Louis' super cool media history blog

One of the readings we had to look through this week was about Zlatan Ibrahimovic. It talked about his multifaceted aspects of his image, and how they all piece together a very different looking Zlatan.  I want to focus on one such example, as it puzzled me. The example in question being the commercial he did with Volvo. According to the text, what is shown in the ad is something that is not often shown in Swedish media. The image of a man, hunter gatherer, battling the cold, coupled with him being a caring father and a loving husband. I found this surprising when reading this, as I always thought Sweden was ahead of the times in regards to gender norms. Take maternity leave, where it is usually split 50/50 with the father and the mother, and 90 days must be reserved to the father if he so chooses to take them. This is far and away more progressive than anything we have in Canada, so the author saying these contrasting images of Zlatan are rare seem quite odd to me. Perhaps these t...

 Bill Clinton. What comes to mind when seeing his name. Is it his policies? The laws he passed? How many supporters he had? For most of you, upon seeing that name, you think of the Monica Lewinski scandal. The scandal that ripped through media like a fire storm, being covered by every outlet and medium imaginable. I find that fascinating, as this showcases perfectly one of the concepts we touched on in class, which is privatization. In short, this is the practice of focusing more on the private matters of a politician's life as opposed to their normal political business dealings. This is clearly something that has been done for quite some time now, but is becoming more prevalent in our day and age. As shown in the Lewinski scandal, more and more politicians are being presented as celebrities. Being showcased in tabloids with big flashy headlines having nothing to do with their policies. A more recent example is that of president Trump, who made more headlines than one could count. ...

As a business (or more specifically, marketing) student, I have never taken a class such as this one. All my previous classes have been, in general, within the business landscape (courses such as accounting, HR, finance, economics etc). When I learned I was allowed to take a class outside of this realm, I quickly jumped on the opportunity. After a bit of digging, I found this class and was immediately intrigued. The world of media has always fascinated me and thus learning about its past history seemed extremely interesting to me. It feels like now more than ever, with the likes of Trump and big influential figures, media has become more than a tool, some would even say a weapon. With the prevalence of "fake news" and media outlets being billed as good or bad by high ranking officials, it is interesting how much power influences the information we consume. I'm looking forward to learning more on these issues, and to hopefully come away with an understanding as to exactly ...