It's Me

Hey everyone,

my name is Nina. I am twenty years old and am from beautiful Germany/Munich. I moved to the states - Newport, Vt when I was fifteen, which was a very hard transition. After 1 1/2 years I moved to Burlington, Vt (thank god) and am now attending awesome Champlain College :)
I just switched my major from Business to Marketing and absolutely love it.

I just got a job at a German restaurant/bar where I will be serving German food and beer.
Check it out

If I think about my relationship with media I would say that I am constantly opposed to it. I am on my computer most of my free time and I just bought a Blackberry (I admit it).
Everywhere I look and go the media are there and there is no way to escape it.
Now that I am taking this Mass Media class I seem to appreciate it more.
I tend to think about and evaluate everything more than I used to.
It is super interesting. Good job Professor Williams.

Technology has evolved so much over the past years and sometimes I do not even know how to keep up with it. If you look at the iPhone and all the applications that it has, it is super overwhelming that you can book your flights, find a restaurant in your area, or play skateboarding games all on a little device. There are even flashlight or navigation applications.



I mean, really????

Well this is actually a fake iPhone commercial but I still wonder how far technology is influencing us in our daily lifes? Did we forget how to talk to someone in person because we are so used to pressing some buttons and having a whole conversations or meetings on a technological device.

The first cell phone that I owned ( which I was very proud of) had a special feature which was the game 'snake' on Nokia phones. I thought it was the coolest thing. That was only 7 years ago and now technology is getting more and more advanced.


Media- related Concepts

This class has helped me understand Media and most importantly taught me how to react to it.
The first thing I want to talk about that I also addressed as a Key Concept on our class blog (Click here) is the Cultural approach to Mass Communication. Chapter 1 points out that the concept of the cultural approach recognizes that individuals bring diverse meanings to messages, given factors such as gender, age, educational level, ethnicity and occupation. I thought it is very interesting that no matter how the ‘sender’ sends out a message to the public, every individual will interpret the message differently depending on his or her cultural beliefs or interests.
This goes back to consumer behavior and how well you know the people you are targeting. Every person is different and has different values which is very important for the media because they need to know how to approach every individual.

Another media-related concept that I found important is the Internet ( in fact I am using it right now). Our textbook stated that the goal of the internet was to build a new media network to replace the traditional media which are books, newspapers, television and radio. The internet has become more and more advanced and you never know at what point it is going to stop emerging. Youtube for example is one of the most popular Websites, with more than twenty-five million hits a day. Its videos challenge traditional broadcast and cable television. There are videos of basically everything on youtube. You can find commercials, personal videos or movie trailers.


This might be one of the most famous youtube videos and it never gets old. It is fascinating how a private home movie becomes so famous by simply putting it on the internet.


Chapter 3 points out a question of what is appropriate media content to be on the web. It is easier to eliminate forms of sexual content from books, films or television than from the internet. Every person that has internet access can post videos, pictures or comments online that might be disturbing to others. The question is who controls all this information? There is so much out there that we cannot eliminate all the inappropriate content that is on the web.I think this is an interesting topic because when I was younger we had a computer in our household that I could access and go on any websites that I wanted. Even though they have laws of protections (Take me there) how does this affect children or teens?

Finally, the two most important international issues affecting radio in the 1990s were ship radio requirements and signal interference. All major U.S. seagoing ships with more than fifty passengers on board traveling more than two hundred miles off coast had to be equipped with with wireless equipment. This was a major advancement in the 1990s especially after the Titanic tragedy happened.




Four tool sets



The four tool sets are great and I am starting to apply them when I see commercials or listen to the radio. I like practicing in class when we watch a commercial and then apply the four tool sets. It is fun and I learn.





Media-related Question


There is so much distraction out there, so much information, a lot to talk about and so much to keep up with but how much of all the media do we actually take in everyday in our lives?