Media identities

Each society and culture has their own way of interpreting what is beautiful and how people should act and look. In American society the media is often the perpetrator of these concepts.

The article in Media Making about the Ralph Lauren model is a good example of the media forming an idea of an ideal person.

Ralph Lauren, and other companies, have created the ideal woman in the image of a stick. This idea of the perfect woman permeates our culture through advertising. It becomes a social problem which affects the idea of beauty and how women deal with their own bodies.

Why society is the way it is

Society is a amalgamation of concepts, cultures and ideas that have been all mashed together. Certain parts of any society are taken the same by everyone and not challenged. However, there are parts of society which everyone has their own interpretation of.

The reason people share these common ideals can be attributed to our society. Ideas, virtues and concepts are all ingrained into our minds as children. Seeing these as common place we readily accept them.

Having these ingrained concepts can make change for a society very difficult. So entrenched can a society become in its ideals that new ideas may not be readily accepted. People grow up believing what they have been taught is correct and can feel angry or defensive if new ideas come around that contradict the common ideas.

The way we think and what we think about certain things is part of who we are. We grow up with certain meanings, ideas and concepts and that is part of our society. Society shapes who we are, what we think and why we think it.

Ideology

Ideology is something which is very subjective, no one person will answer in the same way.

I believe that my ideology includes my beliefs as influenced by my culture and religion. This means that while I may share ideology traits with those around me, someone from another country or region might have a totally different idea of what ideology is.

There's no right or wrong to which ideology is correct. I have my own beliefs which I believe are right, but someone else has their own set which they believe are right.

In conclusion, ideology is something extremely difficult to define. We all have our own idea of what it is yet in the end they are all different.

Models of Communication

There are two very different models of communication discussed in our book. The "transmission model" and the "cultural model."

The "transmission model" is very simple and is what I would expect most people to view as basic communication. It is the transmission of ideas from one person to another.  For example, in a lecture the professor is transmitting to the student. They are receiving ideas directly from one person to another.

The "cultural model" is a bit more complex. It deals with the creation of a common culture which is affected by a community of people. It is an all-encompassing type of communication. The "cultural model" shows how a person from one culture may interpret a message differently than someone from another culture. This model shows that while all people essentially share the same "world," we all live within our own subcultures. Language, religion and geographical region can all affect the culture we live in.