28/02/17 - Babysitting apps boom as parents bid to reclaim free time (50)

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/feb/25/parents-babysitting-apps-boom-childcare

This article is about how people have invented this app where if someone needs help babysitting their child, it can be done so with the click of a finger. This app is quite similar to Uber in the sense that if a babysitter is needed with a few minutes, the parent could go onto the app and quickly find someone that is willing to babysit for a while with the parents paying. Over the years, this app has been used more and more frequently which to some extent, people cannot understand why. They don't believe that leaving that someone with a stranger is good and can be a risk considering the parent doesn't know who the person even is; they could be a criminal as far as they are aware. A spokeswomen called Katherine Twamley, from the department of social sciences at University College London said: “As parents see themselves more as having a shared responsibility for childcare they also see themselves as having a shared right to leisure.”

• Frances Jones, 32, from London, has a one-and-a-half-year-old son and regularly finds babysitters this way: “I’ve never left him in the day, it’s just while he’s asleep. If you want to have your life back you have to use these services because you can’t constantly rely on family and friends. Having a nanny or a person locally would be ideal, but I don’t have that.”
• “People are finding themselves on zero-hours contracts and needing to create portfolio careers. ‘Tag team’ parenting – where shifts between work and home are shared between couples – can be hard to manage, especially if parents are single or separated,”

In my opinion, I believe that apps like this are very dangerous and could potentially have a huge effect on peoples lives. If a parent is leaving their child in someone else's hands, personally they should let a family member or a professional carer take care of them. For example, if someone that had no experience of babysitting but needed the money to do so, the parent wouldn't know what they're capable off; something seriously bad could potentially happen. This is why I believe that the impact in new and digital media something is a bad thing as it can lead to dangerous apps being made and since a lot of people believe the things which are uploaded on the internet, they could believe anything which can be misleading to the audience and users.

28/02/17 - TV advertising exceeds £5bn for first time (49)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/02/23/tv-advertising-exceeds-5bn-for-first-time/

This article is about how TV advertising has passed the £5bn revenue mark for the first time in the history of TV advertising. It also states that the revenue as being rising for the past 6 years in a row. In addition, online businesses are the second largest advertising category which has invested in more than £500 million. However, the article also stated that Facebook were the biggest spenders as they had spend more than £10m in on-screen adverts. This is a huge advantage for companies such as Facebook as a lot of the time, their revenue grows and is built up on advertising and is how more and more users are seen to be registering with social media giants, like Facebook. This means that they would have more money to make investments and therefore done so by putting them in TV advertising.

•  Procter & Gamble was the most-viewed advertiser last year with 30.5bn views, with pay TV giant Sky notching up 21.2bn views, Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser hitting 20.3bn views each and Mars clocking up 16.4bn views, according to the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board.
• The study also estimates that TV advertising is now 30pc cheaper in real terms than it was 10 years ago.
• It said that social media giant Facebook was the biggest-spending new TV advertiser, ploughing £10.8m into on-screen adverts.
• Revenues from TV advertising rose 7.4pc to £5.27bn last year, the sixth consecutive year of growth, according to TV marketing body Thinkbox.

In my opinion, I am not surprised that TV advertising has increased every year and has made a revenue of these high figures. I believe that this is beneficial to the companies as they know how the make the audience believe in something if they wrote it in a way which the audience would feel persuaded. Advantages of TV advertising to the large industries is that TV reaches a much larger audience than local newspapers and radio stations and also does so in a shorter period of time. Furthermore, it reaches viewers when they're the most attentive and it allows the industries to convey their message with sight, sound and motiion which gives the companies instant credibility.

Identities and Film: blog task

1) Read Media Factsheet 142: Identity and Film.

2) Complete the Twenty Statements Test yourself. This means answering the question ‘Who am I?’ 20 times with 20 different answers. What do they say about your identity? Write the 20 answers in full on your blog.
3) Classify your answers into the categories listed  on the Factsheet: Social groups, ideological beliefs, interests etc.

I am...

• A Liverpool Fan - Interests
• A Sports Enthusiast - Interests
• A Film Enthusiast - Interests 
• A Brother - Social groups
• An older sibling - Social groups
• A Photographer- Interests
• British - Social Groups
• A Sikh - Ideological beliefs
• Male - Social groups
• A food connoisseur - Self-evaluations
• A Programmer - Interests
• Student at GHS - Social groups
• 18 years old - classifications
• 6" 2 - Social groups and classifications
• A Car enthusiasts - Interests
• Beardless - 
• A fan of music - Interests
• A Comedy lover - Interests
• A Committed gamer - Interests
• A fan of technology - Interests

4) Go back to your favourite film (as identified in the lesson). What does this choice of film say about your identity? Are there any identities within the film (e.g. certain characters) that particularly resonated with your values and beliefs?

My favourite film is Scent of a Women. I believe that this films suggests that my identity is about looking at the little things in a particular movie. For example, in the movie I chose, the reason why I said that it's my favourite is because of the main character. In the movie, the main character played a blind person and was taken care of by a student who needed the money. Throughout the movie, instead of the student taking care of the blind man, it seemed that the blind man was taking more care of the student, which I thought was very strong considering he couldn't see.

5) Watch the trailers for the five films highlighted as examples of gay/lesbian representation in mainstream film. How are LGBT identities constructed in the trailers and how are audiences encouraged to respond to these representations?

Wilde - Through the trailer, I saw two males as a couple. At first, one male showed his true colours (being gay) and the other character, at first, was shown to be married to a women. However, when the two characters started to talk to each other, they eventually became a couple but since it was shown in an older time, it was harder for people to accept it as it was a normal thing to do. But since they got their own way in the end, audiences can be encouraged by the fact that if you try hard enough, you will most likely always get it your way and be happy.

Philadelphia - The trailer showed a man who had hidden his sexuality (about being gay) from his work colleagues and along with that, he had aids. However, due to the fact that he had aids, he was fired from his place of work. The fact that he was also gay, could have made a major effect on the fact that he was fired. In addition, audiences can be encouraged by this as equal rights have been shown between people who are gay or have aids and the other people, suggesting that everyone is the same.

The Wedding Banquet - In this movie, it showed hidden identities between the characters. The main character was shown to being marrying a women, but only until we see that this marriage is only done because of the fact that two men wanted to be together without anyone apart from the 'bride' knowing about the couple. This doesn't necessarily encourage the audience as they may see that everything in life isn't as easy as it may seem to be and you cannot get everything that you may want.

The Kids are Alright - In the movie, we seen a lesbian couple who both have their own children. Alongside this, the children are half brother and sister because the mum's had the children by a sperm donor. The audience can be encouraged by this as they shouldn't let anyone else control their children apart from themselves as they are the ones who raised them. Also, the movie itself also shows that everyone is the same and we get the feel that the two mum's are no different from anyone else.

Pride - This movie shows that everyone in here are proud of who they are, e.g. the Lesbians are proud to call themselves Lesbians and the gay's are proud to be who they are. Therefore, this encourages the audience as they shouldn't care about what everyone else is thinking and just believe in themselves and look at if they are happy with who they are and no one else, which could then make them a stronger person.

Identities: applying feminism

1) The five types of feminism that has been outlined on this media factsheet are the following:

• Radical Feminism
• Liberal Feminism
• Marxist-Feminism
• Black Feminism
• Postmodern Feminism

2) I believe that Butler would fit into liberal feminism. This is because of the fact that Butler believed that genders do not have biologically fixed roles, for example men can do what a women can and vice versa. Also, this is the same definition shown for the liberal feminism in the factsheet (gender roles are not biologically determined). Therefore this is why I believe that Butler fits with liberal feminism.

Also, I believe that McRobbie fits with the marxist feminism. McRobbie talks about how women are shown to be very weak in the media and she explains that women need to feel good about themselves and seem to be powerful in the media over men. 

The everyday sexism project and postmodern feminism both have a great link as they both have the definition of encouraging women to share their past experiences they may have had with men or something which was reinforcing the feminism stereotypes and how we still live in a feminism time.

3) Suffragist - a person advocating the extension of suffrage, especially to women.
Suffragettes - a woman seeking the right to vote through organized protest.

4) Mulvey's argument against Hollywood films is that the camera ‘looks’ at women as if were a male and the woman is a desirable sexual object. She called this the male gaze and suggested that women are either viewed in a ‘voyeuristic’ way, which makes them ‘whores’, or in a ‘fetishistic’ way, making them ‘madonnas’ or virgins. In my opinion, to some extent, I do believe with what Mulvey says but disagree more. I believe that, yes women are seen as a desirable sexual object but nowadays, we believe that its a normal thing if they are seen to be like this.

5)

• Billboards
• Schools
• Airplanes
• Bus stops
• Elevators
  

6) She claims that the advertising industry makes a women’s appearance the most important thing about her. Women feel they must strive for perfection but feel guilty and ashamed when they cannot achieve the absolute flawlessness they are being told is ‘normal’. Kilbourne uses several examples of how images in advertising are manipulated to make the women in the adverts appear perfect. 

7) Wolf argues that the notion of ‘beauty’ is entirely socially constructed and patriarchal. By this she means that men in a given society create rules of what is considered beautiful in women but this alters from culture to culture. She gives the example that with a Westernised women, a beautiful women must have features such as blonde hair, a slim figure and flawless skin. 

8) The representation of women in music videos have been presented as controversial because through many different videos, women have been portrayed as victims. Also, we see have seen that a lot of the time, the lyrics of the music are also referred to women and how they have done bad things and also suggests how the majority of them are represented as 'prostitutes' which is highly controversial and debatable. This is because a lot of this isn't true, in my opinion and therefore the women have been given a negative status amongst themselves.

9) A lot of the time, artists such as Nicki Minaj and Beyonce have been shown as empowering the women gender. For example, in a lot of their music videos, they always seem to be in control of the men and the other people around them. Despite, there being some sorts of pleasure for men, these two particular artists always seem to have the spotlight in terms of power and therefore can be seen as encouraging the female audience as they can also be seen as doing the same thing.

10) In my opinion, I do believe that new and digital media has given women the opportunity to challenge sexist views. For example, nowadays we have social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook where people have the freedom to post anything they which to despite having the potential users that are willing to fight against peoples beliefs. Also, we have having an increase in the number of female YouTubers which are starting to become very well known from a female and also a male audience. Therefore, I do believe that this is an opportunity to challenge sexist views.

Case study: Everyday Sexism

1) Why did Laura Bates start the Everyday Sexism project?

Laura Bates started of the Tedx talk by talking about her our past experience with sexism. She gave the example that she had been groped by a man on the bus as he was touching her leg and bringing his hand all the way up to her crotch. She then discussed how she made the statement that she was being 'groped' on the bus but no one cared; she seemed as if she was the criminal in this case and that it wasn't anyone else's business to be getting involved in this situation. So, she started off this project as she felt that not enough women were discussing and sharing their experience where they may have been harassed etc and therefore, this could've been a place where they can do so.

2) How does the Everyday Sexism project link to the concept of post-feminism? Is feminism still required in western societies?

The Everyday Sexism project is linked to post-feminism as it is both talking about how women are started to be treated differently. However. I believe that post-feminism is needed more than ever due to the fact that there are still cases where men are deemed more powerful than women and clearly not showing the fact that men and women are equal. Therefore, I believe that we are still in a feminism state where we still believe that women need to be more equal towards men. This has been shown in the Tedx talk where around 50,000 women had posted their situation within the first 18 months which suggests that there still is a huge problem and how we are not in a post-feminism state.

3) How can you apply Judith Butler's theory of gender as a 'performance' to the creation of the Everyday Sexism project?

Judith Butler talks about how the two different genders each have got their own roles but are not biologically fixed meaning that a man can do the so-called women's job and vice versa. However, in this scenario I believe that these particular jobs are being reinforced by the genders. Stereo typically, we see men as the powerful gender and the women as the vulnerable gender. Linking it to the Everyday Sexism project, we can identify that the users of this project are on here because they are typing and sending their issues to the project is most likely due to the fact that they are being harassed by the male gender as they are found to be more dominant.

4) How does Angela McRobbie's work on female empowerment link to the Everyday Sexism project?

The female gender are posting their issues on this particular due to the fact the are being harassed by the male gender. Therefore, by posting their issues on here they are able to feel more free about themselves as there may be other people which can relate to the same scenario they may have been in. Then, this will be empowering the women gender as they can fight together and help prevent things like this happen to them again in the future.

Media Magazine: The fourth wave?

1) What is networked feminism?

Network feminism is divided into four different waves of feminism to explain the cultural content in which they began. It's aim is to tackle social equality issues found both on, and using, modern technology. In addition, user-generated content websites have seemed to flourish with the words of feminists, such as blogs and YouTube. Therefore, Networked feminism is a phenomenon that can be described as the online mobilization and coordination of feminists in response to perceived sexist, misogynistic, racist, and other discriminatory acts against minority groups.

Why is it a problem?

This is still a problem as many people still believe that we are in a post-feminism era. However, feminists (to this day) still deal every day with misconceptions and prejudice: the idea that rape or coercive sec may be justified if a women is wearing provocative clothing, the huge gender despite equality legislation, the ubiquitous representation of women as weak and disempowered.

2) The ‘first wave of feminism’ began in the late 19th to early 20th centuries, with a main focus on suffrage. The ‘second wave’ began in the 1960s, campaigning for the growth of equal rights and leading to the Equal Pay Act of 1970, amongst other equality laws. Since the late 1990s, we are believed to have entered the ‘third wave’ (often identified as post-feminism). The new fourth wave of feminism is also known as ‘networked feminism’. it aims to tackle social equality issues found both on, and using, modern technology.
In my opinion, I do believe that we are in a fourth wave of feminism simply because we are involved in many different types of campaigns, such as the Everyday Sexism Project.

3) Everyday Sexism
The Everyday Sexism campaign is a website where different women can talk about their past issues which they may have had with men. The aim of the site is to document examples of sexism from around the world. Laura Bates believed that hardly anyone would talk about these issues, e.g. groping and therefore, the men can just carry on with doing whatever they want to. Within the first 18 months of this project, over 50,000 women had written and sent of their issues. Over the years, it has become very successful where the creator of this had one many awards and nowadays, people have started to advertise this campaign, e.g. the police.

HeForShe
The He For She campaign is led by Emma Watson, well known for her role in Harry Potter. Watson's campaign itself focuses on male support for gender equality, highlighting the fact that feminism is not about promoting matriarchy, but solidarity. However, many people have criticised the He For She campaign, saying that it makes feminism too reliant on males, undermining the ‘strong woman’ element and relying on the old stereotype that women need men to get things done. In addition, Watson utilised Twitter for a Q&A session during the campaign’s promotion at Davos, and represented both feminism and He For She as dynamic and integrated.

FCKH8 campaign
The movement focuses on the modern representation of girls and the huge social inequalities they face, whilst featuring young girls‘F-Bombing’ to highlight society’s imbalance when it comes to offences. However, FCKH8 is actually a for-profit company, and the video is in fact trying to sell its t-shirts. This exploitation of feminism as an advertising tool created a huge backlash. In addition the equation of swearing with ‘good’ feminism didn’t play well with a majority in the movement; and the digital aspect left the campaign open to numerous parodies and anti-feminist diatribes.

This Girl Can
This Girl Can is a promotional campaign that seeks to inspire women to challenge cultural assumptions about femininity that prevent them engaging in sport and exercise. The short television clips draw upon “real” women’s bodies, of different shapes and sizes, as they move, sweat, strain and take pleasure in a range of activities. It has been described as the first fitness campaign for women which doesn’t shame or exclude them, by sharing photos, videos and quotes of women without the usual sexual exploitation of a women’s fitness advert and without body shaming.


4) In my opinion, I believe that we are in a fourth wave of feminism to some extent, as stated above. However, I do still believe that the female gender do still get more attention on social media than men do. Therefore, making me wonder if there is any reason to talk about feminism. Nowadays, we see females in the army, as police officers etc, so I don't think that we are in a feminism era. But we still do have the occasions where a male could potentially grope a female and therefore this is a reason why I believe that we are in a fourth wave.

19/02/17 - Mobile giant Three to block online advertising (48)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/02/18/mobile-giant-three-to-block-online-advertising/

This article is talking about how the mobile provider, Three, will next week announce a deal with Shine, an Israeli technology company that specialises in blocking mobile advertising. Many people have also stated that this Israeli company is very controversial with it's business. It is understood that Three UK will announce that it will begin trials of the system with a small group of customers over the next few months to develop designs for a roll-out across its network. In addition, it also talks about how since a large company is prepared to take these actions will also cause serious unease among digital publishers, who rely on mobile advertising for a small but growing share of their revenues. Furthermore, The controversial move has attracted the attention of regulators, who have claimed Digicel may amount to an unlawful interception of communications and violation of ‘net neutrality’ principles, whereby all data is treated the same.

• Olaf Swantee, the departing chief executive of BT’s mobile operation EE, told The Telegraph last year that he was considering how to clamp down on the most “intrusive or crass” mobile advertising. O2, which Three UK is attempting to acquire for £10.25bn, has also said it is looking at restrictions.
• Shine’s investors include Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong billionaire behind CK Hutchison, the owner of Three.
• It is understood that Shine has suggested that Three follow the Digicel model, although the European operator has not decided the details of how it will use the technology. It could target only the most disruptive or data-hungry types of advertising, such as videos that play automatically. But it is understood Three believes advertisers should pay for the data consumed by their messages.

In my opinion, I believe that with Three blocking the online advertising may be beneficial towards them but not towards the others. The reason for this is because other companies would use Three considering they are a large mobile provider company and therefore would try to make profits from them to help out with their own businesses. However, since they are blocking this, it can have a huge effect on the other companies. I believe that this is a good thing, to some extent, due to the fact that businesses are trying to use their business as a point where others can make money off them and therefore, I believe that this type of online advertising is wrong. On the other hand, Three are also a company which use online advertising to some extent and if they do it, I don't see why others can try and make a revenue of them.

19/02/17 - Why IMDb should rethink the decision to close its message boards (47)

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/17/why-imdb-should-rethink-the-decision-to-close-its-message-boards

IMDb had, recently. made the decision to close the message board on their website. However, this article is talking about why IMDb should reconsider their thoughts about closing the message boards. In the article, the CEO of IMDb said that the board was no longer creating a positive, useful experience and despite the fact that IMDb were no longer using the message board, he said that he would definitely encourage others to copy this idea and release something like this on another website etc. In addition, due to the fact they are deleted the board, it has created a negative feel to it and some users talked about the importance of this message board and how it was beneficial towards them. One user said that he made friends on the over boards over his favourite films and actors. He then goes on to talk about how they would usually discuss them on the message board, e.g what his favourite part was throughout the movie. But then, “IMDb say that the boards have been overtaken by trolls, but they could easily make it harder for people to troll, by hindering them creating multiple accounts”, where things weren't being taken seriously then and therefore resulted in them having to shut the board down. 

• Dan L began an online petition to save the boards, currently at just under 10,000 signatures. He suspects the invocation of trolls is little more than a smokescreen. 
• “They make bold claims such as 250 million monthly users worldwide. If IMDb really had 250 million users how come the movie with the most ratings, Shawshank Redemption, only has 1.7m votes? I don’t see how they can have 3.3% of the world’s population regularly using the site.”
• Dan uses the 2016 film Beta Test as an example of a fraudulently rated film in which half of the film’s apparent viewers have rated it a 9 or a 10, though the “top voters” (those with accounted for and regularly active accounts) have only rated it an average of 4.6.

In my opinion, I believe that the idea of closing down the message board is a bad idea for the users. Even though this doesn't effect IMDb as it is only a discussion board, it is restricting the users from allowing them to talk to other users. In the article, we saw that many users talked about how they all made friends on there and therefore, this was very entertaining for them. I believe that since it wasn't effecting IMDb, they should allow the users to keep writing their views about the films, even though there may be some people trolling on the website. I believe that without trolls, the internet wouldn't be the same and this is a thing which we need on the internet even though they may be very annoying.

19/02/17 - PewDiePie angrily accuses media of 'out-of-context' reports on antisemitic video (46)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/16/pewdiepie-antisemitic-video-media-wall-street-journal

This article is about how a famous YouTuber, PewDiePie, uploaded a rant video about how the mainstream media picked different parts from the many videos he had uploaded which had made him look like an anti-semite (a person who is hostile to or prejudiced against Jews). The YouTuber then started to compared the old-school media to the new media platform by saying that "old-school media does not like internet personalities because they are scared of us. We have so much influence and such a large voice, and I don't think they understand that". This can be led to the fact that things that are posted on the internet shouldn't always be taken to heart as a lot of people who take this up as 'banter' rather than wanting to take this to offence and starting a new argument with others, creating a negative environment on the internet. In addition, he also said that he has started to fight back against the mainstream media but “the more I punch back, the more I get back” and he doesn't like how the reports focus solely on how much he earns through his YouTube career.

• He doesn’t like the fact that reports focus on how much he earns (estimated to be more than $12m in 2016).
• Kjellberg, who has more than 53 million subscribers on YouTube, explained that his relationship with mainstream media has soured over the years as he has become more successful.
• The story, he said, “was an attack towards me by the media to try and discredit me, decrease my influence”.

In my opinion, I believe that what the YouTuber is talking about does make a lot of sense about how the mainstream media like to make a big deal over something which has no meaning towards it. However, I still believe that the content that he has posted on his account is also wrong. First of all, if someone is trying to make a video that is tended to be quite funny, they should be allowed to and if he isn't fussed about what he has posted, then no one else should get in front of him and hold him back or put him off doing so. On the other hand, I do believe that what he has posted is wrong to some extent but no one should retaliate towards him as it would just create a scene and therefore, create a negative atmosphere which could then put off the viewers of his YouTube channel.

19/02/17 - Are mobiles changing how we shop? (45)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/shopping-and-consumer-news/12172230/Are-mobiles-changing-how-we-shop.html

This article is about how technology is changing the way we are starting to buy products. Nowadays, we use our mobile phones to buy products which is the most used device for online shopping. In addition, researchers also stated in this article that there has also been a huge increase on the number of middle age users who have also started to use online shopping. May different spokesman have said that 'mobile is undoubtedly our fastest growing sales channel. Importantly though, mobile is becoming the glue between our shops and online". However, the article also discusses the different consequences with the fact that online shopping is starting to become extremely common; people are starting to become more 'fatter' which is a health concern as the customers believe that using the internet to do their shopping. To some extent, this is very true but also it isn't. Furthermore, the article also states the advantages of shopping online; the key advantage towards this is that you have a wider range of products to select from.

• A Mintel study of Christmas shopping habits found that only 37 per cent of those surveyed bought all or most of their presents online.
• According to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, which tracks trends in internet shopping, 66 per cent of visits to retail websites between November and January came through mobile devices. That compares with 53 per cent in the same period a year earlier.
• According to IMRG (Interactive Media in Retail Group), the trade body for internet retailers, 51 per cent of online sales between November and January in the UK involved hand-held devices rather than traditional computers or laptops.

In my opinion, I believe that, to some extent, online shopping is a good thing but also a very bad thing, especially for the health concerns. With online shopping, people start to become very lazy and therefore less customers would start to go out to do their shopping. I also believe that if there are more online consumers and the traditional consumers, more businesses will start to close as they wouldn't have any customers walking and buying products from their stores. However, the good things about online shopping is that we have the opportunity to pick from a wider range of products which isn't the case when you go into the shops. People also believe that it is a much quicker access as the consumers would have the opportunity to do other things if they are busy doing something else and don't have the time to go to the shops.

Feminism: blog task

1) Butler believes that traditional feminists are wrong to divide society into 'men' and 'women' and says gender is not biologically fixed. In this video, the audience manages to see two different types of females. One who is doing the so-called man's job, in repairing the car and the other of being a typical housewife. This reinforces Butler's idea on how the gender is not biologically fixed as we so a women doing two different types of jobs.

2) I believe that McRobbie would view Beyonce as an empowering role model for women, especially the teenagers in the things that she is doing throughout the video. First of all, she is wearing short clothes and feels really comfortable about her body. Therefore, this would come across the younger audience as powerful because they should feel the same way and don't care at all about what the others think. In addition, at the beginning we saw her repairing a car. Stereo typically, we would say that this is a man's job and no women should ever do something like this, but Beyonce challenges this stereotype by doing it and therefore, can also make the audience think twice about doing something even if they don't feel like it's their place to do so.

3) In my opinion, I believe that this video is mostly outlining and reinforcing the traditional 'male gaze'. First of all, Beyonce was always wearing some sort of tight outfit throughout the video which would be very attracting for the male gender as it is showing some sort of pleasure to them. Also, another thing which I find is also very pleasing to the male gender is the fact that she is repairing or doing something to the car at the beginning. Car's are something which the male audience enjoy and to see a women in a tight top standing and working on the car, is like a dream for the male gender.

Identities and the Media: Feminism

1) Read Playing With The Past: Post-feminism and the Media (MM40, page 64).

2) The two texts which this article focused on are the following:

• HBO's Pan Am
• Beyonce's music video - 'Why Don't You Love Me

3) From Beyonce, an example of the male gaze been shown is by the fact that you can see her using make up from the pictures provided in the article. The makeup shown is a key example of it makes them more attractive to the male gender. In addition, in the actual video, bras and knickers were also used  by the women as it also suggested that they were being very sexual and appealing to the male audience. Furthermore, from the text Pan Am, the male gaze has been shown also by what the four female models are wearing (pilot costumes - skirts etc). Although these particular skirts were more appealing to the men in the last 50 years ago, men now find that smaller skirts are more attractive to that particular audience.

4) Personally, I believe  that there is no such things as feminism in today's world. This is because of the fact that anyone has got the role to do anything they want to. Of course, there are certain things in which a male can do and a female cannot do and vice-versa, but in today's culture, lots are people can do things equally. For example, many  years ago we wouldn't expect a female to do a man's job, for example being a police officer but nowadays they are. So therefore, I believe that feminism doesn't count in this day and age and I believe that anyone can do anything.

5) Patriarchy - An ideology that places men in a dominant position over women.
Male Gaze - The gaze referring to Laura Mulvey's seminal article 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' which argues that main stream Hollywood films subject female characters to the 'male gaze' of the camera, fragmenting and objectifying their bodies.
Feminism - A movement aimed at defining, establishing, and defending women's rights and equality to men.

No More Page 3

1) No More Page 3 was started by Author Lucy-Anne Holmes in August 2012. The reason why it was started is because of the fact that there were many complaints for having a topless women on every single page 3 cover. In addition, the Author who started all of this once was reading the paper and then thought to herself that this is a 'man's world', where really it shouldn't be the case.

2) One of the key reasons in which Page 3 had to to go is because it was showing the women's body in a offensive way, as there wasn't any meaningful reason as to why this women had her picture taken and posted like this. Therefore, realizing that this was only there to pleasure the male gender and also demoralizing the female gender.

3) In this article from the guardian, Susie Boniface talked about how showing the nudity of women was almost a way of making them more powerful against the men. This showed that the gender didn't care about who would see it and did it to almost 'free' themselves. However, the other spokesperson Barbara Ellen, talked about how the Page 3 was disrespecting the female gender as it was a way to pleasure the male gender. In a follow  through answer, she said the following: " Page 3 is the Old Order – reeking of male dominance, of women as sexualised and neutralised objects (Stripping celebrities at least bring a sense of their public personalities)."

4 & 6) An example of an article from the website I chose is "Little Mixed Up About What To Wear?". This article was about talking about the outfits which the singing group were wearing and how it was like the page 3, in the sense that they were wearing little amount of clothing even though they were broadcasting live with the younger viewers watching. In my opinion, I disagree with this article simply because  of the fact that I believe that anyone should have the access of wearing whatever they wish to, of their own choice. Even though they may have been wearing something that a lot of the audience may not have approved off, it was still past the time which the younger audience shouldn't really be watching TV anyways, so I believe that it is only a matter of opinion but still believe that anyone should have the option to wear whatever they which to, as long as they feel comfortable in it.

5) Looking at the No More Page 3 campaign and the article that I was reading from the Sexist News website, I believe that, to some extent, they are very similar in the sense that they have similar views about what a female body should have covering themselves up with. They both believe that they shouldn't being showing too much of their own skin and should cover up themselves as much as they could. I can tell that this is coming from a women perspective as they may not like the fact that the female gender is almost downgrading themselves as you wouldn't see the male gender have pictures taken in a nudity manner etc.

7) In my opinion, I believe that there still is a need for feminism because even though life is completely different now compared to how things were 50-100 years ago, there are still many different aspects where people believe that women aren't getting the same treatment as what men may do. For example, power; people still believe that men are still more powerful in every aspect but nowadays, we see people like the PM of the UK who is a female but isn't getting that notification as what a person like Donald Trump is getting as he is now the President of the US. 

07/02/17 - Twitter accounts really are echo chambers, study finds (44)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/04/twitter-accounts-really-are-echo-chambers-study-finds

This article firstly started to talk about how politics and the internet are very similar with each other. It then carried on saying that a research carried out by Twitter users from parties such as Labour are tend to interact with each other more than the other different political parties. In addition, it started to talk about how on Twitter, different types of supporters would act differently on the social media sites, even by the things they may upload on their Twitter profile picture, said by a cognitive scientist at Sheffield University, Tom Stafford. It also showed a table under the headline 'Political user groups were found to re-tweet users who belong to their own group more frequently than those belonging to others'. So overall, this article manly was talking about the way in which all of these politicians use social media accounts, according to different types of research taken into account.

• More than three-quarters of retweets from SNP supporters and 73% of those from Ukip supporters were of someone from their own party. In contrast, the highest proportion of one party retweeting supporters of another – 32% – was between Tories and Ukip supporters.
• Labour supporters were weighted more heavily towards the Guardian, Independent, New Statesman, Mirror and Huffington Post, all of which Demos classes as centre-left or leftwing, and perhaps unsurprisingly accounted for 82% of shares from LabourList.
• The research was carried out by the thinktank Demos, which looked at the tweets sent between May and August last year by 2,000 people who have publicly stated their political allegiance on their profiles and who had at some point addressed a member of parliament in their tweets.

In my opinion, I really find this very interesting in terms of finding out how the people, we would hardly expect to use social media sites, use them. However, linking back to the title of this article, I disagree with it since I believe that they are not an echo chamber, to some extent. Echo chambers are defined as uncensored etc, but I believe that these politicians do like to try and hide some important information and keep it private and within the party itself.

07/02/17 - IMDb shuts down its message boards (43)

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/feb/06/imdb-shuts-down-message-boards

This article is talking about how the IMDb website has shut down its message board for users to make comments on. They (IMDb) believed that it wasn't creating a positive place for the users and included that there monthly users contain of 250 million. The message board allows different users to make their own discussions on the website and allowed a lot of other users talk on it to. Whether it was talking about the movie itself or other sequels they would want to recommend to others. In addition, a spokesman told the guardian that "The human brains like to make connections. Somebody spots a connection between two things ... you want to share that knowledge". This meant that when ever someone saw something that they may want to make reference to, they would have immediately done that with the message board but a lot of the things turned out to be very negative as there were many different critics out there with an opinion that wasn't encouraging for a lot of the other users.

• More specifically, the company – which was set up in 1990 by Bristol-based IT worker Col Needham and later sold to Amazon
• The message boards will be permanently disabled on 20 February, following a two-week transition period.
• In a statement on its website, the IMDb said it had “concluded that IMDb’s message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide”, and that the decision was “based on data and traffic”

In my opinion, I believe that getting rid of the message board for others to interact on was a bad idea. This is because of the fact that people don't have that much accessibility to the website and cannot, in result, have the option of putting out their opinions. The internet is all about have the freedom to discuss what they want to, even if someone found it negative. We have many different social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter where we have the option of having an opinion and sharing news etc. Therefore, I believe that this this shouldn't have happened considering this isn't showing the freedom which the users online should have.

Post-colonialism - bonus reading and tasks

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Page 66

1) Aisha Harris - This theorist argued that social media play a negative role in the construction of black identities, for example, in social media such as Twitter, we tend to see a lot of black people in "internet 'memes'". 

Giddens - This theorist argued that social media can be an arena for the construction of positive black identities. One example given from the article is 'The Blackout', which was a campaign involving the "celebration of blackness".

 Henry Jenkins - This theorist also argued that social media is an arena wherein 'participatory cultures' can be established. An example of this is another online campaign on Twitter called '#BlackTwitter', which challenges negative representations of black identity.

2) In my opinion, I believe that social media is a negative force when it comes to issues of black identity. Since I believe this, this is therefore linked to a theorist that was mentioned in the article, Aisha Harris. A key reason why I believe that it is a negative for because of the fact that the users, occasionally make 'fun of' black identities when it comes to social media and hardly ever target anyone else. This, in my opinion, makes the black identity vulnerable and therefore, some of the audience would feel sorry for them because they are occasionally the ones who have been targeted at by the audience.

3) The key theorist which links to the issue of social media and black identity is Alvarado. One of the key words which works well with this issue is humorous. A lot of things posted on social media related to black identity whether it's vines or memes, it tends to generate a lot of laughter. Therefore, I believe that humorous is a good way to describe this issue but to some extent, it does downgrade them which then can also link to pitied as they are shown to also be vulnerable.

Page 6

1) In the British press, a great deal of the language and the imagery has been hostile. Refugees are often labelled as migrants, to create the impression that they are travelling by choice, rather than fleeing a genuine disaster. In addition, they have been misrepresented as the refugees are described as swarm, horde or tide.

2) In my opinion, I believe that the documentary genre is less biased than the news media. As said in the article, documentary television can correct the overwhelmingly negative impression of refugees given elsewhere in the media, and the humanity of those at the sharp end of the world's conflict. With the documentary genre, they tend to focus more solely on the topic of the issue and therefore, the audience then understand the issue more .

3) Edward Said is a good post-colonial theory to link to the issue of representation of refugees. Said talks about the west against the east of the world and how the West over power the East as they also believe that they are more superior than them. Therefore, since the East side of the World contain the refugee's, this is why I believe that Said is a good theorist to mention, because the West is more powerful.

Post-colonialism: final blog tasks

1)  Alvarado - This is a theory which highly talks about the black community and how they have been represented, e.g. How we the audience would see them (Pitied - vulnerable, Dangerous - crimes, exotic - food, humorous - actors).

Fanon - This theorist is someone which described colonialism as essentially destructive and you can link some of what he says to diaspora identity. 

Said - This theorist explained that at the start of European colonisation the Europeans came in contact with the lesser developed countries and believe that they were more superior considering that they had the better lifestyles, e.g. In terms of wealth.

2) In my opinion, I believe that the opening of Yasmin created a positive and also a negative view of British Muslim. Firstly, it created a positive representation because in the clip, we saw that the main character was helping disabled children as it was her job. Even though we do see Muslim's in a negative way, this does create a positive sense of their representations as they are caring for others too even though the get 'grief' a lot. On the other hand, it creates a negative representation within the community itself as the beginning showed disrespect to the Muslim community because of the fact that the main protagonist was taking off her religious clothes and putting on 
more 'westernise' clothes. It almost shows a sense of downgrading their culture which will really effect those who are very religious and wear religious clothing everyday.  

3) 

Alvarado

This video is linked to Alvarado, as it is reinforcing the stereotype that the Black community is 'dangerous'. I believe this because it is talking about how this black man, had been suspicious of killing over 30 women across 20 years which is a frightening statistic and this is why I believe it is linked to Alvarado.

This is another clip which can be used in Alvarado's theory of dangerous, to some extent. Stereo typically, people believe that the black community are violent but in this case, it is doesn't show them to be as violent as what people may suggest of them. They have been shown to be very friendly and in this case, it shows them to be 'pitied'.

This is another video which is linked to Alvarado. But in this case, it is linked to humurous. Nowadays people find the black community very funny and not too serious and we can use Katt Williams as an example. He is a comedian and there are also other actors and comedians that are the same, e.g. Will Smith or even Kevin Hart.

Edward Said

I chose these three clips as I believe that they all have similar concepts of 'East vs West'. The thing which they all have in common is that they all are about these families that have come from either India or Pakistan and have moved over to England. For example, in East is East, a Pakistani family had moved to England and this Pakistani man had married this white women. This almost shows that the West is more superior than the East, because firstly, the East have moved to the West. In addition, in the East, we would see more traditional clothing but nowadays, we see the East wearing more Westernised clothing which links back to the fact that the West are more powerful.

Fanon

All of these videos are linked to Fanon's theory and the key word, 'decivilize'. In each video, it links to gangsta and pimp, as in all of these videos, it was creating a violent atmosphere. For example, Ill Manors was a movie on not allowing young people what they want and therefore, created the video of the young people violently ruining cities and looking like they are criminals.