There is no question that we are bombarded by media messages multiple times a day. When you take on the challenge of actually recording all of your media exposures, you truly see how media saturated our lives have become.
It took me a day to remember to write down the time every time I saw a commercial, or heard an ad on the radio. It is not an easy thing to remember to do. We take for granted how many messages we are receiving because it is the norm for us, we have grown accustomed to it. By day two, I had finally gotten the hang of it, and recorded a full day of advertisement and media messages.
My cell phone charges next to my bed while I sleep. Every morning when I wake up, I check my text messages, Facebook notifications, and e-mails. While doing this assignment I realized that advertisements are the first things that I see when I open my eyes. Deleting the “Victoria’s Secret 20% off blowout sale” and “Petsmart exclusive coupon for you” e-mails is how I start my day, and I usually think nothing of it.
Before school starts, I watch a little television during breakfast. On this particular morning, I turned on the MTV show Teen Mom, and took notice of the commercials that surrounded the show. I saw commercials for Madonna’s new cd, the Jersey Shore, and Proactiv Solution. The commercials that I was seeing were clearly targeted toward the demographic of those who watch Teen Mom.
Throughout my day, I received over thirty e-mails from various retailers. My phone alerted me that I had a new e-mail so many times that it became very frustrating.
On my way to school, I saw billboards for cars and furniture. I also heard many different advertisements on the radio. One ad was for a car, another was for the new movie Snow White, and one advertised a grocery store.
Many of the messages that we receive on a daily basis happen simultaneously. I was watching The Office with my husband later that evening, and I was receiving e-mails while viewing a commercial. When we drive, I will see billboards advertising a dentist office while hearing an advertisement for AT & T on the radio. Media messages are inescapable, and this assignment really showed me just how much of it we are exposed to in a day
