Melanie’s Weblog

I am a huge fan of music, specifically of the live variety.  I go to concerts every chance I get.  The Bay Area, which until recently was my home, is a Mecca for live shows.  I’ve seen all my favorite bands multiple times.  My all time favorite band is My Chemical Romance, who unfortunately have earned themselves an “emo” label by those who don’t really know any better.  Their last album was about living, and beating death when it came calling.  I’m not really sure how that fits into the emo mold, but there we go.  So for this week’s assignment, I jumped at the chance to write about a mass medium that could send undesirable message.  I take this topic personally, because my favorite band is quite frequently blamed for the suicide of young people, who just happen to listen to their music.

Based on my research, I am confirmed in my belief that music does NOT have a negative effect on people who listen to it.  There are plenty of articles everywhere I look that loudly proclaim how negative emo music.  However, the arguments are weak.  One website I visited claimed that violent music could be a sign of a violent teen.  This was their opening argument.  I’m sorry, but this just isn’t very convincing. Could be.  That is not something I say when I want people to take me seriously.  This argument came from the Media Awareness Network.

A survey by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry said people are labeled as emo due in part to the music they listen to, which can then lead to further problems, such as bullying.  Again, not true.  The music I listen to is definitely under the category of what many people consider emo.  However, I am one of the happiest people I know.

JSTOR had a study of music on anxiety.  One of the researchers’ finds was that music can minimize frustration.  This is true.  For me, when I listen to “emo” music, it helps to know that there are people who experience pain and sadness just like I do, and this in turn helps me feel less frustrated with everything going on around me.

All this information fits most closely wit the “Spiral of Silence” model.  The four steps describe perfectly the difficulties faced by “emo” people every day.  They then turn to the music of people such as My Chemical Romance and Panic At The Disco to escape that fear of isolation described in the model.

These grounds are relevant because emo music is just that: music.  Ultimately, if a child is going to suffer from depression and perhaps become suicidal, chances are they would be so with or without the music they listen to.

Readers might argue that the anger in and despair in emo music encourages people to go and slit their wrists and other such harmful things.  The My Chemical Romance fan-created tagline is “MCR saved my life.”  Countless fans can give testimonies of almost losing it, but listening to their favorite band put them back on track and made them realize that perhaps life wasn’t so bad after all.

As I sit here writing this, the lyrics to one of My Chemical Romance’s songs fill the room.  “I am not afraid to keep on living,” proclaims the lead singer.  If this isn’t positive and anti-emo, then I don’t know what is.

References

alterophobia@gmail.com.  (2008, May 28). Expert study shows how accusations of being “emo”
are tied to being bullied.  Message posted to
http://alterophobia.blogspot.com/2008/05/expert-study-shows-how-accusations-of.html.

Media Awareness Network. (2008). Negative Effects of Music.  Retrieved
Fromhttp://www.mediaawareness.ca/english/parents/music/inappropriate/negative_effect
s_music.cfm

Peretti, Peter O. and Swenson, Kathy.  (1974). Effects of Music on Anxiety as Determined by
Physiological Skin Responses.  Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/pss/3344765

This week’s assignment led to a rather interesting discovery on my part: politics aren’t just for adults. Young people can get involved too, and upon further examination, I found out that what my generation has to say is actually pretty interesting. My assignment was to monitor an alternative media source and a mainstream news source, and then compare them. I chose to look at CNN.com, since I used it last week and am somewhat familiar with it already. My alternative media source was Wiretap, which was the source that led me to see that my generation cares about politics.

Wiretap’s tagline is “ideas and action for a new generation.” This in itself is comforting. Its articles are clearly written with a younger audience in mind. There is little on the site about issues like the stock market and taxes, because they don’t affect my peers and me. The headlines on Wiretap are things about voting myths and sports activism, both of which are current issues, interesting to my generation. However, CNN is ALL about the election right now, with a few other headlines mixed in. While CNN is probably more factual, I know I personally struggle to get through each an every article. I understand that the election is important, but it is not the only issue facing America today.

This being said, if it is straight election coverage that you want, then CNN is the right place. There is a section for the election on Wiretap, but it is less election coverage and more side stories that vaguely relate to the election. CNN is probably also a little more reliable, seeing as it is a professional news site. Professional reporters write for CNN, whereas Wiretap seems mostly to be like FUBU- For Us By Us. The latter covers what might be deemed as less “important,” much as I hate that distinction.

I think it is likely that serious news-goers would frown down on a site like Wiretap, and perhaps they have that right. Since it is clearly geared towards younger people, it glosses over some of the issues that older people find very important. However, young people, like me, feel the same way about CNN. It is almost too news-based, with little analysis. It is also daunting. I am a words person, so when I log onto CNN.com and I see a ton of numbers, I get a little scared. Wiretap puts everything into a perspective that I as a teenager can understand. No number crunching or stock-market analysis. I can’t say that one source is better than the other, because both are so different. They both offer such different views and even different types of stories. So in conclusion, I recommend a dose of both CNN.com and Wiretap to maintain a healthy and balanced news diet.

Politics have never really been my thing. Up until this year, the election never really held any interest for me. Perhaps this was because that until recently, I wasn’t a United States Citizen. This meant that I couldn’t vote. Hence, my complete disinterest in any and all things political. Plus, I wasn’t old enough to vote anyway. This year, everything changed. I still didn’t really care about politics very much, but the election now holds some interest for me. Then, last week, I watched the most recent of the Presidential debates, and I decided that perhaps politics aren’t so bad after all. This week, I am going to take it a step further. My assignment told me I HAD to monitor three days’ worth of election coverage. Not just that, but I was told to look for specific roles fulfilled by the media, based on Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman’s book “The Press Effect.” Toulmin’s model is the basis for my argument.

My source, CNN.com, did a fairly decent job during my monitoring over the past three days. However, it could have been better. I read a total of eight articles about the election. None of them fell under one of Jamieson and Waldman’s categories of press; they all filled at least two roles. Most of the articles were mainly press as soothsayer, although they also had elements of press as storyteller. These stories told the stories of what had happened, and then switched gears completely to focus on what was going to happen next. The last article focused on what “The Press Effect” calls “press as custodian of fact.” It broke down the race for the White House, changed as it was by the last debate. Honest facts were given both for and against McCain as well as Obama. It used the history of the presidential election to show whether or not McCain and Obama are doing “well” in the race, and whether or not the current polls will hold true.
This last role, the custodian of fact, is perhaps the most difficult and the most important. Jamieson and Waldman describe the custodian of fact as one who corrects factual inaccuracies, defines key terms, gives a sense of history and biography, explores probable impact, and offers analysis, not description. This role is the most difficult because it is incredibly difficult to cover an election without subconsciously using some kind of bias.
It is important to me because as a relatively uniformed voter, I need to know the straight facts, and all of the facts. I don’t need someone sugarcoating the bad stuff and glorifying the good. I also need the honest analysis of what’s going on, not someone who is using selected facts to prove a point.
If I have taken anything out of an assignment, it is that finding a piece of honest, unbiased reporting is very difficult. I will now be on the constant lookout for what I define as “good” reporting-the use of the role of custodian as fact. Not to mention that I am now that much more interested in the election and politics. Hopefully with a few more assignments like this, I will go from indifferent to interested. Hey, you never know.

Before I attended my first J201 class, I couldn’t have cared less about blogging. It was a big deal over nothing, I thought. However, I have since changed my tune. On my first day of class, the wonderful Tiffany Derville informed us that we would have to keep a blog for the next ten weeks. I inwardly groaned. But, like any good college student, I gritted my teeth and began looking into the world of blogging.

I still have no idea what I am going to write about, or from which sources I will claim inspiration. I have no background in journalism or writing for anyone other than my English teachers. I am, in all senses of the word, a rookie. I am coming into this with a fairly successful minor league career, which translates into good grades in high school English. However, now I play in a whole different ballpark. Some of my peers are rookies, while others have been playing in the majors for a few years. My first few at-bats are almost certainly going to be strike-outs. You never know though. Maybe before too long I’ll catch a lucky break and hopefully by then end of this class I will have hit a homerun. Are the baseball references a little cliché? Probably. But when diving headfirst into the unfamiliar, no one can blame me for wanting to bring along something familiar.

So why this blog? The obvious answer would be because I have to. But thinking about it, I begin to see that this might actually be fun. It will be difficult. I do love to write, but I spend most of my time in my world, created, managed, and inhabited by me and only me. Keeping this blog is going to force me to leave my world and venture into the real world. As a college student, it’s probably about time this happened anyway.

How about a little bit about me? Music is my life. I love singing, and I have been in choir since the age of six. I also love going to concerts. I pay close attention to the music scene. This includes not just the current gossip, but also things such as various artists’ political views. Do you see where I am going with this? I am going to speak freely for a moment. Politics bore me. However, add music and pop culture into the equation, and it’s a different story entirely. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you see some future posts from that angle.

I am a little bit anxious to see how the blogging world operates. Will I be able to keep up? I hope so. One of my favorite bands, Cobra Starship, wrote a song with a chorus that begins “Oh, I’m ready for it. Come on, bring it.” And now, I am ready. Let’s do this.