Bye-Bye Blog

Well this has been an experience. I've learned a lot about media and it has deffinitely changed the way I view ads and how I percieve them now. Now I can see how different techniques are used to get the consumer to think certain things and associate the ad with certain things. This impacts my life because now I am able to recognize when companies are trying to get a certain message across, and I can choose to fall for their schemes or not.

I think not I am more media literate, which is very important. This is important becuase people should know how media works so they, too, can realize when they are being tricked. Media literacy also leads to being a smart consumer. When you realize what's true and what's false in ads, you are able to make smarter shopping decisions. This way you are able to saves your money and spend your money on well-made and honest products.

Before this semester I consumed a lot of media. I was either on the computer, watching TV, texting, or all of them at the same time. During this semster, however, I have not had the time nor energy to watch TV, and the only time I would be on the computer was to do homework, like this blog for example, or to be on Twitter of Facebook in between homework. I do still text constantly though, but I tried not to text that much while doing homework. It didn't work...I used to probably watch somewhere between 2-5 hours or TV a day, now I'm lucky to watch 2-5 hours a month. Watching that much TV impacted my life because I saw all the ads and that affected what clothes I wanted to buy because I saw cute things in commercials. It also affected my work habbits because I would always get distracted watching TV and not finish my work. This year I tried to be better about that and do all my work because watching TV, which is why I didn't watch TV because I would finish around 11 o' clock at night!

From this media blogs, I have learned many things. I've seen many different ads and I've been able to use my knowledge of techniques and appeals to really understand what those ads were trying to do, trying to say, and trying to make the consumer think. On some ads, I was very shocked to see some of the messages they were trying to get across using those techniques, but then I realized that's how a lot of ads are and people still believe them and fall for them. Now, I am able to look at an ad, fully comprehend it, and then make a smart consumer decision about it.