Music Video Analysis

   The song 'The pain of fighters' by the Israeli singer Idan Amedi talked about his experience as a fighter during his military service in combat engineering in Israel. In his early days as a singer, he was on the T.V show X-Factor (2010) and performed this song for the first time. He wrote and composed the song by himself. At the end of the season the song was released to numerous radio stations and reached a number one in the hit parade.

   I chose this song because behind his words there is a hidden pain. The song is the way that he can express his feelings outside and share his deep pain. Inside him there is a screaming voice that want to tell us what really happened in the past. The song was written as a letter to a girl that he broke up with. He wrote it during the night when he came back home for a vacation and realized the meaning of life in different aspects. How much pain he had seen and all the friends that he had already lost. He held himself up in his room and wrote her a letter that explained everything. The song comes from a real place inside him. It's designed to encourage other soldiers who have lost their friends during the war and the pain they experienced. They usually keep everything inside them and prefer not to talk about what happened, but the pain is still there and they are carrying it for the rest of their lives. All those boys who chose to serve in the army and wanted to protect their country, are away from home because they want us to live in peace. They are taking the risk to loosing their own life in order to save ours.  For those who still live and survive the wars come back with trauma. Amedi as a former soldier, talked about his past, all the blood that he saw and his friends who were killed next to him. Whenever he came back home for vacation, he understood what he was feeling. The hurt and pain of carrying all the trauma from the past. He realized that he is different and life is a gift because he is still alive, loosing his best friends makes him feel grief and guilt. 

   The song opens with him expressing his loneliness; "First evening of being alone, I sit and write you a letter about all the things that happened..". First of all he wanted to share what really happened to him, which means he wanted to gives other people who have experienced similar trauma the ability to do so when they are ready to. Life continues, yes it is hard but he was in the same position and he knows the same pain all those boys are carrying. The message is to help them, they need to get out of that in their own time.  They need to understand that with all the pain they feel for those they've lost is still real, but instead of dwelling on the pain they need to start their life again.  The song ends with him still thinking about life. From another aspect, with all the pain that he still has, he cannot sleep,  he has nightmares and pictures of the war stuck in his head.  The silence has meaning: to let all the thoughts out and be able to start their life again.  

   I like to hear this song whenever there is an attack in my country and soldiers are killed. I cannot forget that they are all there for the purpose of protecting others by using their own bodies. I support all of them and respect them very much. Every year, whenever we have the memorial day for fallen soldiers this song is one the most played. People feel the pain that soldiers have to go through, all the bad memories being engraved in their hearts. As a nation, our purpose of defending our country is possible because we are all together and can all connect with each other, especially through songs like this. People who didn't lose anyone are able to feel the same pain as families who did. Every memorial day this song connects us all, it leads us to think about our friends and families that have lost soldiers in the war. 

   Personally this song touches my hurt because I have lost friends who have studied with me in school. It's hard to contain the pain. Those boys who just joined to the army are all young usually 18-24 years old, they weren't able to experience anything in their life other than war and they are often taken to soon without the chance to continue our generation. 

   Idan Amedi's songs are usually quite songs that talk about the pain and the experience from his military service. Most of them are sad as I said, it's about the loss of people and the stories behind the hard situations that he experienced. We can learn from the meaning of the words in the songs what really happened to him at that time. He keeps inside him the pain and slowly starts to express himself with through his songs. The meaning of the words are very deep, translated in hebrew the lyrics make more sense. 

   "Idan Amedi" (album name) debuted on September 5, 2011. The album was named when the gold album sold over 20 thousand copies. There are 11 songs on the album. The album cover is very minimal, it is of Idan's face without a smile. His face shows us that he keeps something inside him and wants to tell us through his songs.

     Very similar to other music videos, the actions in the video provide what the song is about, what the story is behind the lyrics. The message from the writer is clearly illustrated through the video. People can understand his meaning better when they watch the video. In my opinion, the deeper meaning beneath the song can be more clear. For this song we have two different clips, both of them start with Idan singing and playing his guitar. We can see different soldiers during the clip, with some in  wheelchairs as a consequence of the war. Based on the same idea that he wrote the song to his girlfriend. The difference in the clips is that one of them we can actually see the places that the soldiers served and the obstacles they are faced with. The other one is more about him and the girlfriend. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCzN7Y_qiY8&list=RDXCzN7Y_qiY8

How Social Media Impact Journalis

http://word.mn/news/1451

For many years, people around the world believe that social media will bring change to our lives. In addition, they thought that the Internet would affect Journalism in a good way. However, the impact is reflected in a negative way. People in the media world, journalists, hope for a positive change. What is happening today compared to the past is that all the new sites are not showing us what just appeared in the newspapers. They have a life of their own. In other words, the news is not a product that is being delivered to the public on a daily basis. On the Internet it is easier to update information quickly, and to make necessary adjustments which makes it easier to stay updated as opposed to newspapers which go out once a day.

http://www.sheinspires.com.au/journalism/5
-top-tips-for-journalists

Today, social media is most likely seen as a service that is constantly being updated. The Internet has created a situation where most news sites will bring stories that have already been featured in other news sites because the circulation and publication is so easy and accessible. If we take a look back at journalism in the 90s for example, we can see daily newspapers that were printed early in the morning. Today, people wake up sit in ease while drinking their coffee and looking through their smart phone at current news. People are more likely to depend on technology, Social media, news sites and the Internet in general then the hard copy newspapers as were delivered in the past. A number of reasons make the online news updates more attractive, one of them being that the information is easier to acquire and it is free. Anyone in any place in the world can read anything at anytime and stay updated. In the past, if we visited a foreign country and we did not know the native language there weren't many ways for us to get information, to receive the news, today we can open our phones and go to any website at any given time and it any given place.

https://thaiintelligentnews.wordpress.com/2011/10/01/
journalism-8-far-extreme-right-press-poll-question
-raises-heated-debate-on-thai-journalist-ethics/

In the past journalists would write their stories on the night before and have them printed in the morning newspaper, which essentially meant that civilians were reading yesterday's news. If one wanted to know what was happening in the current day they needed to wait for tomorrow's newspaper. Today, there is no need to wait, we can find any piece of information at the drop of a hat, a click of a button, a finger on the screen. This new reality which allows us to be connected all the time is needless to say a great advantage, but as is everything in life to every advantage there is also a disadvantage.

For example, the presence of social and online media has taken away many jobs. Printing houses are still working with the demand for newspapers has weakened compared to a time before the Internet was so accessible to all. When having to choose if we would rather get our information from a newspaper which costs money or online which is free of large majority of the population choose the free option. It's not that people are less interested in the news the size of the consumer audience has stayed the same but the means to receive the information has changed. In the process of changing the method of receiving our information news crews and journalists gradually start becoming obsolete.

On the other side, many journalists use social media to their advantage. They use it in order to collect more material and information on current news stories. In addition, it is help them reach a broader scale of audience in which they can voice their opinions to. Another positive which we can observe in the relationship between social media and journalist is that many journalists use social media as a investigating tool, which can assist them to locate sources and eyewitnesses faster than they would be able to in the past. In the current reality of today most people post about their day-to-day lives, especially if they witnessed something newsworthy this by turn allows journalists to find these people as soon as they post and share their story.

Social media has become a source for sharing news. It is adding another layer of information to existing news sources. It is important to state that journalism still exists as well, it has just evolved. Since consumers have shown west interest in the written paper and pat in the past few years’ newspaper sales have gone down.

I think social media as like everything in life has advantages and disadvantages, it depends on how we look at it. From my perspective, I believe that social media has changed journalism for the better. It might have damaged the printing houses income, but at the same time that lets the public get information at real-time. I feel is much better than our past option of receiving a newspaper once a day. Printed journalism became less useful. As time passes changes in the world are being made, it is inevitable and many times change is a good thing. As more and more time passes by printed journalism will fade out and eventually become completely absent, our main source of information is the Internet and I believe that in the future that will be our only source of information.

The good news is that journalists have adapted to this new way of passing on their opinions. They have removed from the printed news to posting their news and articles online. This new innovative way of sharing information with one another is not only cheaper and more effective it also reaches more people around the world. People use social media during a large portion of their day there for news stories and posts will show up on their screens in real time, taking it even one step further, if the story that they read interested them then there more than likely to share it with their friends, and their friends can share it with their friends and this can go on and on and eventually reach millions of people all across the world. That is not a privilege the journalists would have with the written paper. There are still people who prefer to receive their news in the form of the newspaper, this mostly refers to the older population who struggle with learning new technologies.

For closing, today social media allows everybody to read the news online and get updated 24 hours a day, and at the same time to voice their opinion on certain matters dot the main source in the past was newspapers and journalists and editors would print the main stories in the early hours of the day and that would be that. News was always a few steps behind the actual events. Today, people are aware of what is going on around the world in current time. My opinion is that social media actually helps journalism, overtime people may lose their jobs due to social media, but I believe did those people are more than capable of finding alternative jobs and that the positives of having such an accessible way to access information overthrows the negative.

https://ouimpressions.com/2013/08/19/should-you-switch-journalism-tracks/

Media Effects and Cultural Approaches to Researches

The media plays an important role in our society. During the years, the media improved a lot. The development from year to year brings innovation to humanity in  different ways. Social media becomes a way to express ourselves in public. The information is available all the time. Everyone has access from everywhere in the world. Smart phones and laptops that did not exist before, let us to use social media daily. Therefore, the effects of the media could be negative. Popular movies or videos games that appear in any kind of mass media are influential on us. Sometimes people find it difficult to make the separation between what they are seeing on the screen to the real life. According to the book Media&Culture by R.Campbell, “There are four trends of between 1930 and 1960 that contributed to the rise of modern media research: propaganda analysis, public opinion research, social psychology studies, and marketing research.” However, we can see these methods of research in three examples, such a violence, racism and gender.

We have a lot of portrayals of violent behavior in the media. Kids who are watching television and exposed to killing or fighting have a bad influence because they are taking that as an example and imitate it in their life. Therefore, parents tried to avoided them by blocking this kind of channels back home, however it is hard to control it all the time because they can watch it on the internet. This is an example of social learning theory which includes four steps: attention, retention, motor reproduction and motivation. As an illustration, the “Bobo doll” experiment had children watching violent behavior then copy the action of what they see.

The media has a big effect on the way races are viewed by society and it can be in any kind of mass media. As humans, we cannot stop the racism around the world suddenly in one day. However, the first step can come from the media side. Racism cannot be terminated only by the people around. Media is powerful and we have to use it right without hurting other people. The term racism as we all know, is actually a belief that are many differences between races and that your own race is superior and has the right to control other people. As an example, if we open internet and we google ‘beautiful women’, most of the results are white women and there are only a few other ethnicities. Therefore, the internet supplies information that is not actually true because there are bunch of beautiful women around the world and their skin color does not matter. Whenever people going to google the ‘beautiful women’ and they going to see the results that our media provide the stigma will stay.

          Gender stereotypes are another example of how the public is effected by the mass media. We know how much power mass media have today. People are not just provided with information from the media, they affect their lives by shaping their opinions. Focus on the gender roles in our society manifests by another stigma that men are more dominant than women.  Today the differences are smaller than in the past, when men have been the one who taking care of the house and work hard to support his family and women were the housewives. We all can see how media still using those gender stereotypes and influences the public attitude whenever social groups display on media in negative way. Passing any message in the media can create a certain image of reality as a result the real perspective display wrong, even though people already aware about the unequal of social groups in the media.

            The media has a big power over us. What people are not seeing is that any information that passing through the media affects us in negative way sometimes. Children are very easy to impact and they are usually the ones who spend many hours watching television or just on the internet checking what is going on, Social media becomes a big part of their life, however their parents cannot control what they are seeing all the time.  The information is available and the access is free to anyone, which is hard to avoid from unnecessary information.