Special Gift From Kenya to America

"The Maasai, a community that holds cattle sacred, is broadly unfamiliar to residents of Manhattan. And cows may not mean a lot to many ordinary Americans. But it is the ultimate gift one can get from this community. "

With the society that we live in today, I feel that we as Americans do not appreciate the life we have here and the things given to us. When comparing to other countries, we are lucky to live in a country that has many opportunities to help us make it in this world. When the Maasai community gave us cows, most of us may find it to be ludicrous since we see cows as a provider for milk and meat, but we need to look at it in a different perspective. To the Maasai community it means so much more than just an animal you eat. We should be appreciative and thankful for receiving the gift from Kenya, at least we know we have their support. No one is making Kenya sympathize or hand us gifts, they are doing it because they want to show the Americans that they care and are sorry for our losses. I just feel our society is unappreciative and it’s all about money, looks, and luxurious things. It’s sad to say that our country is kind of "F up."

Two Communicaton Model

In chapter one it talks about the two types of communication models the transmission model and the cultural model. Out of the two models the transmission model seems to be the easiest to comprehend. The source, message, and receiver are the three basic ideas in the transmission model. With these three sources it can be used in any form of communication.

The cultural model is more in depth compare to the transmission model. The cultural model deals with communicating among different kind of ethnicities, beliefs, genders, and etc. When people have diverse backgrounds and are communicating with each other, it may be hard for both crowds to understand the main point of the message. For example, if the sender is trying to get their message across to the receiver and he/she do not comprehend. The sender might have to try and reword it in order for the receiver to see eye-to-eye with the them.

Representation & The Media

When watching Stuart Hall’s “Representation and the Media” video clip, I got confused at first. I tried to focus in on what his explanation about the representation meant to him, but I got distracted with the flying videos in the background. It distracted me to the point where I had to re watch the video again. Finally after watching it for the second time, I had a better understanding of what the word representation meant to me.

The word representation is a presentation to the mind of a picture or an idea. It explains the signs that stand in for and take the place of. In a way representation is a form or a tool for the media. It stands among the true and the viewer because of its ability to be imitative or reproduced.

In Hall’s video he talks about the politics of representation approach or the channels through which meaning production occurs. He believes that objects, people, and so on do not have true meanings and that the meanings are just shaped by human beings in addition to our society being part of the reason as well.

:)

HI