How do Television and other Visual Media Affect the Lives of People

How do television and other visual media affect the lives of individuals and families? This is my research question narrowed down. I chose this because visual media is a part of just about everyone’s life. Television, computers and smartphones with access to different forms of visual media are used on a regular basis. Also, these forms of visual media has helped to shape American culture. An example is the cable television. Another form of visual entertainment media that has shaped American culture is the internet. I think this form has had the biggest impact. Just about everyone has used the internet at some point in time. There are video web sites such as, Hulu and Netflix, on which customers are able to view movies or their favorite television show whenever they want. These sites are accessible through the computers, smartphones, and even video gaming systems. So now consumers are able to watch their favorite programming from virtually anywhere at any time.

 There are television shows and movies that contain explicit content but there are also many shows and movies that are family oriented and educational I do not think that the social influences of visual entertainment media are mostly positive or negative. However, my research looks more into the negatives of these visual media. So I have to organize my research paper to write a little bit about the positives and then move onto deep research about the negatives influences of these visual media.

On my research about the negatives, I would probably start by writing about how these visual media affect communication as well as physical activity and other interests. Then I’ll look into how too much TV-especially programming of low educational value-can reduce people’s ability to concentrate or reason. Lastly, visual media can make some people dissatisfied with the reality of their own lives. 

InstagramRough Draft

   Instagram is a very popular form of online social network. Instagram is a site where people go to share their pictures of their everyday life. It is a way for people to show their friends and family what they are doing by posting pictures. Instagram in itself is very similar to Facebook, the only difference is that on Instagram there is no status updates and you cannot chat with your friends. On Instagram and Facebook you get to go on peoples profiles and like the pictures that you think is interesting to you. But the overall message is the same. Both of them are ways that people can document their lives for other people to see through pictures. Even though Instagram seems fun and interesting there are lots of things that could go wrong. If you are not careful you or someone that you love could get hurt. Relationships can be built and destroyed on Instagram based on the pictures you put up or the pictures that you decide to like. You could also get hurt if you where to put up too much information and some begins to stalk you.

     Instagram is open to the public so anyone/any age could use it if they wanted. The majority of the people that use Instagram would be college students, people that are in their teens and early adulthood. Being a college student I think that Instagram is a very nice way to communicate with you friend’s that are in a different state. Instagram helps you to share and for you to see some of the thing that your friends are doing. It also helps you to show the world are the beautiful things that you find in nature and your surroundings. One thing that usually affect/ hurt people is when they are in a relationship and the significant other is liking other girl’s pictures or the girl is liking other guy’s picture. Because people can see whose picture you like, if the significant other keeps liking a girl picture or commenting on it, the girl could see and think the boyfriend is either trying to talk to that girl or cheating on her.  It could have an impact on friend ships as well.

     There are some people that really get jealous when they see their friends posting pictures with other people and not getting included in it. In this case it’s if the friend goes somewhere without inviting the other friend and post pictures of them having fun. The other friend would feel left out not wanted and start to think they don’t want to be their friends any more. Depending on the picture that you decide to post is what’s going to determine whether you friend of your significant other is going to react or feel.  

      You are also able to comment on the pictures that other people post which is nice because you get to share your opinion and communicate with each other. Even though commenting on someone’s pictures is nice in the sense that you get express how you feel about that picture it could also have its negative effects on relationships. Because it is on the on the web when someone is reading the comment they could read it in a certain way that world make it seem bad. Leading to a lot of misunderstandings and hurt feelings. Because of this relationships could be destroyed and friendships could be broken. If someone is in a relationship and they comments on a person’s pictures saying nice things, when the significant other sees it, some do not just assume that you are just being nice, they would think that there is something going on and get their feelings hurt when in reality the person didn’t mean it that way.

Ugly Betty

Now a days there are television shows for just about anything that you can think about. There are fantasy, comedies, real life, etc. Ugly Betty is one of the shows that I can remember very well because of how the show was set up and the kind of message it was trying give its audience. This show was about a girl of the Mexican culture trying to make it into the magazine business in New York City. Betty the main person in the show lived in a poor neighborhood in Queens in New York with her dad, her older sister and her niece. This character did not look like the stereotypical girl so it was hard for her to get a job. In our society she would be called ugly hence the name of the show Ugly Betty. The shows main target was the teenagers, young adults, and for minorities. The reason why the main target are those people is because the show is very relatable to people around that age groups and people that do not really fit the stereotypical way that people are expected to look like in order to make it in some kinds of industries.

There are lots of things in this show that address most of the popular culture beliefs, values, attitudes, narratives, and myths on how people should be. In the popular culture there are certain beliefs and values that they hold on to. Some of the beliefs and values that the popular culture tend to focus on is how everyone should behave, look at things, dress, look like, etc. In most cases the way that the popular culture tells us to act, look like, or even speak s not really how it should be. In the show Ugly Betty they do show some of the way society expects us to dress, look like, and act like. Because Betty was not the stereotypical girl, didn’t look the same, not the same body type because she was not skinny, the way she got her job and how she was treated at her job was all because of how she looked. Even though she was more than qualified for the job she wanted she was not able to get it until the owner saw her and based on her looks hired her. He only hired her because she was ugly and he didn’t want his son to be tempted to sleep with his assistant.

This show does have both positive and negative values. This show at first based all on looks and appearance. Ho people should dress, and talk like, which in reality is not true. After Betty was hired they show stated to have more positive values. The show started to go in the direction that everyone is different in their won ay and that there is not just only one look that everyone has to fall into in order to be beautiful. This show dose have a positive influence of the targeted audience and also showed that there are lots of different kind of beautiful people not just the once that society tell us.

Implication of Targeted Ad.

Targeted advertisement improves the quality of the match between the consumer and the advertisement message, and enables smaller businesses to access advertising markets from which they were previously excluded. While this holds for display advertising, it is even more true for sponsored search, where the individual consumer declares her intent or preference directly, by initiating a query.

On the other hand, if a company sends a lot of target ads to a consumer, he or she might stop using the company’s product or services. Too much of something is never good and could end up turning the consumer away. Hence the saying less is more.

In the Dr Pepper Ad, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c4iaetOC54, this clearly tells consumers that their product “Dr Pepper 10”is not for women.  This showcases hyper masculinity to sell its product. They are pushing an idea that to be a real man, you can’t be sensitive and you have to be into physicality. In trying to over masculinity to promote this drink I think was not the right thing to do. Dr. Pepper is a drink that is clearly not just for a certain type of people.  So making a commercial that only targets only a certain group of people (real masculine men) was not a great idea.  I understand that they are trying to say that only real men drink Dr. Pepper 10, but the way that they portrayed it in the video is was overdone.  The commercial seemed sexist both for men and women. It portrays men to be brainless by showing them doing dangerous things without a second thought and it excludes women completely by trying to portray women as weak and not strong enough to handle the drink.

There are lots of commercials that try to play into the stereotypes of men and women. Most advertisements either try to use women as a sex symbol or men as being masculine. Some do this sadly and others do it in an extreme way for example the Dr Pepper 10 commercial.  I think to have a useful commercial advertisement companies need to be able to relate to both sexes without offending them. Yes you can please everyone but only there are ways to be able to please the majority of people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9cCUtT7Wxs

the Verizon advertisement where they are on the streets showing people pictures of the coverage other phone companies have across the U.S on a big white poster board. They had AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and other once. The coverage was represented by dots and the more dots the picture had the clearer the person could tell it was a map of the U.S. Because other phone companies didn’t have that much coverage the people couldn't tell it was a map but when they showed the coverage of Verizon people could clearly till it was a picture of the U.S map because it had more dots representing more coverage. The appeal of this advertisement was to show people that Verizon when compared to all the other phones had be coverage then all the other phone companies so people after seeing this should switch to the phone company that clearly has the best phone coverage across the U.S. As an AT&T customer, I was surprised to see how much little coverage they had in America from watching this advertisement. It made me reflect on time when I tried calling my family in different States and I had difficulty hearing them. 
In this advertisement  Not only is Verizon trying to show how wide their network coverage is, but at the end of the commercial, the give you an option of a trad in or upgrade from your existing network.