For this post I want you to brainstorm 4 lists:
The first two are simply a honest, contemplative, and thorough list of the advantages and disadvantages of the role of the "corporate media" in our personal lives/ society at large. It's like when you know you have to break up with your boyfriend/ girlfriend but aren't sure why:) Minimum 10 each, maximum ??? This doesn't have to be complete sentences (unless it's necessary to explain nuances) but can be an itemized list.
A1- PROs
B1- CONs
Discuss your associations & the (direct and indirect) ramifications you see in each item of both lists.
This can be a list of various elements: associations (metaphors or more literal connections), emotional responses (rage/ indifference/ satisfaction, etc.), and a full consideration of the consequences (self-image, financial empowerment, exploitation,
A2- Associations & ramifications (direct and indirect) of the PROs
B2- Associations & ramifications (direct and indirect) of the CONs
You have plenty of ammunition supplied by Lasn and our discussions (albeit mostly on the negative side). Watching "The Corporation" will supply you with more. I want you to draw from these sources, (putting Lasn or whatever other source you reference in parentheses next to items that are direct references to his terminology- i.e. if you mention "infotoxins" or "jolts"), but ultimately these lists will reflect your take on the role of the corporate media in your lives. Write a section at the end summing up your conclusions. You might be leaning towards one bias or another, or maybe it's a mixed picture where you're split. Explain what going through this list/association made you think of; how did it solidify or destabilize your opinion of the corporation? Do you need to need to let him go or are you still in love? Or are there serious changes that need to happen to ensure trust and sustainability? enough with the relationship metaphor... go for it!
http://www.thecorporation.com/
Response #10
ReplyDeleteRebecca Tulis
A1
1) Increases employment
2) Develops new medicine and ways to achieve better health
3) Some products are very useful to our daily lives
4) We can buy the “American dream”
5) Informative
6) Helps the economy prosper
7) Makes our lives easier
8) Corporations can sometimes take part in helping the community
9) An array of ways to receive information
10) New technology makes our lives more enjoyable
B1
1) Makes us lazy
2) Tells society what to like and not to like
3) Corporations are very competitive and will do anything to convince people
4) Hurts small businesses
5) New Technology can be harmful to our environment.
6) Increases the gap between rich and poor.
7) Has immoral ways of swaying people.
8) Overconsumption
9) We are receiving too much information
10) Defines what is the American Dream
A2
1) Even though people are being employed, they may not be receiving what they deserve in terms of pay and benefits. This can make the gap between the rich and poor bigger.
2) Medicine and health care is not always available to every especially people who can’t afford it. This reminds me of the current health care problem.
3) For me, I do not feel safe without a phone because it allows me to be in constant communication with the people I am close to. However, some times we become obsessed with having a phone on us at all times and do not realize the times we do not need it.
4) We talk about this in class all the time and I think it is the corporations that make the American Dream possible and it gives us something to strive for. However, is our idea of the American Dream too superficial?
5) I believe corporations are informative in that they teach us how to improve our society. But is all the information we are receiving correct and useful?
6) Employment will increase and people are put more money out into the market. Nevertheless, I believe our society is buying more than we need or can afford which will only put us in debt.
7) Technology like cell phones, computers and television have become a huge part of our lives and are a great source of information. A negative aspect to this is that these technologies can consume our lives where as we ignore everything else around us.
8) When I think of this I think of the Ronal McDonald House charities and how Ronald McDonald House Charities support health programs.
9) Wherever we look, we are constantly bombarded with new information. Technologies like our cellphones and laptops give us up to date information at all times. However, are we receiving too much information?
10) Watching Television, talking on the phone or searching the Internet simply is enjoyable. Yet, we are staying in our homes and not getting outside to enjoy our environment.
Response #10 (part 2)
ReplyDeleteRebecca Tulis
B2
1) Everything we need is in our homes and we do not have to leave. We also depend too much on transportation. For instance, instead of driving 2 miles, we could bike it.
2) Corporations say what society should like by how they put it out into world. For instance, we wear certain clothes because we saw it in a magazine and therefore think it is what we have to wear to fit in.
3) Some corporations will do anything to convince people that their product is the best even if that requires them to hire actors to wear our use the product and promote it.
4) Huge corporations are more prevalent than small businesses. For instance, I think of Wal-Mart and how their low prices encourage people to come there instead of coming to small businesses. The only positive aspect to this is that we are saving money by doing this.
5) In terms of technology and our environment, I think of our cars are polluting our air. However, corporations are coming up with ways and making the effort to help the environment.
6) Increasing the gap between the rich and poor is based on the idea that the majority of people working for these corporations are not making a substantial amount of money and in the meantime and making products for the wealthy.
7) Corporations can convince people to do things by making them feel like they don’t fit in and cannot succeed in the world.
8) Overconsumption is a major problem because we are constantly consuming things that we don’t need. For instance, do we really need a television in every room in our houses?
9) The amount of information we are receiving can be overwhelming especially because a lot of it is not as useful as we may think.
10) Corporations have the power to define the American Dream because it tells us what aspects to the American Dream we should strive for. Corporations also make the American Dream more unattainable.
Going through my list, I found that it was a lot harder to rebut the cons of a corporation. For instance, there is no positive aspects to overconsumption or how small business are being negatively affected. However, I have found that some of the pros are extremely important and beneficial. For this reason, I feel biased to corporations. I think we depend on corporations a lot more than we think whether it is in a good or bad way. Corporations can change our beliefs and ideals yet they give us things that make our lives easier and enjoyable. I believe we can survive without these corporations if we didn’t already have a dependency on them but since we already do, I do not know what could happen to society if corporations were to just end.
Alyssa Olson
ReplyDeleteResponse #10
List A1: pros
1. informative
2. options
3. opinions
4. straight-forward
5. organized
6. local
7. world-wide
8. accessible
9. supports business
10. transmits ideas
List B1: cons
1. brain washing
2. business’ ideas
3. one-sided
4. monetary based
5. greed
6. dependence
7. debt
8. force
9. overview
10. brief
List A2: associations
1. the media keeps us informed to an extent
2. as the viewer we have options as to what we watch and what we don’t watch
3. the media is filled with opinions based on who is funding the program or ad, gives an overview of different views
4. the media is very direct and to the point, the information is given to you very quickly
5. due to the directness of the media it is very organized. TV commercials usually relate to the show being viewed
6. the media relates closely to a local scale, reporting and reviewing local events etc
7. it also focuses on a global scale, while also being available world-wide
8. the media is very easy to access seeing as it is all around us
9. the media helps support business by bring in more customers and allowing more products to be sold
10. the media transmits ideas in multiple forms, allows new ideas to form.
List B2: associations
1. the media brain washes us by force feeding ideas
2. the ideas are formed by the business’ who want us to buy their products so they say whatever they can to make this happen
3. these messages tend to be one-sided so that they seem to be fool-proof and effective because other ideas and opinions aren’t presented
4. the media is based off of money which means that their messages will be swayed by this
5. the media makes our society greedy because we always want the newest things where the average person cant keep up with it
6. we have become dependent on the media to tell us what we want and where to get it, we feel that we need them to know how to live our lives
7. this dependence causes us to go into debt because we are always trying to keep up with the trends and what the media wants us to own
8. they force ideas upon us so that we almost cant avoid them
9. the large overview of ideas does not allow a thorough examination
10. the ideas and notions of the media are very brief which makes the quantity of them more, clogging our minds with these ideas
In conclusion I have found that the media tends to be very double-sided. The lists I made show that the good and bad things about the media tend to be very similar to one another. I believe that it comes down to the quantity of the media in our society, which determines whether its affects are pros or cons. We will always have the media in our lives it just comes down to how big of a part of our lives they are. The media can help spread information and ideas over broad areas while also keeping the people informed, this is a positive thing. Although in the same sense the media can become controlling and when they have large range over our society like they currently do the power can become abused.
Kristen Zelenka
ReplyDeleteADPIII WR #10
Pros of Corporations:
• Provide jobs for many people
• Job security
• Insurance and healthcare for employees
• Gives money to schools, scholarships to students
• Strong financial infrastructure
• Helps developing nations improve their overall standard of living
• Provide services and products at lower prices than private businesses
• Its easier for groups of people to work towards a goal together
• Have potential to have power to create good social change
• Have a lot of money to work with so they can produce innovations
Cons:
• Corporate crime
• Not held to moral standards and responsibility like the individual
• No individuality
• Provides many of our goods and services
• Huge source of pollution
• Everything has become advertised
• Infiltrates every aspect of our lives
• Too profit driven
• Overwhelms small businesses
• Use too much energy to produce their materials
• Outsource/ invest too much in other countries
• Can have too much influence on government
Associations/ Ramifications of Pros:
• Provides thousands of jobs and connections
• Possibility for promotions
• Family Healthcare
• Mass-production
• TOMS shoes
• Research and improved technology
• Helps form our economy
Associations/ Ramifications of Cons:
• Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley
• Corrupt corporate leaders
• Overwhelming influence on our society
• Everything is sponsored
• Profit based not morally based
• Chemical run-off
• Unfair/ Child labor practice
• Pork barrel
I believe that corporations can be beneficial to our society if they are lead by morally aware individuals and if they are held accountable for their actions. They can enforce good social changes and they provide many jobs and incomes that families live off of. However, they are also a huge source of corruption because they are often only profit driven. There are many whit collar crimes and the courts still need to catch up in how to properly handle these issues. I believe that if companies are conscious of the environment and social issues then they can be very beneficial however if they are not then they are extremely poisonous to the health of our society. More trust needs to be established between individuals and the corporations in order to have any real improvement.
A1 Pros
ReplyDelete1) Cheaper products
2) Most goods more widely available
3) More jobs created
4) Easier to regulate quality of larger companies
5) More convenient locations
6) One-stop shopping
7) More profits means more money to possibly donate to charity
8) Cozy feeling of brand loyalty
9) Less decisions for the consumer to make
10) No worries about having to know where it comes from potentially
B2 Cons
1) Cheaper products have a much higher production cost than is paid for by the environment
2) People take for granted that everything they want is so easily available and no longer have any connection to the products they are buying
3) Larger companies have the luxury of paying people minimum wage because their employees cannot say no
4) People trusting that products will not be harmful lead to incidents like recalls, which may be extreme in scale
5) Local businesses cannot compete
6) People will tend to buy the same products over and over again and find no variation, be it locally or otherwise
7) The amount that these companies donate to charity is in no way proportional to the damage their pollution is impacting on the world
8) People will put value in things that really garner none
9) Consumers become defendant on the corporations for jobs and goods, and if they were to fail a lot of people would be detrimentally affected
10) Quality of goods is not questioned as much and can therefore be harmful to the consumer's health
A2
Many people find comfort in being able to go to larger chain grocery stores, the problems with all of their convenience is when locations are not made available to everybody. Currently there are no major grocery stores in the city of Detroit on the logic that people would be willing regardless to travel out of their way to go outside of the city to shop. The logic of profits and losses dictates that more money would be lost in upgraded security measures for these chains to exist within the city limits than it would to inconvenience and stereotype a large group of people. Any benefits brought by these stores is lost, and any donations made to the community would pass Detroit by being that their neighborhood is not that of Kroger's.
B2
The common image of a corporation is that of greed and heartlessness. In this manner, many people, rightly or otherwise, are mistrusting of corporations because of their favoring of options that would result in more profits for themselves. The decision to produce cheaper products is not for the sake of the customer; saving consumers money is a way to generate business despite the disproportionate impact on the environment at large, an environment that the consumers would also benefit from not destroying. Again offering employment to people in the community is a heavier win for the company as employees are paid in a manner that best suites the corporation as opposed to heavy thought on what they need to live in a basic humane manner. Overall, the association of the company is not caring about the public, and this paranoid distrust keeps this understanding of sorts in place.
I believe my lists make me feel stronger against the motives of the corporation, but honestly from my pros I understand that it is very difficult to escape the system. As a removed consumer, I am happy to accept my goods at discounted prices without any wind from the company regarding the real price we as a community are paying, rather it takes a class like this, in a surrounding like a university that is somewhat removed from the "real world" as it were to survey this relationship from a distance. I do not agree with the structure of corporations, nor can I offer myself an alternative in my current situation to removing myself from their influence.
A1: PROS
ReplyDelete• globalization
• informative to the public
• information readily accessible to almost everyone
• supports the economy through business
• creates more jobs and thus help the economy
• makes life easy in terms of ready accessible goods and products for everyday use
• technological advances such as in medicine, and etc.
• possible donations to struggling communities or nations; improve their standards of life
• have easy access
• provide us with energy to live comfortably
A2: CONS
• pollution to the environment
• exploitation of workers overseas such as in sweatshops
• intergenerational tyranny
• harmful to habitat of different species
• harmful to small, independently owned businesses, and thus can possibly harm the economy of that community
• cause unemployment for small business owners
• over usage of natural resources
• unnecessary overconsumption
• corporate crime; in law, see corporation as a “person” with same liberties and rights of people
• have influence over the government which makes policies that benefit the corporation
A2: Associations and ramifications PROS
• Technological advances such as in medicine enable people to live longer, fuller lives
• Helps the world through communication and business
• Helps funds various projects that helps third world countries through money contributions
• Stimulates the economy through increasing availability of jobs and profit
• Since through corporate media, global communication is easily accessible which keeps people informed more efficiently
• Media practices free speech and opinion and thus the viewers are not forced to watch their advertisements or buy their products
• Because everything is easily accessible, people do not have to rely on growing or finding their own food but can simply go to the grocery market and purchase products that are already process for them
• Corporations makes life run more efficiently such as time saving through assembly lines and interchangeable parts.
• Because of the efficiency that corporations run by, it can mass produce various products so that everyone can have a sense of ownership
• Through corporate media, it can stimulate the economy by promoting business to the public
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete(continued...)
ReplyDeleteB2: Associations and ramifications CONS
• Even though corporations makes life easier through readily available products close to where you live, it also hurts the economy of the community that corporations set up business such as Wal-Mart.
• The “corporate media” globalizes the world together such as for communication; however, it also globalizes the possibility of increased pollution.
• Technological advances such as in medicine helps let people live longer lives, however, other advances in technology such as in synthetic materials such as chemicals can cause harmful affects to the environment, species, and the people such as through pesticides that caused deformation in children in Vietnam.
• Corporations make profits through the exploitation of sweatshop workers overseas who are paid very little, while the corporation is selling the products that these workers made expensively
• Corporations lie about where and how their products are made
• Corporations commit corporate crimes such as causing environmental harm, in which they are fined, but many do not admit their guilt
• Continuation of pollution of the environment and our surroundings is intergenerational tyranny to our future generations because we are leaving them our mess
• Because products are sold for cheap, people tend to consume more then they need to survive, causing further environmental problems through our waste
• Because corporations are considered a “persons” in the eyes of the law, they are allowed due process of law as normal people, and thus they are able to get away with many corporate crimes
• Due to the large amount of profit that corporations make, they have influence over social institutions such as the government, in which they are allowed certain privileges
Going through the list made me think that the good and the bad always come together and it is hard to steer away from it. When there are positive points to a view, there is always a consequence that follows. Therefore, it made me think that it is impossible to have only the good, but rather you can only have the good with the bad. Corporations due have positive points to them in which they make life easier, which I am assuming every human wants, however everything comes at a price, such as through pollution of our environment, or the exploitation of poor workers overseas. I found it ironic that corporations, through technological advances such as through medicine prolongs the lives of humans. However, the part I found ironic was that even though corporations found ways to prolong health and longevity of life, the mass production of these medications might be causing harm to the environment and the people who are making these medications. I am not positive if this example is true but the concept of trying to make one thing work and then causing another issue to pop up can be ironic. Realistically, I believe that it will be difficult for people to stop relying on corporations because the affect and influence of corporation and the corporate media is so embedded into our society and our society functions to make life easier, and thus, one can view corporation as a drug in which we are so addicted to their presence and affects that we cannot stop unless an outside force steps in to help.
The Corporation. Dir. Achbar, Mark, Jennifer
Abbott, and Joel Bakan. Big Picture Media
Corporation, 4 June 2004.
A1
ReplyDelete1) Can act as a guide
2) Provides us with information
3) Gives us alternative options in consuming
4) Provides jobs
5) Provides the groundwork of free-speech
6) There is some form of regulation of true story in the US on major channels
7) Exposes us to the cultural norm
8) Allows us to weigh the messages being sent
9) Aids the economy
10) Makes us familiar with the latest technological advances
B2
1) Highly based of off a “brain-washing” technique
2) Allows little room outside of the cultural norm
3) Becomes too influential at some point
4) Exposes children to materialistic mentality
5) Fact becomes very bias
6) No room for the “little guy”
7) The everyday person does not have control over it
8) It is it’s own entity separated from us
9) Begins to tell us how to act and behave
10) Introduces crude and violent material to all ages
Lasn introduces the term “meme” to describe the opposing force to the corporate media. I think it would be interesting to see the people from B2-6 and B2-7 would counter the corporate media. The media acts a it’s own entity. Everyday people do not have a say on what is broadcasted, and therefore, we are limited to our knowledge of what life could be. I don’t mean this in terms of our locations, but in our behaviors. A girl I worked with was not exposed to TV from the modern era, as her family was strict Christians. She watched shows from the 50’s if anything. Her behavior was much different from my peers or mine. She never swore, and she was very playful and would get into people’s personal “bubbles”. And even though she was pure in intention and behavior from not being exposed to the corporate media, she was missing crucial elements on how to survive in today’s world. She was not aware of the opportunities in careers. She knew how to navigate in the woods, like Leopold. Her knowledge did not apply to the world that corporate media identifies with.