McMaster`s Next Top Crowd: Every Wednesday at 8!! ****MARK***

The idea of crowds and crowd mentality recalls me back to my first year of university living on rez. According to the Understanding Human Communication, crowds all have emotions, sentiments and ideas that all members take into one direction, a ``collective mind. `` Now I was a teenage girl at the time of my first year, I liked to watch television, as I still do, but I was intently concentrated on certain shows that could not have been missed that week such as `American`s Next Top Model` and ``Grey`s Anatomy`. As a result of watching these shows every week in the common area, it resulted in a crowd of girls getting together every week and basically taking over the television for a couple of hours.

Now every week, the same girls would barge into the common room and basically take over the television from anyone that was watching at the time. This was a perfect example of Individual Invincibility. (Sevigny, 2005) Us girls got together as a crowd and were fearless, we didn’t care who was watching TV and what they wanted to watch at that time, we just wanted to watch our program and we wouldn’t take it any other way.

Time continued and hockey season started which coincided with these girly shows which everyone watched every week. Now as much as I liked watching my shows I was also very much a Toronto Maple Leaf fan and watch to watch the game even more than I wanted to watch the shows, however I sacrificed my own interest and continued to meet every week and miss any games that would have been on that night (contagion).

Once these shows started to finish, we no longer had a reason every week to meet, and I guess some of the girls missed the weekly meeting to talk about the show and other girly things on our mind that day. So once I was able to watch the Leaf games without disrupting our weekly meeting because the shows were over, the girls got together and suggested watching another show the same time slot that American`s Next Top Model was on. This suggestibility then made me feel as though I needed to obey to the suggestions of the crowd. (Sevigny, 2005)

https://elm.mcmaster.ca/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_11_1

Dr. Sevigny`s tweet about life as a university student, made me realize that the ideas of the crowd are those that are followed because of fear. First year is scary, I was alone in this huge residence and didn’t know anyone, and it was a little lonely and completely terrifying. The crowd technique is a way of fitting in first year, a way of surviving first year. Looking back I don`t remember what happened in that show or the hockey games that I missed, I remember the fun and friendships that I made that first year. So all in all, crowds aren’t always bad..... just as long as you`re not in one forever!

Be Green or not to be Green? **Mark**

As a student, I watch the news daily and read online articles that interest me at times. However, it may be because of my generation or maybe just the way that I was brought up but I tend to take in information as a grain of salt. I figure it’s extremely difficult for me to write any type of paper or article without in some way wording or completely expressing my thoughts on them. Newspapers and television are in turn supposed to be biased, it’s their job right?

Now as I sat in my communication tutorial the article for that week was “Information Deprivation in an Information-Rich Society.” (Gerniner et al, 1996) Having done the readings I found them very interesting to understand that large corporations are basically dictating and manipulating the media outlets in which I watch on a daily business. With this article, one thought came to mind. Fox News Vs. Barak Obama.

The United States has seen major change within the last couple of years; Barak Obama is now president, first ever black president. I noticed watching the View a couple of days earlier that Bill O’Reilly was on discussing how Fox News had been seemingly attacking the President on all aspects of his term so far from his family, his religion, his beliefs and even to the colour of his skin. So I went on youtube to find some of the news reports that they were discussing and found a collage of them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN823dUu6KA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouKJixL--ms

Now Fox News is known to all as a Republican network so it comes to no surprise that the news that they are broadcasting and the specialists that they are inviting onto discuss issues are all anti-Obama Republicans. It was even escalated to a point in which Fox was making up stories about Obama being Muslim and comparing him to Osama Bin Laden, a famous terrorist which many Americans are familiar with his infamous name. They were able to create great controversy about the fact of his smoking habits as well as the significance of his middle name.

The funding that is placed into the Fox network is all Republican based so it seems that they will go to any lengths to avoid being objective when it comes to voicing opinions about the President.

So basically the only positive thing that I can say about Fox News is that they aren't trying to hide their biases in any way, however it worries me that others are not as critical to hearing everything that is being said on these programs to the point in which they are transfering their own beliefs about the President.

However are marketers and advertisers just manipulating information for us to swallow and be able to be believe? In the article posted by Dr. Sevigny entitled "Green suasion or mind control? Officials hoping to stem emissions are getting their message massaged by psychologists. Can manipulating media be justified when some people feel its for the greater good of everyone as a whole?(Porter, The Toronto Star) Now some may refer to The Toronto Star as more of a liberal paper, and the ideas about global warming to be a liberal thought, so are they manipulating information in order for people to make a change in their beliefs? Whether you want to believe it or not, something is changing in the environment, call it what you want, global warming, global changeing, but should these same manipulations be categorized as the same manipulations as Fox's news coverage on Obama?

Personally, I think your comparing apples and oranges. Fox is trying to destroy the image of a single person, where in turn psychologists are simply manipulating ideas about conserving the earth to the masses for the greater good.