Digital Divide- Inner City VS. Suburbs

In my mass comm. class we have had a couple conversations about technology and how there seems to be a gap in the use and knowledge of technology. The best example that i find of the digital divide is in education. Kids who attend inner city schools vs. kids who attend private schools or schools in the suburbs. I am from the suburbs and my family still lives there. We have too many computer labs to count in almost every school in Stillwater, MN. When my younger sisters were in middle school they were even required to RENT A LAPTOP and use that for all of their school work, they were also taught how to use the laptop for their school work. Now, this surprised me a little bit...that the school required kids to rent laptops, but imagine if you were a kid from an inner city school......this would surprise you a lot seeing that you might have never used a computer for school before.

My boyfriend is a teacher and has taught in many schools around the cities and suburbs in Minnesota. He tells me about the technology that these schools have or have not. Many of the schools in the inner cities do not even have computer labs, and if they do there are not enough computers for all the kids to be able to use them. Also, even with the access to these computers many of the kids don't know how to use them correctly....maybe they know how to play the games and surf the net, but do they know anything about PowerPoint or xcel? My sisters do, because their school devoted the time to teach them how to use these functions....and they were only in 7th grade.

If someone complains about the fact that some schools are held back by not having access to computers, a response might be to give the school more computers....but access does not mean knowledge or equality. In an article we read titled "The Digital Divide" they authors say the common solution to many "gaps" is access and availability, but like i have pointed out before what good is the access and availability when you do not know how to use the technology? My solution to the problem is access along with education.

Students graduating from college and applying for jobs know that many a time the qualifications listed on job descriptions is efficiency in Microsoft xcel and PowerPoint. Most classes in college do not teach you about xcel and PowerPoint because they assume that you already know how to use it, but what about the kids who come from schools that don't have computers and if they do they don't know the skills to use the programs on the computer? What do they do when they are applying to jobs? How do we close the gap in knowledge so we can give kids an equal chance of succeeding?

These are all legitimate questions that need to be answered. Being more critical will make people realize that this is not just a problem that you can throw money at. Yes, money can help provide the technology but there is more to it than that. We need to show people why it is important that they have the knowledge to go along with the technology...we need to give them an incentive to learn about the technology and most important we need to provide the knowledge about the technology.

Cultural Framing

In one of my communication classes a teacher of mine mentioned something interesting about September 11th. She said that when she really wanted to know what h*** was going on that day she looked to online newspapers from other countries to get their perspectives. Hmm... interesting. I wanted to ask her what she found out but i didn't get the chance. I decided to take this into my own hands for my Mass Communication class and formulate my research proposal around news sources from other countries besides the U.S. If YOU get the chance look at other online newspapers like the Asian Times, Aljazeera or The Guardian, look at the ways that the stories are framed and constructed, alike or differently.

One day when I was browsing these sites I noticed the Asian Times and Aljazeera newspapers had stories that the United States military forces, located in the Middle East, had gone into Syria and accidentally killed civilians there. This might not sound so "interesting" at first, but then i decided to look into msnbc.com and cnn.com and see what they had to say about the incident....lo and behold i couldn't find a story about it from either site. The way that the Aljazeera site framed the story was in a way that the U.S. had violated some territory laws that were known and had killed innocent people. The site said that because of this incident American schools were being closed down in Syria and there were major protests. The Asian Times had a similar story. I venture that if the U.S. newspapers DID have the story on their site it would not be framed in the same way. My guess is that it would be something like this: U.S. Troops might have been given false information or there was a malfunction of some kind that lead to this "attack".

Culture has a big impact on the way that stories are framed....what kind of message do the newspapers want to give to its readers? What do the readers want to read? What stories will get the most subscribers or make the most money? These are all questions that we can look at to try to understand why stories are framed in certain ways.

2008 Election in the Media

The media has had a great influence on the election this year. I am personally glad that the election is over now so i won't have to watch all of the negative attack ads on TV that we are all exposed to daily. We see it everywhere we go...billboards, the internet, TV and even our friends are talking about the ads. People that i have talk to have mentioned that they have never seen a campaign with soo many negative ads. I ask myself What are the reprocussions of this? Do all of these attack ads make people more cinical? Or because we are all so sick of all the negative ads, do we look for anything good that is said during the ads, no matter how small it is? It would be very interesting to sit down in a focus group and ask people how much the ads had affected their decision for who they voted for this year.
I know that it is good to show two sided messages when trying to argue or advocate for something, but have we really been exposed to many two sided messages in the media? I feel that the nature of the political ads have distracted people from what the ads are really trying to say, the message that the campaign is trying to send...to vote for a certain candidate because they are qualified for the job and that they will work for you. All that i can remember from the ads is that all politicians are bad people some who write pornography, take pictures with the president, and hang out with terrorists. I wonder what the campaigns would have been like if just one of the presidential candidates decided not to produce any negative or attack ads and just focused on promoting themselves....or is our view of media so shallow that nobody would appreciate the good nature of the ads?

Baracks got some moves....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsWpvkLCvu4




Media plays a huge role in our lives and not until the development of the internet and youtube have the people really had a great affect on the media. Youtube is really media for the people by the people. TV, Radio and Newspapers are all ran by corporations and owned by corporations that tell the authors what they should write and what they should tell people to think about, agenda setting. Youtube gives people the chance to post what they think is important, what they think is funny, and gives people an outlet to campaign or advocate for something they feel is important. I could surf youtube for hours just looking at all the different things that people post, i feel that youtube and the internet really empowers people by giving them a medium to really share what they think. Yes, there are editorials in newspapers where people can write to the newspaper and say what they think, but youtube brings this to a whole new level. It is worldwide where newspapers are sometimes just local. The internet has more users than single newspapers and is able to publish more views than traditional media can.

Generation Gap?

So i went to The Eagles concert last night with a couple members of my family(mom, dad, grandama, uncle, little sister)....and had a great time! This experience makes me wonder about other families and how the parents/adults and children/young adults get along. Do most parents and children have the same taste in music? How about TV shows? Books? Movies? I feel that the only time that children and their parents spend together is in the car on the way to school, a friends house or to a extracurricular activity. Maybe they spend some time together when one of the kids wants to get some new clothes and needs their parents to fork over a couple hundred dollars to do so.
I am personally glad that my parents would turn on classic rock in the car and make games out of guessing who the artist of a certain song was. I am glad that my parents shared, with me, the kind of music that they loved growing up because when we go to concerts like last night it isn't just a concert but a connection between two very different generations. It sort of gives me some hope that parents and children do have a little bit more in common than we think, and we all just need to make the extra effort once in a while. With my parents and I, the connection was music.

About Me

I am a student at Hamline University and hopefully will be graduating this year, SCARY!!! My major is Communication Studies and am looking forward to working in the Marketing/Advertising Field.