Insert Post Here

And the post shall be inserted. The post shall be known as “Reflection” and shall remain here till the end of time. Or until word-press shuts down whichever comes first.

Time passes fast.

So comes the end of this blog assignment. What have I learnt? What have I known now that I knew already but know better now? Much clarity has fallen on these 21y/o eyes of mine since the start to the end.

I remember the first time I stepped into my new BCM class and a lovely lady greeted us. That was of course, Ms Jesslyn. She was my lecturer for that module and I was… skeptical initially of what a media module might help or teach me in my pursue of a psychological degree seeing that I had plans to work in a, hmm lets say; more controlled environment, being the military.

But how shallow I was a few weeks just, for the world is ever changing and everything is interconnected. Media has existed for a very long time. Tyrants and heroes rise and fall and both are reported in papers. HOW they can be reported in papers though is something that this module has shed some light on for me personally.

If human beings are a malleable material, then media is one of the objects and tools that shapes us. It gives us personalities, objectives, opinions and far-sight.

And so, the journey of education and learning is always on-going, never stopping completely but occasionally resting. I take great pleasure in knowing that I have learnt and experienced different viewpoints of individuals in my class.

And to everyone who is reading this now, I would like to stress; I am a very nice guy.

Signing out~

Daniel Lie Tien Ee

Mediated Public Spheres

Q: Find an example of ‘popular’ media text ( magazine, TV show, Film ) and suggest how it might contribute to debate in a mediated public sphere.

What are mediated public spheres?

Are they a by-product of our modern media? Or is it a round ball that has practiced the art of meditating which anyone can use?

The latter is not quite right but the former is.

People have grown accustomed to peace. We have lived too comfortably to the point of having “first world problems” as a running gag.

So what is there to jolt us out of this limbo? What is there to show us the error of our ways? Whats there to ‘educate’ us about the world?

MEDIA MAN TO THE RESCUE!

Media commits to being the middleman in our lives. It creates the public sphere of discussion and debate that anyone and everyone can participate in. So how is this done? Simple. They create television programs with compelling stories that makes us ponder unto ourselves the implications.

  

Take for example the popular television program; Breaking Bad. Its plot revolves around a teacher who discovers he has a terminal illness. Simple enough? It gets better. He then realizes he has yet to secure a stable financial future for his family and so turns to a life of drug trafficking in order to achieve that before his demise. Now that we’ve got the story-line, we may read between the lines that the education system in the states are not being funded enough. Teachers are not being paid enough in contrast to being a drug dealer who earns thousands in ill-gotten gains.

But by that logic, the terminator might come from the future too because in the end Breaking Bad like the terminator is just fiction.

So now lets talk about another television program that has reality in a little more rooted grasp with a tad of local flavor but satirical.

Introducing: The noose.

Being a satirical show, it brings out the humor in issues like MRT breakdowns, Singapore’s taxis and the mass influx of China immigrants and their stereotypical English accents. But humor is not just in the air. The show tries to assume the average Singaporean’s point of view which is risky because if done wrongly, would turn off a large chunk of viewers who don’t share the viewpoint.

But it has become quite popular in the country, getting multiple seasons with the sixth starting in 2013. I do believe this show is a very good example of how it being a mediated public sphere contributes issue awareness that stems from reality despite being intending to be humorous.

The wombo combo dilemma of our media

Media has many mediums but has only two possible masters. The private sector and the public sector ( Government owned ). So, why does it matter which side owns it? Both sides easily exploit their servant ( media )but which is the lesser evil?

So take my hand and lets go into my post of BCM110: Why does it matter who “controls” the media?

No, you have to place your hand first. Oh alright I guess with your hand on the monitor it’ll be hard to read the rest of the post won’t it?

Let us begin, says I. ( Inside joke HUE HUE HUE HUE )

We complain on both sides of the fence. If the majority of the media in a country is owned by the government, we call it oppressive and authoritarian. However if the same is mirrored by a private company, it is viewed as a monopolized empire that has many pretty, deceitful layers that ultimately is also oppressive and authoritarian if wielded correctly.

So which side is much more reliable and stable? It depends on what the requirements of reliable and stable means. Does it mean quality or quantity of the news?

Government owned media is state funded. That basically means that quality of the news generally do not risk being compromised too much in order to become juicy with gossip and tabloid materials. And by “too much” I meant that it does have tabloid news for the sake of competition or to make up for the absence of a competitor *cough*SPH*cough*

Private owned media however has to earn their pretty coin. They don’t have the funding provided by tax-payers much like their government counterparts. They need to provide good competition against them. This creates tabloid news which is well received by the people whom, with the aid of subjective reading choose not to focus too much on the harsh side of reality and instead on gossip and artificial importance.

An example would be that nobody wants to discuss about how many bombs and deaths go on in the middle east. Nope, you will NEVER see a newspaper getting a ghost of a chance of a second reprint just for more people to know about issues not just happening across the world but at our very doorstep as well. BUT utter a word about the birth of the new royal baby; Prince George and people will sequel and coo about how cute he is. I’ll say this right here right now: “HE LOOKS JUST LIKE ANY OTHER BABY. HOW DOES HE GET SO MUCH ATTENTION?”.

In fact just today, there is a new article about the royal family and the baby again 2 weeks after his birth but my previous blog post about the Pakistani market bombing faded into oblivion.

But don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to say that government owned media do not capitalize on tabloid news as well. But if you consider the fact that the government is a “company” producing media versus MANY private companies producing their media as well, there will be a huge flood of private sector tabloids floating around that are not really important to our real current affairs which diminishes the quality of news.

Rupert Murdoch is a brilliant man. Rising in the world to become the media mogul that everyone loves and hates. He is the envy of many and an important ally to have if you so wish to enter politics. If you can sway him to buy into your politics, you have already won a quarter of the world. The reason is because he has the final word into what goes into his empire’s produced media. He is the perfect example of a bloated private company that controls so many brands that they can easily influence an average persons mentality and it would follow as such:

Rupert Murdoch enjoys your idea. Your idea is that Macdonald’s curry sauce lowers the chance of cancer. He decides to publish the article in ALL of his owned assets. A Subject reads paper one and goes ” Hey, this can’t be right, Macdonalds uses plenty of preservatives!”. He then moves on and reads paper two. It further reinforces paper one’s article but the subject still rejects it. He then moves on to the internet where he reads about the very same article, this time hes a little bit more convinced. He turns on the television and watches a program of Doctor Oz and the very same discussion of the curry sauce appears. This time, the subject is fully convinced that Macdonalds curry sauce lowers the chance of cancer.

And that is how easy Mr Murdoch can influence the world.

So which is the lesser evil of the two? In my honest opinion, I’d gladly support a government owned media anytime. People protest about how government stifles free speech and all but in the end, a government is only there because the people of the country places them there. If the majority votes a government into power, it basically means they trust the judgement and abilities of the party. Also, if the government is always acting on its own interest rather then its people, there is always an election to vote them out compared to convincing an old man and a quarter of the world that Macdonald’s curry sauce guards against cancer.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/all-about/royal%20baby

http://www.pressrun.net/weblog/2011/04/whats-sph-got-that-new-york-times-aint-got.html

Plans and schemes

  Our world is a very strange place. We are told that life is valuable yet nobody bats a single eyelid when a bomb goes off in a crowded Pakistani market, killing 57. However when a bomb goes off at the Boston marathon killing 2, everyone creates a storm of emotions and publicity ranging from the cover of popular Rolling-stone Magazine to top news of Singapore’s straits times. And the Pakistani bomb? Oh just a small article about it.

  So what is the difference between the two events? Are the stories differentiated by the quality of lives? Surely 57 being a larger amount should pull in much more attention which strangely enough does not. So why is there much more focus on the Boston event? Simple, its because of the media. Atypical answer to how lobby groups use the media to further their agenda is simply to forge a sense of justification for their actions in the future.

  Quoting the joker: “Nobody panics when everything goes according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying.” Its true because for example, the danger threat level in Pakistan is high, with a unstable Government and faulty public services ever present that is further reinforced by the media reports on every-day bombings and death in the region THAT we as outsiders view it as an every-day event of its own becoming a “plan” and “image” set up and portrayed by the media into our mindset that we don’t react as strongly as something that happened in our home ground; Boston, seen as a safe and protected place where a peaceful, marathon is just taking place.

  But then you say; “Oh Daniel, what has this got to do with anything about how lobby groups use the media? Its just a terrorist attack!”. Yes, its a terrorist attack (Boston) and the casualties are unfortunate but this will be a small step towards a greater plan of the Government; Stepping up defense budgets. It all links up to; create an awareness that death in unstable countries are “going as planned” and being a stable country and still having such a tragic bombing in the heart of America justifies a larger defense budget to prevent it happening again creating the on-going project known as the PRISM program.

  This step silences critics of the program by justifying that PRISM prevents the Boston tragedy from happening again and that if you are against it, you are inadvertently allowing such to happen again, securing the success of the program through the use of well-planned media by pro-government lobby groups.

REF

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23470630

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/poll/2013/jul/17/rolling-stone-boston-bomber-dzhokhar-tsarnaev-cover-poll

Grow up and realize its fiction

BCM110: What is wrong with the ‘media effects’ model?

A Jedi, thats what I wanted to be when I was a child after watching my first Star-Wars movie in a theater back in 1999. Upon reaching home I took my father’s golf club and starting swinging it around madly as if it was a light-saber ( Much like the fat Star-Wars kid, but hey I was a wee lad of 8 years old ).

With this throwback, the media definitely had an effect on me and many other boys my age I suppose. But the media effects model is not perfect. It has its flaws which we will discuss today. One of the main flaws regarding adolescents by the media effect’s model is that children are regarded to lack media intelligence, the ability to differentiate a violent action being entertainment or educational. The common question asked when a child performs a violent action would be “Which media did the child learn this from?”.

If, a child takes a golf club and started wailing down pain on other children, would Star-wars be finger pointed at for being the source of inspiration to him wielding a staff-like object? Maybe so but what about his parental upbringing? Where is the investigation towards the child’s social background and how his parents brought him up?

The media is here to stay in our everyday lives whether we like it or not. Video games depicting explicit violence is being churned out easily; Grand Theft Auto, Left4Dead, Dead Rising etc. So does violent media such as video games influence children to commit crimes? Of course not! After all, by that logic, every child who plays SIMCITY would want to become an city-planner too.

 

Which now brings us to..

 

The rating system is there but in the end its just a sticker on the box and its up to the parents to raise the child to understand the difference between entertainment and real life. I mean come on, look at me. I didn’t turn out that bad didn’t I? 🙂

Oh hi there

BCM110 : Introduction to myself.

Hello, my name is Lie Tien Ee but you may call me Daniel. I graduated from Management Development Institute of Singapore (MDIS) on July 2010 with a diploma in psychology. Upon completion of my diploma, I was then enlisted into the army for National Service (NS). I was designated as a driver and remained throughout my NS career until my leaving on the month of March, 2013.

 

Through I enjoyed writing and reading, hailing from a background of arts and literature, I had never really did excelled at either but was pretty decent in the subjects. Granted, I had the privilege of having teachers claim much potential from me which unfortunately never really did come into fruition. In my spare time I turn towards my hobbies which are an opposite of the arts. It is widely speculated that each individual has an either right or left sided brain dominance indicating if that individual is better at the arts and linguistics or the more logical, empirical viewpoints and methods. I never knew which side I was good at as I was neither, with a great interest in computers but never having the opportunity to explore my potential in that field. I am an avid gamer too playing the online video game; League of legends.

I really do love computers since young. Having witnessed my father disassemble and recombine a computer from parts and pieces fascinated me alot. I did not pursue a degree in I.T due to the fact that I did not perform well in mathematics at school.

With this fact at hand, my perceived dream occupation path reached a split road and ventured from being a future computer administrator into becoming a psychologist. Do pardon me if I appear depressive and downtrodden but I’m told that I have a very cynical view on life. My plans for the future is to finish my masters and sign on with MINDEF MMI (Military Medical Institute). So ends the first post of and my debut introduction of this blog.

-Daniel Lie Tien Ee