https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l By Tessa Bunce en-us 2023-04-11 17:15:20 UTC 2026-02-01 16:52:58 UTC hello@padlet.com kittenkid98 https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2550688490 As a communications major, I'm excited for this class since it will be the launching point into my degree, field, and ultimately, my career. From a young age, I've been very passionate about film, TV, interactive media like video games, and short-form video content such as YouTube videos, which informed my decision to pursue this course and this degree. I've interacted with media as both a viewer/consumer and also as a creator, so I'm hoping to gain more insight from this course into both sides of content creation. I'm also particularly interested in the history of communication, since this is a huge gap in my knowledge of the field. On the other side of that, I'd like to delve into the future of communications technology, including current advancements and media trends.]]> 2023-04-11 20:30:18 UTC https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2550688490 kittenkid98 https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2550718949 In this print ad for Heinz ketchup, the denotative meaning is that a Heinz ketchup bottle is shown sliced up as though it were a tomato, complete with a stem on top and rounded base. The slogan "No one grows Ketchup like Heinz" is placed underneath the bottle. 

One connotative meaning is that Heinz ketchup is natural, since the bottle has the appearance and texture of a fruit instead of the expected plastic, a material often associated with poor quality, adverse health and environmental effects, and mass production. The use of the verb "grow" in relation to ketchup implies a natural production process by equating the tomatoes grown to make ketchup (only one of many ingredients) with the highly processed end product. The word "grow" might conjure up images of farming, sunny fields and gardens, as opposed to a word like "make", which could lead a viewer to think of factories and warehouses where processed food products are mass produced and bottled. 

The next connotative meaning is that Heinz ketchup is healthy. This comes from the focus of the ad being solely on tomatoes, obscuring the fact that ketchup is made up of many other ingredients, since it would not be beneficial to highlight any that might be undesirable or unhealthy in the eyes of a viewer. The spotlight being exclusively on the main fruit ingredient in the product implies that overall, ketchup must be healthy, since it looks to be made of nothing but fruit. Fruit is healthy, therefore ketchup is healthy.

A third connotative meaning is that Heinz ketchup is delicious, since the tomato-bottle looks juicy and is a bright, vibrant red, implying ripeness, lots of flavor and great, fresh taste. The slices make the product look ready to eat and enticing by showing off just a hint of the inside, as opposed to a whole tomato which is not conventionally bitten into whole.  

The myth created by this ad overall is that Heinz makes a natural, healthy and delicious product. This is because the implications of all the ad's elements come together to create an impression of the brand and product as freshly grown, simple and delicious, and good for your health.   ]]> 2023-04-11 21:18:50 UTC https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2550718949 kittenkid98 https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2550739464 After keeping track of the various forms of surveillance I experienced this week, I felt as though there was slightly more surveillance that I expected. For example, I had previously been under the impression that most of the tracking occurring in my apps, on my phone, or on websites was under my control; by this I mean that I would always be alerted to tracking and have to either opt in or opt out of it. However, one of the first things I noticed is that my phone's built in fitness app had been tracking my steps without me having set it up to do so, and google maps could generate timelines of my locations without me having explicitly enabled that feature. In these cases, I could of course opt out of these forms of tracking, but I found it interesting and somewhat surprising that opting in wasn't required - I was signed up for these features automatically without my knowledge. I also found that over half of the websites I visited alerted me that cookies would be used, and a third of them asked for my location. For some of these websites it seemed to at least make sense (news, shopping, or food delivery) but for several of them, a location seemed totally arbitrary (blogs and wikis).

Overall, I agree that we live in a panoptic society, however I believe that the forms of "normalcy" enforced by societies are constantly evolving and changing and often met with resistance by "counter-culture" or even revolutionary movements. For example, in the early to mid 20th century in the USA, attitudes of racial segregation were rampant and enforced at all levels of society, but pushback against these "norms" resulted in the civil rights movement and subsequent modern campaigns like Black Lives Matter. The same could be said of ongoing feminist movements and LGBT rights movements pushing back against standards of "normalcy" across the globe and ultimately changing those norms in many places. So although I believe that schools, family units, religious organizations, government bodies and media perpetuate a series of societal norms deemed acceptable by those in power (and often create fear in citizens for breaking the established mold), these norms are constantly evolving at the grassroots level and can ultimately gain enough momentum to change things like what constitutes a "normal" portrayal in media. My favourite recent example of this is the portrayal this year (2023) of a gay love story in HBO's The Last Of Us, which shows a willingness by a large and powerful media corporation to depict a family dynamic as normal that has only recently started to find acceptance in the eyes of most people and institutions. ]]> 2023-04-11 21:54:54 UTC https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2550739464 kittenkid98 https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2550760696 This week, I found that I used 2 different news platforms, and a variety of sources within those. My least used platform was the Google news feed on my phone and browser, which is kind of a "grab-bag" of news; mostly skewed to my interests, but included many sources I was unfamiliar with or featured topics that weren't relevant to me. Sometimes I would check up on this feed out of boredom or if a headline caught my eye, but otherwise I ignored it due it being a somewhat random assembly of other websites and blogs I didn't know or trust yet. The feed would take into account my browsing history, meaning most of the articles were tailored to my interests, but a handful of them were of no interest to me and so I would use the settings feature of the feed to toggle off those irrelevant sources.

Instead, the main platform for news I used was YouTube. There, I would check in once a day with a handful of YouTube channels whose creators I found likable, entertaining, and trustworthy to hear their specific coverage and analysis of various news stories and current events. Some of the questions I asked myself to assess their credibility were: do they cite their sources and provide links below or in their videos? Do they use sources that are reputable or not? Do they make corrections or admit mistakes pointed out by viewers? Do they engage appropriately with viewers and the public? My engagement with these channels was also heavily influenced by personal bias in terms of my political leanings; what news story was covered was rarely as important to me as how it was covered. If a social issue was being discussed, my investment in the coverage stemmed from the solutions proposed by the commentator, not just the content of the news story itself.

Ultimately, entertainment value and political bias are the main reasons why I personally gravitated toward consuming news commentary as opposed to news content itself. There are many well-established, large news organizations that I overall trust and respect for their high quality journalism (for example, I tend to trust CBC). However, I often find myself preferring news coverage that is both highly entertaining and digs below the surface of news stories to discuss the deeply rooted political causes at play. Sometimes, mainstream journalism can come across dry, repetitive, boring and surface-level (possibly in an effort to remain unbiased). On the flipside, news commentary is often designed to both entertain and inform an audience, as well as analyze the underlying social factors that lead to newsworthy events happening in the first place.  ]]> 2023-04-11 22:36:27 UTC https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2550760696 kittenkid98 https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2550788890 I chose to create a subvertisement of Subway's logo and slogan due to controversy surrounding the restaurant chain and its ingredients. In 2017, CBC's investigative journalism show Marketplace ordered testing done by Trent University on chicken from a variety of fast food restaurants including Subway. The results of the testing found that the chicken DNA of Subway's chicken pieces was only about 50%, with the other half being soy matter, compared to the acceptable 80-90% range found in chicken from other fast food chains like A&W and Wendy's. Subway has since sued the CBC for $210 million for defamation, but the case has been dismissed once already and is now entering appeal.

Since the exposé, Subway's quality standards with regard to their ingredients have been seriously questioned and scrutinized. I replaced the original slogan's word "fresh" with "whatever" to demonstrate a lackadaisical attitude on the part of Subway regarding how much of their food is real and includes the advertised ingredients. It also serves to invite the viewer to eat anything, without care for what they consume, in the same way that the restaurant does not care what food it is serving. This highlights how the original invitation to "eat fresh" is misleading and likely outright false on the part of Subway. ]]> 2023-04-11 23:28:00 UTC https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2550788890 kittenkid98 https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2552158156 Given that No Logo aired 20 years ago, I found it very interesting to compare the points raised as they applied to 2003 with branding today. One of the concepts that changed my perception of branding was the idea of "brand first, product second" in relation to marketing. The notion that selling a "lifestyle" is often more important than selling the associated physical item helps to explain why people often seem to turn brands into a component of their identity, instead of simply thinking about how an item might be useful or necessary. If someone buys one product, the success for that company isn't nearly as great as if the person becomes "loyal to the brand and sticks around to buy much more. I think this technique is still hugely prevalent today; for example, car companies showcase hobbies/activities in their ads (family time for SUVs, rugged off-roading for trucks, etc.) and sports-wear companies' ads show off people with traits like confidence, attaining goals, determination, perseverance and so on.   

I also found the idea of pre-emptive censorship interesting; it had never occurred to me that industries might change their product at the conceptual level to stay relevant and appropriate in the eyes of their distributors. This phenomenon reminded me a bit of revisions being made to films to meet age ratings or different versions being released to different audiences, but in this case, products being redesigned to match a brand's established image.

The most shocking moment of the video for me was discovering that Disney created a town, Celebration, in Florida. It really made me want to look into how that town is doing today and find out what the quality of living is like there. In concept, a brand-owned town sounds at best, ill-conceived and at worst, somewhat dystopian to me, so I think researching into it further could potentially be fascinating.

Another phenomenon noted by Naomi that I felt is still topical today is the unfortunate, continued existence of things like "export processing zones" and globally lacking labor standards. Sadly, brands today continue to underpay workers around the world, exploit children and attempt (in many places, illegally) to bust unions. Also timely was her discussion of the distinction between "real" and "practice" jobs, since this concept came under huge scrutiny during the pandemic as nearly all of the most essential roles (excluding healthcare) turned out to be all of those "training wheel jobs" and "teen-only" positions. Societal disdain for customer facing, front-line work was exposed as misplaced and even malicious, and I hope that going forward, this idea of there being a class of "practice" jobs continues to be criticized for attempting to legitimize low pay and poor working conditions.

Overall, I learned a lot from No Logo, and was excited to find out that the creator, Naomi Klein, is now a professor at UBC in Climate Justice. Beyond this screening, I'm hoping to seek out more of the work she's done in the 20 years since.

]]> 2023-04-12 21:28:55 UTC https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2552158156 kittenkid98 https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2552183312 The activism of Harry Potter fans in and around 2015 demonstrates that people's identities as individuals and members of society play a pivotal role in their interpretation of media, as is posited by reception studies. Fans decoded from the work a series of shared virtues and values, which then informed their decision to take action and demand that Warner Bros. meet those same values by refusing to sell chocolate that wasn't fair trade certified. Given that the movement was organized by a sizeable community of fans and not just one person, this also raises the question of whether something intrinsic to the media (the Harry Potter series in this case) appealed to certain identities, values and beliefs in the audience in the first place, causing more like-minded people to select those books to read. 

It was very interesting for me to read this case study now in 2023, since in the eight years since this first took place, activism attached to the Harry Potter brand has continued in the public eye. Fascinatingly, however, the values decoded from the work by Harry Potter fans have actually run up against opposition from the author of the work herself, leading to diametrically opposed causes being championed and funded by both fans and the author. Sadly, the author is a vocal and financial force in the effort to deny human rights to transgender people, but a sizeable portion of the Harry Potter fan base and many actors in the Harry Potter films are working towards the opposite cause: granting and upholding the human rights of trans people. This fundamental divide between author and fans seems to me to speak to the "death of the author" principle, which maintains that authors cannot control the messages decoded by the audience and ultimately the reception of a work may eclipse an author's intent or encoded message entirely.

In hindsight, recent analysis now being done on the original content of the Harry Potter books seems to have revealed a great irony in the author's apparent support of the 2015 campaign against child slavery. (In my opinion, this fresh wave of analysis likely comes on the heels of fans realizing and trying to make sense of the divide between what the author encoded into the work versus what they decoded out of it.) The irony comes from a portion of the 5th Harry Potter novel which is devoted to lambasting a young anti-slavery activist and her campaign to free a fictional race of characters from servitude. During this section, the author mockingly names the activist organization "S.P.E.W." and criticizes the activist character for not considering that the slaves are actually content with their lives and that freeing them would make them unhappy. Additionally, activism in general is portrayed as being annoying, obnoxious, and naïve.

Ultimately, this case study was a fascinating read from the perspective of 2023, given how the divide between fans and the author of the Harry Potter series has only grown wider since when it comes to political and social activism, and encoded vs. decoded meaning and values.     


]]> 2023-04-12 22:16:05 UTC https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2552183312 kittenkid98 https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2552220691 None of the models presented this week fully match my views, so I'll explore why for each one. In the case of the Hypodermic model, the theory presents the audience as homogenous, with each member presumably acting, thinking and feeling the same way about the presented media. While the case of the War of the Worlds radio broadcast demonstrates that media can cause very real fear responses in an audience at a mass scale, I don't think the takeaway should be that audiences are uncritical, but rather that the line between media and reality can be blurred under the right circumstances, deliberate or otherwise. The radio play was designed to sound like an actual radio broadcast, so listeners tuning in partway through might not be able to distinguish the theatre from a real radio program. To me, this seems like a breakdown of communication (the intended meaning of the work got lost due to formatting and presenting fiction as a if it was real) rather than an indictment of the audience's agency overall. I think this showcases that media can be highly influential and even manipulative, but not that audience members are any more likely to be manipulated by media than any other source of information and/or entertainment.

ln terms of the agenda-setting and cultivation theories, I think that to a certain extent news can give audiences an idea of what topics to think about or inform them of stories that networks are prioritizing, but at both ends of this process, the agenda-setting theory leaves out the factors involved in selection. For example, the theory doesn't consider that audience members have the agency to focus on or ignore topics based on their interests, and it doesn't delve into the factors that cause stories to be considered "newsworthy" in the first place. It also assumes that the news sets an audience's priorities, rather than that their priorities may have already been set by the time they tune into the news (or they may have tuned in precisely because they were already thinking about a given topic). The cultivation theory also sees viewers as passive; the assumption is that viewers will accept societies depicted on TV as derived from reality, but this assumes that audience members all watch TV uncritically and also fails to account for the many other influences that can and do shape people's perception of reality.

Lastly, the uses and gratification model seems to recognize that audiences select media actively rather than consume it passively, but it only asks what need media meets for people, rather than what variety of factors go into the selection and interpretation of media. It assumes that function or "need" is the only factor that exists or maybe is worth looking at, when many other influences could exist to inform a person's decision to seek out media.    ]]> 2023-04-12 23:25:11 UTC https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2552220691 kittenkid98 https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2552226180 The most important thing I learned from this course was that that media is powerful, influential and pervasive - a massive, constant part of our lives - but that audiences are also active, engaged, and influential in many different ways. Media and audiences seem to have a cyclical relationship of influence on each other, and I think this has only become more evident as the lines have blurred between media consumer and creator in recent years with the advent of things like social media. This was evidenced through the example of fan driven activism from the 2015 case study, as well as the many grassroots movements highlighted in the No Logo documentary making use of culture jamming techniques. Previously I assumed that media shapes identities and worldviews - and it certainly plays a role in that - but on the other hand, our existing, evolving identities and worldviews can likewise influence and inform our choices about what media to engage with and why.

This course has made me much more cognizant of my role as an active audience member, which in turn has encouraged me to explore the reasons why I might select to engage with certain media and not with others. It has also prompted me to be more aware of media influences I never used to think about before, such as surveillance and advertisements. I always assumed that I would only be influenced my media I selected for myself, without realizing that many other messages are directed at me from many different sources - all designed to inform, persuade, or entertain to varying degrees. Overall, I feel much more informed about my role as an audience member to both encode and decode messages, and the roles of the many other local, national and even global parties engaging in the same processes (governments, advertisers, film producers, social media personalities, etc.) I now feel more prepared to receive all of the many messages that come my way 24/7 and actively evaluate and understand them more deeply.]]> 2023-04-12 23:33:56 UTC https://padlet.com/kittenkid98/i9p35twa2ib7j92l/wish/2552226180