My Really Late Mid-Term

I think that the most useful thing that I’ve done in this class is blogging. This is the first time that I’ve blogged and it’s an interesting form of writing. It’s taking me time to get use to the writing style. Initially I was afraid too write with my voice in a piece because, in any good news piece, you don’t let your own personal voice show but now, with some practice I’m getting use to it.

I feel that I’m doing ok in the class. It would probably help if I remembered to complete all of the assignments. Writing is my strength so knowing how to write isn’t a problem, but writing with my own voice and learning to write shortly are the two things I need to work on. I would really like to focus on writing Twitter messages. Like you said in class, it’s like writing headlines and that is something that I am not very good at.

I would like more information on how to use social media to spread a message. I know that the final project is suppose to teach us this, but since it’s a fake company, it really doesn’t matter what materials we put together and how we put it together. I would like to learn about marketing strategies and how a campaign uses all of these different medias to get a message out effectively. Also, I feel that blogging would be more effective if it wasn’t just reactions to what we did in class.

There is this website called stock.xchng, http://www.sxc.hu, which offers free, open stock photography. You have to sign up for an account with an e-mail address but overall I have found it a very useful web site for images.

“Brown Is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream” Review

Made in 2007, the title is misleading, especially if you only read the first part. Green has taken on a much different context in the past few years and when I skimmed the title, I was initially confused. Even when reading the title, I don’t think of a Hispanics person as a brown person, I think of me as a brown person.

It seems a lot of the video is dedicated to clips of George Lopez’s stand-up and from his show. Overall, I feel that most of these clips didn’t add much to the content, if anything, to the video. Also, the random use of special effects was distracting. Especially when it was making a person appear as a drawing, which was used, it appears, for no reason.

Despite these details, the video brings up a lot of interesting points. Right away, they point out that Hispanic is a term that was created by the US government for race classification. I don’t think this is something that most people think of. For instance, you’d be surprised at the amount of people that can’t believe that I’m Asian. Also, most people aren’t aware that if you’re from the Middle East you’re White according to the government.

Like the video points out most Hispanics identify themselves from the country they’re from and not as a Hispanic. This is the issue that the entire video seems to revolve around. How can the media market towards a “Hispanic” culture if there isn’t a really defined Hispanic culture as most people think, as well as exploring the new, emerging Hispanic culture that teenagers are creating.

To reach this, new developing culture, social media can be easily incorporated. Teenagers are a large number of social media users, and they use it daily. By reaching out through social media, people can spread the word about things that interest them, from immigration reform to connecting with their cousin in Columbia.

The same is true for any idea. With social media being as prevalent in today’s culture someone can find out about any topic that interest them, or, if they are that rare person that doesn’t use social media, the changes are someone they know will have a similar interest and inform them about it.