Sunday, April 22, 2012
Interpreting Media Messages
In this week’s reading, I found that the concept used in order to interpret media messages were very interesting. After collecting all the facts that we need, we need to ask ourselves many questions. A couple of key thoughts that we should keep in mind are to know who created the message, what was the purpose of the message, what techniques were used in order to charm the reader’s interest, and what values and points of views were demonstrated. We must then ask ourselves our own thoughts on what we have read seen or heard from the media. This includes the reactions we had and how we interpreted the information. We also need to think about how others interpret the information being given, if the message is biased in any way shape or form and how the information might affect individuals and society as a whole. We must lastly understand how the information is being backed up, if it is credible, if it uses good facts and reasoning or if it does it at all. Fallowing these questions will enable us to interpret media messages in a better manner.
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I believe that being able to analyze what is being told to us by the media is very important otherwise we would just believe everything they said. It is important to know the underlying reason the message was created and presented in a certain way. I like how you put how we should consider how others have interpreted the information that the media is providing. This way we have more than our own values, beliefs and thoughts which puts the specific topic in a different light. Also, we are not as biased when we make out conclusions on the information.
ReplyDeleteI think this was a very good point and is something that I think most of us do naturally (hopefully). One of the hardest parts of this process for me is weighing broadcasts motives against the truth. For example, I know that Fox news is heavily based towards the right wing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that their stories are all shameless attempts to push an ideology. I think that too often I find myself passing off a fox story as having a poor motive when in fact there may be an important message. I think this is why it’s so important to get news from multiple channels, because this is the easiest way to overcome this problem.
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