Justin Frame
9/24/08
Persuasive Writing
Professor Varner
Finding valuable, credible information, online, can be a tedious task, full of dead ends and false leads. With today’s technologies, everybody is putting their thoughts and opinions online. In order to acquire credible, believable information, a person must know where to look, as to not be fooled by the people who are typing rubbish into their computers, in hopes of being the next great thinker, or internet millionaire. How do you seek out credible information, and avoid bullshit? Many people, including myself, go by the free vs. fee theorem. This theorem states that information that can be found for free, is not always true and credible, much like Wikipedia.com, however, information that you obtain for a fee, like the information you find in libraries and in scholarly databases, like Temple Universities’, is well researched, credible and true.
Using Temple Universities’ credible database, I was able to find valuable information to answer some of my questions about women in advertising, and the ethics behind it. Although the database is vast and sometimes very hard to navigate I eventually found, and in some cases, stumbled, upon the information I was searching for. After creating the original questions and coming up short on the information I was looking for, I tweaked the questions a little, and was able to find the articles and pages I needed to draw the conclusions I needed to answer the new question, without sacrificing what I wanted to learn from the original question.
First, I wanted to see what women think about advertising. Apparently, women think that advertising is out of touch with the way they really feel about and see there lives and there personal selves. Women want to see more ‘real’ women or women that are not depicted as young, blonde and sexy. Also, women want to hear women’s voices more, on voiceovers. The next question that I had was; why, in a majority of media, are women always depicted in sexy fashion? And, quite obviously, sex sells. Advertisers use attractive female, and male, models in their ads so that viewers of these ads connect sex with the item that is being advertised. I just want to say, on a personal level, I definitely see this all over the place, on billboards, television, in magazine ads, and even flyers and handouts around the community. My final question was about ethics, whether or not the use of women in advertisements was ethical. Well, of course it is perfectly fine for women to act and model in advertisements, but as I found online and believe myself, sometimes the line is crossed. Some sexuality in advertisements is perfectly fine, but in the opinion of the author of the article I found, and my personal opinion, women are overly portrayed as sexy and sleazy and hardly ever portrayed in the way modern women are; hard working mothers, who balance a career with a steady home life. Although I found all the information I was looking for, I did stumble upon some questionable material while browsing the internet to find related topics about women in advertising.
Wikipedia is an online database that is peer edited. In other words, it is a database that any nonsense talking, college wannabe can enter information into, much like I did. As per the assignment, I logged onto Wikipedia and entered false information. Under the databases description of advertising I entered; “Advertising is not real, it is an idea that the liberal media has planted into the heads of the business world to make it seem as though commercials are on television in an attempt to get people to purchase products, ads are really on television to prove the existence of ten foot tall Indians that plant ten foot tall corn.” Absolute nonsense, I know, but it goes to show how credible free online databases can be. Oddly enough, I felt kind of excited entering information into a website. Knowing that people may read what I wrote, no matter how non credible it is, was strangely exciting. Creating this particular post, I did not feel credible, mostly because I wrote about ten foot tall Indians and corn, however, if I were to enter information about a subject that I studied and researched I would feel totally credible and I would know what I entered was the full truth. But, how does one differentiate between information that is nonsense and information that is researched and credible?
In conclusion, browsing the web in search of information can lead down roads less traveled, or it can deliver you where there is a plethora of pertinent information. Anybody who searches the web for information must be careful where they get it from, and must comb through the information they find with a fine tooth comb and a suspicious mind. It is wise to turn to respected, sometimes fee based, databases, rather than using peer edited, online databases. And remember, if you are trying to find information about advertising and you come across something about ten foot Indians and corn, you may want to look elsewhere.
9/24/08
Persuasive Writing
Professor Varner
Finding valuable, credible information, online, can be a tedious task, full of dead ends and false leads. With today’s technologies, everybody is putting their thoughts and opinions online. In order to acquire credible, believable information, a person must know where to look, as to not be fooled by the people who are typing rubbish into their computers, in hopes of being the next great thinker, or internet millionaire. How do you seek out credible information, and avoid bullshit? Many people, including myself, go by the free vs. fee theorem. This theorem states that information that can be found for free, is not always true and credible, much like Wikipedia.com, however, information that you obtain for a fee, like the information you find in libraries and in scholarly databases, like Temple Universities’, is well researched, credible and true.
Using Temple Universities’ credible database, I was able to find valuable information to answer some of my questions about women in advertising, and the ethics behind it. Although the database is vast and sometimes very hard to navigate I eventually found, and in some cases, stumbled, upon the information I was searching for. After creating the original questions and coming up short on the information I was looking for, I tweaked the questions a little, and was able to find the articles and pages I needed to draw the conclusions I needed to answer the new question, without sacrificing what I wanted to learn from the original question.
First, I wanted to see what women think about advertising. Apparently, women think that advertising is out of touch with the way they really feel about and see there lives and there personal selves. Women want to see more ‘real’ women or women that are not depicted as young, blonde and sexy. Also, women want to hear women’s voices more, on voiceovers. The next question that I had was; why, in a majority of media, are women always depicted in sexy fashion? And, quite obviously, sex sells. Advertisers use attractive female, and male, models in their ads so that viewers of these ads connect sex with the item that is being advertised. I just want to say, on a personal level, I definitely see this all over the place, on billboards, television, in magazine ads, and even flyers and handouts around the community. My final question was about ethics, whether or not the use of women in advertisements was ethical. Well, of course it is perfectly fine for women to act and model in advertisements, but as I found online and believe myself, sometimes the line is crossed. Some sexuality in advertisements is perfectly fine, but in the opinion of the author of the article I found, and my personal opinion, women are overly portrayed as sexy and sleazy and hardly ever portrayed in the way modern women are; hard working mothers, who balance a career with a steady home life. Although I found all the information I was looking for, I did stumble upon some questionable material while browsing the internet to find related topics about women in advertising.
Wikipedia is an online database that is peer edited. In other words, it is a database that any nonsense talking, college wannabe can enter information into, much like I did. As per the assignment, I logged onto Wikipedia and entered false information. Under the databases description of advertising I entered; “Advertising is not real, it is an idea that the liberal media has planted into the heads of the business world to make it seem as though commercials are on television in an attempt to get people to purchase products, ads are really on television to prove the existence of ten foot tall Indians that plant ten foot tall corn.” Absolute nonsense, I know, but it goes to show how credible free online databases can be. Oddly enough, I felt kind of excited entering information into a website. Knowing that people may read what I wrote, no matter how non credible it is, was strangely exciting. Creating this particular post, I did not feel credible, mostly because I wrote about ten foot tall Indians and corn, however, if I were to enter information about a subject that I studied and researched I would feel totally credible and I would know what I entered was the full truth. But, how does one differentiate between information that is nonsense and information that is researched and credible?
In conclusion, browsing the web in search of information can lead down roads less traveled, or it can deliver you where there is a plethora of pertinent information. Anybody who searches the web for information must be careful where they get it from, and must comb through the information they find with a fine tooth comb and a suspicious mind. It is wise to turn to respected, sometimes fee based, databases, rather than using peer edited, online databases. And remember, if you are trying to find information about advertising and you come across something about ten foot Indians and corn, you may want to look elsewhere.
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