Summary

Media is so present in our daily life like it has never been before. Work, university and free time are mostly connected with the use of media. That has an impact on the way we think, behave and communicate. We spent a lot of time in front of the screen, no matter if it is for entertainment or for work. Probably the biggest change in the last years is how all the different medias are getting connected. We can watch movies on the smartphone, telephone on the laptop, share tweets on a television show or write online tests for the university from your computer. But all this features also bring a lot of new tasks. We have to be aware that we get influenced and we have to learn how to deal with this changes. Life is getting so much faster and easier because of all the innovations, but we have to secure that we control the media and that the media doesn't control us.

Living the Moment

Some days ago I was watching a basketball game of the Arkansas Razorbacks. To show my family back in Germany how it looks like in an American basketball arena I took some pictures with my smartphone to send them home. I was so concentrated to make the pictures that I missed an important basket. Of course I could see it finally in the replay, but to me that is simply not the same because I missed the original moment by itself. This made me think about how we get abstracted by the media. For example when I am at a music concert there is something you can always observe. Many people are so focused on making their videos and pictures of the concert that they are simply not able to enjoy the concert itself. 

A normal concert

Of course having your own pictures of the concert is great to remember it later, but isn't the moment when you are there, when you have the pure experience worth so much more? Don't get me wrong. The features and possibilities of the new medias are great and can be helpful in your daily live. But isn't it true that sometimes we miss to really enjoy the moment, our surroundings and most importantly the atmosphere because we are so focused on our gadget? Yes, the developments are often helpful, but when we use them we should not forget to live the moment and to enjoy everything it offers to you. Because the atmosphere can't be reviewed again. 

Digital Product Placement

Medial inventions always have an influence on our daily live. Some have more and some have less. The influence of smartphones and laptops is enormous. Not only on the way we communicate, but also for example on the way we watch television. Just sitting in front of the tube, enjoying your show and waiting until the advertising break is over does not happen any more. With our smartphone we are always "online" and available. We text, we read articles, watch videos or check the Facebook profiles of our friends. I know many people who are watching a football game on television while their favorite show is running on their laptop. In some how that makes sense, because all the breaks and ads during a game are really exhausting. But does it make sense for the advertisers to pay a lot of money to make advertising when nobody is watching it?

Why should you watch boring ads in the ad break?

I don't think so. I mean, of course the history of advertising and television is really close connected. Television without advertising can't exist, because it is in the end the only or the biggest source to get money. But why should advertisers pay for something without having any outcome. Product placement is the catchword here. Making advertising by putting your product in the show, making it a part of the content is really smart, because the audience is getting influenced by advertising without recognizing it. In there is a interesting progress. By now the advertisers are able to put their products digitally into a program which has been made years ago.

  

How will this influence the way advertising is made, looking at demographics and personalized advertising?

Paying for Content on Youtube

Some days ago I was searching for an old movie which I wanted to watch to write an essay about it. I was searching online for legal and illegal ways to watch it. And in the end I watched the movie on YouTube and paid two dollars for it. Why did I chose this alternative? The easiest answer is: because it was offered to me. It was the first time ever I paid on YouTube to watch something. Why was it worth for me to pay for it, while I could have gotten it for free at the same time. There are several reasons. At first it was the good quality I could rely on.  Secondly I could be sure of what I will finally receive. No fake link, which is trying to sell you something or which is not working, what you finally often get when you try to find a movie somewhere else in the internet. You-tube as brand is something I can rely on and trust. Thirdly and most important, it was easy to find and fast to buy. Knowing where to search for what you want to have, with no need to work through the different layers of the internet is worth a lot to me. And also the online payment was really easy. When you already have an existing account on YouTube you just have to enter your credit card information and in a minute you are ready to go. And again, while you are often frightened to give your credit card information to a service in the internet, there is no need to question the trueness of that established brand.

 
New ways of entertainment

So what made me finally pay for a content, which I could have gotten for free, was the easy and trouble-free way to receive: its availability. And there you can see what the film industry finally understood. By blocking their products from an online approach, frightened to lose the control over it, they opened the way for illegal movie streaming. But now it seems to me, that they have understood that the internet is a opportunity to earn money in a different way. They just had to figure out what they have to offer, to make somebody pay for their products. YouTube or Netflix are just the beginning of that.

Visual Dependency

We are used to get visual information. Weather we watch a movie, read an article or talk to another person. In the movie most of the story is actual told by what you see: the emotions on the face, the surroundings or the actions of the protagonists. When you read an article you get more information than just the words and their meaning: the layout, the design and the adjustment also influence your way of reading it. And when you talk to another person you get information from his emotions on the face and the way he acts: his body language. When it comes to university, it seems that we are used even more to get the information presented by the visual. Power-point presentations, graphics, videos, diagrams and pictures are used in class every day. But what effect has that on our brain and the way we are able to affiliate information? Today in class I realized that I get into trouble, when I have to listen to a single audio source while not receiving any visual information. When I tried to concentrate on the speech which was played to us, I got distracted from the many visual attractions around me. Finally when I closed my eyes, I was able to listen to the speech intensely and to affiliate the information.

Can you stop following the game of chess of your fellow student?

                   
What does that tell us? At first our brain has to deal with a lot of distractions. We are able to ignore them, or to filter them, when the source we want to concentrate on presents the information visibly. You could say we are addicted to that way of presentation. But what you can see here too, is that the number of distractions has increased rapidly. It is not only my smartphone or laptop, but all the other screens, which I can take a look at. Finally you can ask why I am able to concentrate on the information of the power-point presentation while the same distractions in class are influencing me. But that is an easy answer: the screen of the projector is simply bigger.

Repeating Content in the Media Universe

Today in one of my classes I was watching a little movie about women and their representation in the American media, followed by criticism about the women's role in society and politics. To emphasize the limited presentation of women, concentrating only on their appearance and reducing them to sex objects, the movie actual showed a lot of examples of good looking women in advertising, movies, news and games. Surprising was that after the movie, which gave a lot of on evidence based arguments, I felt like I haven't seen so many sexual content in the media for a while as in that movie. So by criticizing it, I was getting exposed to the content even more. Of course that makes sense some how, because the movie tries to emphasize how often this picture of a women is drawn in the daily media. But still it made me think about how things get even more pushed into the audience's focus, no matter if it is criticism or not, just by dealing with it.

Another example for the sexual representation of women 

Looking for example at the series The Simpsons. I always loved that show. It is famous for making fun of the American society, the media, politics, religion and everything else you can imagine. It is not only a parody of real people and events, it also criticizing them and demonstrating their weaknesses. But you can't fight the fact that you are getting exposed to the same topics and contents as what the critic is all about. So you have to ask if in the end, formats like The Simpsons are not simply another part of the media universe, which is repeating the same contents over and over again. They assume to break out of this system by using irony and humor. It gives you the feeling that they stand above the "normal" media formats, because they refer to them and show their weaknesses. But nevertheless they put our attention on the same contents and it supports its importance to the audience.

What are you getting reminded of, when you see that scene of Simpsons?

                   
This thought makes me a bit frustrated, because it feels to me, that in the end every format has a different role in serving the consumer. Some of them are more obvious, some of them are less. I always thought the comedy shows would be special, that they are better than the "normal" media formats by making a parody of it, but now I feel like they are only a little wheel in the machine, keeping the audience's function as a consumer alive.