Media can truly be a tricky concept, weather or not it is true and factual or fake and made up of lies. “Media Overload” is when you watch too much social media at one time. The younger generations I believe have more of these problems but, I also think that we all catch ourselves soaking up social media in every much way. I fell as though we could limit this media overload by limiting the amount of time we are to watch tv or be on the phones.

I believe that people need to interact with the media in different ways and not just sitting in front of the television for nine hours a day.  I say this for not only children, teenagers, and adults.  I have seen more kids this day in age that whine, cry, and beg because they want the Ipad or even their parents phones. This new trend is almost ridiculous that kids 1-3 even know how to use these devices, when even I, at twenty two years old, still have issues working my phone or doing something on an Ipad. I believe that time on these devices need to be limited and the things watched on these devices also need to be controlled.

People need to be aware of the programs that they are watching and be sure to keep their eyes open to the factual parts or if it is just word vomit being thrown out to make some television network look more important with the extra information or if it is just lies being thrown out.  As the public everyone needs to be aware of that.  It also kind of ties in the trust in media.

I believe that media overload is a real thing and people often do not realize they are even binge watching hours and hours until it is already over.  People need to stop watching these pointless programs and really start paying attention to the news that is out there.

Real Journalism is dying, quietly and slowly, and there is not enough attention on it. Many reasons are contributing to it, however.

First off, social media is becoming more and more popular, normal part of every day life, and is completely consuming our minds. How many of us have not heard about a world issue until we came across it on social media? I, myself, have learned of many current political and social events over Facebook before I did in the newspaper or news off of the television. That might have something to do with us turning to Facebook off of our phone first thing in the morning before even turning on the TV, radio, or coffee pot. I remember growing up at home, getting ready in the morning for school with the weather channel and morning news chatter going on in the background. When I sat down for breakfast I caught a glimpse of it from the table every morning before riding off to school. I truly wonder how many children’s families still value this practice rather than receiving news from social media.

What is the problem with receiving news off of social media? I have spoken to a lot of people a part of my young generation about this issue, and I am almost always confronted with, “Why is it such an issue? Social Media is such an important platform!”, “We are able to share so much information with people all at once, it is so helpful and useful!”.
I agree. Social media can be extremely useful, we can reach out to many people at once when it comes to important information. However, when it becomes our first point of contact for important information, that is a problem. Anyone can put information on social media, which can make the information not so credible in a lot of cases. We have turned to believing what social media says before we believe anything else. Why is this the case when real journalists getting paid to do real research are putting our actual credible information off of social media primarily? There are more job openings for social media managers and handlers than journalists and reporters. Want to know what is the most interesting part of applying for a social media specialist position? You do not need an English degree or a related bachelors degree in a lot of cases, because anyone can handle social media. This is who you are getting a lot of your information from.

The art of drinking a cup of coffee or tea while reading the newspaper is falling more and more behind. I hope that we can become more conscientious about the information we come across and researching whether or not it is reputable. I hope that we can begin to put more credible sources as our “go to’s” before turning to social media. How about a challenge? Before you post a current event or issue going on over social media, find it from the actual news, whether it be an electronic article over the web, televised report, or off of a newspaper. Try to create a habit of unwinding from social media by finding actual information in actual places rather than your black mirrored screen.

Current society uses all different types of media and technology as various means of daily living. Examples of this include Facebook for leisure usage, google for a work email, and even Instagram for business promotion of a company. With various different aspects of one’s life linked to media it is necessary in today’s society to flourish and thrive. Through media people are able to interact with one another faster, spread ideas quicker, as well as learn a different ideas and ways of thinking. Society has made media very time consuming in that the average person spends around 13.6 hours taking in social media from various different sources. Since media has become so addictive, people have become more vulnerable, and easily manipulated making it easier for companies to promote different products in particular ways; thus gaining a profit. Since the average person spends so much time on social media, advertising through a means of social media proves to be much cheaper, quicker, and hits a variety of consumers. Current day media such as Facebook has tracked down our likes and dislikes to promote advertisements based off of pages we have liked on Facebook, links we have shared, as well as other websites we have looked at. This allows the consumer to be in direct contact with products that relate exactly to him or her.

Since media proves to be so addictive, people are easily manipulated in believing that everything they read online is true. Most posts and articles shared within media have been shown to be very bias and unsupported by scientific data, and in some cases promote false data. We, as social media users need to understand what we are taking in from social media, and how it affects our lives. With the knowledge of how to view and understand information on social media helps us to be able to know which information is accurate and which is bogus. One tool I use in doing so is reading multiple sources online to create a picture of the story from many different opinions and viewpoints. Even when buying a product online, read the reviews and listen to what multiple sources are saying online. As for scientific evidence, do your research OUTSIDE of informal means of media such as Facebook or Instagram.

Media has shed light on lots of good areas of life, but in many ways it has shown to increase rates of depression and anxiety. Since media consumes our daily lives, we have to be able to know when to put it down/away. When you start to find yourself at a point in life when you feel bored if you aren’t on your phone, it’s time to put it down. If you find yourself using media without learning or gaining knowledge or opinions on a topic, it’s time to put it down. When you start to find yourself “not all there” when you aren’t staring at your phone, it’s time to use social media less. When you start to have better interactions with people over media rather than face to face, it’s time to limit your social media. We have to be able to draw the line from when we benefit from social media, and when social media benefits from us.

Media is around us all throughout the day whether it is through print, broadcast, or the internet. I believe there is a such thing as having too much media. This would be considered a media overload. I know from my own experience, that there is too much media available to us. I really can not count how much media consumes my time throughout the day, which as you can tell is pretty bad. I believe on average I spend about fourteen hours on my phone throughout the entire day taking up all the information the media has to offer. I believe there is a problem with media overload because people, including myself, are not experiencing the full quality of life because we are so tied into the media. An example of this would be spending time with a loved one and constantly checking your Facebook or Instagram the whole time. Constantly checking these media platforms affects being able to really enjoy that special time together. I can admit that I do this all the time with my loved ones and miss out on that quality time. On the subject of encouraging people to interact with the media, I am not sure if we should or shouldn’t. I believe that people can make their own decisions whether to use forms of media. In my opinion, I would just say that maybe we all should limit our intake of the media because it can get overwhelming with having so much information presented to you. For children, I definitely would not encourage them to interact with the media because you would not want them learning things that would reflect on their behavior. Children absorb information the most and the media would only influence them the greatest.

In this past presidential election I noticed a growing presence of political propaganda on social media. As social media has grown to be a huge part of our day-to-day lives, politicians have noticed this trend and created a new platform to get their messages across. Just a few examples of this are Marco Rubio broadcasting “Snapchat Stories” at stops along the trail, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush arguing over student debt on Twitter, Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham produce goofy YouTube videos, the list goes on and on.

And while this direct contact with voters can be a great platform to get ideas and messages across, it can also be harmful. While politicians can get their messages across, it seems to be that only the loudest get heard. A prime example of this is our current President of the United States, Donald Trump. Trump has made a career out of talking over and bullying people to get his way, and when he was a reality TV show host that was all fine and good, but when you’re running to be the president these tactics are extremely frowned upon. Or are they?

Trump has turned campaigning and debates into prime time entertainment, and it has clearly worked in his favor. Due to this entertainment factor people decided they liked him based on reasons they would never like any other person, let alone any other politician. Is this what the future holds for politics? Citizens voting based on entertainment as opposed to values and the common good?

I believe that after the most recent election that trust in the media has gone down, especially on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. There are numerous articles on Facebook, due to the election, that are misleading by spreading misinformation and propaganda about candidates. These misleading articles produced far more attention to its audience than ordinary, reliable, sources did. People tend to share and read stories on their Facebook that appeal to their emotions and beliefs. Individuals with a preconceived bias are more likely to share the lies that are fed to them by Facebook news and influence other peoples opinions. Many individuals do not understand that the post is from an inaccurate source. For example, because of Facebooks increasingly dominant role in the news, individuals such as my grandma/the older population, do not fully comprehend that not everything they read is true. She comes to me about insane stories all the time and I have to explain to her why and how it is not true. Because of mass media increasing in todays society, individuals need to be aware that anyone can write an article so that they can potentially influence a variety of people to believe the way they also believe.

I do not have much trust in mainstream media, such as buzzfeed and or even some articles from CNN. I generally follow and trust BBC and The Economist when it comes to what is actually happening in the World. Conservative and leaning news outlets are the ones that I tend to trust less and have skepticism towards. Also, the way that the President of the United States uses social media highly effects citizens. By either making them feel uncomfortable and undermined or empowered and enlightened. It impacts the way in which people view themselves and others. Donald Trumps social media account on twitter is a modern example of how social media that is used by presidents can be a negative thing. There are many upsides to social media; however, the misleading information that Trump tends to spread, such that “Twitter, google, and Facebook are burying the FBI criminal investigation of Clinton,” is a false announcements that is trying to get a rise out of people and sway the way they view someone else.

If I am ever to share anything on Facebook that I think is reliable, I try to make sure to triple check it before I spread it to my friends.

Marketing and education have similar ideas behind them, but they have vastly different results. Marketing seeks to inform a user about a product or service available to him or her. Education about a product can also be said to do the same, but marketing is biased. A company does not want to let you know all the  gritty details about its products. It only needs you see the benefits of making the purchase without an of the possible hazards or repercussions. Education seeks to inform about all facets of something. If you were to education someone on a product, you would not leave out any details.

For example, a company could release a new brand of bathroom cleaning solution. It could work incredibly well at removing stains, and the marketing team would most likely try to advertise that fact as well as they could. A fraction of the proceeds from the product could even be donated to a charity, and the marketing team would likely be very vocal about that part. However, imagine that the product has a small chance of releasing fumes that can cause illness. The marketing team would probably never mention this and likely just affix a small warning label. If a user were to be educated about this product all of facets would become known even the negative ones. Green Washing is a similar example. A company just advertises the biased environmental facts or skewed views like how shopper can go green by choosing not to use a bag when it trains cashiers to always bag sold items. Marketing seems to just be a biased form of education. It feeds the public what they want to hear in order to elicit the results that it needs from them. Proper education and research of products is the only way to obtain the truth.

Politics and the media have been a big issue for years now.  Politics and media benefit from one another in different ways.  One of the main ways is that political outputs and politics in general give the media plenty to talk about and as they talk about it, it gives them plenty to misconstrue.  When it comes to polls and who you want to vote for, this is one of the main issues with knowing which candidates are actually reliable and knowing if what the media is saying about them is even reliable information.  People who work for places like Fox News or CNN, they are the main news sources that like to play around with political information and completely bash different candidates that are running for things such as president. A great example of this is when Hillary Clinton and President Donald Trump ran against each other back for the 2016 presidential race.  Media outlets were constantly bashing the two pulling up things from their pasts to have something to make a story about them and grab the audience’s attention by doing so.  When they do this, they are portraying negative images to the audience to make them feel a certain way about whatever is going on.  The media outlets during presidential elections will feed off of negativity for whoever they do not like and give that to the audience or they will take something that they have said in the past or present and add more to it to make it more interesting or to make it have something negative about it. With this being said, I think it is important to realize that not all media outlets or news sources give the most reliable information about politics.  They make everything seem so much bigger than it is or they make a politician’s accomplishments seem smaller than they are.

Before taking classes based on public health and the environment, I would have told you that marketing and education are similar in many ways.  After taking classes on these subjects, though, I would have to say that they aren’t as much alike as I previously thought.  Marketing and education is basically profit vs. helping.

When companies are marketing their products, they may tell the truth about them but for the most part the truth is tweaked or over-exaggerated.  Many companies market that their products are “green” or “eco-friendly” or “low fat.”  But are the products they are marketing really as safe and healthy for the consumers as the company makes them out to be?  Companies want their products to sell so when marketing them, a consumer may not get an honest truth.  Or, the consumer may get a potion of the truth.  This can often happen when a product says “LOW FAT” in capital letters on the front but then when you turn the product over, in tiny letters are all of the issues the product has or could cause.

When a company is educating their consumers, they want them to know the facts.  The company will tell their consumers the truth, bad or not.  When educating someone about an issue or product, the person will be presented with facts that do not glamorize or make the product look better.  It is important when educating to not have a bias.

Overall, marketing is a way to make something look good and to make consumers buy the product regardless of if the product is actually 100% what they are telling the consumer it is or not.  Education on the other hand is more about keeping your consumers safe, no matter the profit.  Marketing is a method that is used to bring in profit while education is a method that is used to keep healthy consumers.