Blog Recommendations

Karolina Hejcmanova  - When people watch TV or movie  they usually do not pay attention to the products that are unnoticeable  and obviously advertised. What I really like in Karolina’s blog that she perfectly explained the issue of product placement with using reliable sources. The other aspect is that she is on the positive side of the case: product placement does not bring any harm. All her points Karolina supported with interesting videos. With this blog now I’ve learned more about product placement.  For further information and introduction You can visit: http://theproductplacementblog.blogspot.com/    

Adam Grof -  The blog is highly critical and against advertising.  What I like most that Adam is very clear and specific in his arguments and his position. He is not only claiming that advertising is bad and everyone should stop watching or paying attention to it, but he is explaining why nowadays advertising has become a powerful source to control people’s behaviour as a consumer.  For further information and introduction You can visit:  http://mis-leading-advertising.blogspot.com/

Anna Stryckova – Anna in her blog considered one of the important problem or changes of nowadays- social networks. What interested me is the fact that Anna looked at the issue from the positive side, what in my opinion is highly difficult, because today people spent more time in the Net and less time in reality. I would disagree with some points in her blog, but generally it is great that she was able to challenge the reader to get into an argument about usefulness of social networks for our society and big changes for all of us. For further information and introduction You can visit:   http://facebookmoredetailed.blogspot.com/

Shakhlo Khudayberganova – The blog represented the direct media influence on people’s lives and their behaviour, in Shaklo’s case these people are celebrities. Of course everyone thinks that if you are celebrity, so you have to get used to the paparazzi and have an open life for everyone without any private life. But! We are all human and everyone needs place for relaxing atmosphere without stress. Shaklo perfectly describe all the mistakes and actions that people do considering their favourites in case to know everything. I absolutely agree with her in bright examples like Diana’s death and how paparazzi and media tried to control every action to create specific agenda. For further information and introduction You can visit:   http://shakhlounyp.blogspot.com/

Vu Tuan Anh (Bob) – Firstly, the blog is highly educational about Vietnamese minority in media and their life in Czech Republic. Bob with his own personal experience tried to break some stereotypes about the minority and showed how people suffer from these stereotypes. Also Bob represented the media influence on this issue and how media has been supporting mostly negative stereotypes considering Vietnamese minority.  In my opinion with this blog Bob will successfully in changing people’s attitude or at least make the reader think about problems of minority groups in our society.  For further information and introduction You can visit: http://kedlubna.com/

The Beginning of the End

It is always interesting lead the media development process. Since it continuously has the strong influence on society and creating specific or common opinion it is important to consider media participation in questions that infringe on the world’s interests. Society’s believing in the end of the world in the year 2012 is one of those issues on which media create different agenda and believes that spread fear or indifference among Earth population. Media is basing on different sources starting with the history of mankind, technology development, stereotypes, and predictions. As the world changes rapidly, certain forms of media exploit the many beliefs surrounding these predictions and therefore use them to their advantage. This blog will be focus on developing different believes about ‘doomed day’ and how people react on the information that has been spread all over the world.

What to believe in…

From early past times, the fear of death was presented in many forms, based on different spheres of human life: religion, art, ordinary life later on science. Mostly all these groups make prediction about world’s end by giving different reasoning basing on opinions, believes, cultural background. Nowadays, Apocalypses has become popular due to different reasons such as globalization, dynamic environmental changes, predictions of ancient civilizations, and saint writings from the Bible. With high development of this belief in society, obviously media started emphasize this event from different perspective, mostly from pessimistic one: the whole world is going to an end at 20.12.2012. Known through predictions of ancient origins and scientific events, many of these predictions have been heavily regarded within different areas of media. As more media influences become available, the greater the chance is that facts and statistics will be unclear in direction and meaning. In the confusion of right from wrong, media has influenced our susceptible society into believing that predictions of the future are indeed facts; this is wrong. It needs to be clear how media influences people and about how these groups’ actions reflect a common fear that has developed.

Mostly all different media types have been focusing on 2012. Media sources such as television, books, movies, and the Internet all have similar agenda: to give the audience the feeling that their information is a pure fact.  A large amount of people are afraid to face death in 2012, that is why media can easily turn predictions into facts and make people believe in it. With fast growing of media in developing countries, different media types are able to cover specific audience group based on their beliefs.  The media uses three different structural indicators to indicate susceptible groups: reach, the ability for media to influence society, accessibility, and plurality, the number of companies influencing a group of people. These factors determine how much a society is susceptible to being influenced by the messages that the media portrays.

Many media types use certain strategies to install fear in their audience. The strategies, known as contact indicators, include focus on past atrocities and history of ethnic animosity, manipulation of myths, stereotypes, and identities to “dehumanize”, overemphasis on certain grievances or inequities, and consistently negative reporting. These tactics have been used in the media to exploit people’s fear (Frohardt, M., & Ternin, J, 2003). The other way to frighten population is books. As many sources of information become available to the audience, the percentage of prediction (fake facts) increased among people. In these examples authors become powerful sources that shape societies perception. Many people are willing to accept something if the agenda of the media is credited, despite the fact that it may be making mere predictions about an unknown date. Another type of media that is notorious for using predictions as a radical basis for exploiting fear of the apocalypse are websites.

Moreover, the percentage of information on the Net is increasing rapidly.  It is understandable, because with the high development of technologies and easy access to the Internet everyone can create an agenda about the topic.  The internet let mislead people, because every person can create a belief basing on his/her imagination without any evidence and scientifically or any proof.

In the modern era, mass media has a great influence on society’s perception shaping. This power has many possibilities, including a strong belief in the end of human being in 2012. On the one hand modernization in society helps it to grow and develop; on the other hand it increases the tendency of human to fear death, because of the large amount of information around. Role of the media in society has twisted world perception and the role of each person.  As the result humanity interprets the history in a wrong way and considers predictions and gambling as a pure fact. The media see the effects of people’s reaction on the event such as apocalypse and turned it into their profit to make more money.  A mixture of all of these different theories can often be too overwhelming, causing a social panic amongst societies who are most affected by the media. On the one hand media has a great influence in shaping society’s opinion; on the other hand everyone can be more sceptical and think more critical. Everyone has rights to choose the side: to believe or not to believe.

            Work Cited:

Does Maya calendar predict 2012 apocalypse? March 27^th, 2007. www.ustoday.com Web May 9^th,2011 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-27-maya-2012_n.htm

Media push  http://www.december212012.com Web. May 9^th, 2011

http://www.december212012.com/media_push.htm

'Mayan 2012 apocalypse theory' not true. Nov 10^th 2009. http://www.telegraph.co.uk Web May 9^th, 2011

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6534662/Mayan-2012-apocalypse-theory-not-true-Nasa-says.html

2012: Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, Radiation, and Libya. http://countingdownto2012.com Web May 9^th, 2011

http://countingdownto2012.com/2012-japan-earthquake-tsunami-radiation-and-libya/

2012: Media's Role of Influence. Year 2010. http://www.writing.com  Web May 9^th 2011

http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1655424-2012-Medias-Role-of-Influence

Counting down…

Watching news nowadays and all the conflicts and catastrophes in the world whether intentionally or not lead a person to the thoughts about last days of human beings.  The enigmatic date December 2012 was proven right. But wait! It happened March 11, 2011. It might happen that even in this date people will find mysterious coincidence. However, media in this situation was trying to help Japanese people and reported only the facts.  From this perspective only people create the fear of the worlds end, but the fear is based on the previous information and prediction about this issue.

‘‘The world held its collective breath as this heavy-populated nation experienced the fourth largest earthquake in recorded history. This seismic event, along with the subsequent tsunami, rattled nerves around the globe as scientists scurried to prevent a nuclear holocaust. Since numerous nuclear reactor power plants were compromised, the end result may remain uncertain for many years to come.’’

NASA vs. Apocalypse

Not everyone blindly believes and affected by the theory of the world end. Some websites have accused the US space agency of concealing the truth about the wayward planet's existence, but NASA has denounced such stories as an "internet hoax." Obviously, media cannot entirely influence from one side of the issue. Though more people likely to believe in theory of apocalypse, there will always be sceptics or people who are trying to consider the question from the different perspective.  They can find information in media sources that supports idea of doubt about the end of the world.

‘‘NASA insisted the Mayan calendar does not in fact end on December 21, 2012, as another period begins immediately afterward. And it said there are no planetary alignments on the horizon for the next few decades. And even if the planets were to line up as some have forecast, the effect on our planet would be "negligible," NASA said.

Modern Maya in Guatemala and Mexico have also rushed to debunk the "prophesy". They view the burgeoning end-of-the-world 2012 industry with a mixture of confusion, exasperation and anger at what is perceived as a Western distortion of their traditions and beliefs.’’

For more information visit http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/6534662/Mayan-2012-apocalypse-theory-not-true-Nasa-says.html  

To trust or not to trust

For over a century, people are constantly waiting to see Apocalypse. Every time history repeats itself exactly. Regularly run over and the growing wave of reasoning and rumours about the end of the world. If coming centenarians, the appearance of a comet, eclipse of the sun, all these phenomena are only spurring the gloomy forecasts. Doomsday predicted by all: famous people, scholars, philosophers and entire civilizations. One of the famous and notorious doomsday predictions for 2012 is by far the Mayan that awakened all sorts of extraordinary avalanche of discussions. The opposite side of non-believers ask:  why is this ancient civilization was to have such a huge successamong our people today? Can be really, something dreadful hanging over our planet? The ozone layer becomes thinner each year; the temperature is rising, high development of science. Anthropogenic disasters are not an invention of science fiction anymore and the harsh reality of nowadays is that natural disasters is increasing in geometric progression. Considering all these troubles society noticed that Mayan calendar will end exactly in 2012. However it is a perfect chance for media to brainwash population. 

Last days of existence…

We all live in the world of mysteries and secrets.  Even simple and familiar phenomenon to us is actually in most cases are not completely open; their nature remains mysterious to human mind. However much of this which was covered with darkness of time came to light and was subjected to interpretation. End of the world, apocalypse has always been and remains the main factor of concern to humanity. Everything has a beginning and everything has an end - is a philosophical saying only confirms the usefulness of thinking about the possible end of life on Earth. In recent decades the date of catastrophe was appointed many times and was always emphasized by media. Last threatening date of apocalypses is too realistic. Year 2012 is the time of the parade of planets. The grounds for such claims lie in the darkness of the times, which left behind a mysterious Mayan writing. For long times this culture has been a constant source of discovery for scientists and archaeologists. One of them was calendar that predicted the end of the world in 2012. 

Dilemma

On the one hand it seems to easily believe in all theories according 2012. They are perfectly proven from the past time by old civilization. But! ‘‘There's no archaeological or historical evidence that the Mayans themselves expected anything other than a New Year's Eve party to happen on this date: Claims that this rollover represents a Mayan prediction of the end of the world appear to be a modern pop-culture invention. It's true that the Mayan carvings of their calendar only depicted 13 baktuns, but what did you expect them to do? Carve an infinitely long calendar every time they wanted to express a date? The explanation could be as simple as they didn't expect people in the 21st century to still be obsessed with their archaic calendar.’’ (Dunning, 2008) Many people are likely blindly trust in ancient traditions rather than scientific researches. Mass audience harder understand that propaganda of the theory bring a large amount of money for media companies.