popular culture

One pro of social networking is that social media sites help students do better at school. 59% of students with access to the internet use social media to discuss educational topics and 50% use sites to talk about assignments. It is interesting to think about social media in an educational purpose instead of for posting for social reasons. This came from the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology in January of 2015. Since these statistics came from a psychology journal it is a very reliable source because not just anyone can get their findings published in a journal. One con of social networking is students who are heavy social media users tend to have lower grades. 31% of teens say that using social media during homework reduces quality of work. This seems like common sense to me but I would have expected the percentage to be much higher. This came from commonsensemedia.org in 2015. On the website it says that they help families make smart media decisions. This makes me questio...

I researched the movie Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising and expected to find around 25 product placements throughout the movie. I thought there would be a lot because the movie was targeted at teens and young adults so it would have a lot of popular products being used. I found 6 brands that were used repeatedly during the movie; U-Haul, Nike, Apple, Instagram, Vans, and Converse. I think the use of Apple was a good idea on the film makers part because Apple is such a recognized and popular product. Different types of Apple products were used in the movie like MacBooks and iPhones. This product placement made sense to the storyline like This Must Be the Place describes. During the movie the actors are on their phone making calls or using a computer to look things up so having those products be Apple made perfect sense and didn't have the audience question why they were using it. I thought there would be several different products shown in the movie and there was to a certain degree. Th...

The most interesting video we have had to watch this semester was Secrets of the Super-Brands . I really enjoyed being able to learn why companies advertise themselves the way they do, and why we love them so much. For example Abercrombie would have a "bouncer" and a red rope outside their store to make it seem more exclusive than it really is. Watching the lady get a CT done of her brain while she saw pictures of different luxury and non-luxury brands was really interesting to learn which parts of the brain, like the reward system, lit up. Getting a background as to how some brands got so popular while others didn't was something I haven't ever thought about and was more than happy to learn about. The least interesting reading we have done for me would be Rise of the Lavish Wedding. The reading was very history based, as in it talked a lot about how weddings have come to be so popular since the wedding of Queen Victoria. I haven't ever really thought about what...

In the article Pinked! Orenstein talks about the history of pink toys "It was not until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and differences became a dominant children's marketing strategy, that pink fully came into its own, when it began to seem innately attractive to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few critical years." By making toys pink parents are then required to buy the same toy twice in order for it to be in different colors. Parents having to buy two of everything for their kids helps the toy companies make money, "One of the easiest ways to segment a market is to magnify gender differences-- or invent them where they did not previously exist." Using gender as a way to categorize people isn't the only way these companies are making a profit either, people are also categorized by their age. "Splitting kids, adults or for that matter penguins, into ever-tinier categories has proved a surefire way to boost profits...