Media Morning Noon and Night

Today I presented the last medianote of the semester and I tried to come up with something that would sum up at least some of the issues that we have been talking about through the semester.

I came up with a survey of electronic media use by Americans 13-18. Electronic media was defined as Internet, cell phones, video games, music and TV (but not radio for some reason). The result was stunning: 72 hours a week of electronic media use, although the number is somewhat inflated because consuming two electronic media at once (talking over a cell phone while watching TV, for example) counts double.

But still, 72 hours is over 10 hours a day.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #14

This Medianote Stinks

Will advertisers fight for the hearts, minds and noses of American consumers?

In the first week of MC101 we discuss a communications model that takes into account messages that are sent along more than one sensory channel. I think someone noted in class early this semester that mass media messages (other than perfume ads in magazines) are rarely sent through the olfactory (smell) channel. Well, that could be about to change.

National Public Radio reports that a new installment of the "Got Milk?" campaign is incorporating the scent of chocolate chip cookies into ads at several test sites around San Francisco. As one student noted, good thing the ad agency wasn't trying to sell fertilizer.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #13

This One's Lightweight, Yet Deadly Serious

Today we discussed a study that was released this week by Stanford University researchers that found that a significant percentage of anexorics and bulimics visit chat rooms and websites that perpetuate their illness. There are places on the web where often underage sufferers of eating disorders gather and share tips that make their conditions worse.

Rebecka Peebles, an eating disorder specialist and one of the authors of the study, said that these Internet sites aren't really controllable given the open and interactive nature of the medium.

The MC101s discussed what to do about damaging online information that is unlikely to be blocked or banned.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #12

Who Wants to Be a Journalist?

A recent New York Times article gave me a chance to discuss Citizen Journalism and what Reuters and Yahoo! News plan to do with it.

Citizen Journalism is a term for the opportunity we all have in the Internet age to post our own reports, commentary, photos and video without having to wait for the professional media to do it for us. Citizen journalism is a blogger describing a recent fire at the highrise condominium complex in my neighborhood. Citizen journalism is the UCLA student with a cellphone camera who got a video of a student being shot with a taser by a campus police officer. It's about us no longer being content to merely be consumers of news stories but producers of the stuff as well.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #11

Broadband Crowds Out the Television

What changes will the Internet bring about for television?

How do people's media consumption habits change when broadband Internet access is brought into a household? Are some mass media used less as a result?

A recent Reuters article discussed a study of those countries with the highest percentage of broadband users: the Netherlands, Sweden and Japan. The study found that the availability of broadband increases Internet usage (no surprise there), but that it is also associated with a decrease in television usage. On the other hand, broadband users listened to more radio.

We had a good discussion in the MC101 classes.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #10




***TUESDAY'S SI CANCELLED Supplemental Instruction will not be held on Tuesday, Dec. 5. However, media law (this week's topic) will be reviewed in the SI on Wednesday during the noon hour. Both the Tuesday and Wednesday SIs will hold final exam review sessions next week, Dec. 12 and 13.

According to the 10,000 Authors of Your Textbook...

Wiki technology, where masses of people group-write large documents was at the core of today's medianote. A recent National Public Radio story discussed We Are Smarter Than Me, an experimental project that is using the Wiki model to write a business textbook. Will it be brilliant or will it be chaos?

Most MC101s predicted chaos, but also said that the Wiki model could be used to write some types of books.

Gabcast! Club MediaNote #9