ALS IceBucketChallenge

ALS, also known as Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is actually a progressive neuro-degenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord which can bring much discomfort to a person.

The ALS ice bucket challenge was meant to get normal people to understand and feel how it is to be diagnosed with such a disease, to help essentially raise awareness for this kind of disease and most importantly, help raise funds for people diagnosed with it.

In my opinion,i find such a campaign effective in raising awareness because if we solely look from the number of people who did this challenge alone, there are many of them and that will prove that it succeeded very well. The funds raised have also been of very high numbers. Currently, it has raised over a $100 million, which is quite an achievement considering how many have not heard of ALS before.

However, i also personally feel that this challenge, with its main aim of raising awareness for the disease,has failed to some extent. What sounded like a very meaningful and creative way to raise awareness ended up becoming something that most people now do it for fun, tagging and nominating their friends on social media platforms to do the challenge as well. It has gotten to the point that people are just doing the challenge for fun, to try to get more “LIKES” on their Facebook or Instagram or simply just trying to become more popular on social media platforms. Many celebrities have already completed the challenge, and although it is supposed to be meaningful and all and they too donated money, some may question about their motive in doing so. They may be doing so simply just to get more popular themselves. That alone, is enough to prove that the ALS ice bucket challenge has lost its purpose and ultimate motive already.

The media has definitely spearheaded this project and enabled it to be very successful, what started out from a few people ended up spreading to the entire world from every single continent, thereby showing the power of harnessing social media to get a message across.

ALS Ice bucket challenge

What is ALS?

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.

There are two views to the ice bucket challenge. Some say it is a waste of water and some say it is a cool way to spread message to others. Personally, I find it quite amazing that the challenge was able to bring across the awareness of ALS and in no doubt huge sum of donations were received while doing the challenge. Celebrities and Public figures also accepted the challenge. Their act influence many to do the challenge to.

 

#ALSIceBucketChallenge

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. One would be fully paralyzed before death. ALS is not contagious and everyone of us have the possibility of being diagnosed with it. In order to raise awareness of this disease, the ALS Association has started the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. At the same time, funds were also raised to help patients diagnosed with ALS. Based on the ALS Association website, there were over 3 million donors and donations of $94.3 million and counting received from the Ice Bucket Challenge as of 29 August 2014. From this, it can be clearly seen that the Ice Bucket Challenge has successfully helped raise awareness for ALS.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge went viral on social media platforms and it has now become a trend worldwide where everyone would nominate at least 3 others to do the challenge before doing it themselves. A function of media is for easy dissemination of information and this is clearly seen from the millions of users online posting videos of this challenge with #ALSIceBucketChallenge. In addition, many celebrities and powerful figures are also carrying out this challenge. Such would include Will Smith, Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, Steven Spielberg and even US President Obama. Some ALS patients also took the Ice Bucket Challenge.

http://www.alsa.org/fight-als/ice-bucket-challenge.html

However, although it is clear that many are now more aware of what ALS is, not many are in fact doing this challenge with the intention to help those diagnosed patients. Some of us may be doing the Ice Bucket Challenge simply because our friends or the celebrities that we adore are doing it. How many of us actually do want to play a part to help this cause from the bottom of our hearts? Not many really. Even so, one cannot deny that this group of people are, in fact, now aware of the existence of this disease. In a sense, despite what one’s real intention is, the objective of creating more awareness was met with the help of social media.

ALS #icebucketchallenge reflections

Through the multitude of celebrities and netizens taking up this challenge, their  uploaded videos flood the timelines on social media sites such as  Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Indeed, due to the prevalence and high user-ship of social media platforms nowadays, increasingly more people are being more aware of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

ALS or Lou Gehrig’s is a neurodegenerative disease that is rapidly progressive as nerve cells are being attacked thus the death of motor neurons will affect the voluntary control of muscles. Eventually,  individuals lose their strength and ability to move their limbs and torso. When muscles in the diaphragm and chest muscles fail, people lose the ability to breathe without ventilatory support. Most people with ALS die from respiratory failure, usually within 3 to 5 years from the onset of symptoms. Some persons with ALS may have depression or alterations in cognitive functions involving decision-making and memory due to the diagnose of this disease. In the late stages of ALS, patients will need help to the toilet due to bowel control problems.

However, even with the raising awareness aim met, fundraising becomes a problem as people take up this challenge for the fun of it and doing it to seek acceptance from their peers as everyone is taking turns in doing it. Therefore, people just pour a bucket of ice water on themselves for fun, some without even thinking through the main purpose of this activity and end up not donating to the fund. Also, online transactions are very risky due to the possibility of hoax websites to con charitable people’s money.

Most campaigns raising awareness are of the same principles of garnering support from the population to help those in need. However, the masses might misread the true intentions and make it a popularity fad.

 

 

 

MEDIA PORTRAYS THE IDEA OF CHASING PERFECTION. COMMENT.

Introduction:

In the new world today, people nowadays are spending a large percentage of their time on the media. Media being a platform to share ideas, disseminate news and, communicate with one another has become inevitable in one’s life, especially with the ease of accessing it. It also contains infinite theories and concepts for people to browse through, which their are either acknowledge or critiqued by the public. With the increased critiques, comes the improvement of events. The ever improving concepts leads to the pursuit of perfection, wanting to achieve the state of flawlessness. The state of flawless may be portrayed through media by misleading people, deceiving them and preventing them to see the reality.

SV 1:

Media platforms shares information that are highly unachievable and unrealistic in the reality. Upon seeing the incidents, people would wish for unrealistic events and raise their expectations to those of near ‘perfection’.

SV 2: 

Media often portray the imperfect as undesirable, and only give credits to those that are successful. Thus increasing pressure in the society that in order to succeed, one must strive for perfection.

SV 3:

Creating an illusion, media is capable of influencing and changing the perception of beauty.

SV 4:

Media distorts reality, thus people chase after what the media portrays as the social norm, and attempts to outdo one another.

OV 1: 

Media serves the purpose of disseminating news that is up to date. The news are happenings around the world, and is not shaped or distorted in any way to be perfect.

OV 2:

Media serves an entertainment purpose, as a mean for people to share their thoughts, allow one to relieve their stress instead of exerting pressure to one to strive towards perfection.

THE MEDIA IS ABLE TO SHAPE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETIES’ IDENTITIES. DO YOU AGREE?

In today’s technologically advanced world, media become omni-presented in many society. Media is a platform for mass communication to large group of audiences. Yet, these media are so powerful that it shapes what the people think and believe. Often, these people are being prolonged exposed to the media that they began to perceive whatever the media portrays as the social norms. Collectively, they would also change the perception of the community they live in. This eventually lead to a change in the individual or societies characteristics and beliefs.  However, some conservatives might argue  that media is hardly shape the individual and societies’ identities. Despite the opposition from the conservatives, I believe that media does has the potential to change the individual and societies’ identities.

SV1: Media has allowed informations and ideas to be spread to different parts of the world.

SV2: Media has an extensive reach of audiences as it is prevalent in households of many developed and developing nations.

SV3: Media can be easily utilised by anyone to spread their messages to other people.

SV4: Often enough, media is so open that no one is able to control it completely.

OV1: After all, it is up to individuals’ discernment on whether they should accept whatever that is being portrayed in the media as the social norm or not.

OV2: In certain places, the government is able to intervene and interfere with the media to some degree through censorship

Human’s target to achieve the “perfect” image created by the everchanging media. Do you agree?

With advancements in technologies, we are now more exposed to various cultures and trends all over the world through the daily use of our mobile phones or television. Everyday, the mass media portrays a certain image of the society that is so called ‘desirable’ and people in the current era are heavily influenced by the media, which leads to them being brainwashed to think that is the perfect image that society perceive as. The information that the mass media provides are controlled and it always depict the ‘perfect’ image that humans, especially women should have. As a result, this leads to many woman being not satisfied about their physical appearances as the woman that is portrayed by the media is usually slim and beautiful. Very rarely do we see the media portraying a not beautiful woman as the ‘perfect’ image. With the influence of mass media, many people are misled to constantly pursue the fake ‘perfect’ image.

4 OVs

Beauty advertisements constantly portray that when women use their products, they can have flawless skin and other benefits which can in turn make the person more beautiful. They always use all sort of marketing gimmicks just to convince women that their products can make them beautiful.

The media can cause women to become depressed due to their inability to become the perfect image which the media portrays as. This may lead to suicide or even become lucid if serious enough.

If people are too obsessed about achieving the perfect image that the media emphasizes on, they could resort to plastic surgery to get the desired image that they want which many women in their 20s go for plastic surgery.

The stories of real people that the media share are mostly successful ones and there are only a few exceptional stories of failure. And as majority of the people are influenced by the media, they might not be able to take in the fact of their failure and it might result in serious consequences.

2 SVs

Despite that, the mass media also provide forms of entertainment for people to relax and enjoy. Hence, it might not be a bad thing which the media offers.

Not all the advertisements by the mass media is about the ‘perfect’ image of humans and some of them are educational or even inspiring ones to motivate people.

Dollface

Question:
Media is powerful enough to shape the perception of beauty, especially towards women while they try to figure out their own identity. Discuss.

Intro:
Women in today’s society is constantly looking out for the latest fashion trends and accessories on sale, as well as the figure of the most-watched celebrity as of that moment, and the media just served as a platform for that. Majority, if not all, women make use of the different forms of media to gain these information and follow these trends which are deemed by society as beautiful. As trends changes, the perception of beauty changes together with it too. This would definitely in turn affect the way one views oneself, constantly changing to fit the definition of “beauty” in society. And so, I believe that the media is influential enough to affect the way women feel about themselves both inside and out.

4SVs:
– The media constantly lead women into thinking that being “perfect” is to be tall and slim through portrayals on billboards and advertisements.
– The perception of beauty is ever-changing as more beauty products are constantly being produced and said to make one look “perfect”.
– Advertisements for weight loss has been on the rise on television which has contributed much to one’s insecurity of not looking “skinny enough”.
– Almost everyone in this world has access to the different forms of media available which had allowed for criticisms on others’ body figure be it stranger or not, affecting one’s inferior complexity.

2OVs:
– Everyone has their own principles which would allow them to make moral decisions and not let what others say define them.
– Not everyone have the same views on what is and looks “perfect”.

The media is able to shape individal and societial identities. Do you agree?

Intro: Media plays a very important role and has changed us in almost every way. It is considered as the best way to know what’s happening in our world today. Newspaper, magazine, radio, television and internet are the different types of media. It greatly affects our lives because media has the power to change our thoughts and even our action.

SV1: Media can make people do things very violent because of what they see on T.V or the games they play.

SV2: Media has changed the way that we interact is that we have lost a lot of our social skills.

SV3: Media influence us to follow the norm.

SV4: Media influence us to go after beauty.

OV1: Media is used as a tool to keep us updated.

OV2: Media allows us to express our thoughts more freely.

 

The media is powerful enough to shape the perceptions of beauty especially towards women while the try to figure out their own identity. Discuss

Introduction

The media is known to have a long lasting impact on people’s lives. This may be a positive or negative thing, depending of the context of the situation.The things portrayed by the media are able to influence us greatly and changes our views on certain things. The media brainwashes us into believing certain things even if they might not be 100% true or realistic.The media is seen to portray their ideal definition of beauty. The woman portrayed by the media has a slim figure and long wavy hair. This portrayal leads to many women feeling insecure about themselves and as a result, try to achieve this perfection shown by the media. Despite the saying ‘Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder’, many women are unsatisfied with the way they look. The media has made them think that all women have to look a certain way in order to be considered beautiful and end up lost.

SV1

The media portrays ‘the perfect woman’, leading to a decline in self- confidence amongst women in the society

SV2

Women will turn to plastic surgery as a solution and end up not knowing who they are anymore as a result of chasing after the idea of perfection

SV3

Many suffer from Anorexia Nervosa and Bullima as result result of wanting to lose weight

SV4

 Many women suffer from depression due to their inability of obtaining the perfect body shape

OV1

Media can be a platform for entertainment, to relieve stress when needed.

OV2

Media is overpowered by the support of family and friends who except the person as who he or she is regardless of imperfections.