Okay, so this is probably a strange thing to blog about as my first entry of the semester, but yesterday afternoon my house was broken into while I was visiting my grandmother. Normally I wouldn't think twice about discussing this in a class focused on the media, but when the police were here filling out the reports, one of the officers said something that really caught my attention. He mentioned that since the recession, there have been a ton of cases where people have been stealing gold jewelry from homes because of the fast cash opportunities they see on things like the Cash 4 Gold commercials.
I thought that this was interesting because in my senior seminar class, I am actually writing my final paper on the effects of a certain genre of television on viewers beliefs and behaviors, so to hear from a police officer that they are seeing connections between a media outlet and criminal activity really got me thinking. Once the issue of the commercials promoting quick money making was mentioned, I started tying in what was said to the material for this course and the ways that meaning behind words or signs in the media can take on various meanings and possibly effect people in different ways. Anyway, I just thought the link between the commercials and local crime was worth mentioning as a real world example of how the media impacts its audience.
Oh, another thing that got me thinking about this class was that as the officer was dusting for fingerprints, he looked at me and said, "now you're gonna get to see what real crime scene investigation is all about. This isn't like what you see on C.S.I.", and proceeded to explain the process of identifying fingerprints, which was really interesting, but that I also found to be a little funny considering that the screening for the upcoming week consists of episodes of C.S.I. Miami. Well, the screenings this week should be even more interesting now...
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