HCRHS Media Lit

"Tell me, what do these two memes at right have in common? Answer: Both are false. Someone somewhere sat down at a computer, pulled up photo of Hillary Clinton, and concocted an overt lie. The same is true with regard to whoever falsely attributed the above statement about Republican stupidity to Donald Trump. I've seen both of these memes make a few appearances on my Facebook feed this election season. At times I wonder about the mindset of those who purposefully craft lies. Perhaps they are nihilists. Perhaps they are rigid ideologues bent on winning the war of ideas by defaming the other side at all costs. Who cares about the truth? Right? Wrong. Truth matters. Truth is not the property of any individual. It is the property of us all, worthy of our ardent protection."

"In order to visually elucidate that point, Oxfam International created a comprehensive infographic that reveals the extensive reach of the "Big 10" food and beverage companies. Unlikely ties between brands we largely don't associate with one another show how easy it is to be misinformed about the American food system. F"

"Gold and Phillip offered their insights on examples of rumors and misinformation in the 2016 campaign, discussed the competing issues and agendas they must navigate in their reporting, and chatted with students and educators about the active role young people can play as consumers and creators of news and information about political issues. The hangout was part of a special series on "Building News Literacy, Critical Media Skills, and Political Awareness Today" produced in connection to Letters to the Next President 2.0.  NLP NEWS Check out the News Literacy Project's latest developments. "

"From Baton Rouge to Minneapolis to Dallas, it has been a fraught week in the United States. Tonight, University of Massachusetts Amherst Professor Sut Jhally is speaking at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts about race relationships in America. Jhally is the founder and executive director of the Media Education Foundation. He is best known for producing and directing films on politics, violence and social issues. Jhally spoke with WAMC about how he thinks the election of Barack Obama affected racial identity in the United States. The lecture is titled "The Crisis of Whiteness in the Age of the Black Presidency." It is free and open to the public."

"TV may have been about global unity, but the Internet inspires the opposite."

Research on how technology may be changing the way we think

"Ladies, as everyone knows, are dainty and fragile, and prefer the world to be awash in pastels. Or at least, that's the philosophy behind the old marketing mantra for making products attractive to women: "Shrink it and pink it." It's hard to imagine this phrase being uttered in a boardroom in this era. And yet, every so often still, a new product emerges doused in shades of magenta and labeled "for her": Dell's cutesy laptop Della, which promised nifty ways to search for recipes and count calories. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers' website for women who like football, filled with game-day style tips, manicure ideas, and, of course, more recipes. Bic's pink and purple pens "for her." ("I know you're thinking, 'It's about damn time!' " Ellen DeGeneres snarked. "Can you believe this? We've been using man pens all this time!")"

Wish I had found this before you completed the ad project. You put a couple of keywords in and it generates slogans for you.

"A new comic on Tumblr highlights how modern feminism benefits all types of women and helps those who might be afraid to identify as feminists."

"A black man and a young Chinese woman are flirting, as he leans in for a kiss she thrusts a detergent capsule in his mouth and bundles him into a laundry machine. She sits atop the machine as the man spins and screams inside until, to her apparent delight, out pops a handsome Chinese man dressed in a clean, white t-shirt."

"Last week, I looked around the room and noticed an interesting thing. Maybe you're seeing this at your home as well. We were watching the NBA playoffs on TV. My wife was on her I-pad and so was I. My son was on his laptop. I'm sure if my grandson was there, he'd be staring at a device as well. My wife was checking email. I was tweeting snarky comments about the game. My son was looking at stats from the game. Let's face it. We're all multi-taskers now. Why should TV time be any different? This year, 182 million folks in the US will use the internet while watching TV at least once a month, according to an eMarketer survey. That's 80% of all internet users. So I'm not alone. Or maybe I am because only 25% of those surveyed were using their device to consumer content related to TV. The rest were doing something else, like my wife. Still, 25% were so engaged in the TV programming that they were finding additional information about what they were watching. That's still a big chunk of engaged folks. "

"Regardless of what you think about his latest feat If You're Reading This It's Too Late, (EDIT: now Views From The 6) it's hard to deny that since his first appearance, Drake has been subverting stereotypes about masculinity without even trying. Drake has made himself a successful real-life meme with a loyal fan base by rapping about his feelings.He raps like he finally worked up the nerve to challenge his Forest Hill bully to a freestyle battle, but he drops bangers. Aside from the rare critic who claims that Drake is too "soft," the hyper-masculine culture of hip-hop has welcomed his r&b/hip-hop hybridity."

"When someone hears the term "feminism," he or she tends to blindly link it to a group of people requesting the superiority of women. A lot of self-proclaimed feminists are named "men-haters" or "ugly women." The correlation of feminism to any of these insulting slurs is simply non-existent. Why is feminism tied to a negative feeling? I believe a lot of it has to do with fear. Maybe men fear they will somehow become inferior to women. The truth is, feminism doesn't want to pit one gender against the other. It simply wants equality."

"Tt should be obvious that your gender doesn't hinder your ability to code, yet women continue to face an uphill climb into tech careers thanks largely to unspoken stigmas against female coders.  For its latest campaign, the nonprofit advocacy group Girls Who Code tackles this issue with satirical, delightfully deadpan humor. The new work, from McCann in New York, features young girls sardonically explaining how their boobs, their periods, their long eyelashes and more get in the way of their coding. "

"Fresh Off the Boat", which was just renewed for a third season, has granted Ms. Wu a steady job and a new perspective. "It changed me," Ms. Wu said. After doing a lot of research, she shifted her focus "from self-interest to Asian-American interests." In the past year, Ms. Wu and a number of other Asian-American actors have emerged as fierce advocates for their own visibility - and frank critics of their industry. The issue has crystallized in a word - "whitewashing" - that calls out Hollywood for taking Asian roles and stories and filling them with white actors. On Facebook, Ms. Wu ticked off a list of recent films guilty of the practice and said, "I could go on, and that's a crying shame, y'all." On Twitter, she bit back against Hollywood producers who believe their "lead must be white" and advised the creators of lily-white content to "CARE MORE." Another tip: "An easy way to avoid tokenism? Have more than one" character of color, she tweeted in March. "Not so hard.""

"From summer until the election in November, the King of Beers will be called-and labelled-"America." By way of explanation, an executive declared that, with the upcoming Centennial Copa America, and the Summer Olympics, and, of course, the Presidential campaign, "we are embarking on what should be the most patriotic summer that this generation has ever seen." Interesting word choice, "embarking." I guess it will, in its way, be a bit of a trip. As for "patriotic," it's true that I'm thinking quite a lot about the country these days, and feeling the kind of love for it that can only come through mortal fear and a touch of embarrassment. The new "America" beer can displays a nationalistic commercialism that shouldn't be unfamiliar to any American. The America evoked by the can is an America that I recognize-one that exists only in advertisements. You find it in commercials for pickup trucks and lawnmowers, jeans and mass-produced beer. "

"Factcheck.org, PolitiFact and The Washington Post are now collaborating by jointly piloting Share the Facts, a widget developed by the Duke Reporters' Lab and Alphabet's technology incubator Jigsaw (formerly known as Google Ideas). Share the Facts structures a fact check's key elements - the claim, its origin and the rating - in a box like the one below."

"With billions of dollars expected to be spent on political television and radio ads in 2016, the media's role in keeping those ads honest could not be more important. A recent example in Wisconsin shows the impact and value of media fact checks of ads, a public service for voters that will be increasingly valuable as the campaign season intensifies."