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Formal Essay 1 Guidelines
Due: Friday, June 29th By Midnight
Your first essay should be approximately 4-5 pages typed in 12-point double-spaced Times New Roman. This essay is worth 100 points.
Revisit your early use of media.
Read the excerpt [Excerpt, Ch.1, Follow the Music, Holzman.pdf] from Jac Holtzman’s book Follow the Music: The Life and High Times of Elektra Records in the Great Years of American Pop Culture. Holzman describes always believing he was born to the wrong parents, but that he escaped through the movies. Here’s a key passage:
"My only other escape was far more to my liking—the movies. The images on the screen showed characters of stature, grace, and romance: the world the way I wished it could be. From my bedroom window, if I craned my neck just so, into view would come the Trans-Lux theater, which changed films weekly and gave you a free pass on your birthday. I haunted the place."
In this essay, you need to similarly look back at your early use of media and also consider how media still today impact your daily life and social relationships. At first, it might be useful to consider how media impact you today, but then trace back to your earliest use of media and examine what media provided in relation to your non-mediated childhood memories.
Some questions to consider might be the following (you should answer at least four of these):
- How did your media use connect you to other people?
- How did media separate or isolate you?
- Did you discuss your media use with others, especially parents (were there usage limits, policies, etc.)?
- In terms of how you perceive media compared to your current and more nuanced understanding of how media are constructed, how did you perceive media differently when you were younger?
- Looking back, do you wish your engagement with media had been different?
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Explanation & Answer
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How media use connect to other people
According to Jac Holtzman’s book, Follow the Music, the connection between media use
and other people is examined through the representation of an ethnic minority in the media, and
it is regarded in association to how the use of media impact on other people in regards to identity
formulation and the individual's social world. People’s conceptualization and their approaches
with other people reveal a clear connection to a person’s use of the media through a lived
experience.
Notably, Jac noted that young people consider their identities, diverse, complex, and
contradictory and show a reflexive awareness of the young people’s sense of self, which is a
phenomenon personally constructed, always revised and shown to others. Holtzman argues that
the media is a resource used by young people in formulating and conceptualizing the current
identities and in articulating achievable future selves.
How media isolates or separates young people
In his book, Follow the Music, Jac argues that media has impacted on the young people
by separating or isolating them from the society. He explains this point saying that before mass
media emerged, young people utilized symbolic materials as self-formation tools, which were
achieved through direct interaction processes. Hence, in this context, Jac says that identity
construction was through individual ways, and was restricted through young people’s immediate
personal interactions and locale with others. Therefore, Jac's works explain that knowledge was
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restricted on “local knowledge,” that was modified and transmitted orally through pragmatic
concerns: ‘The understanding horizons of most people were restricted by face-to-face
interactions, which made information to flow’ (p. 212).
On contrary to this form of interaction, Holtzman stated that such conditions have
undergone radical changes as communication media developed, in such ways that the selfmotivation of an individual is highly reliant on the presence of “mediated communication forms”
(p. 213). In this framework, Jac gives proposals that “local knowledge” has turned to be
supplanted and augmented by upcoming non-local knowledge modes given in the media that
makes individuals obtain information past the capability of their specific social words. He
explains this by saying that "personal" understanding horizons are broadened, making them no
longer restricted to direct interaction patterns rather are shaped majorly through the expanding
mediated networks of communication (p.214). For Holtzman, this accessibility increase of nonlocal knowledge, as well as the greater symbolic materials array facilitated through media of
communication, enhance the project of self-reflection. This statement is explained by
considering that if individuals were to be offered a more varied mediated materials range, the
media would function like a resource that people can incorporate and exploit reflexively into
their self-identity narratives.
Additionally, as young people get in touch with the ever-developing symbolic materials
numbers that can be drawn on self-constructing, Jac argues that young people are constantly
confronted with fresh possibilities, thus their horizons are constantly changing, as well as their
reference symbolic point (p. 213). Therefore, through highlighting the upcoming self-formation
new opportunities opened up in the symbolic materials proliferation, Holtzman proposes that
young people go through a greater difficulty in reverting back to understanding models grounded
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in specific and traditional locales. Overall, Jac concludes that the developing mediated
experience availability creates fresh opportunities, new arenas, and new options for selfexperimentation.
Do you discuss media use with other people?
Notably, discussing the issue of media use with other especially parents is depended on
young people’s choices of the role model and their influence. This is because, during the
development of identity in young people, they view their role models as a guidance source;
seeking for emulation figures who show specific characteristics and abilities. Equally, Holtzman
stated that although family members and parents can be important advisors to young people on
their media use, additional influences, involving the mass media give a crucial heroes source for
young people. Importantly, young people’s advisers on mass media use are, to a certain degree,
subject on the young people’s gender and ethnicity (p. 117). However, regardless of the
importance of the common culture of giving young people media heroes, overall most young
peop...