Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Comm 226: Blogging and Contemporary Connections

Dear Class, one of the things that this blogging should be about is making the things in class more relevant to your life. As we are in the middle of the 6th week I will need more participation on your part to make this class energetic and blogging is one way to do that. There were a number of really smart posts that connected issues of brand loyalty to discussions made in class last week by Dan on the NHL lockout and another Brand Loyalty and one's Jeans by Erin. Another was on how ads often have to take on Nationalist airs in order to reach its audience and Derek makes this point on Canadian Advertising. That reminds me of one of my favorite ads of all time, this ad for Molson beer about being Canadian (quicktime). Really wonderful stuff about Canadian culture. Anyways, notice, that and each of these posts and others like them that have taken soemthing discussed in class or the readings and made it relevant. That's a big positive and it will help better get the main ideas in the class. It will also help your peers.

As you blog think of this as the opportunity to make contemporary connections. This class deals with the past, but it is a very relevant and pertinent past, one that is little over 140 years. That isn't much time and we are still dealing with many of the issues and concepts. Technologies and standardization, PR and advertising are all issues that you must deal with each day of your life, even if you do not necessarily think about it.

On Friday I think I am going to show you a film about needing to control information in a time of chaos where the stakes are high. It is titled Control Room and is about how the allies CentCom worked to put out their story and Al Jazeera is putting out another. I will show the first 55 minutes or so and will give you a writing exercise to turn in later. We will relate this back to PR, so please finish the first four chapters by Friday.

Take care and see you later!

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