As a Communication and Media Studies major in my first year, I am very eager to learn about everything COMS 201 has to offer. I am specifically excited to learn how media works in our society and the effects it has on individuals and groups. I am interested in this course because as a society with a growing social media presence, I believe it is important for us to know the effects it has on us. It is also important that we can identify the benefits and the consequences of this growing field in order to utilize it to our benefit while being cautious of the negative impacts it may bring. I am most excited about the topics of theories of media effect, advertising, and news making. This is because I am eager to know about what happens behind the scenes as someone who has been an active consumer of media all my life. 

              In the early 1900s, long after confederation, Canada struggled to have a distinct national identity due to many external factors such as The United States. This posed concerns of American culture “spilling over” to Canada; diluting Canada’s own national identity. This was a poseable concern as The United States was very close geographically. Due to the close proximity of the two countries, it is only natural for trade and media connections to occur. Moreover, the Canadian government put more investment in telecom infrastructure while Canadian companies were producing insufficient amounts of Canadian content which resulted in a lot of American content being present in Canada. 

              To fix this issue, Canada used two colonial media systems in order to build Canada’s own distinct national identity. The first system was the Broadcasting Act. This act was established in 1932 by Prime Minister R.B. Bennett to ensure full Canadian control of media broadcasting with media from national sources without foreign control. This act consisted of terms where the broadcasting system should only be in Canadian content. This act created the Canadian Broadcasting Commission which is now known as the CBC. This act was effective in creating Canada’s identity as it built ideas of what it means to be Canadian through the government’s control of what was being put out in the media. 

              The second colonial media system that helped construct Canada’s identity was the use of radio as a strategy for nation-building. The intention behind this was to communicate national concerns and spread national thought to the people of Canada. This was effective as through listening to the radio, citizens felt connected and were able to easily access news on the country. The government was also able to effectively implement what they wanted to represent as Canadian identity. Overall, both of these media systems were able to build Canada their own national identity in times when Canada had an indefinite identity. 

              I think that the mix of limited effects and uses and gratification theories align with my views the most. I believe that in our current society and how people use social media is very diverse. The limited effects theory partially corresponds with my own ideas as I agree that as consumers, we have grown to be passive in terms of the way we spend our time on media and how it affects us. For example, social media addiction has become a growing concern for people of all ages all over the world.  It is most often seen in children and teenagers as they are stuck to their phones and the media they consume on a daily basis like youtube, netflix, instagram, and tiktok. Not only do people spend so much time on social media aimlessly scrolling, it has become extremely easy to influence viewers with the media. An example of this is how fast beauty products sell out once they are trending on tiktok, indicating how easily influenced people are into spending money. 

              However, I do not agree that society is only passive when consuming media. I also believe that consumers use media to gratify certain needs and wants and use media to their own advantage, meaning the audience is not just passive but has control of their media presence and use. For instance, small businesses utilize the power of social media to their advantage by marketing their business with trends such as sounds. People also use the media to gratify their needs and wants by connecting with people, entertainment, and to relax. To conclude, although audiences can be seen as passive with their ability to be easily addicted and lose control of media, they use the media for their own gains which is why I believe that both limited effects theory and uses/gratification model relate to my own views.

              A culture jam is the transformation of an image and the message of it to critique the original meaning such as subvertisements. A subvertisement is a new version of an ad that is usually satirical or made in attempts to deface the original version to criticize the brand or message. Culture jams are often used to disrupt, gain attention, or critique something and are presented to be humorous or ironic in attempts of media disruption. For this week’s journal entry, I designed my own culture jam on a topic that is present in today’s society and more importantly, a topic I am passionate about.

              The original advertisement had a text saying “This is no shape for a girl” with a pear image, implying that the pear body shape is not acceptable; contributing to the issues of stereotypes and body image issues that many young girls have today. It is also important to note that this ad was put out by a gym franchise in an attempt to encourage women to go to the gym as well. However, this only capitalizes on women’s insecurities and creates more issues to existing problems of body image and eating disorders. To subvert this company and its message that it is extremely problematic, I changed the wording of the ad so that it says “There is no shape for a girl” to completely flip the message of the advertisement. I also decided to add a face to the pear and a speech bubble with the text inside to instead encourage women and girls to eat. The issues raised by my culture jam are the topics of the unrealistic beauty standards of women, stereotypes, eating disorders, and feminism.

              With the evolution and ever-growing presence of media (social media specifically), surveillance has become necessary for both security and the economy. For example, the government monitors behaviour on social media to block any kind of crime such as fraud and hate. Media companies also gather data of their users to sell to marketing companies, this is known as the audience commodity in which the audience is a product that can be sold (as discussed in week 7 lecture). It's important to know the ways in which we are subject to surveillance as it can be a problem of privacy. For this journal entry, I have thought about ways in which we are observed throughout the week. 

              The ways I have thought about how we are subject to surveillance is through CCTVs and social media (liking, posting, viewing, commenting, etc.). However, from these two ways of surveillance, the monitoring on social media made me think the most as we are on social media for hours a day. Yet, as a collective society, we don’t realize we are being supervised when we like, post, comment, retweet, and more as these actions have become a habit. This surprised me as the amount of surveillance, specifically on social media today, is more than I thought as everything we do on social media platforms are being monitored at all times. In addition, I believe that we tend to forget how much time we invest in social media on a daily basis which contributes to the great amount of social media surveillance. However, even with all of this monitoring, I do not think we live in a panoptic society as cyber-crime is very common such as cyber-bullying. Although we are under surveillance when we use social media, people tend to forget about digital footprints and the security of social media apps. 

              Media policy consists of legislations and regulations that create policies in order to make sure that media for the society and citizens including both users and creators of media. These policies are made by national and regional governments to ensure this. It is important to study media policy as it expands one’s understanding of how policies, laws, and regulations are made for communication. Media policy is crucial especially in today’s society due to how social media dependent we have all become. Due to the high frequency of usage and how impactful the media is, it is fundamental for rules to be put in place to minimize the negative effects. For example, as there is a rise in younger generations on social media, it is important that there are policies to prevent inappropriate content from being shown and for the safety of users. 

              Media policy serves many different purposes for both users and creators. One of the purposes served is the protection of individuals’ rights. The protection of privacy, prevention of hate crimes and inequality. Another purpose served by media policies is that they ensure the reliability, authenticity, and validity of media outlets. To prevent consequences like misinformation and fake news, rules put in place allow people to rely on certain media outlets as we know they are sharing authentic information like the CBC News, Global News, and the Weather network. Media policies allow for the media to be a useful and safe platform of production, entertainment, and resources. 

              Now, those are a few generalized purposes media policies serve for everyone all over the world. Let’s take a look at what media policies do specifically for Canada and Canadians. Firstly, the Massey Commision from 1945-1951 served the purpose of examining Canada’s state of arts and culture with the intentions of overcoming challenges of large size geographically and scattered population. Soon the Applebaum-Hebert Commision followed in 1981-1982 after the economic recession with the purpose to extend the study of cultural programs from the federal government. This allowed for findings of how multiculturalism was an advantage to Canada as a nation. 

              For this week's journal entry, I paid attention to my news consumption as of recent times. Firstly, I would like to point out that I am not actively watching the news as I should be. I noticed that I tend to get a lot of my information from social media as I rarely go out of my way to search for articles or watch the news. This means that my primary sources of news are social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter which are not reliable at all unless they are posted by verified broadcasting news company accounts like CBC News’ Instagram page. Social media posts on news are not very reliable as they can be posted by anyone about anything.

              Information from social media is very subjective instead of objective as people tend to share their own opinions on social media. The gatekeeping of this information has not been completed. This affects the credibility and reliability of these sources. Although news on social media can be very unreliable, information from broadcasting and news companies is only reliable up to a certain extent. News from these big companies can be easily tainted because of things like monopoly ownership. In this case, it is argued that corporate monopolies negatively affect the quality of news due to economic interests. 

              This week's journal entry helped me heavily reflect on my personal news consumption and the news consumption of our society as a whole. Unreliable sources and information are all over us and it is very easy to gain misinformation due to the convenience and habits we present with social media. It is important that we take our time to keep up with the news with credible sources like news companies. However, it is also crucial to remember that these sources could also be providing their viewers with tainted news.

              For this final journal entry, I was able to look back and reflect on all of my previous journal entries as well as the course itself. Personally, as a student who is majoring in Communications and Media Studies, I was already interested in this field of study and it was very interesting to learn about the history of media, the impacts of media, and how media works. The most recent journal entry contained the most important thing I learned this term. I learned the importance of news making, news consumption, and understanding what goes on behind the scenes. I found this to be compelling as it helped me reflect on my media consumption and how our society has changed with new media trends. Social media is extremely convenient, making it a common source of news. However, this is extremely unreliable and makes it easy for people to share subjective news. After that journal entry, I became more conscious about my news consumption and made an effort to keep up with news from reliable sources regularly. 

              Learning about the audience commodity challenged what I thought about the economic power that media companies hold. Previous to this course, I never thought about how impactful the media industry was to the economy. However, after learning about the audience commodity, I became more aware of what kind of information we share online and how personalized the algorithm is. The media and communications are such an important field in today’s society as it impacts everything. Communications and media studies hold great power as the media becomes more prominent and the industry continues to grow in the future. 

              This course significantly impacted my approach to communications and media in my own life as well as my future. Through the knowledge gained from this course, I was able to be more conscious about my use of social media and my media consumption. Although this field of study was something I wanted to pursue for my career, I was still very unsure about whether it was right for me and if it would be useful for the upcoming generation and society. Through this course, I was able to learn that I am still very interested in this major and that I do want to learn more about it. This contributed to my motivation for my academics and my future career. I am very grateful that I could take this course and even more grateful that I enjoyed it.