Voice out Loud through media !

Mass Communication
It is always an interesting topic to talk about as now mass media have been part of us as it is playing a big part in our daily life. We did watch television; listen to radio and even internet which is a new media nowadays. Those are act as a channel to transmit medium to us, and this medium has the power to change the way we live and experience the world. Moreover, the functions of media are to give us surveillance, correlation, cultural transmission, and entertainment. It taught us the trends and the important issues that happening around the world as you all know time are precious to us, media can help us to shorten the time we spend for finding information. However, we need to take a balance between bad and good sources.
In media communication theories it explain the effects of mass communication which means how they influences us and explain the role of the mass media in shaping values, world views and world fair.
Remember what Ms Hui ask us how media influences us? Many students have suggested a lot of things; most of them said media influences us in good and bad ways. Actually, personally I feel that media can influences many ways especially the way we talk and the language we used.
Of course, in Singapore, language used in media will not influenced us in a bad way, as Singapore’s media are partial controlled by government, language and information they used are guided.
Being a Hongkie, I have noticed that now Hong Kong has a trend of using improper Chinese in the lifestyles magazines. They can create new words when the words do not even exist in the dictionary as it is not controlled by government and they need interesting gimmicks to build up the sales. This can influence teenagers especially when they are writing composition and even the way they talk, if they are not talk like that they will be seen as totally “uncool”. This is a big issue in Hong Kong’s education; many teachers and parent are worrying that once the teenagers used to write in improper Chinese, it will affect their writing skills in the future. Now, the teachers are trying to correct their way of writing as much as they can in school and for the parents they are giving their children more newspaper for reading, however this issue has been posted in the media (newspaper) and have been acknowleged.
I think they should not use verbal languages for writing in the magazines, especially words that are not in the dictionary. They maybe want to bring up interesting stuffs but to me by using proper Chinese can also give the same effects just like Singapore’s magazine.

However, it maybe wrong to use improper language, but the idea of freedom of speeches is popular in Hong Kong. They can discuss any issues that happened around them in the media which I strongly support it. I believed freedom of speech are important to us and the media, through media act as a third party iwhich let us voice out our own opinions(minority views) to the issues especially politics, economics that happened in that country and not only majority views. What do you think?

Culture

http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/thehousebunny/

To me, this words means that the different kind of people, the way of living and perspective of life are different although they maybe the same races. Especially culture is learned from young and they are shared from generation to generation. Therefore, I believed that every family or group has it own different culture.

Watched House Bunny this weekend, it was a comedy. However, from there I saw the culture different from each sorority group in the movie and how culture influences each other. The story goes by Shelley as a main character in the movie; she is living a carefree life until a rival gets her tossed out of the Playboy Mansion. With nowhere to go, fate delivers her to the sorority girls from Zeta Alpha Zeta. Unless they can sign a new pledge class, the seven socially clueless women will lose their house to the scheming girls of Phi Iota Mu. In order to accomplish their goal they need Shelley to teach them the ways of makeup and men at the same time. The combination leads all the girls to learn how to stop pretending and start being themselves.

In this movie, the group Phi Lota Mu has a unique culture that new students love to join them as culture can affects language and social organization. For Zeta Alpha Zeta they always are the unattractive group of girls which other people thinks that they are freak. However, in order to save their house they need to attract thirty girls to join their group and coincidentally Natalie (one of the members in Zeta) met Shelley who has been moved out of the Playboy mansion. Shelley had persuaded the seven clueless women to change their culture and style in order to suit everyone. As culture is dynamic, it is constantly changing as cultural contact increases; old ways of doing things change and people learn the new behaviors. Also, intercultural communications allow people to access to experience other cultures which can enrich one personal level. In this case, Shelley serves as a new culture to them as they communicated, they exchange culture and they decided to change their style to be more feministic and the Zeta girls also taught her that not all men like the appearance, they also need women who can talk with them.

In this movie, they also show the collectivist cultures too as they believe that it is right to subordinate personal goals for the good of others where their goal is to attract new students to join Zeta rather than individualism. They tried hard to change their styles and they win the group Phi Lota Mu but they slowly feel that they have change to another person like Phi Lota Mu which only judge people from their appearance and they blamed Shelley as the one who changed their group culture, however, they realized that Shelley and them should stop pretending and tried to be themselves. Personally, I feel that it was true that people should just be their selves and should not try to change to suit others.

I enjoyed watching this movie; it was so funny in some of the scenes and it really shown that between people, each of us has cultural differences. I feel that people group together as they shared the same culture. So don't you think that people that we alaways with actually have the same family background?However, we still can get along with people who are different from us, as we are human beings we can adapt to different cultures.

KEEP GOING !

Keepwalking. Asia
Did anyone saw these advertisements before? I am not sure whether these advertisement are shown in channel 5 or 8 but I did see it in AXN channel (SCV)
This is the link for the advertisements episodes.

http://www.keepwalking.asia/

Basically, these advertisements are about promoting Johnnie Walker Black label Scotch whisky. From the advertisements which is in a serials form, they shown the effectiveness of group communication. In these advertisements, they show group communication from their friendship.
In these few advertisements, Jason, Mike, Jack and Tim are friends since young and now they are became business partners. The main character in these advertisements is Jason who is the dreamer (initiator-contributors in task roles) where Mike is the encourager in maintenance roles as he is the oldest among the group, he always encourage Jason to persuade his dream which is become a filmmaker. For Jack, he is a joker which plays as a harmonizer in the group and lastly for Tim, he is a follower in the group as he always listened and did what others say.

In the first episode, Jason was surprised that he was being fired by his friends in the architectural company as he has been working so hard for the company and Jason know that group synergy are important for building up a company especially he know that he should stay on as group can meet member’s interpersonal needs. In this case, the group shows the need for affection (they have developed a close, caring relationship with others). However, this decision is made because the friends are supporting him for persuading his dream after Jason has committed to help out the company for the last three years.

Moving to episode 2, the friends gave supports to Jason by not disturbing and motivate him as he can not produce any script.
However, I think from episode 3, it can see really that no one can stand alone without anyone helping. In episode 3 when individual vs. group, Jason was under a lot of pressure as his script was stolen and the movies can not be produced but when he told his group of friends about the problem, the group of friends really shown a full support which is by their action (e.g. took out all the money they have and even Tim’s precious car). I feel that if one person is facing a lot of problems, a true friend can lend you a hand in that moment and problems can be solved easily.
In episode 4, it only has the trailer which is only have 17 seconds but to me this is the most meaningful advertisement for group communication. From the trailer it says that “Walking alone. You go faster.” But when “Walking together, you go further.” I think this is the idea of group communication, it not only influences each other to meet their needs but when doing something together it is easier for the dream to come true.

Interpersonal Communication

i am sorry that i cant upload any video about the movie as there are some errors.

However, people who are interested can go

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=itsmoviemania&search_query=50%20first%20dates

L.O.V.E
What is love? How individual involved into relationship? Usually people do not know how. To us we just get into relationship by natural or break up as we can not get well together. In this chapter (interpersonal communication), I just learned that actually there are five steps on how we get into a relationship and the five steps on how people break up which is the Knapp Model of Relational Development.

I just re-watched 50 first dates as Ms Hui asked us to watch during the weekend for the communication exam. To me, this movie is quite romantic as the male leading role (Harry) continued to love the girl (Lucy) although she got a symptom that she will forgot everything when she take new information.

This movie can applied the five steps (coming together) exactly, it started as Harry was known as a flirt guy and he did not want to make any promises to the women that he dated which is no commitment and bonding. However, by accidentally he met this girl Lucy in an island when his ship was spoiled, and was attracted by her action (kinesics, body movement)

As he watching her action, he decided to make a move (initiating) by helping her to solve the problem about the “pancake house’s door”. After that they started to have a small talk about what they are working as and so on, which is the stage 2 (experimenting ) in Knapp Model.

Oreo! get a taste of it and start a relationship!

Source: Channel 5 (Oreo Commercial)
Taken from: YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl95nIN3Jx8&feature=related

Although it was shown for quite a while but recently I saw it again on Channel 5. As you all know Oreo ads are quite interesting and mostly related to children and parents which I think they are their target audiences.

Let’s watch this video, (I believe most of us watch it before in Singapore)







Basically, this ad is about the relationship of a son and dad (who work oversea). Although they did not have face to face communication but they are using technology like webcam and the Oreo biscuits are act as a connection or link with the two of them.
In the beginning of the ad, the son and the dad are using facial expression and body movements to send a message which are nonverbal communication but in the ending part the son laughed and they said good night to each other these are verbal communication. Through this ad we can see that verbal and nonverbal communications are part of a whole.For the nonverbal communication, they used paralinguistic (silence) and Oculesics (eye contact) to communicate and used Oreo as a physical object to convey the message to the audiences.

Personally, my perception of parent is that we need to listen or imitated them, so-called learning from their experiences but in this ad I found that it was the dad who are trying to imitated his son by following his son eating habits of Oreo. (First, split the Oreo biscuits, second, lick the cream, then close it back and dip inside the milk.)

I think it is the form of exchanging information, which relationship between people and interaction with other people can allow us to exchange our thoughts, ideas, experiences and personal opinions. In this ad it is the son teaching his dad how to eat his favorite biscuits. So, I think exchanging knowledge can be in different ages no matter how old or how young you are. This can be used as a management although the dad is in oversea but then they used webcam to communicate to maintain a relationship (son and father).

However, the main focus of this ad is Oreo cookies; the message of this ad (which I interpret myself) is that the Oreo cookies can link the relationship of people, can be topics that give people to talk about. Have you all notice that Oreo cookies ad always related to parent, kids, dogs and friendship? I think they wanted to focus that this foods are a connection with people.

OK! Shall we eat a piece of Oreo now?

Perception (What is your idea of perception?)

Source:The New Paper ( Friday, 5 September 2008) without or within beauty

What is your idea of beauty? Inner beauty or external appearance?

This week I came across an article about defining beauty. Basically, this article interview two women who have different views of beauty which one supports on inner beauty and another one supports on external appearance.

For Ms Charmaine Choo, 21, she feels that her external appearance is crucial to her life; she feels that first impressions count the most which is persistence of first impression in communication. To her, she thinks that if you are well-dressed, people will think you have self-discipline which she based on personal construct (psychological). Example that she give for first impression was relationship; she feels that when guys first see you, they don’t care about your character, only your looks which is figure that we focus our attention on. So guys, are it true?

Personally, I feel that we should not base on how the guys looked at us; we should be ourselves and have our own characteristic.
For her, she define beauty is to have silk hair and big eyes with long eye lashes, while I believe the weight/size of the body also count. I believed these selections can be influences by our past experience, environment, social network and mass media. In Ms choo case, her beauty inspirations come from the movies, where she notices what the stars wear and how they are made up and also from people watching at Orchard Road which are all influenced by the environment she lived in and the mass media.

However, some may think inner beauty is more important than physical appearance as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Ms Lim May Ann, 28; who enter a plain photo (which had no make up and her hair was not styled) to a Beauty Redefined photo competition (where the organizers are looking for creative interpretations of beauty, not the “anorexic” sort, as depicted in movies and fashion magazines), claims that the traditional idea of beauty seen in stick-thin models with long, endless leg and nice body like 36C-cup chest and 19-inch waist which are the perception we have for a long time is ridiculous which I think so too. For Ms Lim, beauty is not what is on the surface, it’s what’s within, as what she said, and “There are different types of beauty. Standards of beauty shift through the years, and in this age where modern society is flatulent with excess, being thin is beauty because it is scare.” which are personal constructs (physical), this are also influenced by the social network. For her, children are beautiful because they are always living in the moment and are always enjoying themselves wholeheartedly.


Additionally, the most important message that this article want to rise was the health issues, it was to let Singaporean realize that a healthy, natural body is a beautiful body. In my opinion, I feel that the problem stems from the images presented in the media as young people are being bombarded every day with digitally-altered photographs and advertising that make them feel that being pretty or handsome are the most important things and this lead to sickness like eating disorders, beauty treatments and depression among women because of negative body image. I believed this is the issue we need to concern about nowadays.

Movie Review on Wall-E

Office site: http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/wall-e/

Andrew Stanton, an Academy Award®-winning writer-director had produced a new animation called WALL-e. In this animation, the leading role is the robot Wall-e (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) which is programmed to clean up the planet "Earth", where Earth have become a "garbage planet". However, after 700 hundred years of cleaning he developed a personality and curiosity of his own. The second leading role is EVE which is a robot sent to Earth on a classified scanning mission which is to find plant. The content of speech which is logos is interesting because Andrew Stanton had made these robots personalise which they have the ability to think and have emotion.



The show started off with a song to introduce the universe and slowly focused on the Earth and on Wall-e this made all the audiences focused on the big screen. In the beginning, it "robot" languages shown that he was curious on things that can be used and he will keep them in his "home", also when he feel scared he will keep shivering, and he seems to be very lonely. After hundreds of lonely years WALL•E discovers a new purpose in life when he meets a sleek search robot named EVE. Wall-e was attracted to Eve and he tried to impress Eve by making a fake robot; however he felt depressed when she walked away and when Eve was hibernating he shown anxiety. This is the emotion he developed which is pathos in communication.

Additionally, when Eve was hibernating he took care of her and tried all the possibility to wake her up. I feel that this is very touching, this shows that Andrew Staton made the robots to have a caring action and humans like us, we also need to concern other people too.
The style and delivery of the movie, lexis, by the both robots were using nonverbal communication as most of the time they did not speak. Andrew Staton has managed to use actions, and music to bring out the feeling of the robots.

In the later part of the show, Eve found the plant and went back to Axiom (where the entire human lived). In Axiom, humans there used robots to do all the jobs and they just sit on a moving chairs with a screen in front of them which allowed them to communicate to each other and moving around without walking. Communicated by the screen will discourage them to have transactional communication. I think face to face communication were important for human beings if not we will neglect the things that happen around us.

However, beside all these, personally i feel that the most important message that Andrew Staton wanted to send out to the audiences by using this channel (the movie) was that we need to save our earth by applying the 3R method, Reuse, Recycle and Reduce in order not to make Earth become a garbage planet. I feel that this is the most important message for everyone now.

From the movie, we can see that pathos and ethos are used by the two robots and the important message like saving the environment not only can send through medium like newspaper, television and website but also animated movie on the big screen. haha