HCRHS Media Lit

If you think this heralds hypocrisy, you aren't the only one shaking your head. Last year, Seventeen magazine launched a campaign on positive body image in conjunction with Dove. They've also included a "Body Peace Expert" who answers teens' body image-related questions. How can Seventeen follow its own body-positive philosophy and campaign goals when the magazine pushes the very thing it denounces?

The boys had been taking awhile, so their father eventually came in. He saw the game, and the controller, and started in on the youngest about how he needs to pick something different. Something more manly. Something with guns and fighting, and certainly not a purple controller. He tried to convince him to get the new Zombie game "Dead Island" and the little boy just stood there repeating, "Dad, this is what I want, OK?" Eventually it turned into a full-blown argument complete with Dad threatening to whoop his son if he didn't choose different items.

Seventeen, the most widely read magazine among teenage girls in the United States, claims to "encourage independence" and help each reader "become this wonderful person that she dreams she will be." But far from encouraging independence, Seventeen only reinforces the cultural expectations that an adolescent woman should be more concerned with her appearance, her relations with other people and her ability to win approval from men than with her own ideas or her expectations for herself.

omething is wrong with the way the problem has been posed and addressed. A virtual obsession with asking the wrong question obscures the factors that in fact drive violence and trap the industry in a difficult dilemma. The usual question - "Does television violence incite real-life violence?" - is itself a symptom rather than diagnostic tool of the problem. Despite its alarming implications, and intent, or perhaps because of them, it distracts from focusing on the major conditions producing violence in society and limits discussion of television violence to its most simplistic dimension. Violence is a complex scenario and social relationship. Whatever else it does, violence in drama and news demonstrates power. It portrays victims, as well as victimizers. It intimidates, as well as incites. It shows one's place in the "pecking order" that runs society. And, it "travels well" on the world market. Changing the Debate Let us, then, try to change the terms of the debate so that something might come of it.

Follow up to Ignore the Human Element. Includes an infographic

Welcome to the Relationship Era. Say goodbye to positioning, preemption and unique selling position. This is about turning everything you understood about marketing upside down so that you can land right side up. This is about tapping into the Human Element.

Studio and network executives say that this year they heard more pitches than ever before for shows about the changing dynamics of men. "Manliness is under assault," says Todd Holland, executive producer of "Free Agents." "That's the premise." Some call the trend "wussification" or "feminization." Others say it's just wimpy guys who want to be macho and have no clue how to do it. But it's subtler than that.

The findings of "Adaptation Amidst Prosperity and Adversity" include: As incomes rise, so do expectations, reducing the happiness that the increased prosperity may have brought about. This "paradox of unhappy growth" is present in a broad range of countries, both developed and developing. Consequently, "rising incomes do not translate into ever-increasing levels of happiness." When incomes fall or remain low, individuals in many societies are able to successfully adjust their expectations. "Remarkably adverse circumstances, such as high levels of crime and corruption or very poor standards of health, do not seem to result in equivalently low levels of happiness." Life difficulties can be overcome by increases in income, but the amounts required are substantial. The average individual in the United States or the United Kingdom would need to produce an estimated $60,000 in income to overcome the unhappiness resulting from job loss, and $100,000 to overcome divorce. While the correlations between stated satisfaction with different life aspects were all positive with per capita gross domestic product (GDP), but were all negative with economic growth. For example, life satisfaction levels had a 0.788 correlation with GDP but a -0.082 correlation with economic growth. All measures of social connections - both the support that they get from others and the support that they give to others - were significantly and positively correlated with life satisfaction across the countries.

Hamleys, which is London's 251-year-old version of F.A.O. Schwarz, recently dismantled its pink "girls" and blue "boys" sections in favor of a gender-neutral store with red-and-white signage. Rather than floors dedicated to Barbie dolls and action figures, merchandise is now organized by types (Soft Toys) and interests (Outdoor). That free-to-be gesture was offset by Lego, whose Friends collection, aimed at girls, will hit stores this month with the goal of becoming a holiday must-have by the fall. Set in fictive Heartlake City (and supported by a $40 million marketing campaign), the line features new, pastel-colored, blocks that allow a budding Kardashian, among other things, to build herself a cafe or a beauty salon. Its tasty-sounding "ladyfig" characters are also taller and curvier than the typical Legoland denizen. So who has it right? Should gender be systematically expunged from playthings? Or is Lego merely being realistic, earnestly meeting girls halfway in an attempt to stoke their interest in engineering?

Ever since YouTube became a place where anyone could realistically become a celebrity, brands have been trying to figure out how and what makes a viral video. What's significant about this year's top-viewed ads is the fact that they have more of a web presence on YouTube than on TV.

Riley has an important message for all the toy makers and marketers out there: stop trying to force pink stuff on girls. They like other colors, too. And while you're at it, some girls like superheroes just as much, if not more, than princesses. If you were looking to add some inspiration to your Christmas Eve, watch this little girl's impassioned speech against gender stereotypes in toy manufacturing. We only wish we had been this articulate and impassioned when we were her age.

A history of advertising info graphic

Here's an article that offers the other side of the issue the SOPA bill was written to address. A California appeals court yesterday rejected Universal Music's claim that video-sharing service Veoh didn't do enough to protect content owners. All eyes now turn to New York where another influential court is set to rule on the same issue-who should be responsible for copyright enforcement.

Male and female images As one dramatic example, the image and representation of women and girls in the media has long been a subject of concern. Research shows that there are many fewer females than males in almost all forms of mainstream media and those who do appear are often portrayed in very stereotypical ways. Constantly polarized gender messages in media have fundamentally anti-social effects. In everything from advertising, television programming, newspaper and magazines, to comic books, popular music, film and video games, women and girls are more likely to be shown: in the home, performing domestic chores such as laundry or cooking; as sex objects who exist primarily to service men; as victims who can't protect themselves and are the natural recipients of beatings, harassment, sexual assault and murder. Men and boys are also stereotyped by the media. From GI Joe to Rambo, masculinity is often associated with machismo, independence, competition, emotional detachment, aggression and violence. Despite the fact that men have considerably more economic and political power in society than women, these trends - although different from those which affect women and girls - are very damaging to boys.

Facebook plans to migrate its Sponsored Stories ad platform into users' news feeds early next year, the company says. Introduced last January, Sponsored Stories - a new ad format integrating your Facebook friends' activities into small ads - began appearing in the column on the right side of the News Feed. Last month, the ads began appearing in the Ticker as well. Perhaps anticipating criticism for the latest migration of Sponsored Stories, a Facebook rep emphasized that the ads will be used sparingly. Most users, she says, will see the maximum of one ad per day in their News Feeds. The speed at which the ads cycle through the News Feed, meanwhile, will depend on various factors that Facebook hasn't yet determined, a Facebook rep says.

Below, our take on the top 10 digital trends for 2012 that will go mass.

Starting March 1, InStyle will take over a 19-by-42-foot storefront at the bustling corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue and the windows, enabled with touch-screen technology, will show six spring looks. The venture is overseen by the magazine's publishing side, although the products featured in the window will be inspired by the title's March issue. Collages, in a similar vein to Polyvore's model, can be created and instantly sent as a digital postcard to smartphones. Essentially, these cards provide a detailed shopping list, with special offers and a photo stamp (women can personalize the cards further by having their photos taken at the storefront). Geo-targets from the cards will direct shoppers to a given brand's closest preferred retailer. It can get as specific as, say, "see Linda on the third floor of Bloomingdale's, in the northwest corner of the store."

But the relentless mass marketing of cool has tainted this style of behavior and made it seem inauthentic or contrived to a growing number of individuals. It is almost inconceivable that anything could happen, at this late stage, that would restore to cool the freshness and vitality it possessed in the fifties and sixties. Cool now lacks conviction and energy. Above all, its economic force is diminishing. And this, more than anything, will accelerate its decline. The arbiters of taste - at record labels, in films and TV, in consumer marketing, in media - will respond to these economic shifts rather than lead them. But follow they must, or disappear from the scene. Their successors will not make the same mistakes. Over time, this will transform even the last institutional bastions of cool into promoters of the postcool worldview. One of the most interesting spectacles of postcool society will involve the dominant forces of the old paradigm scrambling to co-opt the new one. Packaged and slick and phony will attempt to become down-home and natural and authentic. We can see this playing out in many arenas - from music to clothing, politics to daily news. But let us take one sector of our economy and show how this works.