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"Cinematic VR allows viewers to live entirely inside a film. They put on goggles and look at the universe around them - behind, above, anywhere they turn their gaze - and still see the world of the movie. Some in the entertainment industry view it as perhaps the greatest advance in entertainment since the addition of sound to movies nearly a century ago, involving the senses in ways they're not involved when the real world is visible next to a screen. But while investors in Hollywood and elsewhere have poured in hundreds of millions of dollars, drawing top talent and yielding a creative explosion, cinematic VR has produced little in the way of commercial success or popular acceptance."

"It started with a post on social media. Or, to be more exact, a series of posts about a visit to McDonald's to buy a milkshake. Within hours, Josh Raby's gripping account on Twitter was international news, covered by respected outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. "This guy's story about trying to buy a McDonald's milkshake turned into a bit of a mission and the internet can't get enough of it," read the headline on Indy100, the Independent's sister title. The New York Daily News said he'd been "tortured". Except, as McDonald's pointed out - and Raby himself later admitted - the story was embellished to entertain his Twitter followers, although he says he based it on real events. Raby's was the latest thinly sourced story that, on closer inspection, turned out not to be as billed. The phenomenon is largely a product of the increasing pressure in newsrooms that have had their resources slashed, then been recalibrated to care more about traffic figures. And, beyond professional journalists, there is also a "whole cottage industry of people who put out fake news", says Brooke Binkowski, an editor at debunking website Snopes. "They profit from it quite a lot in advertising when people start sharing the stories. They are often protected because they call themselves 'satire' or say in tiny fine print that they are for entertainment purposes only.""

""Farmed and Dangerous" takes branded content to another level by not including any branding at all in the show. Social Media Week organizers dubbed it Unbranded Entertainment. Chipotle and other advertisers placed commercials in the show, but by not including branding in the show itself, the restaurant has taken a risk that few marketers would entertain. But Chipotle's chief marketing and development officer, Mark Crumpacker, said on a panel at Social Media Week, in which I participated, that he didn't consider it a big risk at all. Citing McDonald's significant marketing budget, which dwarfs his company's, he said Chipotle couldn't afford to rely on traditional advertising. The hope is that PR, buzz and social media will do much of the heavy lifting for the chain's message."

"The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media is the only research-based organization working behind-the scenes in the entertainment industry to engage, educate, and influence the need for gender balance, reducing stereotyping and creating a wide variety of female portrayals for children's entertainment."

"Growing numbers of observers contend that the dominant public role of our time has shifted from citizen to consumer. Indeed, respondents in polls typically cite entertainment, shopping, and other consumer activities as their top free time preferences. Commercial media and public entertainment venues offer environments carefully constructed to avoid politics and real world problems that might disturb these consumer impulses. As people in global societies increasingly enjoy the freedoms of private life, it becomes increasingly difficult to communicate about many broad public concerns. The personalized society enables people to choose individual lifestyles and identities that often lead to disconnection from politics. Many citizens become receptive only to consumer-oriented messages about tax cuts, retirement benefits, or other policies targeted at particular demographic social groups. Culture jamming is an intriguing form of political communication that has emerged in response to the commercial isolation of public life. Practitioners of culture jamming argue that culture, politics, and social values have been bent by saturated commercial environments, from corporate logos on sports facilities, to television content designed solely to deliver targeted audiences to producers and sponsors. Many public issues and social voices are pushed to the margins of society by market values and commercial communication, making it difficult to get the attention of those living in the "walled gardens" of consumerism. Culture jamming presents a variety of interesting communication strategies that play with the branded images and icons of consumer culture to make consumers aware of surrounding problems and diverse cultural experiences that warrant their attention. "

"A culture jam uses the media of a dominant culture (corporate, entertainment, political) to criticize and subvert the intentions or values of that culture. Dominant (mainstream, hegemonic, commercial) culture generally aims to seduce and entertain you; culture jams typically want to disrupt or upset you, make you feel uncomfortable about the elements of mainstream or dominant culture that they are subverting. Here is an example. This was done by a student in a previous class as her Creative Remix Project:"

"Earlier this week, at the biggest video game conference of the year - the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) - Microsoft unveiled a number of new games for their Xbox One video game console. After the presentation, Anita Sarkeesian, of Feminist Frequency, correctly observed that none of the games featured had a female protagonist."

"An introductory assignment may ask students to think about representations of different social groups in the fictional TV shows, films and books that have shaped their lives. For example, at the beginning of the semester, I will give students an assignment titled "The Stories in Your Life" with the following list, and ask them to think of characters from these social groups that are represented in their favorite stories (this list of groups corresponds with the chapters in the textbook Diversity in U.S. Mass Media): African Americans, Native Americans, Latino Americans, Arab Americans, Asian Americans, teenagers, elderly people, people with disabilities, wealthy people, impoverished people, LGBTQ, and women. When we come together as a class and discuss their lists, the students have typically made some startling yet obvious discoveries: there may be no characters in a certain group, or the characters might be one-dimensional stereotypes. They quickly have those lightbulb moments that will open their minds to deeper discussions about underrepresentation and misrepresentation in entertainment media. They often realize that more often than not, the stories in their lives ask them to identify with white males. This introductory step in media literacy education gives students the reflective and analytical tools to examine what media tells them about themselves and others."

"A new comprehensive study, conducted by The Media Insight Project, shows that trust and reliability in news can be broken down into specific factors that publishers can put into action and consumers can recognize. The study also finds that in the digital age, several new factors largely unexamined before - such as the intrusiveness of ads, navigability, load times, and having the latest details - also are critical in determining whether consumers consider a publisher competent and worthy of trust. The specific factors that lead people to trust and rely on a news source also vary by topic, the study finds. How much consumers value a specific component related to trust depends, for instance, on whether they are seeking news about politics or traffic and weather, let alone lifestyle. On some topics, consumers rate in‑depth reporting and expert sources more highly. In others, ease of use is of higher value. For still others, being entertained is more important. And in social media, consumers are fairly skeptical of content and want cues of trustworthiness such as clear identification of the original reporting source."

Embedded advertising is persuasive material embedded in media content in exchange for a payment.  The ad may take the form of product placement, product integration or branded entertainment.  Though the terms are often used interchangeably, they denote increasing degrees of influence advertisers have over media content.

"Facebook's News Feed, a homepage built by our friends and organized by our clicks and likes, isn't really a "news" feed. It's an entertainment portal for stories that remind us of our lives and offer something like an emotional popper. In fact, news readers self-identify as a minority on Facebook: Fewer than half ever read "news" on the site, according to a 2013 Pew study, and just 10 percent of them go to Facebook to get the news on purpose, as opposed, say, being assaulted by a breaking news event when you're just scanning baby photos. To see this more clearly, let's compare the BuzzFeed network's most viral stories-i.e.: the stories that go biggest on Facebook-to the top stories on Twitter and the most-searched stories. First, here are the top stories on Twitter in 2013. It's a blend of news, like terrorist attacks and music shows, and evergreen silliness with Ryan Gosling and Kim Kardashian. "

"Here's why I hate the convention: The stand-up has zero journalistic value. It wastes time. It wastes precious reportorial resource. It turns the world into a mere backdrop for entertainment. It's a fake. Take, for example, all the stand-ups we see these days at the George Washington Bridge because of the Christie scandal. Local TV news does it:"

"Just before the holidays, late-night comedian Conan O'Brien poked a little fun at local TV newscasts. In doing so, he illustrated some serious issues about the compromises journalists make in understaffed newsrooms. O'Brien has aired similar montages in the past, capturing repetition in local stories about such topics as Cyber Monday shopping, restaurants that serve political-themed food, and the news that actor Mike Myers and his wife were expecting a baby. The compilations are popular fodder for Internet discussions, where viewers attributed the homogeneity to "consumerist propaganda," "controlled brainwashing," and "corporations spitting out prefabricated copies of fake news." The truth is less conspiratorial. Each story O'Brien featured was supplied by a syndication service that distributes scripts, video clips, and fully-produced news packages to local stations. The self gifting story came from CNN Newsource, which claims 800 affiliates. (CNN is part of Time Warner, which also owns the TBS cable channel that airs "Conan.") You're almost certainly watching syndicated content when your local newscast shows video of national or international stories. Stations also rely on Newsource for sports highlights, business and consumer reports, entertainment news, and stories CNN categorizes as "Caught on Camera," "Animals," "Kickers," and "Easy to Tease.""

"Hobbs approached the educators at the Holocaust Museum about acquiring the same "Mind Over Media" title and expanding the content. She was successful and has created a new resource where she invites educators, students and others to contribute examples of contemporary propaganda. (Full disclosure, I reviewed the site prior to its unveiling and contributed examples.) In an introductory video posted on the website the narrator says "in a world saturated by media messages, propaganda can be found in information, news, advertising or entertainment." The website uses crowdsourcing to create a gallery of propaganda examples. Users upload content they've located, share their own interpretations, and then evaluate the impact of the images, web pages or videos. "

"SNL has created commercial parodies about everything: chia pets, Spanx for babies, an app for kids whose moms want to add them on Facebook. It's not unusual for those commercials to make light of serious news of the moment. Remember, this is a show that has made comedy out of the swine flu, police brutality and ISIS. There will always be people who chuckle along, and (usually more) who take to the Internet in a rage. With "Heroin A.M.," SNL struck a nerve again."

"A feminist parody of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" - a song that has been accused of blurring the lines between consensual sex and rape - was briefly removed from YouTube yesterday, leaving its creators mystified. "Defined Lines", created by a bunch of University of Auckland law students, features three fully dressed women responding to the attentions of scantily clad men as they sing about sexism. The video, which has been watched more than 450,000 times since it was posted three days ago, was removed from YouTube yesterday having been flagged by users as containing "inappropriate content", but has now been restored."

"Critics and audiences have also praised its subversive plot, which focuses on the relationship between two sisters and turns Prince Charming into The Villain. But there's another argument to be made against Frozen's villain, and it has to do with the implicit notion that there was something wrong with the Prince Charming fantasy in the first place. The assumption is that it needed correcting because providing girls with idealized images of romance and romantic partners is inherently bad for them."

"New York's former mayor is not pleased with the Queen B. Rudy Giuliani, a onetime Republican presidential contender, rebuked Beyoncé on Monday for what he described as an "attack" on police officers during her Super Bowl halftime show performance."

What do the Super Bowl Ads tells us about American society and culture? An essay that looks at how media reflects society.

"Business Insider tells us that the average pricetag for a 30-second spot during Super Bowl 50 has risen 11% from last year's highest price and is now a cool $5 million. In fact, last-minute slots could have gone for as high as $6 million." The video of each ad with a short printed introduction appears on the page in the order in which they appeared during the game.