Catastrophe in Japan

Over the weekend, Japan faced catastrophic events. They had a massive earthquake at 8.9 magnitude on the scale with numerous aftershocks and huge tsunamis followed. The whole country shook, literally. Japan is now 8 feet closer to the East. It was very shocking to see the disaster happening live on TV as the residents of Japan took videos and uploaded them on YouTube. Social media was the most useful tool for Japan to use to ask for help. People around the world were able to get instant SOS from them through Twitter or through social networking sites like Facebook. Even news channels depended on them to get the latest stories from the victims. A lot of people criticized that social media is a negative effect on our society. Look at how much it has done for Japan. In a matter of days international reliefs and other countries have reached out to help right away. Social media is a very useful tool when it comes to situations such as these. At this very moment, Japan is still shaken by the incidents that had happened. Due to the terrible circumstances, some nuclear plants have leaked. However the Japan government assured people that it is at low figures at the moment. They are trying their best to cool down the plant to prevent for worse scenarios.

Japan is one of the most advanced country in the world – technologically. In fact they are at least 20 years ahead from all of us. I believe that they will be able to get back on their feet and overcome what has happened to them. I salute to the Japanese. Even the senior citizens had quick initiative on what to do when a tsunami or an earthquake happens. If the same terrible disaster happened in another country, I know for sure it would be worse. Right now Japan just needs help in surviving and picking up the pieces that’s left from the monstrous disasters. People have been discussing that a lot of organizations are going to take advantage and use this time to make money from the donations that are going to pour in heavily. I think people should decrease donating money and increase donating physical things like canned goods and warm clothes. We shouldn’t be depending on money to help them. One woman in Japan literally said on TV that she would rather receive food and warm clothes than money. We shouldn’t rely too much on the humanitarian organizations to buy the things for us to get the proper materials needed for the victims. If we are sincere, we should give the humanitarian the things we want the victims to physically get. We complain too much about how humanitarian reliefs don’t utilize our donations properly. Well it’s about time we change the type of donations we pour in.

Media

Recently I did a group presentation on Representation of Media. My group and I did it based on the movie “The Devil Wears Prada“. We decided to do our presentation by explaining our research through the four characters from the movie; Miranda Priestly, Emily Charleton, Andrea Sachs and Nigel. I enjoyed my presentation with my mates. Media surely can shape the person’s perceptions on things. We can only change these if we tell ourselves to do so; researching on them. There were other groups who did their presentations too. Their ideas were pretty good too. It’s nice to know what type of ideas and the effects of the media’s domination over our lives. I admit I hate reading thick textbooks unless it was something that was very interesting. Most of my books are in PDF formats and I prefer to read them on my laptop. I know this contradicts to the fact that I stated that real books are better than e-books but textbooks are different from novels. Novels are something that can never be replaced. I love the smell of the pages of a new novel. It’s rich and fresh! In our society with high-end technologies, we tend to depend too much on the sophisticated gadgets and forget the simple things in life. There has been a never ending discussion between who to rely more; the experienced presenter or the journalist who is witnessing the event. It’s a bit of both, I think. Nowadays, these two people have become one. With internet, you can get news in seconds. We have Twitter and YouTube and the list goes on. Another discussion comes to my head right now; the fight between the professionals and the amateurs in the media industry. With internet and sites like Twitter and YouTube, anyone can produce news. Personally I feel that there is a difference between the two. An amateur journalist does not have any credibility and his or her story can’t be referenced or relied. However I know a lot of amateur journalists who have more truth in their stories compared to the published news from the professional journalists. We may think that our society is open minded compared to the past, I disagree. We are still the same as not all of us feel 100% good to hear about certain topics that are at times raised. Therefore how each of us perceive anything from media depends on our background and upbringing. No matter how “open minded” we may think we are, we all are still defaulted to believe what’s been fed to us. Media feeds us what we know. How we know is from our upbringing and background.