HARRISON SHRAIR
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Passionately Driven Communications Studies and Graphic Design Student
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Recent Graduate of The Harrington School of Communication and Media at URI
COM 416 Blog
#COM416 : Look Who's Back (2015)
After watching the 2015 German Satirical Comedy on Netflix, Look Who's Back, I had many different feelings and emotions toward the film, as well as towards the filmmakers. I think that it was an interesting idea for a movie plot, but I found it sort of disturbing to watch such a terrible person be portrayed as sort of comedic.
One of the most impactful scenes for me was at the very beginning when Adolf is running around trying to understand what has happened and why he has awoken in this time. He comes off almost comedic to some people, but it is more of a social commentary of what people would do if this actually were to happen.
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I think that this film might’ve been interpreted among young germans in various ways. I think a lot of people would probably be appalled to see Adolf Hitler as a character in a Satirical Comedy role such as this one, but I think that they might understand that this film was created to show Hitler in a different light, trying to dehumanize him by using him as a comedy prop. I think it might be relevant to Americans today because our leader has some frightening similarities with Adolf Hitler, but I also think that a lot of people wouldn’t take the time to watch this film due to the disturbing content revolving around Adolf Hitler, even if the character was acting in a satirical role.
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#COM416 Bad News Game Simulation
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I found this bad news game to be very interesting and not at all what I thought it was going to be. This game is really all about how fast and easy it is to spread propaganda and other forms of information to the public. Throughout the simulation, there were many opportunities to either start controversy or to do the moral thing, but I found myself starting to spread inaccurate things because I saw my simulated followers list increasing. I wasn’t initially sure what this game was aiming to do, but it became clearer to me afterwards that this game was trying to make the player understand that people really are obsessed with how they are viewed, especially online. The game was also really all about the way that fake news and bad information can be spread so quickly and easily, while many people don’t even understand that it isn’t true. Online social media outlets such as Twitter have the capacity to have various forms of propaganda like this spread throughout it, while many of the users on the site aren’t educated enough to the point where they can tell a difference between real news and bad information.
I really enjoyed playing this game, or simulation, because it was able to express many different valuable ideas and information through a fairly simple way. By having the player choose the different decisions but having the answers options be influential at the same time gave way to sort of misinformed choices. The different paths that you could take in this game led you to doing different things such as even creating a whole online news organization that is just spreading fake news. The simulation led you to produce content on tragedies that stirred up things like conspiracy theories, which I found to be very interesting.
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#COM416 Ryan Holiday's Trust Me, I'm Lying
After reading Part one of Ryan Holiday’s Novel, Trust Me, I’m Lying, I was able to realize many important tricks and ways to use media to your advantage. I found it really interesting that one way for bloggers to get rich, Holiday described as basically exploitation. He went into detail about how "One of the quickest ways to get coverage for a product online is to give it away for free to bloggers (they’ll rarely disclose their conflict of interest). At American Apparel I have two full-time employees whose job it is to research fashion bloggers—girls who post photos of their outfits each day to thousands of readers who imitate them—and send them our newest garments.” (IV, Tactic 1). This is a really interesting concept to think about, because this can promote so much online activity and buzz about a specific product, and that is in fact due to the way that the bloggers or “media influencers” can get the message out about said product. This to me is really cool because all you need to do is give away this free product to a few interested people and they will do the rest of the work. I have encountered this type of media trick in my own consumerism as well. Back when I was in high school, The popular clothing company, Vineyard Vines, reached out to my friend since he was posting a lot of instagram pictures wearing their clothes and using their captions, so eventually they decided to reach out and offer him a brand sponsorship. All he had to do was wear the specific free clothing they sent and upload pictures of it with their specific hashtags, and then they would be getting free advertising from him. Vineyard Vines now uses people that post these pictures with their gear on their website anyways, even if they bought it normally like everybody else, which is really interesting because now they aren’t even giving away free items, they’re just using people that use their hashtag anyway for free publicity. https://www.vineyardvines.com/
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"Every blog, publisher, and oversharer in your Facebook feed is constantly looking to post things that will take on a life of their own and get attention, links, and new readers with the least work possible. Whether that content is accurate, important, or helpful doesn’t even register on their list of priorities.” (VI, Tactic 3). This quote was really important insight into how people that consistently post online are a very easy way to spread things around the internet fast. Holiday talks about how he gives the bloggers what he thinks will go viral for them to post online, opposed to the good, wholesome news content that some people would rather be seeing spread. This tactic is really important because it can create a lot of success for work that has very little meaning. This whole idea ties into the problem surrounding “fake news” and other viral internet behaviors because it shows that people will click on headlines that sound more interesting, even if they aren’t necessarily real.
The last really interesting tactic that I found in Part one of Ryan Holiday’s book was regarding how to get a lot of clicks with a question mark in the headline: "I have my own analysis: When you take away the question mark, it usually turns their headline into a lie. The reason bloggers like to use them is because it lets them get away with a false statement that no one can criticize. After the reader clicks, they soon discover that the answer to the “question” in their headline is obviously, “No, of course not.” But since it was posed as a question, the blogger wasn’t wrong—they were only asking.” (VII, Tactic 4). This tactic really stood out to me because he clearly outlines how people can get away with doing things like this and writing complete lies, only because they added a question mark to their work. I found this to be really very interesting and informative.
#COM416 Fox News Trump Video: Analysis
After viewing the video from Tuesday March 19th's Synchronous Com 416 class and watching the Vox video regarding President Trump and his relationship to Fox and Friends. Somehow the relationship between Donald Trump and Fox and Friends has turned into a somewhat symbiotic relationship. Trump places lots of praise on how "influential" the Fox and Friends program is. The video gave multiple examples of how Trump tweets things that gives Fox and Friends power to air stories that they are hearing from the president. The relationship begins when Trump watches certain episodes of Fox and Friends, and he then gets these crazy ideas in his head about certain political and cultural problems. Once Trump watches this show and turns to Twitter to report the findings he learns about, which most of the time create fear and much bigger problems than ever necessary.
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The Five Filters of the Propaganda model played a large part in the way that I was able to interpret the information presented in the video. Trump plays a huge role in the way that the United States is affected by propaganda, because he loves to use his Twitter account to report things that are usually untrue, which stirs up tons of problems. The centralized ownership filter accounts for how Media outlets like fox and friends have a large role in propaganda, which can clearly be seen when Trump watches it and then Tweets what he learns. The target audiences of these Tweets are usually individuals with lower intelligence and less education. These are typically the type of people that let President Trump get inside their heads and influence them with his ridiculous views. The government as well as the media outlets like Fox and Friends shape the way that journalism is, especially since people like to believe that Donald Trump's Tweets actually have any sort of real important meaning.