November 5-11 Question 2

Both Sadler and Hunt have good arguments about interne plagiarism. Although I don’t fully agree with either Sadler or Hunt, if I had to choose which I agreed with more, I would have to choose Sadler. Sadler believes that plagiarism is not just copying of another’s work, but an attempt to mislead the reader, an attempt to deceive the reader. Because the reader expects your information to be yours and true, there is a boundary that is crossed. The reader trusts your expertise in the subject in which you are reporting on and is misled when you plagiarize. It is important to Sadler for students to educate themselves about plagiarism and the dangers of plagiarism. Hunt on the other hand, believes that there may be some benefits to internet plagiarism. Although it is wrong, it makes sure that teachers are actually paying attention to their student’s work. Plagiarism has always been looked down on and considered wrong, but Hunt brings an interesting perspective to the playing field

November 5-11 Question 1

Media experiences can definitely reinforce your existing worldviews as well as challenge your views in many ways. For me, I believe that we are always influenced by media in this society. We’ve built up our society around media and it seems as if we find all of our information from media whether it be current events, political information, or even personal beliefs. The way that media can reinforce your beliefs and values is when they agree with your prior beliefs and values. For example, say Fox news says that it’s okay to abort babies and that was your prior position on the issues as well. Then, when you go to reevaluate your position on the issues, you will have Fox as one of your sources for where you received your information. Media can definitely expand your views because it can give insight on information that you didn’t know about. One of the best ways to learn about new things and expand your views is watching the news. The news gives many different perspectives as well as provides a lot of different information.

October 29 - November 4 Question 3

The topic that I’ve decided to write about for this week is the topic of Advertising and the Media. The reason I choose this topic is because the two are so closely related that we don’t even know we’re being advertised to when we watch TV. There are three points to advertising, “to create product awareness, to inform consumers about a product or service, and to motivate customer demand for the product.” Creating product awareness is very important because just due to logic, if the product is not known, nobody will buy it. To inform consumers about a product or service is important because people might know the name of the product, but not truly know what it does. For example, the product Hydrocortisone has a long name and without a proper explanation, nobody would know what it does. Hydrocortisone is a very strong drug that helps people with itch such as a bug bite or even Eczema [a skin condition]. One would never have known this without the proper explanation. Motivating customers to buy the product is a technique that is used all the time. For example, the Gianst winning the World Series was an automatic income boost for sports stores such as the Giant’s Dugout or Sports Authority. “If you’re a real fan, then you need these shirts or this jersey.” All of these are part of Advertising and Media.

October 29 - November 4 Question 2

Chapter 10 comes up with a lot of good arguments when talking about the idea of children’s food advertising. I think that Wootan and Liodice explain what they are saying very thoroughly and completely. Wootan takes a different side where he agrees with the government’s regulation in advertisement towards kids. This includes things such as censoring certain things on TV. We are currently trying to cut down the large amount of obese children. Liodice argues that we need to stop the regulation of advertisement. He believes that it is the rights of the companies to appeal towards these children and make profit from them. This approach is geared towards a business man approach; everything is about the business and the generated revenue. I think that taking away the advertising would definitely cut down on the obesity, however many of the obese children are learning their eating habits from their parents. That is where the root needs to stop. Parents need to teach their children how to eat and buy the right types of foods for them to stay healthy.

October 29 - November 4 Question 1

Some of the different marketing strategies that I’ve encountered in the past week would be pricing strategies and name brand strategies. First off, pricing strategy is the strategy of cutting the price of a particular product in order to up the consumption of this product. Where I encountered this was in the workplace. I currently work at Andersen’s Bakery at Valley Fair Mall and we just lowered the price of an item called the strawberry pastry. We did this to increase the profit made from this product. Even though we lower the price, more of the product is bought and therefore, we generate more income from the strawberry pastry. The strategy of name brand is a strategy in which companies will come up with either a catchy phrase or a name that just seems to run off the tongue easily. These types of names will spread like a wild fire among the consumers of the world. For example, the name American Eagle has an almost patriotic touch to it. The product and the name brand are so appealing that people from all over the world come to buy clothes from this store. These strategies help generate income and in a sense, trick the public into spending money.

October 15-21 Question 3

The concept that I chose for this week is the concept of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for evidence that is in line with our assumptions or original ideas and dismisses evidence that is against our assumption. The reason that I chose this topic is because confirmation bias happens all the time without our being conscious of it. For example, in the up and coming election of Obama and Romney, it is possible that someone who is originally a republican or who is originally a democrat might only look for information and statistics that buffer their nominee for their view. Without even knowing we have already decided who we want to vote for without looking at all of the facts and all of the discussions between the two nominees. Also, it is possible that with the information that’s given, we will distort it in a way that suits our purposes. Confirmation bias is a very dangerous thing and can lead us away from being good critical thinkers. We need to be able to consider all aspects of an idea to be the best critical thinker that we can.

October 15-21 Question 2

Although Condon believes that UFOs do not exist, he states “… any scientist with adequate training and credentials who does come up with a clearly defined, specific proposal for study should be supported …” Condon does not seem to have enough substantial evidence to argue that scientists should not study UFOs and instead, he states that schools should not discuss this phenomenon or give credit to students who are finding sources from UFO books and magazine articles. Unlike Condon, Hynek believes that UFOs are worth studying. He states that scientists must start from scratch with data gathering and data processing. I believe that Hynek makes the best argument. He believes that a small percentage of sightings are alien space craft, but he makes it known that the only way to prove such a thing is to collect new and legitimate information. Paynter is skeptical, but he believes that there is a slight chance that UFOs exist. He writes in a way to persuade readers that there is no such thing as UFOs, saying things like “just because a given UFO sighting cannot be explained it does not follow that it has been proved to be an alien space ship,” and “there is no probative physical evidence that compels us to conclude that aliens are visiting the Earth.”