quarta-feira, 18 de março de 2009

TV Commercials




Television commercials appear between shows however it also interrupts the shows at intervals. This method of screening commercials pretend captures the attention of the audience. It tries keeping the viewers focused on the television show. Consequently they won’t want to change the channel; instead they will watch the commercial while they are waiting for the next segment of the show. However the remote controls have changed it because people can turn off the TV, turn down the volume or even switch channels when the advertisement comes on.


Nowadays TV has an enormous influence on people choice. People are easily manipulated by commercials. Commercials employ techniques very powerful and efficient. Commercials took advantage from the proximity with the audience to apply the target audience to purchase a determinate product, to take part in an election and to promote bands, clubs, etc. However only people with much money can utilize TV to promote their interests.


I think that TV commercials can be very useful to promote good things; however it also can promote bad things. Personally I believe in good intentions and I think that TV is very important and useful; however it must be used with careful.

terça-feira, 17 de março de 2009

Consumerism




Consumerism is an attraction for a product or a service using a set of irresponsible and dangerous behaviours. Consumerism is also used to describe the tendency of people to identify strongly with products or services they consume, especially those with commercial brand names and perceived status-symbolism appeal. For example: luxury automobile, designer clothing or expensive jewellery. A culture that is permeated by consumerism can be referred to as a consumer culture or a market culture.


I think that many products are luxuries and superfluous. Amount of people consume these products in order to benefice as social indicator allowing people to recognize each other by the clothes and the things they use. I believe that this way of thinking is completely wrong. We should have our own personality because we are not what we buy. I suppose that this consumer society is connected with a decrease of the self-confidence. Today people are more insecure and they need to feel that they are important people or with expensive clothes to feel great with them. I am critiquing these market cultures because these cultures are damaging the environment and they contribute to climate change, global warming, air pollution, greenhouse effect and all these problems will causes another problems like toxic waste floods and tornados because this troubles is like an avalanche for the reason that every problems causes another problems and it becomes in a vicious cycle without end. However this violent movement takes many economical drawbacks, too. This movement can take many companies to bankrupt and another’s serious consequences.


I appeal to all people in the world to fight against this big trouble. That was the reason I choose this subject: I am intending to save the world from a big impact.



The Influence Of Celebrities On Teenagers

As we can see on this video, teenagers take examples from celebrities. When a famous people make advertisement, and show a product, teens is run to shop’s to buy that product, because they think that the celebrity who make this advertisement use the product too, and teens want to be a famous and beautiful person, and so, similar to the celebrities that make the commercial.

Because of the preferences of famous people, teens change their lives, for example: when one teen want to be a second version of Beyoncé, they change her body, become put their brass bigger, change their color of eyes, changes their color of skin, and another. In form change their body in the way to be equal to hers so that they could be famous and with an equal or similar body to her.

Extreme Makeover


Extreme makeover is a program to change person’s where they become a better looking people. That people can change people appearance, sometimes with cosmetics, they can range from something as simple as a new haircut, to the use of cosmetic surgery, to the extreme of the implantation of dental veneers, eye-color-changing contact lenses, and the use of appearance-altering gastric bypass surgeries, providing massive, permanent fat loss in obese persons, and the associated plastic surgeries.


This is used for teenagers too, to change their bodies. That is stupid, because teenagers are growing, and their bodies are change with time. In that age they don’t be worried about this things, their bodies are in transformation, and so, grow in up first, and before think about this things.

Migration


Migration refers to directed, regular, or systematic movement of a group of people.

Emigration is a movement of a person or persons out of a country or national region, for the purpose of permanent relocation of residence. For example: one people are in Canada and that people want to go out to Portugal, for Canada that people are emigrant.

Immigration refers to the movement of people among countries. For example: one people are in Australia, and that people want to go out to another country, and for this new country that people are immigrant.

In one hand migration is a good think, in case of emigration and immigration to develop the country which foreigners want to go, and the other and prejudices the country which the emigrants or immigrants come from.

In conclusion, migrants go to other countries because they need find better life’s conditions, to them and their families.

Xenophobia

Xenophobia is an unreasonable fear, distrust, or hatred of strangers, foreigners, or anything perceived as foreign or different.


In Portugal the most foreigners are Brazilian, Chinese, Ukrainian and Russian.


In my opinion, in one hand every people are the same, and they have all the right to look for a better life in another country in the other hand I think that this people take the jobs, which belong to Portuguese people. This happens because foreigners’ labours are chipper than Portuguese labour. This leads the possibility to employ more workers to finish the work faster and with less cost.

segunda-feira, 16 de março de 2009

A consumer society

More and more we can see the society that we have, a society that love to be in the shopping centre and buying things that aren’t necessary. This is a typically consumer society.

As we can see there is a lot of consumerism in our society. Consumerism is when people buy things only for pleasure and not because they need it.

This will increase if we don’t stop to think what the consequences of this act are. People don’t see the consequences but the truth is that they exist. If we buy more we pollute more, if we buy more we spend more money and in some cases we overspend or we become to have debts.

I think that our problem is that we spend a lot of money on things that aren’t necessary in our lifes like expensive clothes and new technological devices. Sometimes we are influenced by the commercials and we want to buy that product because we think will bring happiness to our lives.

This consumer society has to stop as soon as possible or the future generations will pay for our mistakes.

Gossip magazines

Everyday we face celebrities’ scandals on magazines and more now than ever we see the called gossip magazines.

This magazines only shows the scandalous stories about the personal lives of celebrities. Some people like to know what celebrities are doing or see the bad things they often do.

In order to exist this type of magazines they have people called paparazzi that follow celebrities almost everywhere, they take pictures and write about them. We frequently see fights with celebrities and paparazzi, it is true that most abuse and violate their privacy but sometimes they are only doing their work, because they are paid for that and have to do a good work in order to have the biggest scandal and sell more magazines.


As we can see most people prefer this type of magazines that newspapers and informative magazines.

I will refer some names of these magazines in USA and Us: People, Ok! Magazine, Us Weekly´s and Star. In Portugal there are: Maria, Flash, Caras, Lux e Vip.

Tv Impact

Television is the media that influences us the most, especially children.
In this days people watch TV more than ever, some of them to escape from their lifes and relax a little bit. It is proved that most people don’t turn the TV to watch a specific program, they simply decide to watch television and then they find something interesting to see.


There are cases that people are addicted to TV and because of that they become to change their behaviour. They don’t go out with their friends and don’t do sports so all of this will affect their health and turn them to a sedentary lifestyle.


TV programs more than ever have violence and sexual content and that influences children. Kids are the group that is more affected by TV because they don’t know to separate fiction from reality.


But the impact of TV on children has many factors like how much they watch, their age (younger kids are more affected), their personality (kids with problems and with aggressive behaviours can be more influence than the others) and wherever they watch alone or with their parents.


There are three things that TV has that influences and affect kids: violence, sexual content and commercials. The first one is most likely on cartoons where violence is shown as fun. So cartoons, movies, TV shows there shows this kind of behaviour, will increase their aggressive behaviour. The second one will affect them in the way that the sexual content that is shown is not the most correct and then children will think that is usually and the right thing to do, so parents have to be careful and talk with them about that. Finally commercials, as we can all see, occupy a lot of the TV programming with the breaks of the shows. They are dangerous in the way that they pass a lot of commercials of junk food and almost none of healthy food, this will affect children increasing their obesity.
So now more than ever we have to be careful with TV and don’t let us be influence by that.


domingo, 15 de março de 2009

An Elusive Dream





Many people in the underdeveloped countries have been looking for a better life. However these people have miserable conditions of life and they haven’t enough money to get a better place to live. Many of them have sons to feed and if anyone tries to help them, they just have one option: They become illegal immigrants. Immigration that violates the immigration laws of the destination country is termed illegal immigration or undocumented immigration.


According some statistics immigration to Europe is a phenomenon that has grown dramatically since the end of World War II. Most European nations today have sizeable immigrant populations, many of non-European origin. This statistic shows us how dramatically this situation is.


Many people have a bad preconception about immigrants. However they aren’t terrorists; they aren’t criminals; they aren’t here to take welfare. Immigrants are between us for the same reason of us... They come to this country hoping a better life for them and for their families. Immigrants are human beings just like us.


I hope that you never close your heart to help other people, even illegal immigrants.




Antagonistic Marketing


Marketing is a set of strategies and action that provide from the development and the sustentation of a product or service in the consuming market.


Nowadays we should be careful with this aggressive marketing and all parents in the world have an important role in order to prevent a consumerism future. Parents should educate their children to have a good behavior against these attacks. Young children have difficulty distinguishing between advertising and realty in ads, and ads can distort their views of the world, so parents should act from an early age. Young children are particularly vulnerable to confusing advertising and parents should teach them how to fight this problem.


According some statistics fast food spend more than tree billion dollars a year on advertising, much of it aimed at children. To directly target children and teenagers, the fast food industry uses more than traditional commercials. Restaurants offer incentives such as playgrounds games, clubs, contests, free toys and other products related to movies and TV shows.


Finally, I appeal to everyone who doesn’t want to see their child addicted by this antagonistic marketing: Teach your children because they are our future!




That’s right, as you can see in this video, a big part of the enormous success of McDonald’s is in the “Happy Meal” where they promote toys and another kinds of incentives for children because children have an enormous influence on parent’s consumes.

The influence of advertising

Advertising is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service.
The influence of advertising on our lives, for both children and adults, has changed over the years. In the early days, advertising for toys and other products for children was primarily targeted toward parents and their message was direct. Today however, things have changed. Marketing messages are more sophisticated, more pervasive, and are aimed directly at "hooking" kids at a very early age.
Learn more about how advertising has changed over the years; it is target, the subtle messages, it is prevalence, and pervasiveness. Find out about the influence of advertising on children and what you can do to counteract or avoid it by reading more here on this page.


Types of advertising

Media
Commercial advertising media can include wall paintings, billboards, printed flyers and rack cards, radio, cinema and television adverts, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts, bus stop benches, human billboards, magazines, newspapers and stickers on apples in supermarkets. Any place an "identified" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising.

Covert advertising
Covert advertising is when a product or brand is embedded in entertainment and media.


Television commercials
The TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format, as is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV events.
The majorities of television commercials feature a song or jingle that listeners soon relate to the product.



Infomercials
There are two types of infomercials, described as long form and short form. Long form infomercials have a time length of 30 minutes. Short form infomercials are 30 seconds to 2 minutes long. Infomercials are also known as direct response television (DRTV) commercials or direct response marketing.



Celebrities
This type of advertising focuses upon using celebrity power, fame, money, popularity to gain recognition for their products and promote specific stores or products. Advertisers often advertise their products, for example, when celebrities share their favorite products or wear clothes by specific brands or designers. Celebrities are often involved in advertising campaigns such as television or print adverts to advertise specific or general products.

Refugees


A refugee is a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution.
Owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country.
The concept of a refugee was expanded by the Conventions’ 1967 Protocol and by regional conventions in Africa and Latin America to include persons who had fled war or other violence in their home country. A person who is seeking to be recognized as a refugee is an asylum seeker. The lead international agency coordinating refugee protection is the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which counted 8,400,000 refugees worldwide at the beginning of 2006. This was the lowest number since 1980. The major exception is the 4,300,000 Palestinian refugees under the authority of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), who are the only group to be granted refugee status to the descendants of refugees according to the above definition. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants gives the world total as 62,000,000 refugees and estimates there are over 34,000,000 displaced by war, including internally displaced persons, who remain within the same national borders. majority of refugees who leave their country seek asylum in countries neighboring their country of nationality. The "durable solutions" to refugee populations, as defined by UNHCR and governments, are: voluntary repatriation to the country of origin; local integration into the country of asylum; and resettlement to a third country.
As of December 31, 2005, the largest source countries of refugees are the Afghanistan, Iraq, Myanmar, Sudan, and the Palestinian Territories. The country with the largest number of IDPs is Sudan, with over 5 million. According to UNHCR estimates, over 4.7 million Iraqis have been displaced since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, with 2.7 million within Iraq and 2 million in neighboring countries. At least 60,000 Iraqis are losing their homes and becoming refugees every month.

Discrimination


Prejudice and discrimination are negative manifestations of integrative power. Instead of bringing or holding people together, prejudice and discrimination push them apart. Ironically, even prejudice and discrimination imply some sort of relationship, however. If there is no relationship people would be completely unaware of another person's or group's existence. When there is any relationship at all- even a negative one- there is some integration. Kenneth Boulding referred to this as "disintegrative power"-"the integration that is achieved through hatred, fear, and the threat of a common enemy." This is seen in military patriotism, in nationalism, and in any situation of "negative identity" in which one group defines itself in terms of what it is not. This tends to lead into a "pathological situation of internal violence, often perpetuated through the family itself." While this is especially obvious and destructive when it occurs on a large scale- as it did in the Balkans, Somalia, Sri Lanka, or the Middle East- it also occurs on smaller scales as well, when one group holds negative stereotypes of another group and discriminates against members of that group based on those stereotypes.


Types of Discrimination


Age Discrimination- Age discrimination laws help ensures that you are not denied a job, an equal chance of training or a promotion because of your age. They also protect you from harassment or victimization because of your age.


Disability Discrimination- Find out about the legislation that is in place to promote civil rights for disabled people and protect disabled people from discrimination.


Equal Pay and Compensation Discrimination- Equal pay and compensation discrimination occurs when an employee's wages are based not on the employee's job title or performance, but on the employee's race, sex, national origin, religion, age or disability. A number of federal laws exist to protect employees from equal pay and compensation discrimination.

National Origin Discrimination- Whether an employee or job applicant's ancestry is Mexican, Ukrainian, Filipino, Arab, American Indian, or any other nationality, he or she is entitled to the same employment opportunities as anyone else.


Pregnancy Discrimination- Discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions constitutes unlawful sex discrimination. Women affected by pregnancy or related conditions must be treated in the same manner as other applicants or employees with similar abilities or limitations.”


Race-Based Discrimination- Racism, by its simplest definition is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial difference produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.


Religious Discrimination- Religious discrimination can occur when you don’t have the same religious or philosophical beliefs as someone else, or because you have no religious beliefs, and because of that someone treats you less favorably than somebody else who does share their religion or belief.


Sex-Based Discrimination- The Sex Discrimination makes it unlawful for an individual to be discriminated against in the workplace, in relation to selection for a job, training, promotion, work practices, dismissal or any other disadvantage such as sexual harassment.


Sexual Harassment- Sexual harassment is unwanted and unwelcome behavior, or attention, of a sexual nature that interferes with your life. Sexual advances, forced sexual activity, statements about sexual orientation or sexuality, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature all constitute sexual harassment.

Stereotypes

Stereotype is a preconceived idea that attributes certain characteristics, in general, to all the members of class or set. The term is often used with a negative connotation when referring to an oversimplified, exaggerated, or demeaning assumption that a particular individual possesses the characteristics associated with the class due to his or her membership in it. Stereotypes can be used to deny individuals respect or legitimacy based on their membership in that group.
Stereotypes often form the basis of prejudice and are usually employed to explain real or imaginary differences due to race, gender, religion, ethnicity, socio-economic class, disability, occupation, etc. A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image based on the belief that there are attitudes, appearances, or behaviors shared by all members of a group. Stereotypes are forms of social consensus rather than individual judgments. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Stereotypes may be occasionally positive.

Racial and ethnic stereotyping

-->Native Americans
Inuit stereotypes


-->Black stereotypes
Early stereotypes
Modern black stereotypes


-->North African, Middle Eastern and Muslim stereotypes


-->Indian, Pakistani, Hindu and other South Asian stereotypes


-->East Asian stereotypes

Chinese stereotypes
Japanese stereotypes


-->White stereotype

White American stereotypes
English stereotypes
Scottish stereotypes
Welsh stereotypes
Irish stereotypes
Spanish stereotypes
Australian stereotypes
Dutch stereotypes
French stereotypes
German stereotypes
Scandinavian and Nordic stereotypes


-->Itlian stereotypes


-->Slavic Eastern European and Russian stereotypes


-->Jewish stereotypes


-->Middle and South-American stereotypes