News, Trust, and "Truthiness"

While reading my classmates’ blogs, most of which agreed that satirical news are equally as reliable as legitimate news, I noticed a strong faulty trend that even I fell for when writing last week’s post – there was a common misunderstanding of the definition of “reliability”.

A majority of the class agreed that they like satirical news reporting because it is humorous in how it emphasizes the corruption and sometimes plain bigotry of power holders in our society (corporate companies, politicians, governments, etc), which gives its audience entertainment and awareness at the same time. However, this does not necessarily identify the source as reliable; in fact, it may very well play the opposite role.

Karandeep Dhillon backs up my point by stating that “…[satirical news shows] raise points regarding current situations which the general audience watches and is interpolated to think in the same way. The use of satire can create biases in audiences…” (http://jattinc.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/80/). For the sake of the entertainment business, the humour these shows use has to be somewhat controversial for an audience to be attracted to it. However, controversial information can cause for a bias in opinion, especially for an impressionable audience.

This can cause a problem because, as Isaac Cowan puts it, “When you ask most teenagers or people in their early 20s, do they prefer their news presented in a truthful and funny way or truthful but boring and a slightly biased way? Arguably speaking, most would say the first option…” (http://isaacc56.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/is-the-fake-news-the-real-news-2/). Beneficially, these shows interest a younger audience, which gets that demographic more interested in international issues, and ultimately, more active in working towards a cause they believe in. However, because youth are so impressionable, feeding them information that so strongly supports one ideology can bias their overall opinion.

That being said, satirical news shows should not be completely eliminated from the public sphere – rather, just independent from legitimate news sources. While their purpose is debatable, they do serve a good cause, as Jenny Tran proves in her blog post: “Even though some people do not like satirical news reporting such as The Daily Show and The Rick Mercer Report, it starts debates. This makes people see other people’s point of views…” (http://jt11mb.blogspot.ca/2013/11/is-fake-news-real-news.html). With so much heated debate in our society between political parties and their supporters, it is important to look at a situation from both perspectives to be able to properly present a well-informed, unbiased opinion.

Satirical news shows benefit our society in many other ways. As I discussed in my last blog post, the hosts of these shows often live off of humourously criticizing politicians and/or corporate companies and their faults. However, what some people see as faults, others can see as a move in the right direction, meaning that these hosts are presenting their own biased opinion. The benefit is that it raises awareness to a large audience; by making the bold statements that they do, they put a situation in a new perspective for people to rethink where they stand on said issue. This does not play the full role of a news sources, though, which is why I cannot define satirical news as reliable, but rather as beneficial.

Is the Fake News the Real News?

Earlier this year, we discovered how powerful the media is on our lives as a result of how much information is available to us – sometimes, overwhelming amounts. There is a reason that our era is and will remain to be identified as the age of information; Wikileaks is an excellent example of this overwhelming amount of information. With the accessibility to all these different sorts of information and from different viewpoints, we can expect strong (which often means biased) opinions. For this reason, culture jamming is growing in popularity.

Satirical news reporting started as just a part of culture jamming, but has evolved to define and control it. Forms of media that mock every last detail of a politician’s life (the Colbert Report, Daily Show, The Onion, etc.) have become a large seller for the entertainment business; audiences form strong opinions on politicians and parties, therefore it is now comedy to poke fun at them. This demand has grown so much that now, shows other than just satirical news use this form of entertainment to attract audience – SNL sees more political mocks and Ellen DeGeneres features frequent commentaries.

Personally, I find more truth in satirical news reporting than in legitimate news. The objective of this media is to make money from this form of entertainment. However, they do so by crossing boundaries in how much they criticize companies, politicians and anyone with a large effect on our society’s customs and behaviour: “The objectives of culture jamming often include…using the media to criticise [sic] the media and dominant culture” (Culture Jamming and Counter Hegemony, pg 214). This is a type of campaign and awareness that I hugely advocate. Only by crossing such boundaries can people fully understand an opinion different from theirs and realize the measure of corruption in other media, which is advantageous to improving the quality of life in our society.

As defined in the text, this is media activism (pg 214). Since we have already acknowledged that the media has a huge effect on our society, we can conclude that media activism is popular, but more importantly, is effective: “In the 1970s, feminists…started to paint slogans and captions on images of women…Such political graffiti drew attention to the sexism in these images and in doing so changed patriarchy” (pg 214). Feminism, for example, is known to be the most advanced movement in political history, largely due to media activism. While it is an ongoing movement, women’s rights have seen drastic changes (positively) in the last century.

Conclusively, culture jamming in any form is advantageous to a society’s functioning. Although it is most popularly a form of entertainment, it is still significantly effective to changing world politics in general. Culture jamming identifies the corruption (and sometimes, just plain ridiculousness) in the logic of other media, which helps its large base of consumer audiences form better informed opinions on what controls their society. It positively affects the entertainment business and it successfully targets exploited marketing, which ultimately makes it a useful part of our society.

Demonstrable Demographics

Through my classmate’s blogs, I found a variety of advertisements targeting my (or safely, our) demographic – our age. The majority agreed that these advertisements generalized a certain population under a stereotype. At the same time, they agreed that the generalizations are most often not true or applicable, but perhaps inflated forms of what is truthful about the demographic.

In her post, Kendra Samis discussed how Coca Cola produced an ad targeting women, especially adolescent girls. The ad is meant to show that their product was now available with a lower calorie count, since (stereotypically) women are always concerned about their weight and teenage girls are always trying to get in a better (usually slimmer) shape: “Due to the simplistic message of the ad it can be believed by many…that if you consume Diet Coke you will start to see changes in your body and wieghtloss [sic]” (http://kendrasamis.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/what-the-hail/).

This advertisement was created specifically targeting my demographic – women. Women suffer largely from constant criticism from companies telling women how to look better. As a result, self-esteem levels hit rock bottom, especially at my age. Although I’m no physician, I do know that Coca Cola products are not produced for health benefits. In their ad, they depicted an idea that since their product is now healthiER, it is healthy in general, but this is untrue. They successfully, however, chose a demographic that this would attract – people constantly worried about their physical appearance. Whether or not it represents the demographic correctly (I, for one, am not concerned with whether or not I drink Diet) is debatable and applies differently to all members of the demographic.

Ty Keca chose an advertisement by Dove that went viral. Dove has now popularized itself as an advocate of natural beauty. In their ad, they show what process a model undergoes before being presented to the general public in an attempt to shame large companies for creating such unrealistic expectations. “Dove has been using these techniques in their commercials to attract to the reality of beauty rather than this fake beauty portrayed in the picture…” (http://tykeca.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/what-the-hail/). As put by Ty, Dove is advocating natural beauty in this advertisement, and since they associate themselves with that cause, they are promoting themselves as a company. For me, I think Dove has successfully targeted my demographic better than Coca Cola – although they both target the same demographic, Dove exposes the corruption in other companies, which gives women a sense of empowerment. Rather than telling women how to look better, they teach them how to see the beauty in themselves, which is an accurate representation of what that audience needs.

I have never been a fan of Maybelline and Deanna Quait chose an ad that backs up my opinion. Maybelline produced an ad that connects a woman wearing their mascara to her success in completely irrelevant aspects of her life: “At the end of the commercial the woman beats the men at the [card] game and in turn gets to walk away with their clothes and leave them at the table to sit naked. The fact that she beat them in cards and got their clothes has nothing to do with mascara at all and gives girls the idea that if they wear this mascara, they can beat men at card games and get their clothing” (http://deannaquait.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/what-the-hail/). Here, Maybelline targets teenage girls obsessed with being attractive and the idea of being loved. They connect the use of their product to popularity among men. This hits two stereotypes in one – they are telling girls how to look better, and at the same time how looking better will make men attracted to them. Of course, this is completely inaccurate (I’m sure men look for more than just mascara on women), but it sells as a result of girls’ despair for those two things. Even if it wasn’t there to begin with, these ads help create a generalization of a certain group. When people want to fit in with what these companies depict as normal, they buy the product, which does normalize it, and eventually represents the demographic.

What the Hail?

One of the smartest ways that the media works is in advertising, and it does so in a sly manner. A now popular form of advertising is to target certain audiences by showing them what positive changes can be made to their lives with a certain product, even if the product is completely irrelevant to that aspect of life. This is how companies advertise themselves.

With the recent outrage on who the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch, Mike Jeffries, wants to target with his clothing, I decided to look into A&F advertisements. With no surprise, I found that almost all of their advertisements were of half naked teenagers. The ad in the following link (http://robertmoss.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/abercrombie-fitch1.jpg?w=640) is made to target adolescent boys and girls alike. For me, it implies that if I shopped at their store, I would be much more popular among attractive young men (and vice versa), although there is hardly any clothing being advertised. Although this marketing does not attract me, it is successful based on the impact of A&F, which to say the least, is huge. “When we think of our own subjectivities it is helpful to see both the autonomous power we have…and the determined quality of our identity or subjectivity” (O’Shaughnessy & Stadler, pg 190).

For example, an image of an “average” teenage girl appears, followed by an image of mascara, and followed again by an image of that same girl with flawless skin, dressed attractively, and edited to perfection. Although the last image did not pay particular attention to the use of mascara, the advertisement was made in such a manner that it allowed the targeted audience (teenage girls) to make a connection between purchasing this product and resembling the flawless and perfect physical appearance. This is what A&F has done with that advertisement.

Jeffries recently said that he only wants to see the “attractive kids” wearing his clothes and that they are designed to fit a certain physique – the tall and attractive girls, and the athletic and muscular guys. While many people found this outrageous and consequentially boycotted A&F, another group found that if this is the image that A&F was targeting, they could improve their own image by wearing that clothing: “If we accept values…then we carry those ideologies as part of who we are. The idea here is that our identities (our concepts of who we are) are…constructed…” (O’Shaughnessy & Stadler, pg 184).

Whether or not these advertising schemes successfully represent me is debatable based on my views of the media. This applies equally to everyone in my demographic. In general, I can conclude that they work based on the success of the advertiser. Abercrombie and Fitch, although controversial in its marketing, has successfully reached its target audience and, as a result, is a very successful clothing company. Instead of saying that they did not reach their entire target audience, I prefer to think that I (and anyone else it does not effectively reach)  am not part of their target because I have seen myself fall for this scheme with others. Ultimately, it is an effective marketing strategy.