By and large, I thought the topics discussed in class were quite interesting because most of the things presented were never visible to me beforehand. Out of all of the topics discussed throughout the semester, my favorite topic would have to be media influences and the copycat effect. One article during this topic that caught my attention and liking was ‘Media influence” by McLaren. In this article, it gave many examples of how people in our society have been victims of the copycat effect due to the media. Some people (not everyone) are interested in mimicking their celebrities or other things that interest them when watching television…etc. I also came to realize through class discussion and the 1998 film that people also copycat murders and other crimes from movies. I found this shocking but yet it was still interesting that people are actually dumb enough to copy such movies. One thing that had me “tripping” was the part of the film that talked about a woman who gathered others to rob a bank. This woman attempted to rob her designated bank by mimicking the robbery scene of “Set It Off” exactly. I also liked the blog along with this topic because we presented others with something we had mimicked from a media source. It was fascinating to see what my fellow classmates had mimicked from the media. I must also add that I liked the topic relating the bandwagon effect. If we see something in the media that displays majority of people doing, we would probably try to fit in and join that so called “wagon.”
The topics that I liked the least was about the marketing of diamonds and the Muraskin and Domash readings on cases such as Ramsey, Menendez and Peterson. I really didn’t like the marketing of diamonds topic because I didn’t feel like it was equivalent to any of the other material we learned in the class. The topic came out of nowhere and it seems like the only justice issue about it is that people are putting a high value on some that people are slaving over in Africa in hopes of making a dollar. Possibly, the fact that De Beers ads were not all factual was injustice, but people still live to those ads even though some may know that diamonds aren’t forever or that diamonds are a key to a women’s heart. I couldn’t really get into this topic because I feel like people put it on themselves. We, the people of the United States, are the ones that made diamonds what they are today. I believe this topic can have very conflicting sides. In regards to the CJ policy and the cases such as Ramsey, I wasn’t that interested because I have heard about these cases in various other classes and heard about them also through the news. I had no will to think a lot about this topic because I knew most of the underlying detail.
The topics that I would like to see expanded would be the copycat effect because I find it interesting and I would like to know more about why people copycat stuff from the media and what they get from it. One thing that should have been limited was the presentation on suicide because all the things see talked about was redundant. I’m sure a lot of students in the class already knew some about suicide, but when the presentation went into depth, it may have caused some fear in us. Knowing the signs of suicide alone would cause fear because we may think suicide is possible if we have some of those signs (which is not so).
As I stated earlier, all the topics were interesting but some were more interesting than others. I felt like we spent as much time on each topic as needed to get the ideas across. So, if I were to teach a class on Media & Justice, I would probably make it more geared at the big picture of “Copycat Effect.” There would be a lot of class discussion and I would probably ask the students to talk about their thoughts in class rather than on a blog. If possible, I would have all class members bring a laptop to class so the class as a whole could look at different medias and find justice issues. When looking at the copycat effect, I would use current day issues in the media that are relevant to justice issues such as a kid jumping of a bridge after seeing a celebrity doing so. I would also look at the media and see if the news media are telling different stories or not about the same issue. The class would also look at how the “copycat effect” affects the people in our society and decide if it could cause moral panics or other disturbances.
