weekly news

Ratko Mladic jailed for life over Bosnia war genocide

The former Bosnian Serb has been sentenced for life for genocide and other atrocities in the 1990s Bosnian war.  He was known as the "Bosnian butcher", he led forces during the massacre of Bosnian muslims in Srebrenica and the siege of Sarajevo.  The Un tribunal convicted him on 10/11 charges.  However,  He had denied the charges and his lawyer said he would appeal.

He was charged with the murder of 7,000 plus men and boys. He was cleared of a second count of genocide in other municipalities.  Other charges included war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The crimes of troops under his crimes are as follows: Mass rapes of women and girls.  Keeping the people in inhumane conditions-starving, thirsty, sick and beating them. Terrorising civilians by bombing and shooting them and destroying their homes and mosques.

After 16 years on the run since the 1995 war, he was finally found in his cousin's house in Serbia in 2011.

In my opinion he deserved a harsher sentence due to all the atrocities he committed.  I hope that all the families that were severely affected by what Mladic did, have some sort of satisfaction or closure now that he has been caught and sentenced.  Overall, what he did is not that different to what happens in this day and age in certain parts of the world, just that these current events are not as severe and more covered up by the government.

The suited psychographic

Aspirers- Seek status, materialistic, acquisitive, orientated to image and appearance, persona and fashion.  Typically younger people.

Succeeders- Seek control.  Strong goals, confidence, work ethic and organisation.  Typically higher management and professionals.

Resigned- Seeks survival.  Rigid and authoritarian values.  Interested in past and tradition.  Typically older persons.

Explorers- Seeks discovery.  Energy, individualism and experience.  Values difference and adventure. Typically a younger demographic(students).

Strugglers- Seeks escape. Alienated and disorganised.  Few resources beyond physical skills.  Buys alcohol, junk food, lottery tickets.  Typically lower demographics.

Reformers-  Seeks enlightenment.  Freedom of restrictions and personal growth.  Social awareness and independent judgement.  Anti-materialistic but aware of good taste.

Although i would prefer to say that i do not fit into any category because i dislike being labelled.  I would say that i fit mostly into the reformer category, although i do have certain characteristics from other categories.  Due to the fact that i hate restrictions, i have more of an independent judgement and i am anti-materialistic.

Music Videos analysis

You and I-John Legend

This music video is a very positive and inspiring video for women of all ages, shapes, sizes, ethnicities,etc.  It represents a variety of women and girls and connotes that all women regardless of what they look like, their age, where they are from, etc are beautiful regardless.  It also shows the vulnerability of females, it makes the audience intrigued as to why these women are all of a sudden being depicted as so sad.  Very few men are shown in this video, except to show that they are supporting the females.  There is mostly use of full body and portrait shots, to mainly show facial expressions to evoke the desired emotions from the audience.  The lyrics of the song go in perfect harmony with the visuals of the video.  Overall, connoting that regardless of how women are viewed or depicted or the pressures that society tries to place upon us, we are all unique and beautiful.  This is the empowering of women.

Badiah-Nailah Blackman ft shensea
https://youtu.be/6VrmWNfVh4M
This song is of the category of Soca.  It main purpose of creation is to not only make money and fame, but to contribute to carnival.  It promotes that women at carnival should enjoy themselves, and dance as they see fit to the music, and not to just stand there and watch, but to let the music free them.  Overall, it is a very fun song, that empowers caribbean women not to feel ashamed of their culture and to not be afraid to embrace it.  During the majority of the video, it is  set in a night time/ evening setting, to make it more seductive to encapture the embodiment of how carnival or caribbean dancing is in the way that they are dressed and dancing.  It also shows parts of what living in the Caribbean is like.  This is more of a grey area, can be seen as both empowerment and exploitation.

Crossover-Tommy Lee Sparta ft Sean Kingston
https://youtu.be/XG7Kbr3sJaM
This music video essentially shows the "thug life" side of things.  That once you are in the game and involved in that related lifestyle, you must have loyalty to your "niggas".  This encourages young men to envision this lifestyle as something to aspire to, especially as you see they are smoking weed, lots of money and lots of women.  This also reinforces the stereotype that black men are already represented as.  The dim lighting also connotes to the darkness of the deeds that they are committing.  overall, the music video holds a negative connotation although it could be bringing to light the issues that young men are faced with to survive in their own community.  Also, the women in This video are being exploited rather than empowered as all of them are depicted as strippers.

weekly news

The source is BBC News.

Iran-Iraq earthquake: hundreds killed as border region hit 

A 7.3 magnitude earthquake has killed at least 396 people and has injured at least thousands more.  This has been declared the deadliest earthquake this year.  Most of those who died were in Iran's western Kermanshah province where a search of survivors had started.

Unfortunately as well, the town's main hospital was severely damaged as well, leaving it struggling to treat hundreds of the injured.  Rescue teams hindered by landslides, making it harder to rescue persons or to search for any survivors.

As this has recently happened there are unfortunately not a lot of updates on the tragedy.

Hopefully, other countries will support Iran-Iraq, instead of leaving them in their current state or destroying them even more while they are down.  But seeing as Iraq-Iran is known to be prone to earthquakes, they should put reinforcements in place so as to ensure when events like this take place that there will be less damage and consequences.

Weekly News

The source is BBC news.

Youtube is to restrict  the availability of videos showing children's characters in violent or sexual scenes if they are reported by viewers.

Last week a blogger by the name of James bridle highlighted that youtube was still being swamped with indecent and bizarre scenes aimed at children.

The site begs to differ saying that it already stops those particular videos from earning advertising revenue, as its team was made up of " parents who are committed to improving our apps and getting this right.

The issue of these content creators using poplar children cartoons in violent and sexualised ways to frighten children has been widely reported.  It appeared that such videos had been algorithmically generated to capitalise on popular trends. 

Age-restricted videos are blocked from appearing in the youtube kids app and can only be accessed if logged in with an adult account.  

A report from the New York Times had reported that inappropriate videos had still slipped through the net previously.  

Youtube claims that it uses human reviewers to evaluate whether flagged videos are appropriate for a family audience.  But in the post Mr Bridle stated that he does not know how youtube will be abel to stamp out the issue and therefore protect the youths from seeing too much before their time.

Overall, i do not think youtube will be able to 100% be able to stop these things from happening, but they may be able to set certain procedures in place to lessen the chances.  Parent(s)/ guardian(s) will have to monitor their children and what they watch more in attempts to protect their innocence.

Mood Board

Representation of national and regional identity

The national or regional identity that is represented in media, varies on the location.  It is often the focus  on certain stereotypical characteristics and customs associated with the nation or region.

Examples of the different representations of different cultural backgrounds and areas are;

The house wives series;  This shows the "wives" of particular areas and the way that they behave.  A more specific example is house wives of atlanta, it shows mostly if not an all black woman cast.  It shows the relationships that the women have with each other and others that they encounter in their everyday lives.  It does not necessarily represent black women as struggling or in poverty or as a minority but as rich, loud, ratchet and constantly "angry" or fighting.  Therefore putting them in the known stereotype for black women.

The london riots which happened most violently in the area of croydon, this originated in north london over the shooting of a man by the name of dougan and then it trickled down.  This helped to reinforce the overall outlook that most person have on croydon.  A dangerous area, in which crime rates are high and the people(mainly the youths) are violent and rebellious.

The ice bucket challenge funded an ALS breakthrough, this was a social media campaign, which took place in the summer of 2015, helped to fund the breakthrough in ALS research of 2016.  This helped to bring more awareness to the disease and to bring a lot of persons from around the world together for a cause.  Although, persons did have their criticism about the campaign and called it "slactivism" as well as persons or areas that did not partake may have been "demonised", but the overall impact of the event was that of a positive notion.

These show both a positive and negative notion of regional and national areas.  In my opinion, it does not matter about the area but the persons themselves, why certain things take place.