President Barack Obama, He Understands The Media!

For my Electronic Media Writing class we watched the first 20min of President Barack Obama's State of the Union as seen here-



and then wrote down different observations we had relating to the triune brain, eight trends, seven principles, 29 techniques, his thesis, and "facts" he provides to support his thesis. In this blog I'll demonstrate some of the conclusions I came up with.

The Triune Brain

Because of the limited images to distract my brain, I was able to focus on President Obama as he spoke. His voice was nicely paced so I didnt get distracted and his tone and volume was very pleasant to hear. Any time that I found myself drifting away, my reptilian brain was shocked and my attention brought back by the clapping.

Eight Trends

1. Technological shift because we are able to watch The State of The Union online

2. Economical Shift that President Obama wants to make and references a lot

3. Cultural Shift that President Obama talks about, moving forward as a nation

Seven Principles

1. Pacing with slowed talk, pauses, clapping

2. Emotional Transfer that President Obama connects with the audience as if he's speaking to them one on one not an entire country

3. Production Techniques such as camera angles and cuts away to members of the audience

4. Reality Construction because he is reading of something scripted and the producers are calling the shots of the camera to show you the people who are having the biggest positive reaction to the speach

29 Techniques

1. Group Dynamic- uses words such as "our union" "we must" "this nation" ect.

2. Repetition- he says those group dynamic words several times to keep it in our mind that we are one nation

3. Strength- how we are a strong nation that has come over hard times "We prevailed, we moved forward"

4. Plane folks- he talks about the people in the nation who are having hard times, not the rich- "those who already know poverty"

5. Warm and fuzzies- he talks about children writing him letters asking serious adult questions

6. Symbols- he is wearing a tie that represents power and strength and an American Flag to represent patriotism

7. Defensive nationalism- talks about everyone in the country as a whole and that our country must overcome all the bad and troubling things

Thesis

American's have struggled during these hard economic times but we have started to make changes that are already helping and there are new ideas to put in place to make us a better, stronger nation and uphold our responsibility to other nations of the world.

"Facts"

1. Unemployment maybe double what it is today with out his actions

2. 18million Americans are benefiting

3. 65% of them have cheeper healthcare

4. 25% have tax cuts- first time homebuyers, small businesses, college students, ect.

5. 2million Americans working and are unemployed

I hope you enjoyed reading what I've learned and observed from watching President Obama's State of The Union feel free to comment if you would like to hear more about my opinions or discuss anything further with me!

~Laura

Get To Know Me A Little

My name is Laura Kingston, I am a mass media and communications major, I am a Sophomore and I've lived in New Jersey, Kentucky, 3 places in New Hampshire, Vermont, and now my parents are in Kansas. Some of my passions are photography, film editing, travel, nature, and my friends.

A picture of me in one of the best places- A sunset, a hammock, a book, a camera

My dads a professor who goes to Saudi Arabia two times a year and teaches there for 2 weeks and he brought back news papers. So my most fun media experience this winter was defiantly reading news papers from Saudi Arabia. 



The number one thing that I really like about our media culture is easy access (if internet is working). I appreciate being able to listen to new artist for free because it gets them exposure, not because I want to get music for free. I also like how quick information gets spread and how we can be as close to the action as possible. For example the earthquake in Haiti, we can see live shots and lots of pictures online and with out the internet people might not realize the real tragedy that is happening there. I also like that we can create our own custom internet, have all of the pages we want located in one area, and even digitize ourself and put anything we want on the web.

One thing that scares me about the media is that it can be hard to know if information is reliable. Its very easy to spread rumors around online and have it get picked up by a "reliable source" and then they have to take it back because it was wrong. I don't like how a lot of people today say that they "read the news" when really they just read the headlines on hotmail or the lead story on TMZ, thats not news but people think it is and use it instead of picking up the New York Times or even going to The New York Time's website.

I'm sure that I know what my dream job is but I'm sure thats not what I'll end up doing which is why I chose this major. I want to work for the Discovery Channel editing and producing shows and documentaries. However, I would also love to work for a local TV news station or edit movie trailers. For now my friends and I will just make silly videos for fun like this one-