Great work 11C Tuesday. You are a small group but your effort is most impressive. This wasn't the easiest or most inspiring CR to respond to (no offense to JH) - but you all managed to write insightful posts and have a good in-class discussion (sometimes more effective and satisfying than a debate).
Class 11C-Tuesday | C.R.#6 | |
Scorsese | 9.8/10 | |
Spielberg | 9.6/10 | |
Hitchcock | 9.3/10 | |
Kubrick | 9.3/10 | |
Tarantino | 9.7/10 |
NOTE - Only for 11-C Tuesday. Other classes can comment as well and do extra CR's (that's great to see) but we should avoid confusion. You MUST do the ones your class members come up with. Extra ones are optional.
From Joohyung:
The topic for my Critical Response, from TED.com, is "Johanna Blakley: Social media and the end of gender."
She is talking about the old network system and the influence of new social media on gender.
She argues that social media applications (that we all know and love, or love to hate) are actually going to help free us from some of the absurd assumptions that we have as a society about gender. Social media is actually going to help us dismantle some of these silly stereotypes.
It is good to see; however, I think it is highly biased toward women's roles only. We should think about what causes the real end of intolerance between gender.
These are my brief notes.
1. On social networking sites, people tend to 'network' more with their peer group. So, if I am a college student there would be all sorts of college guys and girls in my friend list. Even if social media demographics continue (and will continue) to hold relevance. So, I don't agree with the broad premise of this talk - that aggregation would shift towards 'interest groups.'
2. It's an interesting observation for marketers that women spend more time on social media sites. Even my personal observation is aligned with this. Just spending more time, however, does not entail interaction with the adverts placed within social media. What is the likelihood of a person following an advert? Maybe this is something we can direct our research towards finding. In a way, the talk is contradicting. The speaker talks about the 'end of gender' and in the end establishes the importance to target females - and how social media and affiliates should consider them.
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Garrioch's Critical Response:
While I think her ideas are interesting, and she has identified some interesting trends regarding social networking and how media is responding to all these new possibilities (for better - which I can agree with), I think she's making some pretty big claims that sound more amazing than they actually are. An end to gender? Of course we can't take this literally, and we aren't meant to. But does the foot of her research fit the shoe of her assumptions?
In some cultures, her ideas might stand out and be more groundbreaking than others. Maybe in Muslim countries. But in America, where the playing field is fairly equal for men and women, using the word "feminist" is sensitive and has to be reserved for when and where it is truly needed. Feminism and Facebook in the same sentence? Maybe, but I'm not convinced by what she reveals (or nearly reveals) in her speech. Maybe 7 minutes isn't long enough to set the table for what she really wants to say.
We don't have to argue the fact that women use Facebook more than men. Women like to communicate more actively than men. Women shop more online and pay more attention to new products than men. But does that break down the stereotypical views a company might have about how to serve a target market? There are TV shows specifically geared towards genders, and that will never change. And why should it? At the end of the day is this going to impact the issues that really matter in society? Not really.
After watching this TED Talk, I didn't have any strong impression of what Blakely was saying. Compared to Robinson's message of creativity, this message of "women are going to dominate media" is not that groundbreaking. Women have been strong players in media for a long time. I'd be more interested if she was discussing a minority group.
Interested in hearing what others had to say about Blakley's views, I went to YouTube to see the comments for this same video. The good and the bad regarding comments on YouTube: lot's of stupidity but also a lot of candid insights - which are ranked with a "top comment" near the top. I was happy to see someone agreed with me here:
Top Comments
So - please complete your CR's BEFORE next class, and see what you come up with. This one is a bit tough.8)
Nevertheless, this talk is quite unpersuasive - Blakley only talks on how social media is changing our lives; then show a statistic that women use social media more than man (which btw doesn't have anything to do with her suggestion that women are driving the "social revolution").
Bottomline: Blakley does little to defend her statement that social media will free us from assumptions about gender.
I gave this talk a thumbs down, because it was slightly incoherent. She loosely outlined some trends, which she interpreted a little poorly. For example, if women constitute 55% of the general population, they SHOULD comprise 55% of social networks. It doesn't demonstrate increased female influence. It just follows from the density of the population. She let her internal agenda color her conclusion.