For me choosing my topic on my final paper was fairly straight forward.

I am an avid gamer and the topic

of video game violence is the most prevalent discussion and I wanted to know more about it. When it
came to research it was a different story. When we were assigned to find sources for, against, and
alternative it was a bit different. Looking for papers that were against my initial opinion saying that
video games cause quote unquote Aggression was fairly straight forward but I wanted something that
wasn’t a cookie cutter response. What I learned from taking a close look at different situations is that
when people are against something, they will find whatever they can to discredit it. Such as the article I
found about propaganda techniques in games. I eventually ended up thinking that even if they use these
techniques to minimize violence there is no call to action, there is no message to tell people to act a
certain way and without it they lack context and different meanings can be drawn from them. From my
media consumption journal and analysis, I learned that when you look at what you consume you will
likely find surprising things about your habits. Like how I learned that at least of the time of the
recording I never mad an effort to be a part of any discussion or to be up to date of it. I even made the
effort to avoid these topics because I had it in my head that if I were to turn over to the news, I would
likely see things which are depressing yes but they have to be discussed because they keep happening.

I learned that I find the media to be a conglomerate that cares only about money such as Nolan
Chomsky says it is. I think that ever since the industrial revolution it has been about profits at the end
and before that I believe it has been about control particularly with propaganda. Examples that come to
mind are how Napoleon is always thought of as short but that was a propaganda technique that stuck
around because Napoleon was average height for his time. With profit the government itself had to
outlaw the media straight up lying or “Yellow Journalism” as it was called so they have done what they
can to keep profits up. Yet despite these flaws within the system it is still the place where discussion
happens or at least is inspired because where else can we get the information we crave since very few
can just travel to where events happen so we are stuck with the media we have. Even then with the
means of control and profit we still somehow manage to make change happen because we still discuss
these things, because we still have people who will bring the issues, we have with society up so we can
deal with them. If those voices are silenced bringing change will become harder to accomplish.