Final Blog

I found the story on Wal-Mart very
interesting. There are some very interesting facts presented in this chapter. I
was not aware Wal-Mart employed 1.5 million people. I also had no idea Wal-Mart
was founded in1962. I had always thought it was a much younger corporation than
that. I found fact stated in the chapter that Wal-Mart received over 3 billion
dollars in tax payer money difficult to believe. I would like to see how that
number was formulated, and if the tax breaks mentioned before in the chapter
were included in the formation of that number, because if Wal-Mart received
over 3 billion dollars in tax payer money our governments spending habits are
even more out of control than I thought they were.

I felt
that some of the facts that were presented in the chapter were presented in a
way that was confusing to me as a reader. For instance, when he mentions that
Wal-Mart buys more from china than any other corporation, he adds that Chinese factory
workers in 2005 made 40 cents an hour on average and in 2008 the Wal-Mart CEO
made $32 million including benefits. These are statistics that are stated at
the end of a paragraph and are never elaborated on or revisited to give any relevance
to them. That leaves me to conclude that they were included in the chapter to
make Wal-Mart look bad for the CEO making $32 million a year and the Chinese factory
workers making 40 cents an hour. These statistics can be misleading for several
reasons. For one, workers in a Chinese factory are not employed by Wal-Mart so
there is really no relation there. Another reason is that China doesn’t use
dollars and cents, it has its own currency that is valued far below the U.S.
dollar, so while 40 cents an hour may sound awful to us it could mean something
completely different for them. I’m sure it’s not good by any means, but it’s
probably better than we might think.

I would
like to ask the author how he goes about conducting his research. I find it can
be difficult to find credible sources and clear facts, especially when
searching online, and I would like to find out how to do so more effectively.

Globalization

Globalization is a fascinating subject. Our media is already
very globalized. As Mr. Simon pointed out in class on Tuesday, there are kids
wearing Mickey Mouse t-shirts in the most remote villages on the other side of
the world. That is a testament to how globalized our media is and how culture
can be exchanged in that way. As far as global media regulation goes, I believe
that any form of regulation in any area should be left up to the government of
that area. In order for true representative government to take place (because
it is the responsibility of government policy to reflect the view of its
people), it is in the best interest of the people in a given area to have their
representatives decide how to regulate the media that is accessible to them. Since
representative government is not embraced everywhere as it is here, I would
argue any form of global media regulation would not be in the best interest of
our nation. We do not need bureaucrats from other nations deciding what we
should see and what we should not see. We already have to deal with our own
bureaucrats regulating every aspect of our lives, I don’t think we need to
invite more of them from foreign nations to do the same.

blog 3

The Media Theory I find to be most interesting is the theory
of media effects. All the theories within this category  are used by the media, or have been used in
the past. The hypodermic model is one that I find very intriguing. The media
absolutely attempts to inject messages and agendas directly into our minds.
That is essentially what advertising is. A company is injecting into your mind
the idea that you need the product they are producing. I do not believe this to
be an extremely effective way for the media to influence us but it does work in
some ways. I do not go out and purchase every product I see advertised on television,
but occasionally the advertising I am exposed to will entice me into going out
and buying something. The cultivation theory is also a very interesting one. It
suggests that the generations that were brought up watching television are
likely to be influenced on a wide variety of social and economic issues. The
book says that the impact of television cultivation political beliefs causes a
conservative leaning public. While I do believe that the United States is a
center-right nation, I could not disagree more adamantly that television and
media have anything to do with this, especially in my generation. Conservatism
is despised by almost all of the writers and actors in Hollywood, and there is
only one major news outlet that is right leaning. The leftist controlled media
brainwashes people into hating fox news and people like rush Limbaugh by taking
things that are said wildly out of context, and in some cases making them up
completely. One of my favorite things to do after someone expresses disgust at
the mere sound of Rush Limbaugh’s name is to ask them if they have ever
listened to his radio show. The answer every single time has been no. I truly
believe that television cultivation has nothing to do with anyone becoming
conservative, and I honestly don’t think any conservative or liberal would ever
make that argument. The media effects theories all have areas of truth and
effectiveness but many are no longer in practice. It is very interesting to go
back and look how they started and how they have changed over time.