—they are essentially raised on Disney. Accepted as an institution whose morals don’t need to be questioned because they are so innocent, Disney has unnoticeably shaped children’s perceptions of the world—not always in happy, charming ways. The film Mickey Mouse Monopoly uses the cultivation theory and cultural studies perspectives to analyze the way the Disney industry is affecting children through media exposure.

Whereas primarily families, religion, and the state once formed children’s understanding of culture, television and the media now largely do it. Dominating the medium that is essentially raising today’s children, Disney is shaping children’s imaginations. They’ve created a clear environment of images that children grow up in and become accustomed to, beginning to structure what we recognize and comprehend about the world. Disney is subtly cultivating children’s impressions of the world through long-term media exposure.

The way Disney chooses to represent the world has the power to distort children’s perceptions of things like race, class, and gender. Mickey Mouse Monopoly analyzes the way gender is represented in Disney movies. Females are highly sexualized, with big boobs, small waists, and the long, fluttering eyelashes. They use their seduction and their bodies, rather than intelligence, to get what they want from people (especially from men). If Disney represents heroines like this, it teaches them that all that matters is the way you look. Disney also upholds the idea of women as weak—the female characters in most Disney movies easily get themselves into trouble, and always must be saved by the big, strong, heroic man.

A particularly disturbing point brought up in Mickey Mouse Monopoly was the abusive relationship between Belle and the Beast. I noticed as a child the horrific and violent behavior of the Beast, but I never realized how wrong it was for Belle to excuse it and continue to return to him. Eventually she falls in love with a man, overlooking the abuse and turning him into a prince with just a little love. It’s wrong for Disney to promote these ideas. Domestic abuse is a serious problem, and Beauty and the Beast sends the impression that we should forgive men for abusing their partners, and if we are only nice to them, they will change.

These critiques of Disney’s representations of females display the cultural studies perspective. They way Disney represents gender, race, and culture in our society has a direct correlation to the way children think about the world. Disney has the power to shape the way children think.  Yes, most Disney movies have taught valuable lessons to children. But Disney needs to use its power for the better and create positive perceptions of the world for children, rather than the inaccurate and negative cultural representations we’ve grown up on.

Online Assignment 3_Mogck

                Disney is one of the biggest media corporations in the world.  They have the ability to reach a huge number of people, especially children. "Mickey Mouse Monopoly" tries to show just how Disney media affects children and the monopoly that Disney holds over children's source of entertainment. Many people believe that Disney is more than just entertainment though; they believe that Disney is educating children in ways that might not be entirely beneficial. The documentary criticizes Disney on portrayals of sexism, racism, and consumer culture.  Two perspectives that help define these insights into Disney's media are cultural studies and cultivation theory.

                Cultural studies is a media perspective that believes the mass media portrays messages that can affect the culture of an audience, but also that the culture the media is produced in affects the content that is produced. One example of this is the way the racism is displayed in Disney movies. In the movie "Lady and the Tramp" two Siamese cats are included in the film and can be seen to represent people of Asian ethnicity. The cats are portrayed with stereotypical Asian features such as slanted eyes and their English is noticeably choppy when speaking.  In addition to these physical features, the cats are shown as cunning and manipulative. They are set as antagonists against the main character. These are some stereotypes that exist in American culture and are included in the film that most likely will cause people to believe the stereotypes even more, or to at least put them on the audience's mind. Another example demonstrating a cultural studies effect, is the portrayal of sexism in Disney movies. While Disney does seem to attempt to create strong female characters, almost all films involve a women being saved by a man. In "Snow White" Snow White is shown cleaning and being happy doing household chores, and later is saved by a Prince's kiss. In "Beauty and the Beast" Belle is an independent woman who loves to read, but in the end she requires rescuing anyway. Both gender portrayals are skewed; females needing to be rescued and males being the strong, good  men that they are doing the rescuing. Again these are stereotypes that already existed in American culture, and now they are being played back in the form of an innocent children's story.

                Cultivation theory deals with the cultivation of perceptions on certain groups and behaviors through media over time. The thought behind cultivation theory is that long exposure to media creates a greater impact on people's beliefs and perceptions. One way that Disney is responsible in this theory is the constant portrayal of the same story. While every Disney story is a different tales, many follow the same themes and produce the same end result. For example, a common plot to Disney movies involves a girl who is not happy in her current life and is rescued in some way by a man who she ends up falling in love with and living happily ever after. A couple movies that follow this plot are "Cinderella" and "Little Mermaid." Another plot that is often seen in movies is that of a man vying for a women's attention and eventually getting the girl. "Aladdin," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Sleeping Beauty" follow this theme. By constantly representing the same type of story, Disney is forcing these concepts into the minds of children.  Repetition of the same story over time ingrains in children that this is the way life should be; men should always be saving and chasing after women. 

Online Assignment 3_Mueller

Disney is one of the world’s most recognized and loved brands. The characters and storylines that accompany movies such as The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King The Little Mermaid, and Pocahontas are all recognizable in a majority household in the United States. Disney movies do have many great morals in their stories, but there are many glaring examples of racism and Because of this, their films have a major influence on those who watch them – children. Keeping this in mind, the question must be asked, ‘Should the company take moral responsibility for its pictures underlying messages?’ Disney shapes the children it reaches through Cultivation Research and Magic Bullet perspectives and therefore needs to reevaluate what types of messages, direct or indirect it sends in their films.

Cultivation Research perspective theorizes that through long-term exposure to media, our assessment of the real world situations can be manipulated or altered. This becomes a concern when examining Disney movies because of children’s early exposure to the company’s films as well as the duration of childhood for which they view Disney films. In the documentary “Mickey Mouse Monopoly” a nine year old, Abigail, is asked to recall how African American characters are used in Disney Movies, she then replies “I can’t think of any Disney movie that has black people that are good, or bad” with a bewildered and perplexed look on her face. This is a major concern because children think nothing of the fact that a race is even left out of their favorite movies until the issue is brought up to them, which is proven by Abigail’s confused reaction. Dr. Poussaint states that all Disney, and media as a whole, has become an indentifying aspect of generations and can define the way groups of people think. Because Disney movies continually discriminate against certain groups of people, the youth who view their movies run the risk of creating distorted perceptions of the world and community around them.

The magic bullet perspective states that direct contact with the media can influence thoughts and actions. Children learn language and actions from movies, whether the film has truth or not. The documentary showed two girls who imitated their actions after princesses in Disney movies act because it seemed to be the way that they should act. What little girl does not want to be a princess? Nancy Eldridge reinforced this same idea only relating it to the way that Native Americans are portrayed in movies. She commented that when children visit Plimoth Plantation, they believe that all Native Americans had the same antics as the in Peter Pan and “hit their faces and go ‘woo woo woo’, wear headdresses with lots of feathers and sit cross-legged with their arms folded.” Children developed certain actions and thought processes based on what they are exposed to in the movies, setting their antics for the future based on direct contact with media. 

Online Assignment 3 Doss

The Mickey Mouse Monopoly is an exploration of the effect early childhood media exposure can have on a young psyche, and the reason behind those consequences.  This is somewhat an extension of an article we read for section that I found very interesting, and the documentary continued to shed light on this burgeoning field.  While Disney has been a hallmark of children’s entertainment for almost a century, the possible negative impact it can have on impressionable children is a more recent idea, and one that is explored greatly in this documentary.

The Magic Bullet is one of the media perspectives explored in this documentary.  This perspective applies to nearly all of the movies mentioned in the film, but the point that I found most interesting was Disney’s portrayal of black stereotypes.  In the case of The Jungle Book, nearly all the animals are anthropomorphized, and while some animals are depicted fairly neutrally, the monkeys resembled black stereotypes common in the animation industry in the 1960’s.  This may have lead children to associate blacks with ape-like tendencies such as stealing, yelling, fighting, and other activities usually associated with the poor.  While this depiction was bad, the hyenas in The Lion King are worse.  They are a quite obvious representation of inner-city youth, with loud banter and scuffling the majority of their character development.  While as a child I didn’t consciously associate them with blacks, I did recognize that behavior as undesirable.  This is a problem because that behavior was and is a media stereotype of blacks.  Therefore, the film aided those connections being made in my mind, with the support of other media.  This brings in the cultivation perspective of media, and the interactions between the magic bullet and cultivation.

Another aspect of Disney’s cultural influence is it’s portrayal of women.  The main heroine always has the ideal figure, and (in some cases) is completely dependent on men for salvation.  Disney upended this “damsel in distress” formula with Mulan, and more recently with Brave.  However, the majority of films (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty) deal with themes of female weakness and vulnerability.  However, even in Mulan Disney dealt with stereotypes.  Chinese society is portrayed as viciously sexist and oppressive, exemplified when soldiers call for Mulan’s immediate execution when it is revealed she is a woman.  This can cause children to associate Asian ethnicities with those same characteristics.

Online Assignment 3_Markham

                The Disney name is a name held dearly to many, if not all, households in America. What appears in their movies is conveyed throughout the lives and play of these children for years to come. Should we then be weary of what kinds of messages are presented through Disney’s films? Disney does, indeed, present many quality learning experiences to children, but these experiences often have distorted perceptions of the truth as well as an everlasting effect on the way children view certain objects. The Disney media, through the use of Cultivation Research and Cultural Studies perspectives, shapes the way society views the world.

                The Cultivation Research perspective on media summarizes that our impressions of the world can be composed of long-term media exposure and often distort our perceptions based on our degree of exposure. A prime example of this perspective is seen through children’s early and lengthy exposure to Disney movies. As Dr. Justin Lewis mentioned, the impacts of media are not always immediate, but create an environment we grow up in and shape how we understand the world through cumulative messages. In Disney, kids are exposed to many movies with similar ideals and portrayals of individuals, such as the display of females in their movies. Most Disney movies portray women as sexualized individuals that can use their body to get what they want. Kids that see this over multiple movies tend to get a distorted perception of what women need to be like in society. In addition, villains of these movies are often associated with dark colors, creating a negative connotation to dark skin and crime. Scar in Lion King is a darker lion, and villains in other movies are often in black clothing with dark skin colors. The more people are exposed to these connotations, the more perceptions are distorted, according to the Cultivation Research perspective.

                In addition to consistent themes in messages, each movie of Disney itself supports the Cultural Studies perspective of media. This perspective states that messages may reproduce existing power structures, and that content comes from within a culture. The Disney movies often portray stereotypes of certain demographics that already exist, strengthening the portrayals of people in society. As seen with Native Americans in movies like Peter Pan and Pocahontas, Indians are seen as savages, which is a long-running stereotype in America.  These images conflict any efforts to eliminate these stereotypes, and lead to kids reenacting these prejudice views. Disney, in this perspective, also uses its power to influence others. They often sue anybody that presents their image in a negative light, as seen in many books trying to show the stereotypical ways of Disney. In Cultural Studies, using power to shape society is one effect that large media companies can have because they are able to control messages and perceptions, and Disney is a prime example of this power structure.  

Online Assignment 3_Kaplan

The documentary “Mickey Mouse Monopoly” describes the way in which the Disney corporation has a monopoly over the content which educates and entertains our children. The documentary featured various academics and writers in cultural studies analyzing the effects of the Disney content as well as the magnitude of the extent to which Disney controls the airwaves. The consensus throughout the documentary was that Disney publishes content that idealizes fair skin and associates negativity with darkness. The documentary also attempts to answer what repercussions this content might have on children as well as adults who have grown up in a culture inundated with Disney.

            One implication of Disney’s monopoly on youth content is that it creates a culture that maintains roles in which fair skin is idealized and dark skin is associated with negativity. This cultural studies perspective, which we covered in lecture, refers to how media represents culture in interaction with existing culture. Theses roles established by the interaction between the culture represented in the media and existing culture can stick with viewers outside of the frame of the media. Dr. Henry Giroux argues that children, who have underdeveloped and influential worldviews, are especially affected. He further argues that Disney represents urban/minority culture in an uneducated, incapable and negative light, while fairer skinned characters are represented as the norm. Giroux argues that when children see these roles being represented in the media, it shapes their perception of these roles in real life. This refers to the ritual view of communication, which says that communication functions as a ritual that enforces societal roles. According to Giroux, Disney also does a lot to control their image as a media outlet. In reality, Disney is a media conglomerate that owns many media outlets but still manages to maintain its image as a symbol of innocence. This too, is another way in which Disney represents culture, namely, the culture of Disney which has become instilled in American youth, in a role with existing culture, namely as an innocent cartoon outlet.

            Another implication of Disney’s monopoly on American youth content in culture is that it cultivates a culture that our youth grow up with. The concept of cultural cultivation is that our worldview, and the roles of individuals are established over time through culture, such as school, television and art. This means that not only are kids understanding the roles developed in Disney movies but also as they watch an increasing amount of Disney this culture is ingrained in them and becomes their worldview. Furthermore, because of how pervasive television and Disney culture has become, children who watch a high amount of TV are getting their main source of cultural cultivation from Disney. Even if their parents or school reinforces more equal and less detrimental cultural roles, the worldview provided by Disney is so pervasive that youth are still going to be affected by it.