Hi from Australia!

Hi all!

Not sure if anyone still frequents this page but I just wanted to share with you guys a blog I have been working on!

As part of my university degree back in Australia, I have created a social innovation movement called “Say No to Pesticides & Packets.”

It is a student initiative to promote and encourage students to get involved with food cooperatives and also ethical and sustainable consumption habits. Although only in it’s early stages, it is something I have become really passionate about! And Magda you will also be pleased to know that I am getting so much more confident with this blogging thing! (Much of that I owe to you and coms370)

We have a facebook page and a twitter account as well as a wordpress blog.

I would absolutely love for you guys to get involved and show some support from the Montreal Concordians!

There is also a heartfelt post about Concordia’s own food cooperative Le Frigo Vert (which was introduced to me in a coms370 class!).

Thank you so much everyone and good luck with your studies! Would love to hear what everyone is up to and working on!
http://weloveorganic.wordpress.com/

 

Ellyse Saunderson x

 

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Organic or not Organic?

Check out this great blog post by DocMatthew about the differences between organic and non organic vegetables and a list of the 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables you should avoid buying non organic!

Organic or not Organic?

Week 12 — Notes

In our penultimate class we moved from branding to a lively and heated discussion of self-branding. Our last readings by Theresa Senft and Alison Hearn, out of everything in the course, are the ones that give us language to self-reflexively think about ourselves, our subject position and our relation to the world, particularly the brand world of consumer culture.

We started with Senft’s exercise “flesh, image, icon, brand” as a way to think about ourselves and our image as a semiotic object and also as a commodity. This was also to get us thinking about us, and Goffman’s (1967) concept of “face work” which Hearn brings up in her article. Erving Goffman wrote about face in conjunction with how people interact in daily life. “He claims that everyone is concerned, to some extent, with how others perceive them. We act socially, striving to maintain the identity we create for others to see. This identity, or public self-image, is what we project when we interact socially.”

Further, Amelia Jones (2006) asks: “How does the image relate to the self? How are imaging technologies linked to ideological conceptions of seeing and knowing that, in turn, define the subject in Euro-American culture?”  As Katherine Hayles also argues, “technology not just mediates but produces subjectivities” (Jones, 2006, p. 44). In other words, how our these new image based social networks such as Instagram, Snapchat, tumblr, etc. linked to the ideological conception of seeing and, in turn, defining subjectivity?

The Secret Science of Advertising

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikerose/the-secret-science-of-advertising

Hopefully not so secret to those of us who are taking this class this semester. But in case you were still skeptical, here’s a form of advertising broken-down.

Although we have spent most of the semester breaking down ads, thought this video had a few new things to say. I also thought it was interesting the statement at the beginning which asks “does advertising really work? U.S. companies spend over 170 Billion on advertising every year so they seem to think it does”. So again, if anyone was still skeptical about whether ads had an effect on them or not, well, do you really think companies would be spending that much money on advertising if they weren’t sure it did?

We did discuss semiotics, but I liked the discussion of color in this video. It is interesting to think we can associate meanings with something just because of the color it is.

Hope this can add something to what we’ve discussed this semester!

Cashmere Commercial

This commercial shows women in three different settings: “oriental”, Greek, and modern “Western”. Lastly we see a women wrapped up in TOILET PAPER. First, Bell Hooks could possibly argue that this ad appropriates cultural signifiers: a Greek sculpture, oriental music are used in this ad, but they are taken out of their historical context. A pretty controversial idea to sell by clothing women in toilet paper and having them cuddling with it!

Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BpSORQgSA4

Dove makes another mistake: “normal skin” on their bottles

I was doing some research for a paper for another class, and I came by an article about Dove. This lotion bottle was “accidentally” marked “normal to dark skin”. I had not heard about this, but it reminded me of our discussion in class, the time we analyzed the gradient Dove ad. It seems this ad has reassured us that our racist reading of the ad was correct. Eek. For more info you can visit:
http://amplifyyourvoice.org/u/afy_samantha/2012/6/27/doves-campaign-for-real-beauty-only-if-youre-white-ie-normal

Panopticon effect

So we are doing our ad subvert on BudLight… and of course we discuss our project on Facebook. AND we are being surveilled! I It is so impressive to see that this Budweiser ad appeared on my newsfeed. It’s also hilarious!