on Media & Global Change

www.salzburg.umd.edu

PARTICIPATING INSTITUTIONS

American University of Beirut (Lebanon)

American University in Sharjah (UAE)

Bournemouth University (UK)

Makerere University (Uganda)

Hofstra University (USA)

National Institute of Education (Slovakia)

Polytechnic University of Namibia (Namibia)

Pontificia Universidad Catolica (Argentina)

Pontificia Universidad Catolica (Chile)

Quaid-i-Azam University (Pakistan)

Stellenbosch University (South Africa)

Syracuse University (USA)

Tsinghua University (China)

Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico)

University of Maryland, College Park (USA)

University of Miami, (USA)

University of Texas, Austin (USA)

Zayed University (UAE)

Generation Mobile

How much do we really need to know?

PART ONE: Something Fishy going on…

Case: Fishy Business in Boston…

So, how do we see food and consumption in light of true

enough?

5 A’s for Understanding Audiences

ACCESS to media

AWARENESS of context, value, narrative

ASSESSMENT of how media portray events and issues

APPRECIATION for community, dialog, conversation

ACTION to encourage more understanding of audiences and their identities

“We simply steer clear of information that contradicts what we think we know. This is selective exposure. It says, simply, that in an effort to avoid the cognitive dissonance that comes out of receiving news that challenges our beliefs, we cunningly select the messages we consume” (30).

Selective Exposure

Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The "ideas" or "cognitions" in question may include attitudes and beliefs, and also the awareness of one's behavior. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, or by justifying or rationalizing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors

Food, Media, & US

• The tradeoff between long term ideas (I may gain weight) and immediate impacts (coke tastes good) are not fundamentally how humans think…

• Brain waves work differently for screwdrivers than they do for doughnuts, or the Big n’ Tasty…

Humans are conditioned:

• Sugar• Fat • Salt (which was not design to be

eaten)

Hyper Targeting audiences…

The Economics of Child Advertising

In the United States, Saturday morning cartoons alone come with 33 commercials per hour.

Commercials aimed at kids spend 55% of their time showing boys building, fixing toys, or fighting.

They show girls, on the other hand, spending 77% of their time laughing, talking, or observing others.

And while boys in commercials are shown out of the house 85% of the time, more than half of the commercials featuring girls place them in the home.

One study of Saturday morning toy commercials found that 50% of commercials aimed at girls spoke about physical attractiveness, while none of the commercials aimed at boys referred to appearance.

And there is the “organic” debate…

What does organic mean?According to the USDA: Organic food is produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations. Organic meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation. Before a product can be labeled "organic," a Government-approved certifier inspects the farm where the food is grown to make sure the farmer is following all the rules necessary to meet USDA organic standards. Companies that handle or process organic food before it gets to your local supermarket or restaurant must be certified, too.

What do these words mean:Free Range?

Natural? Hypoallergenic?

Biased Assimilation

“People tend to interpret and understand new information in a way that accords with their own views….

….sometimes getting more information about a controversy doesn’t produce a better foothold on the facts—sometimes, strangely, more information actually pushes us deeper into the cocoon of our long-held views” (150-151)

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions and to avoid information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs

Case: Water

PART TWO: How we understand: Social

Reality & behavior

Social Reality

“When many people around us feel that a certain thing is right or true—whether it concerns the combat-readiness of a division, the propriety of eating cow hearts, or even, indeed, whether John Kerry acted heroically during war—that group belief becomes, for each of us, an idea that we, too, take as fact” (53).

Awareness, “Truth”, & Images?

“All images are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

For ExamplePhotographer frames eventPhoto editor

selects image, crops image, manipulates color, contrast, etc

Editor chooses what page and wherePage 1 or page 13, above the fold or below the fold

Layout designer tinkers with size (large, small) and location (left, right)

Contexts are always “framed”

Ask yourself:What is included?What is left out?What language is used?

Tsunami Photographs

What the New York Times decided

• 4:30 pm, Dec. 27, 2004: Page One meeting Considered 900 images

• How to evaluate those photos: How many dead? Who are they? How to communicate scale of event to Americans?

• Responsibility of newspaper as seen by editors To bear witness To tell “truth”

Tsunami Photographs