Popular Christian religious visual media has had an important effect on the cultural transmission of Christianity by indirectly and directly promoting important government ideals to viewers in the United States. Christian television shows and movies are especially prominent. Popular examples include The Chosen , Miracles from Heaven , A Week Away , and Murder Among the Mormons .  Spreading of Religion through Cultural Transmission Who consumes visual Christian media and why? Let’s look through the lens of uses and gratifications research , which claims that people consume specific media to meet specific needs that they themselves can identify.  In the book “Religious television, controversies and conclusions,” authors Robert Abelman and Stewart M. Hoover state, “Audiences tend to be self-selecting. They already believe, turning to religious broadcasting for confirmation of those beliefs.” In other words, Christian believers use visual religious media to gratify their desire for furthe

With the holidays, it's common to reassess your time and priorities - especially when it comes to media usage/consumption. I looked to Facebook to try to code (informally) this better.  But how do you determine what is good and what is bad?  I watched my feed this week extra closely- I noted the key components for what was pushed up in notifications as well as visibility. There were lots of gratitude posts, as well as ties to families (heritage and family history work too), and many more comments and good wishes. Overall, more interaction with each other- which was an interesting concept- and higher hopefulness.  There were also a lot of ads and promotions for buying things. Unsurprising but you never really know how prevalent they are until you're trying to see ANYTHING else. All it takes is a little attention.  The duality of media with benefits and deficits during the holiday is something I will be more cognizant of, especially because of the extra time that I have during

In a recent discussion, it was mentioned that we retain our memory of fear more through visual stimuli (ie. scary movies) than we do other forms of media (ie. books or music). This conversation had me questioning what content was more retainable.  From just my own experience, I noted other things that seemed to have a larger impact on me from my exposure to media.  Preferences (likes and dislikes) Pattern-making  Meaning-making Things I had learned when I was growing up related to these three things still are with me now. I have learned over time what media content I enjoy and that has been maintained with what I currently view.  I also noted that all of my structure comes from the pattern-making I learned about with my media use as well as the content I viewed. With that said, I also recognized that not all of this was positive- I felt as though the patterns I made with my use of media altered my ability to multi-task because I adjusted my patterns to not include that aspect of deve

 Recently I went on a loooong road trip and naturally had to determine what music to listen to.  Music is very important media- it helps us shape our emotional responses, help with meaning-making, and allow for another method of communication. We frequently look at our music in terms of content, but ever since our music lecture, I have been contemplating the idea of methodology. How does accessibility and preference affect our music choice ?  On my road trip, I decided to test this out.  I had to figure out which app was the best for me. Here's what I found: Spotify - connectivity Pandora - variety YouTube Music - exclusivity  They each had something to offer but I noted that my music taste changed with each due to convenience and what I already had saved. With Spotify I chose to listen to what was pre-saved (2000's music), Pandora I chose to search for something new so I picked a song I wanted to hear in hopes to find more like it (country music), and finally YouTube Music to