Media Reflection 1/21/18

        Keeping this blog and taking critical thinking has acted as a rude awakening for me. Before having taken this class, I was a lot more unaware of many aspects of media than I would have like to have thought at the time. For instance, I did assume that companies used certain tools to try to convey to their audience that their product will be useful and worthy of consumers to buy. However, I never would have imagined every single technique, and how detailed the techniques are, they use, and how desperately they try to get them to work on their audience. I thought at the time that advertisements were attempting to market towards everybody, not just a select group of people (target market audience). However, this has now become obviously false.
        Now that I am more aware of the strategies employed by advertisers, I am less likely to be pursuaded by their ads. While watching commercials and even some TV shows, I can identify a lot of the techniques that advertisers are using in hopes of the audience deciding to purchase their product. I guess I have developed somewhat of an immunity to many advertising techniques. Since I am more aware of advertisers' tricks, I am less affected by the clutter that surrounds me. It also bothers me much less than it did a couple months ago.
        It is important to have media literacy and I hope that more and more people in this world can work towards developing it. I believe that it will help them out in the sense that they will be less likely to make bad decisions by purchasing useless products, and by letting themselves break free of the clutter.