Pop Culture

Popular culture is an expression of our collective experiences as a society. They are societal  ideas and values that are transmitted to the audience through a wide range of different mediums including advertisements, social media, TV, etc. Media messages are contracted in creative ways on creative mediums such as those listed above, or mass media overall. However, the process of it is invisible to the audience. For example, people create social media accounts for free, they like things and gain followers or vice versa. Although the audience may not be aware of this, these social media companies are actually making money despite it being free to users. This is because with all the things that are liked by the users, which implies their interest, companies are able to create data and demographics of their users and throw advertisements on them based on their likes. This is how mass media industries such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. are selling their audience to advertisers, which allows them to make millions of money. Just like the saying, "You are what you like". What a person likes on social media has become their identity and defines who they are. As said before, popular culture is an expression of our collective experiences as a society. This means that our ideas and values are represented by the mass media and we are able to learn other culture's ideas and values through the media. However, because pop culture and mass media conveys the same messages to the audience, they start to lack their authenticity and become just like everyone else. 
Pop culture also manipulates the behavior and values of their audience. Likes, follows, friends, retweets, etc. defines an individual as it becomes their identity. They are the currency of the new generation. For example, when an individual earns a certain number of likes or followers, they would create interpretations and assumptions based on that. So if they would gain less likes on their posts, they would interpret that as if they are not likable or vice versa if they would gain many likes enough which shows that individual create meaning in media messages through interpretation.

Comments

  1. UnknownJanuary 31, 2018 at 8:11 PM

    What you wrote is good, I liked how you linked it to things said from the video we watched, as well as using a lot of examples throughout the text, you talked about how companies make money through us, and I liked how you what this means for us, and how we benefit from it, while also it's bad for us. I agree with your last idea on how individuals create meaning in media messages through interpretation since I do it myself.
    You could improve by talking more about the politic and economical points in a media message.

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  2. UnknownJanuary 31, 2018 at 8:21 PM

    You explained the four core concepts of media analysis in a good amount of detail. I appreciate the part where you said "Likes, follows, friends, retweets, etc. defines an individual as it becomes their identity." as it is true that likes have become the currency of the new generation and are used to validate someone or their opinion on something. However, I think you could've done a better job of explaining how studying pop culture deepens understanding of the four concepts of media analysis since you've mostly just explained those four aspects instead of correlating them with pop culture. I appreciate your post overall and think you did a good job :)

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