Blogger Clogger's Slog Blog

Blogger Clogger's Slog Blog

    Well hello everyone, I'm finally back and coming to you in the final hours of allowance for this little assignment of ours. We all have long days and for me, this was an impressive one filled with mistakes, midterms, work and traveling. This makes the title of today's blog particularly fitting.

During one of the many hours of work though I anticipated how, to-the-wire, this entry may be and I decided to start my blog at work in the only way I could think to do. Interview the people at Zehrs, co-worker and otherwise as if I were a journalist asking them the question of the hour:

Do we get the media we want or want the media we get?

     I initially laughed upon seeing this question because I can see the philosophical value in debating the thought for years on end but that will never answer anything really. I know I'm supposed to pick a side and argue for it, and I will, but think about this logically...

How many forms of media do you honestly not care about?

How many forms of media do you have no interest in indulging in?

… If we follow some prior thoughts, in that almost all of life can be considered one media or another, Then I'm guessing the answer to the previous question is many. In this vein, we should always get the media we want because the rest is ignored. However, this only counts for the preliminary acquisition of the media and it's rather easy to hate what you end up with. So did we get the media we want in these cases? No, this rationale only works when we view the question from the point of view of the singular observer. The audience is another matter and as Stadler and O'Shaughnessy say, "All our efforts at finding the meanings of texts may come to grief when we confront the real audience" (Media and Society: Fifth Edition University Press 2013 Pg.97). The "real audience" can speak for every individual and every individual is moot when challenged by the "real audience". The only option here is to look at the latter half of the question.

Do we want the media we get?

     If you've ever honestly watched someone watch Jersey Shore you know that you've really (emphasis added here is too significantly stressed to be described through script) got to want it in order to sit through it. That there is your answer. Everyone has their own Jersey Shore. That little moped in the back of the garage that you don't want your friends to see you drive. That's wanting the media you get. It's easy to say that you hate the news or hate what the fashion magazines are excluding (truth) but eventually you fall right back onto your hidden moped and drive back to Jersey Shore where you bask in the sunlight of your own needed media that tans you oh so brilliantly orange. I think James Halloran puts it pretty well, "We must get away from the habit of thinking in terms of what the media do to people and substitute for it the idea of what people do with the media" (Halloran, J 1970, The Effects of Television, Panther, London). The answer, my friend and reader, is dirty, dirty things.

     But I digress! John Patcher informed me, during the interview, that, “the media only gives us what it wants us to want”, which immediately made me not want to continue the interview. After breaking contact with the man and being loosely chastised by my manager I shut things down and got back to work for a couple minutes.

     Mary Phillips from the West side made it clear that we most certainly do get the media we need in a very verbose way. “Of course we get the media we need”, she exclaimed excitedly, “If we had no media, we wouldn't know the state of the world. We need the media”. Well Mary, all my gut says is "potentially".

Tony Johnson, a baker in the North told me to get away from him and Ted Nugent was not around for comment.

     So in closing, let me ask you. When engaging this form of media today, did you read the blog you wanted or get the laugh you needed?