This is where we post our projects, experiences, thoughts, and discoveries. The lab community is a great place to learn about the topics and techniques covered in the Creative Media Lab. Feel free to leave a comment!

In the past years or so, media has taken the greatest impact on it’s youngest generation. Adolescents have managed to manipulate the many resources available to them on the web, expanding to a wide variety of demands, changes and movements.  This varies to the most recent movement that all began with a source of media,  Kony 2012 (Youtube), following to later movements such as the Demand Change Project, and Teens Against Bullying .  All of these examples have been voiced out through communities throughout the entire world with media sources as simple as Facebook.  Adolescents have and will continue to catalyze the meaning of media throughout future generations.By utilizing meaningful sources of media such as visuals, the reader or consumer becomes engaged in the topic allowing a majority to join the movement or become more aware.

 

Many new resources are available to teenagers, such as blogs, videos on Youtube, and most commonly used in younger generations, social media sites. Up to “2 billion of us” interact with media everyday. Media such as Youtube, Blogs, and Facebook are used for entertainment, information, and as a source of ventilation.  “Facebook is now used by 1 in every 13 people on earth”, with this many users a day it is almost impossible to not come across strong opinions and entertainment. When using different types of media there is always things to consider, as stated in Info Doodads, “Once something is shared on social media it will be there forever for the rest of the world to see.” For example exchanging phone numbers with strangers on the Internet, this incident has occurred several times causing many problems for young adolescents. Media isn’t necessarily always a positive impact on our society, however it’s up to you to make it how you want it. In other words it’s up to us, the people, to use media in a beneficial way.

As a contributor to the sites mentioned, I have also come across many visuals and videos that portray a message such as these picture shown below. These pictures are always accompanied by text that say, “click like if you respect”, ”click like to prevent”, “ click like if you love”, or in such cases, “reblog if you like”, and “reblog if you respect this man”. In this first visual, media is used to compare food, but in this second visual there is a greater sense of feeling and emotion. Pictures like these are constantly showing up in social media sites.

 

What I don’t understand, is how ignorant people can be, believing that by simply clicking a button they can change an issue/problem or debate? It definitely devalues the purpose of media when individuals post pictures that say, “Share this post if you believe in God, or ignore if you believe in the Devil.”  In most cases there is nothing you can do by simply clicking a button, however in cases like the Kony 2012 campaign, post like these quickly begin to impact the users, people like myself. As soon as the issue hit the web within weeks the word was spread all throughout schools, homes and television. This only shows how much of a role media plays on providing information to community members about issues across the world.

 

As the media industry begins to grow it is up to us to decide whether we want to influence change within media and technology. It seems as if it’s impossible to ignore the different types of media we are constantly being influenced by, and whether we want to use it in a helpful and positive way. Communication is indeed essential to all living creatures, and we need it. All generations, past and future, have reconstructed the meaning of media and continue to influence others.