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Sunday, January 20, 2013

Human Resource Information System - HRIS

Human Resource Information Systems

The purpose of this paper is to identify other companies who have faced similar human resources issues in regards to information technology. Through benchmarking different companies we can learn how other companies have handled certain human resources issues related to information technology, information systems, new technology, and data security. An overall analysis has been completed using research on IBM Europe, Ameriprise Financial, Terasen Pipelines, Shaw’s Supermarkets, CS Stars LLC, IBM, WORKSource Inc., and Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc. This paper also includes eight synopses of companies facing similar issue to those in the reading.

New Technology

Human Resource Information System - HRIS

With the changing world and constant new technology that is available, managers need to be aware of the technology that will increase effectiveness in their company. Human resource information systems (HRIS) have increasingly transformed since it was first introduced at General Electric in the 1950s. HRIS has gone from a basic process to convert manual information keeping systems into computerized systems, to the HRIS systems that are used today. Human resource professionals began to see the possibility of new applications for the computer. The idea was to integrate many of the different human resource functions. The result was the third generation of the computerized HRIS, a feature-rich, broad-based, self-contained HRIS. The third generation took systems far beyond being mere data repositories and created tools with which human resource professionals could do much more (Byars, 2004).

Many companies have seen a need to transform the way Human Resource operations are performed in order to keep up with new technology and increasing numbers of employees. Terasen Pipelines moved its headquarters from Vancouver to Calgary to be closer to the oil and realized a major growth in employees. In the past recording keeping was done on paper and with spreadsheets. Mangers at Terasen realized that there was a need to change to a more computerized system and looked into different HRIS vendors. By making the move to a HRIS system, Terasen is able to keep more accurate records as well as better prepare for future growth. Another company that saw the benefits of keeping up with new technology is WORKSource Inc. To meet the challenge of handling 100 new employees, WORKSource Inc. acquired Web-based technology programs from GHG Corp. like electronic pay stub, electronic timesheet software, time-off system, and human resource information system (“Tips,” 2006). By adapting these new programs, WORKSource was able to reduce waste and cost.

The Internet is an increasingly popular way to recruit applicants, research technologies and perform other essential functions in business. Delivering human resource services online (eHR) supports more efficient collection, storage, distribution, and exchange of data (Friesen, 2003). An intranet is a type of network used by companies to share information to people within the organization. An intranet connects people to people and people to information and knowledge within the organization; it serves as an “information hub” for the entire organization. Most organizations set up intranets primarily for employees, but they can extend to business partners and even customers with appropriate security clearance (Byars & Rue, 2004).

Applications of HRIS

The efficiency of HRIS, the systems are able to produce more effective and faster outcomes than can be done on paper. Some of the many applications of HRIS are: Clerical applications, applicant search expenditures, risk management, training management, training experiences, financial planning, turnover analysis, succession planning, flexible-benefits administration, compliance with government regulations, attendance reporting and analysis, human resource planning, accident reporting and prevention and strategic planning. With the many different applications of HRIS, it is difficult to understand how the programs benefit companies without looking at companies that have already benefited from such programs.

One such company is IBM. IBM has a paperless online enrollment plan for all of its employees. Not only has the online enrollment saved the company 1.2 million per year on printing and mailing costs, the employees enjoy working with the online plan. "Since we began offering online enrollment, we've learned that employees want web access," Donnelly [Senior Communications Specialist] says, so they can log on at home rather than through the company intranet. So the company has been working to put in place a web-based enrollment system that employees and retirees can access from anywhere (Huering, 2003). By utilizing the flexible-benefits application HRIS has to offer, IBM was able to cut costs and give employees the freedom to discover their benefits on their own time and pace.

Another company that has taken advantage of HRIS applications is Shaw’s Supermarkets. In order for Shaw’s to better manage its workforce, the company decided it was time to centralize the HR operations. After looking at different options, Shaw’s decided to implement an Employee Self Service (ESS) system. The use of self-service applications creates a positive situation for HR. ESS gives HR more time to focus on strategic issues, such as workforce management, succession planning, and compensation management, while at the same time improving service to employees and managers, and ensuring that their data is accurate. With this solution, employees have online access to forms, training material, benefits information and other payroll related information (Koven, 2002). By giving employees access to their personal information and the ability to update or change their information as needed, HR was given more time to focus on other issues. Understanding the different applications HRIS has to offer will give companies the chance to increase employee efficiency and reduce costs.

Measuring the Effectiveness of HRIS

The evaluation should determine whether or not the HRIS has performed up to its expectations and if the HRIS is being used to its full advantage (Byars & Rue, 2004). One of the most significant challenges faced by public personnel executives today is measuring the performance of their human resources information system (HRIS) In order to justify the value-added contribution of the HRIS to accomplishing the organization's mission (Hagood & Friedman, 2002). Implementing an HRIS program may seem a necessary stem for a company, but unless it will be an effective tool for HR operations, it will not help increase efficiency and may hinder it instead.

One company that implemented a HRIS system is Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc. (TAMS). TAMS put all employee benefits information online and created an open enrollment option when TAMS changed healthcare providers. Almost immediately upon rolling out the UltiPro portal [new HRIS technology] to employees, TAMS began seeing improvements, with an estimated 70% increase in open enrollment efficiency (Wojcik, 2004). By determining the efficiency of the new program, TAMS was able to realize the benefits of the new HRIS system.

Security of HRIS

The privacy of employee information has become a major issue in recent years. With identity theft becoming a common problem, employees are becoming more sensitive about who sees their personal information, and the security it is kept in. By making sure employee information that is kept in the HRIS is relevant to the company and making sure there is limited access (password protection) to such information, companies can make its employees more secure with the safety of their information. Whether electronic or paper, employee files deserve to be treated with great care. Establishing security and end-user privileges calls for a balance of incorporating, HR policy, system knowledge and day-to-day operations (O’Connell, 1994).

One company that faced a major security issue was CS Stars, LLC. CS Stars lost track of one of its computers that contained personal information that included names, addresses and social security numbers of workers compensation benefits. The bigger problem was that CS Stars failed to notify the affected consumers and employees about the missing computer. Though the computer was retrieved and no information seemed to have been harmed, many employees lost their sense of security with the company. New York's Information Security Breach and Notification Law, effective in December 2005, requires businesses that maintain computerized data which includes private information to notify the owner of the information of any breach of the security of the system immediately following discovery, if the private information was, or is reasonably believed to have been, acquired by a person without valid authorization (Cadrain, 2007).

Another company that experienced a breach in security is Ameriprise Financial. In late 2005, a computer that contained personal information on clients and employees was stolen. Because many of the employees at Ameriprise take their computers between work and home, the company determined there was a need to put more security into those computers. Ameriprise made sure all employees had the new security suite installed on their computers. By responding quickly to the need for more security, Ameriprise made sure all information is being kept secure. Making sure employees information is kept as secure as possible there will be more trust in the company and the HR employees working with that information.

Conclusion

IBM, Terasen Pipeline, CS Stars LCC, and Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc. are good examples of companies facing issues similar to human resources information technology and human resources information systems. All of these companies know the importance of new technology, human resources information systems, and data security. The remainder of this paper provides synopses of more companies facing human resources issues, how the company responded to the issues, and the outcomes of the company’s responses.

Companies Benchmarked

IBM Europe

The Situation:

IBM is a global organization offering research, software, hardware, IT consulting, business and management consulting, ring and financing. It employs around 340,000 people, speaking 165 languages across 75 countries, and serving clients in 174 countries. In January 2007, IBM established a separate “new media” function within its corporate communication department. IBM main goal is to educate, support, and promote programs that utilize social media. IBM Europe decided to expand internal communication by blogging guidelines. The recognition was that blogging was already happening among IBMers, just in an unregulated way. In a similar way, institutionalizing a function to deal specifically with new media is not a corporate move, or establishing from scratch. It’s a response to the issues already emerging in the company. Now that those technologies are here, people are using them, they’re growing and there here to stay-we’re just going to put some structure around them so that we can try to optimize their use.” The users decide what technologies they want to use and how they want to use them. That main idea is that IBM understands that they must remember to respect the fact that social media are social. IBM had the need to connect its 340,000 global employees more effectively.

The Response:

IBM’s intent around social media has now been officially formalized. From January 22 2007, the company established a separate “new media” function within its corporate communication department. “Its remit: To act as expert consultants inside and outside IBM on issues relating to blogs, wikis, RSS and other social media applications. The main idea is to educate, support and promote programs that utilize these tools. IBM has a history of being a t the forefront of technology based corporate communication. From the multimedia brainstorming “WorldJam” that made news headlines back in 2001 in which 50,000 employees worldwide joined a real time, online idea-sharing session about the company’s direction. IMB has always prepared itself to use breakthrough technologies to establish a two-way dialogue with its employees. The need for social media was necessary and could no longer wait.

The Outcome:

In the last few years IBM has been recognized as being the vanguard of social-media use: IBM was on of the first Fortune 500 companies to get behind collaborative wikis, published internal blogging guidelines as far back as 2003, and is now moving fast beyond RSS and podcasts into videocasting and “virtual world” technologies like Second Life. The intranet search facility extends to all areas of the site, including new media aspects. When an employee logs onto their portal an executes a key word search, the results they get back not only come from the main intranet pages, but include results from IBM forums, wikis, blogs and podcast/videocasts tags. IMB has an understanding that employees are no longer staying in a company their entire lives. It’s just not like that any more. In Belgium for example over 50 percent of 2,300 employees have been there fewer than five years. The company has come to the conclusion that with an increasingly young and mobile workforce, the likelihood is that an employee population full of a younger generation, for whom these tools are part and parcel of life, is not that far away. In years to come IBM will have to deal with employee base for which blogging is just the natural way to interact over a web platform. IBM has created centralized platforms for most tools that fall under its remit, which includes wikis. For Philippe Borremans, new media lead Europe for IBM, has the potential business applications of a wiki cover two broad benefits: Collaborating and knowledge sharing. IBM has scored some notable successes on both fronts in the near 5000 wiki pages now up and running in the organization. The company has been a huge pick-up in interest in podcasting over the last 18 months writing can seem such a technical skill, whereas people feel they can talk more freely than they can write. One of the most consistently popular IBM podcasts, with over 20,000 downloads a week.

Ameriprise Financial

The Situation:

The Department of Justice survey estimates that 3.6 million U.S. households were victims of identity theft in 2004. Trafficking in personal date goes beyond U.S. borders: the New York Times reports that stolen financial information is often distributed among participants of online trading boards, and the buyers are frequently located in Russia, Ukraine, and the Middle East. One reason clients are concerned about data security is the widespread publicity generated by breaches at financial services firm. In late December 2205, an Ameriprise Financial employee’s laptop that contained unencrypted data on approximately 230,000 customers and advisors was stolen from a car. Other financial services firm, including Citigroup and Bank of America, also acknowledge large-scale customer data losses in 2005. President of NCS, Rita Dew, a compliance consulting firm in Delray Beach, Florida, says that the Securities and Exchange Commission requires investment advisors to have policies and procedures that address the administrative, technical, and physical safeguards related to client records and information.

The Response:

Ameriprise Financial had to fight back and had to implement “layers of protection.” It is important for employees who their primary business computer, and employees regularly transport the computer between home, office, and meeting sites. The vulnerability of this arrangement and the need for a safety software program is much needed.

The Outcome:

Employees who are transporting lab tops should install the Steganos Security Suite on their computer. This software allows employees to create an encrypted virtual drive on the laptop that serves as data storage safe. Employees stores all client related data and tax preparation software database on the encrypted drive, which employees has set up with one gigabyte of storage space. The best thing is that when an employee turns off the computer the information is stored “safe”, the software automatically encrypts the virtual drive’s data. The software also generates encrypted backup files, which employees store on CDs in a fireproof safe. This should keep the data secure if any employee’s laptop is stolen or if the drive is removed from the laptop. Other financial advisors are relying on encryption both in and out of the office. Other programs that are being used to protect client’s information are RAID Level 1 system to store data on the drives that are encrypted with WinMagic’s SecureDocs software. Encryption ensures that anyone who steals the computer will be absolutely unable to read the data, even by connecting it to another computer as a “slave drive. This has given many financial advisors the greatest peace of mind.

Terasen Pipelines

The Situation:

Terasen Pipelines is a subsidiary of Terasen Inc. located in Vancouver, Canada and is located in several provinces and U.S. states. In 2001 the company changed its headquarters to Calgary to be closer to the oil. With the big move, the company went through a growth spurt. With the company in many different locations and the growing numbers of employees, the HR department saw a need to find a new system to keep more accurate records.

The Response:

In the past Terasen had kept records on paper and with spreadsheets and with the growth of the company, this system does not work as well as in the past. In order to compensate for future growth, Terasen began to look into HRIS companies to help with the HR operations. After researching different companies, Hewitt’s application service provider model with eCyborg was found to be the right fit.

The Outcome:

Although there was difficulty adapting to a new way of recordkeeping, Terasen was able to find a system that will help support the current and future growth of the company. Fortunately, some of the HR staff had experience working with an HRIS and were able to help their colleagues imagine new processes, as aided by a system. One theme often voiced throughout this process was: "You guys don't know how hard we're working when we can make it so much easier with a system that could do a lot of this for us. You don't always have to run to the cabinet for the employee file just to get basic information. It can all be at your fingertips." (Vu, 2005). In order to help Terasen ease the HR burden of implementing a new HR system, the management of Terasen was convinced to look for a vendor to help implement and maintain a HRIS system. This system has helped Terasen better prepare for current and future growth.

Shaw’s Supermarkets

The Situation:

Shaw’s Supermarkets is the second largest supermarket chain in New England. With a workforce of 30,000 located at 180 stores throughout six states, Shaw's HR staff is responsible for managing employees' personal data. Their employee mix includes approximately 70 percent part-time employees, consisting of students, senior citizens, second-job part-timers, and career part-timers. One third of the workforce is made up of union associates, and Shaw's staff oversees the company's involvement with three unions and six separate contracts (Koven, 2002). In order to help manage the workforce, the HR staff became interested in centralizing its HR operations.

The Response:

In order to centralize HR operations Shaw’s decided to implement an ESS (employee self-service) solution. The use of self-service applications creates a positive situation for HR. ESS gives HR more time to focus on strategic issues, such as workforce management, succession planning, and compensation management, while at the same time improving service to employees and managers, and ensuring that their data is accurate. With this solution, employees have online access to forms, training material, benefits information and other payroll related information.

The Outcome:

Shaw’s has had positive feedback since implementing the ESS solution. "The reaction from our employees has been extremely positive," Penney, VP of Compensation and Benefits, says. "We even had a significant increase in our medical coverage costs, and it was almost a non-issue because the online enrollment featured the plan choices, the employee cost, and the company subsidy. An employee self-service application makes it very easy for them to understand their contributions and coverage options. I received several e-mails from employees saying this was a great change and how easy ESS was, which the case is not often when employees are selecting their benefit options." (Koven, 2002). By giving the employees more access to their information they are able to see the benefit choices available to them. Employees are also able to update their information online, which helps reduce the paperwork of the past. Shaw’s has also seen improvement in productivity because employees are updating information at home, not during work hours.

CS Stars, LLC

The Situation:
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has announced that New York State has reached its first settlement with a company charged with failing to notify consumers and others that their personal data had gone missing. Cuomo’s office, which enforces the state’s 2005 Information Security Breach and Notification Law, charged CS STARS LLC, a Chicago-based claims management company, with failing to give notice that it had lost track of a computer containing data on 540,000 New Yorkers’ workers’ comp claims.

The Response:

The owner of the lost data, which had been in the custody of CS STARS, was the New York Special Funds Conservation Committee, an organization that assists in providing workers’ comp benefits under the state’s workers' comp law. On May 9, 2006, a CS STARS employee noticed that a computer was missing that held personal information, including the names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of recipients of workers’ compensation benefits. But CS Stars waited until June 29, 2006, to notify Special Funds and the FBI of the security breach. Because the FBI declared that notice to consumers might impede its investigation, CS STARS waited until July 8, 2006, to send notices to the 540,000 New Yorkers affected by the breach. On July 25, 2006, the FBI determined an employee, of a cleaning contractor, had stolen the computer, and the missing computer was located and recovered. In addition, the FBI found that the data on the missing computer had not been improperly accessed.

The Outcome:

New York's Information Security Breach and Notification Law, effective in December 2005, requires businesses that maintain computerized data which includes private information to notify the owner of the information of any breach of the security of the system immediately following discovery, if the private information was, or is reasonably believed to have been, acquired by a person without valid authorization. The law affects not only businesses in their dealings with their customers, but employers in their role as custodians of employees’ personal data. (Cadrain)

Without admitting to any violation of law, CS STARS agreed to comply with the law and ensure that proper notifications will be made in the event of any future breach. The company also agreed to implement more extensive practices relating to the security of private information. CS STARS will pay the Attorney General’s office ,000 for costs related to this investigation. (Cadrain)

IBM

The Situation:

IBM's paperless online enrollment system, introduced in 1999, has proved to be a winner for both the company's 135,000 active U.S. employees and the company, according to Cathleen Donnelly, senior communications specialist at company headquarters in Armonk, N.Y. The company saves .2 million per year on printing and mailing costs alone, Donnelly says, and the employees’ can take advantage of a variety of technologies to learn about issues, research program information and access decision support tools from their desktop computers. (Heuring, 2002)

The Response:

One of those tools, a personal medical cost estimator, enables employees to calculate potential out-of-pocket health care expenses under each of the plan options available to them, Donnelly says. Employees log in personally and are greeted by name and with important information regarding their benefits enrollment, such as the deadlines and when changes take effect. They automatically get access to health plans that are available to them, and the calculator lets them compare estimated benefit amounts for each plan.

"Employees can select the health care services they expect to use in a particular year, estimate expected frequency of use, and calculate potential costs under each plan option," Donnelly says. "The feedback that we've received from employees tells us that this tool has really helped them to make a comparison between plans based on how they consume medical services." The calculator shows both IBM's costs and the employee's. (Heuring, 2002)

The Outcome:

"Since we began offering online enrollment, we've learned that employees want web access," Donnelly says, so they can log on at home rather than through the company intranet. So the company has been working to put in place a web-based enrollment system that employees and retirees can access from anywhere.

Employees can get summary information on the plans, drill down into very specific details and follow links to the health care providers for research. Donnelly says the system has received high marks for convenience because employees can "get in and out quickly."

WORKSource Inc.

The Situation:

To meet the challenge of handling 100 new employees, WORKSource Inc. acquired Web-based technology programs from GHG Corp. like electronic paystub, electronic timesheet software, time-off system, and human resource information system (“Tips,” 2006). These tools enabled CEO Judith Hahn to handling payroll procedures efficiently and effectively.

The Response:

WORKSource has eight workforce centers, with approximately 108 employees, located throughout a six-county region. Previously, payroll, benefits, and human resources for those employees were processed and managed by a Professional Employer Organization. The company also has 52 administrative staff in its headquarters office. When the contract with the PEO terminated on June 30, 2006, those 108 employees were immediately moved to the payroll of WORKSource, which meant Hahn’s workload more than doubled effective July 2006 (“Tips,” 2006).

Hahn, in an interview with PMR, said she relied on LEAN to help get a handle on what needed to change for her to manage the increased workload. Two years earlier, Hahn’s CEO had introduced her to LEAN, a Japanese management concept of eliminating wasteful steps and motion when completing processes. “I began to read as much as possible about LEAN and joined an HR LEAN focus group” (“Tips,” 2006).

The Outcome:

Mastering the concepts of LEAN led Hahn to develop and apply her own acronym of “REASON” to her department’s payroll and HR processes. Review the process: map payroll tasks from start to finish. Eliminate waste: determine how to complete a payroll task most efficiently without unnecessary steps. Analyze alternatives: research and evaluate the applicability of new technology. Sell innovations to management: document the return on investment of each innovation. Open the lines of communication: communicate openly—and often—with all stakeholders, including employees and top management. Never allow negativity: make change simple and fun. Give employees plenty of encouragement and time to learn (“Tips,” 2006). Judith Hahn was able to implement the right human resource functions using information systems.

Toshiba America Medical Systems Inc.

The Situation:

Lynda Morvik, director of benefits and human resources information systems at Tustin, California-based Toshiba America Medical Systems Inc. (TAMS), thought it would make sense to add a benefits communication component to it. By having all the benefit information online, the TAMS employee handbook would also be a living document, enabling Morvik to make changes when necessary. Such was the case halfway through the project, when TAMS changed health care plans from Aetna Inc. to United Health Group Inc (Wojcik, 2004).

The Response:

TAMS, an independent group company of Toshiba Corporation and a global leading provider of diagnostic medical imaging systems and comprehensive medical solutions, such as CT, X-ray, ultrasound, nuclear medicine, MRI, and information systems, had been using a payroll service bureau and an in-house solution for HR that didn't include easy-to-use consolidated reporting or an employee portal. After evaluating UltiPro alongside several enterprise resource vendors, TAMS selected Ultimate Software's offering and went live in September 2002 after an on-time and on-budget implementation. Almost immediately upon rolling out the UltiPro portal to employees, TAMS began seeing improvements, with an estimated 70% increase in open enrollment efficiency (Wojcik, 2004).

The Outcome:

In an effort to expand the usage of the Web beyond the benefits enrollment process, TAMS has posted a library of documents and forms on its HR portal, including the benefits handbook, which garnered a 2004 Apex Award for publication excellence. That same year, Business Insurance magazine also gave TAMS the Electronic Benefit Communication (EBC) award for outstanding achievement in communicating employee benefits programs over the Web. To continue elevating its use of Ultimate Software's HRMS/payroll solution, TAMS modified the UltiPro portal to meet the imaging company's unique needs (Wojcik, 2004). It was completely integrated with several proprietary applications created to address compensation and performance management issues so that TAMS employees have a central location for comprehensive workforce and payroll information from a Web browser that they can access with a single sign-on (Wojcik, 2004).

References

Byars, Lloyd L. & Rue, Leslie W. (2004). Human Resource Management, 7e. The McGraw-Hill Companies.
Cadrain, Diane (2007). New York: Company Settles Data Breach Charges. Retrieved June 3, 2007 from [http://www.shrm.org/law/states/CMS_021505.asp#P-8_0]
Clarifying IBM’s Strategic mission for social media (2007). Strategic Communication
Management. Retrieved June 1, 2007 from
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=17&did=1263791161&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=4&clientld=2606&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
Friesen, G. Bruce (2003). Is your client ready for eHR? Consulting to Management, 14(3), 27. Retrieved June 3, 2007 from ProQuest Database.
Hagood, Wesley O. & Friedman, Lee ( 2002). Using the balanced scorecard to measure the performance of your HR information system. Public Personnel Management, 31(4), 543-58. Retrieved June 3, 2007 from ProQuest Database.
Heuring, Linda (2003). IBM: Laying Outing Enrollment Options. Retrieved June 2, 2007 from [http://www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/articles/0803/0803heuring_paperless.asp]
Koven, Jeff (2002). Streamlining benefit process with employee self-service applications: A case study. Compensation & Benefits Management, 18(3), 18-23. Retrieved June 2, 2007 from ProQuest Database.
O’Connell, Sandra (1994). Security for HR records – human resources. HR Magazine. Retrieved June 3, 2007 from [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m349] 5/is_n9_v39/ai_16309018
Protecting Client Data (2006). Financial Planning. Retrieved June 1, 2007 from

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1066464321&Fmt=4&clientld=2606&RQT=309

&VName=PQD.
Tips on Using Technology to Streamline Payroll Processes – and Cut Costs (2006). Payroll Managers Report, 6(10), 1-9. Retrieved June 2, 2007 from EBSCOhost Database.
Vu, Uyen (2005). Contracting out HRIS easy call at Terasen Pipelines. Canadian HR Reporter, 18(4), 5-9. Retrieved June 2, 2007 from ProQuest Database.
Wojcik, J. (2004). Toshiba Employee Handbook Goes Online. Business Insurance, 38(49), 18.
Retrieved June 2, 2007 from EBSCOhost Database.

Human Resource Information System - HRIS
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Steven Brown, MBA is a loving husband and father of two boys. He enjoys his time with his family by providing a strong family foundation of Christian Faith. After completing his Bachelors degree, Steven wanted to further his ability to teach and share to others his mindset that they can do anything if they would believe in themselves.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

A Definition and History of Social Psychology

An essay that includes a definition, in own words, and history of social psychology, at least six major theorists, the types of issues this field considers, the five major variables of interest to social psychologists, and major contemporary research trends in the field.

This is a science that aims to accurately, objectively, open-mindedly and continuously research why and how people are in social settings (Baron, Byrne, & Branscombe, 2005). Some theorists that contributed to advancement of social psychology are French gentleman Gabriel Tarde, with the imitation concept, Gustave LeBon and Emile Durkheim with the theory on society's influence on the individual. In 1874, Herbert Spencer extended Darwin's concepts from biology into sociology. He coined the term "survival of the fittest."

Spencer influenced many early 20th century American psychologists, such as William James, and sociologists, such as Edward Ross, Lester F. Ward and William G. Sumner, who introduced social psychology. J. Mark Baldwin, in 1897, used social psychology in a thesis on children. William McDougall published "Social Psychology" in 1908.

A Definition and History of Social Psychology

In 1897, Norman Triplett made the first experiment of this science, on how groups competed and set the pace for individual performance. In the mid-1920s social psychology took a firm hold in psychology. In 1924 Floyd Allport wrote "Social Psychology," a scholarly book used in academia to this date.

In the 1930s, Gardner Murphy, Lois Barclay Murphy and Theodore Newcomb wrote "Experimental Social Psychology" and Carl Murchison "Handbook of Social Psychology". They defined social psychology as experimental, instead of as naturalistic observations. Sociologists started studying the individual in society.

During the Depression and World War II, Thurstone and Likert researched changes in attitudes. Kurt Lewin and Gestalt psychology studied political groups, frustration and aggression in children. Lewin worked on group dynamics and conflict resolution from the 1940s through the 1970s.

Muzafer and Carolyn Sherif researched small group dynamics in summer camps in the 1940s and 50s. After World War II, the field searched for problems. John Dollard and Neal Miller worked on "Social Learning and Imitation" with learning and rats, in 1941.

In 1950, their "Personality and Psychotherapy" explained psychoanalysis as social learning. In 1946, Fritz Heider preceded Leon Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance Theory, claiming that there is an imbalance when perceptions of a relationship do not match reality, which causes a change in either perceptions or reality to regain balance. In the early 1960s, Stanley Milgram's research on obedience set up subjects to believe they were shocking a stranger for incorrect responses. That deception raised ethical concerns. Self-identity, self-esteem and self-image have been researched towards the end of the last century. Social psychology is part of the psychological mainstream.

This science recognizes the connection between social thought and social behavior. Social neuroscience studies social and social behavior in relation to the brain and biology. Modern social psychology focuses on the unconscious and multicultural parts of social thought and behavior.

In naturalistic observations, versus systematic observations, behaviors occur naturally.

There are several methods used in social psychology. One is the survey method. Another one is the correlational method that investigates the possible correlations, not causes, on studied variables.

In this science's experiments, there is the systematic alteration of independent variables, to study their effects on dependent ones. Successful experiments randomly assign participants to experimental conditions and hold everything else constant to avoid confounding variables.

To determine validity, social psychologists use inferential statistics. They use meta-analysis to determine the effects of independent variables across studies. They also rely on theories to advance their work.

Deception, or withholding information from participants about the scope of an experiment, is often used in social psychology. Social psychology safeguards experiments by using informed consent and meticulous debriefing. To conclude,this science is cutting edge and its five major areas and variables of interest are: attitudes, group processes, social learning and cognition and self-perception (APA, 1999).

References
Baron, R. A., Byrne, D. R., & Branscombe, N. R. (2005) Social Psychology. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
APA (Dec 1999) Social psychology: Once overlooked, now a staple. APA Monitor Online Author 30 (11).

A Definition and History of Social Psychology
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Thank you.

Elena Pezzini, M.S., C.P.C.
You Have Got The Power, Inc.
Turnaround Coaching Psychology & Hypnosis
Office (702) 518-6649 Fax (251) 217-0082
http://www.YouHaveGotThePower.com

Thursday, December 27, 2012

The Power Of Media

The media is responsible for both- reflecting values of a society and creating new ones to a good extent. 'The pen is mightier than the sword' goes an old proverb. It has been proved over and over again since the advent of writing and development of media. Media today consists of books, television, movies, music, internet, radio, magazines, newspapers etc. Each of them have evolved as a powerful medium in their own right.

Values lie at the core of the society. They evolve and become a part of the society over the years. Both tradition and modernization contribute to the development of values. Values change over time. What was considered taboo 20 years back is a way of life today. Thats how media tends to develop the world. Media is far-reaching. Hollywood stars have mass fan following in countries and places about which even the stars won't have heard about. With the internet as goes the cliche- the world has become a smaller place. You can know anything about everything on the net, such is its power and reach. It reflects what people really are and what they really think. No hypocrisy here.

The United States has always been a fore-runner, be it movies, fashion or music. What the US does is followed by the rest. Jeans and fast-food, original products of the US are now as familiar to a Chinese as to an Indian. The newly developing nations adopted values and traditions created by the west. TV shows are now telecast all over, thanks to satellites. So the American way of life is copied in Japan. So do these people lose their original tradition and values. To an extent, yes but mostly the case is- the original values are retained while newer values and trends keep on enhancing the culture. So slowly a new way of life develops- no wonder parents often say, 'this wasn't the case in our time'.

The Power Of Media

Books reflect the mind of an intellectual. They give a deep insight to the way a person thinks. Books are very effective media to spread thoughts and values. Since a book is read, shared and preserved over the years unlike a TV show. Talking of TV shows, they have created new milestones. The show 'Who wants to be a millionaire' revived the age old human greed for wealth and popularity. Now everyone wanted to be instant millionaires. Hard work- who wants to do it.

Blockbuster reality shows like Survivor and Temptation Island drove home the same points. Whatever the people pretend to be- their basic cravings have and will remain the same. And this was true for everyone everywhere. New values weren't created, maybe brought out of the closet again. But greed and lust shown in these shows reflect the common man on the streets.

Music and Internet are considered perfect media for spreading one's own beliefs, values etc. Rock stars have masses emulating them. Wearing T-shirts worshiping Satan is a part of the rock culture. But many of these same people do go to church on Sundays. Talking less about the internet is better. Instead moving on to magazines and newspapers. They print to earn. So scandals are moneyspinners for them and not a challenge of morals and righteousness for the society. It is bad when these media take a biased opinion on an issue and publicise the same. Its the commoners who take a wrong side because of wrong ethics.

Media makes or breaks people, events, anything. Values get created, diffused in the society. Something thats a way of life for one man becomes a new value for another, thanks to media.

The Power Of Media
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Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Langston Hughes - The Life, Times, Works as Well as Impact of a Versatile African-American Writer

Langston Hughes stands as a literary and cultural translation of the political resistance and campaign of black consciousness leaders such as Martin Luther King to restore the rights of the black citizenry thus fulfilling the ethos of the American dream, which is celebrated universally every year around February to April.

Hughes' overriding sense of a social and cultural purpose tied to his sense of the past, the present and the future of black America commends his life and works as having much to learn from to inspire us to move forward and to inform and guide our steps as we move forward to create a great future.

Hughes is also significant since he seems to have conveniently spanned the genres: poetry, drama, novel and criticism leaving an indelible stamp on each. At 21 years of age he had published in all four (4) areas. For he always considered himself an artist in words who would venture into every single area of literary creativity, because there were readers for whom a story meant more than a poem or a song lyric meant more than a story and Hughes wanted to reach that individual and his kind.

Langston Hughes - The Life, Times, Works as Well as Impact of a Versatile African-American Writer

But first and foremost, he considered himself a poet. He wanted to be a poet who could address himself to the concerns of his people in poems that could be read with no formal training or extensive literary background. In spite of this Hughes wrote and staged dozens of short stories, about a dozen books for children, a history of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured Peoples (NAACP), two volumes of autobiography, opera libretti, song lyrics and so on. Hughes was driven by a sheer confidence in his versatility and in the power of his craft.

Hughes" commitment to Africa was real and concretized in both words and deeds. The fact of his Negro-ness (though light-complexioned) has aroused in him a desire to challenge those from the other side of the color line that reject it:

My old man's a white old man

And my old mother's black

My old ma died in a fine big house

My mad died in a shack

I wonder where I'm gonna die

Being neither white nor black?

His search for his roots was given impetus when in 1923 Hughes met and heard Marcus Garvey exhort Negroes to go back to Africa to escape the wrath of the white man. Hughes then became one of the poets who thought they felt the beating of the jungle tom-toms in the Negroes' pulse. Their verse took on a nostalgic mood, and some even imagined that they were infusing the rhythms of African dancing and music into their verse like we could sense in the reading of this poem: 'Danse Africaine':

The low beating of the tom toms,

The slow beating of the tom toms,

Low ...slow

Slow ...low -

Stirs your blood.

Dance!

A night-veiled girl

Whirls softly into a

Circle of light.

Whirls softly ...slowly,

Born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902, Hughes grew up in Lawrence, Kansas and Lincoln, Illinois, before going to high school in Cleveland, Ohio in of which places, he was part of a small community of blacks to whom he was nevertheless profoundly attached from early in his life. Though descending from a distinguished family his infancy was disrupted by the separation of his parents not long after his birth. His father then emigrated to Mexico where he hoped to gain the success that had eluded him in America. The color of his skin, he had hoped, would be less of a consideration in determining his future in Mexico. There, he broke new ground. He gained success in business and lived the rest of his life there as a prosperous attorney and landowner.

In contrast, Hughes' mother lived the transitory life common for black mothers often leaving her son in the care of her mother while searching for a job.

His maternal grandmother, Mary Langston, whose first husband had died at Harpers Ferry as a member of John Brown's band, and whose second husband (Hughes's grandfather) had also been a militant abolitionist. instilled in Hughes a sense of dedication most of all. Hughes lived successively with family friends, then various relatives in Kansas.

Another important family figure was John Mercer Langston, a brother of Hughes's grandfather who was one of the best-known black Americans of the nineteenth century.

Hughes later joined his mother even though she was now with his new stepfather in Cleveland, Ohio. At the same time, Hughes struggled with a sense of desolation fostered by parental neglect. He himself recalled being driven early by his loneliness 'to books, and the wonderful world in books.' He became disillusioned with his father's materialistic values and contemptuous belief that blacks, Mexicans and Indians were lazy and ignorant.

At Central High School Hughes excelled academically and in sports. He wrote poetry and short fiction for the school's literary magazine and edited the school year book. He returned to Mexico where he taught English briefly and wrote poems and prose pieces for publication in The Crisis the magazine of the NAACP.

Aided by his father, he arrived in New York in 1921 ostensibly to attend Columbia University but really it was to see Harlem. One of his greatest poems, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" had just been published in The Crisis. His talent was immediately spotted though he only lasted one year at Columbia where he did well but never felt comfortable.

On campus, he was subjected to bigotry. He was assigned the worst dormitory room because of his color. Classes in English literature were all he could endure. Instead of attending classes which he found boring he would frequent shows, lectures and readings sponsored by the American Socialist Society. It was then that he was first introduced to the laughter and pain, hunger and heartache of blues music. It was the night life and culture that lured him out of college. Those sweet sad blues songs captured for him the intense pain and yearning that he saw around him, and that he incorporated into such poems as "The Weary Blues".

To keep himself going as a poet and support his mother, Hughes served in turn as: a delivery boy for a florist; a vegetable farmer and a mess boy on a ship up the Hudson River. As part of a merchant steamer crew he sailed to Africa. He then traveled the same way to Europe, where he jumped Ship in Paris only to spend several months working in a night-club kitchen and then wandering off to Italy.

By 1924 his poetry which he had all along been working on showed the powerful influence of the blues and jazz. His poem "The Weary Blues" which best exemplifies this influence helped launch his career when it won first prize in the poetry section of the 1925 literary contest of Opportunity magazine and also won another literary prize in Crisis.

This landmark poem, the first of any poet to make use of that basic blues form is part of a volume of that same title whose entire collection reflects the frenzied atmosphere of Harlem nightlife. Most of its selections just as "The Weary Blues" approximate the phrasing and meter of blues music, a genre popularized in the early 1920s by rural and urban blacks. In it and such other pieces as "Jazzonia" Hughes evoked the frenzied hedonistic and glittering atmosphere of Harlem's famous night-clubs. Poetry of social commentary such as "Mother to Son" show how hardened the blacks have to be to face the innumerable hurdles that they have to battle through in life.

Hughes' earliest influences as a mature poet came interestingly from white poets. We have Walt Whitman the man who through his artistic violations of old conventions of poetry opened the boundaries of poetry to new forms like free verse. There is also the highly populist white German Émigré Carl Sandburg, who as Hughes' " guiding star," was decisive in leading him toward free verse and a radically democratic modernist aesthetic

But black poets Paul Laurence Dunbar, a master of both dialect and standard verse, and Claude McKay, the black radical socialist an emigre from Jamaica who also wrote accomplished lyric poetry, stood for him as the embodiment of the cosmopolitan and yet racially confident and committed black poet Hughes hoped to be. He was also indebted to older black literary figures such as W.E.B. Dubois and James Weldon Johnson who admired his work and aided him. W.E.B. Dubois' collection of Pan-Africanist essays Souls of Black Folks has markedly influenced many black writers like Hughes, Richard Wright and James Baldwin.

Such colour-affirmative images and sentiments as that in "people": The night is beautiful,/So the faces of my people and in 'Dream Variations: Night coming tenderly,/ Black like me. endeared his work to a wide range of African Americans, for whom he delighted in writing,.

Hughes had always shown his determination to experiment as a poet and not slavishly follow the tyranny of tight stanzaic forms and exact rhyme. He seemed, like Watt Whitman and Carl Sandburg, to prefer to write verse which captured the realities of American speech rather than "poetic diction", and with his ear especially attuned to the varieties of black American speech.

"Weary Blues" combines these various elements the common speech of ordinary people, jazz and blues music and the traditional forms of poetry adapted to the African American and American subjects. In his adaptation of traditional poetic forms first to jazz then to blues sometimes using dialect but in a way radically different from earlier writers, Hughes was well served by his early experimentation with a loose form of rhyme that frequently gave way to an inventively rhythmic free verse:

Ma an ma baby

Got two mo' ways,

Two mo' ways to do de buck!

Even more radical experimentation with the blues form led to his next collection, Fine Clothes to the Jew. Perhaps his finest single book of verse, including several ballads, Fine Clothes was also his least favourably welcomed.

Several reviewers in black newspapers and magazines were distressed by Hughes' fearless and, 'tasteless' evocation of elements of lower-class black culture, including its sometimes raw eroticism, never before treated in serious poetry.

Hughes expressing his determination to write about such people and to experiment with blues and jazz wrote in his essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." Published in the Nation in 1926

'We younger artists...intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves Without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they Are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful, And ugly too.'

Hughes expressed his determination to write fearlessly, shamelessly and unrepentantly about low-class black life and people inspite of opposition to that. He also exercised much freedom in experimenting with blues as well as jazz.

The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If coloured people are pleased we are glad. If they are not their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how and we stand on top of the mountains, free within ourselves.

With his espousal of such thoughts defending the freedom of the black writer Hughes became a beacon of light to younger writers who also wished to assert their right to explore and exploit allegedly degraded aspects of black people. He thus provided the movement with a manifesto by so skillfully arguing the need for both race pride and artistic independence in this his most memorable essay,

In 1926 Hughes returned to school in the historically black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania where he continued publishing poetry, short stories and essays in mainstream and black-oriented periodicals

In 1927 together with Zora Neal Hurston and other writers he founded Fire a literary journal devoted to African -American culture and aimed at destroying the older forms of black literature. The venture itself was short-lived. It was engulfed in fire along with its editorial offices.

Then a 70 - year old wealthy white patron entered his life. Charlotte Osgood Mason, who started directing virtually every aspect of Hughes' life and art. Her passionate belief in parapsychology, intuition and folk culture was brought into supervising the writing of Hughes' novel: Not Without Lauqhter in which his boyhood in Kansas is drawn to depict the life of a sensitive black child, Sandy, growing up in a representative, middle-class.mid-western African-American home.

Hughes' relationship with Mason came to an explosive end in 1930. Hurt and baffled by Mason's rejection, Hughes used money from a prize to spend several weeks recovering in Haiti. From the intense personal unhappiness and depression into which the break had sunk him.

Back in the U.S., Hughes made a sharp turn to the political left. His verses and essays were now being published in New Masses, a journal controlled by the Communist Party. Later that year he began touring.

The renaissance which was long over was replaced for Hughes by a sense of the need for political struggle and for an art that reflected this radical approach. But his career, unlike others then, easily survived the end of that movement. He kept on producing his art in keeping with his sense of himself as a thoroughly professional writer. He then published his first collections, the often acerbic and even embittered The Ways of White Folks.

Hughes' main concern was now, the theatre. Mulatto, his drama of race-mixing and the South was the longest running play by an African American on Broadway until Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun appeared in the 1960's. His dramas - comedies and ramas of domestic black American life, largely - were also popular with black audiences. Using such innovations as theatre-in-the-round and invoking audience participation, Hughes anticipated the work of later avant-garde dramatists like Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez. In his drama Hughes combines urban dialogue, folk idioms, and a thematic emphasis on the dignity and strength of black Americans.

Hughes wrote other plays, including comedies such as Little Ham (1936) and a historical drama, Emperor of Haiti (1936) most of which were only moderate successes. In 1937 he spent several months in Europe, including a long stay in besieged Madrid. In 1938 he returned home to found the Harlem Suitcase Theater, which staged his agitprop drama Don't You Want to Be Free? employing several of his poems, vigorously blended black nationalism, the blues, and socialist exhortation. The same year, a socialist organization published a pamphlet of his radical verse, "A New Song."

With the start of World War II, Hughes returned to the political centre. The Big Sea, his first volume of his autobiography work with its memorable portrait of the renaissance and his African voyages written in an episodic, lightly comic style with virtually no mention of his leftist sympathies appeared.

In his book of verse Shakespeare in Harlem (1942) he once again sang the blues. On the other hand, this collection, as well as another, his Jim Crow's Last Stand (1943), strongly attacked racial segregation.

In poetry, he revived his interest in some of his old themes and forms, as in Shakespeare in Harlem (1942).the South and West, taking poetry to the people. He read his poems in churches and in schools. He then sailed from New York for the Soviet Union. He was amongst a band of young African-Americans invited to take part in a film about American race relations.

This filmmaking venture, though unsuccessful, proved instrumental to enhancing his short story writing. For whilst in Moscow he was struck by the similarities between D. H. Lawrence's character in a title story from his collection The Lovely Lady and Mrs Osgood Mason. Overwhelmed by the power of Lawrence's stories, Hughes began writing short fiction of his. On his return to the U. S.. by 1933 he had sold three stories and had begun compiling his first collection.

Perhaps his finest literary achievement during the war came in writing a weekly column in the Chicago Defender from 1942 to 1952. the highlight of which was an offbeat Harlem character called Jesse B. Semple, or Simple, and his exchanges with a staid narrator in a neighborhood bar, where Simple commented on a variety of matters but mainly about race and racism. Simple became Hughes's most celebrated and beloved fictional creation. and one of the freshest, most fascinating and enduring Negro characters in American fiction Jesse B Simple, is a Harlem Everyman, whose comic manner hardly obscured some of the serious themes raised by Hughes in relating Simple's exploits in the quintessential "wise-fool' whose experience and uneducated insights capture the frustrations of being black in America.. His honest and unsophisticated eye sees through the shallowness, hypocrisy and phoniness of white and black Americans alike. From his stool at Paddy's Bar, in a delightful brand of English, Simple comments both wisely and hilariously on many things but principally on race and women.

His bebop-shaped poem Montage of a Dream Deferred (1991) projects a changing Harlem, fertile with humanity but in decline. In it, the drastically deteriorated state of Harlem in the 1950s is contrasted to the Harlem of the 20s. The exuberance of night-club life and the vitality of cultural renaissance has now gone. An urban ghetto plagued by poverty and crime has taken its place. A change in rhythm parallels the change in tone. The smooth patterns and gentle melancholy of blues music are replaced by the abrupt, fragmented structure of post-war jazz and bebop. Hughes was alert to what was happening in the African-American world and what was coming. This is why this volume of verse reflected so much the new and relatively new be-bop jazz rhythms that emphasized dissonance They thus reflected the new pressures that were straining the black communities in the cities of the North.

Hughes' living much of his life in basements and attics brought much realism and humanity to his writing especially his short stories. He thus remained close to his vast public as he kept moving figuratively through the basements of the world where his life is thickest and where common people struggle to make their way. At the same time, writing in attics, he rose to the long perspective that enabled him to radiate a humanizing, beautifying, but still truthful light on what he saw.

Hughes' short stories reflect his entire purpose as a writer. For his art was aimed at interpreting "the beauty of his own people," which he felt they were taught either not to see or not to take pride in. In all his stories, his humanity, his faithful and artistic presentations of both racial and national truth - his successful mediation between the beauties and the terrors of life around him all shine out. Certain themes, technical excellencies or social insights loom out.

"Slave in the Block" for example, a simple but vivid tale reveals the lack of respect and even human communication, between Negroes and those patronizing and cosmetic whites.

Hughes also took time to write for children producing the successful Popo and Fifina (1932), a tale set in Haiti with Arna Bontemps. He eventually published a dozen children's books, on subjects such as jazz, Africa, and the West Indies. Proud of his versatility, he also wrote a commissioned history of the NAACP and the text of a much praised pictorial history of black America The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955), where he explicated photographs of Harlem by Roy DeCarava, which was judged masterful by reviewers, and confirmed Hughes's reputation for an unrivaled command of the nuances of black urban culture.

Hughes's suffered constant harassment about his ties to the Left. In vain he protested he had never been a Communist having severed all such links. In 1953 he was subjected to public humiliation at the hands of Senator Joseph McCarthy, when he was forced to appear in Washington, D.C., and testify officially about his politics. Hughes denied that he had ever been a communist but conceded that some of his radical verse had been ill-advised.

Hughes's career hardly suffered from this. Within a short time McCarthy himself was discredited. Hughes now wrote at length in I Wonder as I Wander (1956), his much-admired second volume of autobiography. about his years in the Soviet Union. He became prosperous, although he always had to work hard for his measure of prosperity. In the 1950s he turned to the musical stage for success, as he sought to repeat his major success of the 1940s, when Kurt Weill and Elmer Rice had chosen him as the lyricist for their Street Scene (1947). This production was hailed as a breakthrough in the development of American opera; for Hughes, the apparently endless cycle of poverty into which he had been locked came to an end. He bought a home in Harlem.

By the end of his life Hughes was almost universally recognized as the most representative writer in the history of African American literature and also as probably the most original of all black American poets. He thus became the widely acknowledged "Poet Laureate" of the Negro Race!

According to Arnold Rampersad, an authority on Hughes:

Much of his work celebrated the beauty and dignity and Humanity of black Americans. Unlike other writers Hughes basked in the glow of the obviously high regard of his primary audience, African Americans. His poetry, with its original jazz and blues influence and its powerful democratic commitment, is almost certainly the most influential written by any person of African descent in this century. Certain of his poems; "Mother to Son" are virtual anthems of black American life and aspiration. His plays alone... could secure him a place in AfroAmerican literary history. His character Simple is the most memorable single figure to emerge from black journalism. 'The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain' is timeless, "it seems as a statement of constant dilemma facing the young black artist, caught between the contending forces of black and white culture'

Liberated by the examples of Carl Sandburg's free verse Hughes' poetry has always aimed for utter directness and simplicity. In this regard, is the notion that he almost never revised his work seeming like romantic poets who believe and demonstrate that poetry is a 'spontaneous overflow of emotions".

Like Walt Whitman, Hughes's great poetic forefather in America's poetry..., Hughes did believe in the poetry of Emotion, in the power of ideas and feelings that went beyond matters of technical crafts. Hughes never wanted to be a writer who carefully sculpted rhyme and stanzas and in so doing lost the emotional heart of what he had set out to say.

His poems imbued with the distinctive diction and cadences of Negro idioms in simple stanza patterns and strict rhyme schemes derived from blues songs enabled him to capture the ambience of the setting as well as the rhythms of jazz music.

He wrote mostly in two modes/directions:

(i) lyrics about black life using rhythms and refrains from jazz and

blues.

(ii) Poems of racial protest

exploring the boundaries between black and white America. thus contributing to the strengthening of black consciousness and racial pride than even the Harlem Renaissance's legacy for its most militant decades. While never militantly repudiating co-operation with the white community, the poems which protest against white racism are boldly direct.

In "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" the simple direct and free verse makes clear that Africa's dusky rivers run concurrently with the poet's soul as he draws spiritual strength as well as individual identity from the collective experience of his ancestors. The poem is according to Rampersad "reminding us that the syncopated beat which the captive Africans brought with them "that found its first expression here in "the hand clapping, feet stamping, drum-beating rhythms of the human heart (4 - 5), is as 'ancient as the world."

But what Hughes is better known for is his treatment of the possibilities of African-American experiences and identities. Like Walt Whitman, he created a persona that speaks for more than himself. His voice in "I too" for instance absorbs the depiction of a whole race into his central consciousness as he laments:

I, too, sing America

I am the darker brother.

I, too, am America.

The "darker brother" celebrating America is certain of a better future when he will no longer be shunted aside by "company". The poem is characteristic of Hughes's faith in the racial consciousness of African Americans, a consciousness that reflects their integrity and beauty while simultaneously demanding respect and acceptance from others as especially when: Nobody '/I dare Say to me, Eat in the kitchen.

This dogged resistance and optimism in facing adversity is what Hughes' life centred on.thus enabling him to survive and achieve in spite of the obstacles facing him. as Rampersad affirms:.

'Toughness was a major characteristic of Hughes' life. For his life was hard. He certainly knew poverty and humiliation at the hands of people with far more power and money than he had and little respect for writers, especially poets. Through all his poverty and hurt, Hughes kept on a steady keel. He was a gentleman, a soft man in many ways, who was sympathetic and affectionate, but was tough to the core.

Hughes's poetry reveals his hearty appetite for all humanity, his insistence on justice for all, and his faith in the transcendent possibilities of joy and hope that make room as he aspires in 'I too', for everyone at America's table.

This deep love for all humanity is echoed in one of his poems: 'My People" some lines of which were earlier referred to:

The night is beautiful,

so the faces of my people,

the stars are beautiful,

so the eyes of my people

Beautiful, also, is the sun

Beautiful also, are the souls of my people

Arnold Rampersad's last word on Hughes's humanity, is anchored on three essential attributes: his tenderness; generosity and his sense of humour.

Hughes was also tender. He was a man who lovse other people and was beloved. It was very hard to find anyone who had known him who would say a harsh thing about him. People who knew him could remember little that wasn't pleasant of him. Evidently, he radiated joy and humanity and this was how he was remembered after his death.

He loved the company of people. He needed to have people around him. He needed them perhaps to counter the essential loneliness instilled in his soul from early in his life and out of which he made his literary art.

Hughes was a man of great generosity. He was generous to the young and the poor, the needy; he was generous even to his rivals. He was generous to a fault, giving to those who did not always deserve his kindness. But he was prepared to risk ingratitude in order to help younger artists in particular and young people in general.

Hughes was a man of laughter, although his laughter almost always came in the presence of tears or the threat of the surge of tears. The titles of his first novel Not Without Laughter and a collection of stories Laughing to Keep from Crying. indicate this. This was essentially how he believed life must be faced - with the knowledge of its inescapable loneliness and pain but with an awareness, too, of the therapy of laughter by which we assert the human in the face of circumstances. We must reach out to people, and one should not only have an astounding tolerance of life's sufferings but should also exuberantly complete the happy aspect of life.

His sense of humour is again credited by a writer from Africa who was like Hughes also faced with fighting racial discrimination and deprivation, Ezekiel Mphahlele.

Here is a man with a boundless zest for life... He has an irrepressible sense of humour, and to meet him is to come face to face with the essence of human goodness. In spite of his literary success, he has earned himself the respect of young Negro writers, who never find him unwilling to help them along. And yet he is not condescending. Unlike most Negroes who become famous or prosperous and move to high-class residential areas, he has continued to live in Harlem, which is in sense a Negro ghetto, in a house which he purchased with money earned as lyricist for the Broadway musical Street Scene.

In explaining and illustrating the Negro condition in America as was his stated vocation, Hughes captured their joys, and the veiled weariness of their lives, the monotony of their jobs, and the veiled weariness of their songs. He accomplished this in poems remarkable not only for their directness and simplicity but for their economy, lucidity and wit. Whether he was writing poems of racial protest like "Harlem" and "Ballad of the Landlord" or poems of racial affirmation like' Mother to Son' and 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers,' Hughes was able to find language and forms to express not only the pain of urban life but also its splendid vitality.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Impact of Social Media on Society

"Do you have Facebook?"
"Yes, of course. But I don't think you can find me, as there are too many people who have the same name as me. Try searching with my surname as well."
"Hey, you celebrated your birthday in K-Box, right? I saw the photos in your Facebook."
"Bro, I saw your comments about the YouTube video that I've posted in my blog. I'm happy that you are also deeply moved by the 'Dancing Peacock Man' as well."

Social media or "social networking" has almost become part of our daily lives and being tossed around over the past few years. It is like any other media such as newspaper, radio and television but it is far more than just about sharing information and ideas. Social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Blogs have facilitated creation and exchange of ideas so quickly and widely than the conventional media. The power of define and control a brand is shifting from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities. It is no longer on the 5Cs (e.g. condominium, credit cards and car) that Singaporeans once talked about. Today, it is about the brand new Cs: creativity, communication, connection, creation (of new ideas and products), community (of shared interests), collaboration and (changing the game of) competition.

In January 2010, InSites Consulting has conducted an online survey with 2,884 consumers from over 14 countries between the ages of 18 to 55 years old on social networking. More than 90% of participants know at least 1 social networking site and 72% of participants are members of at least 1 social networking site. On the average, people have about 195 friends and they log in twice a day to social networking sites. However, 55% of the users cannot access their social network websites at work. In the past, not many adults were able to make more than 500 friends, but with social media, even a child or teenager can get to know more than 500 people in a few days by just clicking the mouse. Social media has devalued the traditional definition of "friend" where it means trust, support, compatible values, etc. Although we get to know more people, we are not able to build strong bond with all the people whom we met as our available time is limited. Hence, there is an upcoming social trend of people with wider social circles, but weaker ties (people we don't know very well but who provide us with useful information and ideas).

Impact of Social Media on Society

Social media also influences people's buying behaviours. Digital Influence Group reported that 91% of the people say consumer reviews are the #1 aid to buying decisions and 87% trust a friend's recommendation over critic's review. It is thrice more likely to trust peer opinions over advertising for purchasing decisions. 1 word-of-mouth conversation has an impact of 200 TV ads. With the prevalence use of social media, there is numerous news related to it from the most viewed YouTube video on "Armless pianist wins 'China's Got Talent'" to Web-assisted suicide cases (e.g. New Jersey college student who killed himself after video of him in a sexual encounter with another man was posted online). Thus, does social networking make us better or worse off as a society?

Positive Effects of Social Media

Besides having opportunity to know a lot of people in a fast and easy way, social media also helped teenagers who have social or physical mobility restrictions to build and maintain relationships with their friends and families. Children who go overseas to study can still stay in meaningful contact with their parents. To a greater extend, there is anecdotal evidence of positive outcomes from these technologies.

In 2008, President-elected Obama won the election through the effective use of social media to reach millions of audience or voters. The Obama campaign had generated and distributed huge amount of contents and messages across email, SMS, social media platforms and their websites. Obama and his campaign team fully understood the fundamental social need that everyone shares - the need of being "who we are". Therefore, the campaign sent the message as "Because It's about YOU" and chose the right form of media to connect with individuals, call for actions and create community for a social movement. They encouraged citizens to share their voices, hold discussion parties in houses and run their own campaign meetings. It truly changed the delivery of political message.

Obama campaign had made 5 million "friends" on more than 15 social networking sites (3 million friends on Facebook itself) and posted nearly 2,000 YouTube videos which were watched over 80 million times. At its peak, their website, MyBarackObama.com, had 8.5 million monthly visitors and produced 400,000 blog posts. In order to ensure that their contents were found by people, the Obama campaign spent .5 million on Google search in October alone, 0,000 on Advertising.com, 7,000 on Facebook in 2008, etc. Currently, Obama's Twitter account has close to 6 million followers.

In 2010, after the earthquake happened in Haiti, many of the official communication lines were down. The rest of the world was not able to grasp the full picture of the situation there. To facilitate the sharing of information and make up for the lack of information, social media came in very handy to report the news about the affected area on what happened and what help was needed. Tweets from many people provided an impressive overview of the ongoing events from the earthquake. BBC covered the event by combining tweets from the work of its reporter Matthew Price in Port-au-Prince at the ground. Guardian's live blog also used social media together with the information from other news organisations to report about the rescue mission.

It has been two years since CNN officially launched iReport as a section of its website where people can upload video material, with contact information. During the Haiti crisis, CNN had published a range of social media material but not all the materials were verified. The editorial staff would vet the reports from the citizen journalists and labeled them differently compared to unverified contents. On Facebook, a group, named "Earthquake Haiti", was formed to show support and share updates and news. It had more than 14,000 members and some users even pleaded for assistance to the injured Haitians in the group. Using email, Twitter and social networking sites like Facebook, thousands of volunteers as part of Project Ushahidi were able to map reports sent by people from Haiti.

The most impressive part of the social media's impact on Haiti is the charity text-message donations that soared to over million for the victims in Haiti. People interested in helping the victims are encouraged to text, tweet and publicize their support using various social networking sites. The Global Philanthropy Group had also started a campaign to ask wealthy people and celebrities, like Ben Stiller and John Legend to use Twitter and Facebook to encourage others to give to UNICEF. An aid worker, Saundra Schimmelpfennig, allowed the advice from other aid workers and donors to post on her blog regarding to choosing which charitable organisations to support. In the meantime, donors were asking questions in Twitter, Facebook and blogs about their donations and endorsements of their favourite charities. After every crisis, the social media for social cause becomes a more effective medium to spread the word.

Negative Effects of Social Media

There are always two sides of every coin. Social media is just a tool or mean for people to use. It is still up to the users on how to use this tool (just like a knife, can help you to cut food or hurt others). Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center conducted a study on "The Future of Online Socializing" from the highly engaged, diverse set of respondents to an online, opt-in survey consisted of 895 technology stakeholders and critics. The negative effects presented by the respondents included time spent online robs time from important face-to-face relationships; the internet fosters mostly shallow relationships; the act of leveraging the internet to engage in social connection exposes private information; the internet allows people to silo themselves, limiting their exposure to new ideas; and the internet is being used to engender intolerance.

Some respondents also highlighted that there will be development of some new psychological and medical syndromes that will be "variations of depression caused by the lack of meaningful quality relationships", and a "new world society". The term, "Social Networking", has begun to deceive the users to believe they are social creatures. For instance, spending a couple of hours using Farmville and chatting with friends concurrently does not convert into social skills. People become dependent on the technology and forget how to socialise in face-to-face context. The online personality of a person might be totally different from his/her offline character, causing chaos when the two personalities meet. It is apparent in online dating when the couple gets together in face-to-face for the first time. Their written profiles do not clearly represent their real-life characters. It is more enticing for people to type something that others want to hear than saying the truth.

Besides the "friendship", creators of social networking sites and users redefine the term, "privacy" in the Internet as well. The challenge in data privacy is to share data while protecting personally identifiable information. Almost any information posted on social networking sites is permanent. Whenever someone posts pictures or videos on the web, it becomes viral. When the user deletes a video from his/her social network, someone might have kept it and then posted it onto other sites like YouTube already. People post photographs and video files on social networking sites without thinking and the files can reappear at the worst possible time. In 2008, a video of a group of ACJC students hazing a female student in school on her birthday was circulated and another video of a SCDF recruit being "welcomed" (was hosed with water and tarred with shoe polish) to a local fire station made its way online.

Much news has been reported about online privacy breach in Facebook and Facebook is constantly revising their privacy policy and changing their privacy controls for the users. Interestingly, even when users delete their personal information and deactivate their Facebook account, Facebook will still keep that information and will continue to use it for data mining. A reporter asked whether the data will at least be anonymized. The Facebook representative declined to comment.

In the corporate world, human resource managers can access Facebook or MySpace to get to know about a candidate's true colours, especially when job seekers do not set their profiles to private. Research has found that almost half of employers have rejected a potential worker after finding incriminating material on their Facebook pages. Some employers have also checked the candidates' online details in Facebook pages to see if they are lying about their qualifications. Nowadays, younger generations have a complete disregard for their own privacy, opening doors to unwelcome predators or stalkers.

Impact of Social Media on Society
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Raymond Tay
Founder & Trainer of Leader's Wheel LLP

Having strong interest in personal development and helping others.

My Company Site: http://www.leaderswheel.com
My Learning Blog: http://www.leaderswheel.com/raymondtay

Friday, December 7, 2012

The Importance of Social Media Marketing Today

Marketing is essential to any business and is generally referred to as the most important aspect of any business strategy. Large companies spend millions of dollars to hire reputed agencies to handle the marketing of their business whereas smaller companies rely on more creative and cost efficient methods. In the extremely competitive world of today, social media marketing is the new 'in' thing and definitely here to stay. In a nutshell, it means using social media such as blogs, community sites, video sharing sites etc. to market a product or a business.

Certain popular websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube which have more than five million visitors everyday are considered to be an important hub for marketing. Promoting your business using these sites is a very attractive business proposition since they offer a huge amount of steady traffic everyday. In today's world, social networking is extremely successful and social media marketing is very important to a business because of the sheer number of people that access these sites regularly.

The reasons why this type of marketing is so important, or rather, essential for a business are many. Firstly it is a low cost investment when compared to the other options available, offering many links to your site for free. Social media is generally free to use but marketing the same thing through conventional methods would cost you thousands of dollars. These sites get a lot of traffic and they in turn generate traffic to your site. Also it acts like a word-of-mouth concept that people tend to believe when compared to commercial advertising.

The Importance of Social Media Marketing Today

To make a lasting impact on the user and build a successful business any entrepreneur should be adept in social media marketing. There are a number of factors to keep in mind while promoting your business online so as to maximize its potential and achieve realistic real time sales. Lehman Hailey believes marketing through social media is a potent method that will make your site profitable over time.

Following are a few pointers that an entrepreneur would do well to remember while utilizing the immense scope of this type of marketing. Firstly, one should always try to give a clear account of the company's product or the contents of the business instead of exaggerating and claiming the impossible because this discourages people from visiting your site whereas a more realistic picture generates slow but steady traffic over time. Secondly, it is important to post as many links as you can wherever there is a provision to do so.

Any business becomes profitable only if the end product promised by the company or the entrepreneur is really as good as advertised and produces customer satisfaction. There is no sure-shot formula for success using marketing since it only gives more visibility to the business and the end sales depend only on the efficiency of the product. However, social media marketing is an important tool that, when properly used is a highly beneficial and promising enterprise.

The Importance of Social Media Marketing Today
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You can get more information about Lehman Hailey on his blog located at http://www.lehmanhailey.com/blog

Monday, December 3, 2012

The Effects of Media on the Skinny Side of Eating Disorders

What is the most deadly psychological disorder today? If you guessed an eating disorder, then you are right. According to WebMD, eating disorders are illnesses that cause a person to adopt harmful eating habits. So, does this make WebMD just a great resource, or is this really true, and is an eating disorder really a dangerous illness? Most sufferers of an eating disorder are often mocked about their problem, and they are not taken seriously. People should not misinterpret or disbelieve sufferers of an eating disorder because it is, in fact, a very serious illness. There are, however, minor cases of eating disorders but there are far too many deaths related to them, thus we must take this issue very seriously and approach it with care.

Why are eating disorders the greatest killers among the many different psychological disorders? This is because of the media, as well as the disorder's dramatic and deadly affects on the body. Today, media is in our lives no matter where we go. From television, radio, and the news, to magazines, newspapers, and the internet, media plays a big role in the spreading ideas, norms, and styles to people. Media spreads information really quickly to millions of people. Media is around people no matter where they turn, and they face it on a daily basis in some form. So, how is media related to eating disorders? This question, and many other questions, will be answered after we get a better understanding of what an eating disorder is, its characteristics, statistics, and ways to prevent and treat it. I will, however, focus only on anorexia and bulimia because they are more affected by the media than overeating disorders are.

People with eating disorders obsess about their intake of food, and they spend a lot of time thinking about their weight and body image. Their body is badly affected both emotionally and physically. People with an eating disorder may suffer from a number of different symptoms, and not everyone gets the same symptoms as they vary from individual to individual. According to the Help Guide-Mental Health Issues, even though anorexia is the most revealed eating disorder in the media, bulimia is the most prevalent eating disorder.

The Effects of Media on the Skinny Side of Eating Disorders

A person suffering from anorexia sees themselves as fat when they are, in fact, skinny and underweight. Their weight does not match their height, activity level or age. They get bad memory, feel depressed, have a fear of gaining weight, feel light headed, and often faint. Women with anorexia may have problems with their menstrual cycle such as missed or late periods, as well as trouble getting pregnant. Woman who are pregnant have a higher risk of a miscarriage and a higher risk to need to deliver their baby through C-section. People suffering from anorexia can also have muscle and joint problems, kidney stones, kidney failure, anemia, bloating, constipation, low levels of potassium, magnesium, and sodium in their bodies, low blood pressure, slow heart rate, and heart failure. Some physical signs that can be seen on a person suffering from anorexia are dry or yellow skin, brittle nails, more hair growth on their body, and thin and brittle hair. A person with anorexia may also get cold easily, bruise easily, and feel down a lot.

A person suffering from bulimia can get the same effects as a person suffering from anorexia since both disorders involve the loss of major and rapid weight, which leads to very unhealthy changes in the body. Symptoms between anorexia and bulimia sufferers differ in the way that sufferers of bulimia would eat a lot of food in a short amount of time and then force themselves to throw up, when people with anorexia just don't want to eat altogether. People with bulimia also misuse laxatives and go on strict diets of fasting and rigorous exercising. Sufferers from eating disorders in general are affected emotionally, psychologically, behaviorally, and socially. Emotional and psychological changes include increased anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, guilt, and low self esteem. Some changes in behavior of a person suffering from an eating disorder include dieting, frequent visits to the bathroom after eating, a change in fashion, and constantly checking their weight. Some social changes of a person suffering from an eating disorder may include isolation, being anti-social, avoiding social gatherings where food is involved, and a loss of interest for hobbies. Other physical signs of eating disorders in general include edema, a reduction in metabolism, sore throats, stomach problems, heartburn, and hypoglycemia; which leads to irrational thinking, shaking, confusion, irritability, and comas.

Eating disorders have a big impact on society on a small and on a large scale; meaning both individuals and society as a whole dedicate significant parts of their lives to the struggles of dealing with eating disorders. A lot of money and time go into the troubles of dealing with an eating disorder, as well as into the measures taken in order to treat and prevent them. Eating disorders are very common amongst celebrities, mainly because their profession puts pressure on them to be skinny. The majority of celebrities that we see in the media are all skinny, and most of them are anorexic or bulimic. The fans of these celebrities look at the bodies of their idols and they want to be like them. The problem with this is that anorexic and skinny celebrities do not make good role models for their fans because their skinny figures are not a healthy look to follow. Famous people believe that in order to be successful they must be skinny. This is not true. Celebrities expose their looks and body image to the media where fans can see them and get the wrong idea that their idol's looks are acceptable when their idols are only trying to lose weight for their own "success". In a weight article, Monica Seles stated that "Women in society have much tougher pressure to be thin." It is like a cycle; celebrities are skinny in order to impress their fans and companies. They send their fans the wrong idea, thus making their fans lose weight. In the end, everyone has the idea that they must be thin and they must lose weight, thus, being skinny becomes the norm.

According to the article "Eating Disorders and Body Image in the Media" by Heather Mudgett, media can be very hypocritical because while the media shares news about celebrities dying from eating disorders, it also contains images of underweight celebrities modeled as if everyone should look like them. We might also see an article about a person dying from an eating disorder in a magazine, and on the next page we might see an underweight model, modeling a popular product. The underweight images of people in the media give consumers the wrong idea that being skinny is OK and that there is nothing wrong with it, when, in fact, being that skinny can lead to a person's own death. Consumers spend so much money on products and services that will help them lose weight, such as weight loss drinks, nutrition bars, pills, laxatives, weight loss videos, and they even take weight loss classes. People also misuse drugs and liquids in order to force themselves to lose weight, and this can be very stressing to the body. Any time that we do something against our body's natural functions, we hurt our body and put ourselves at great risk to further health problems in the future.

So many celebrities suffer and have died from eating disorders. Singer Karen Carpenter was struggling with anorexia and bulimia and after she went to treatment for years, everyone thought that she had recovered and was doing better. After that, she was found dead on the bathroom floor in her parent's house. She had a heart attack and it was said that the result of it was because she had abused the drug Ipecac for years. Ipecac is a liquid that is used to induce vomiting, and it is often abused by anorexics and bulimics.

According to the South Carolina Department of Health, about seven million American women and one million American men have an eating disorder. About one in every two hundred women in America has anorexia, and about two or three out of one hundred women have bulimia. About half of Americans know at least one person who has an eating disorder. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, about 5% to 10% of people diagnosed with anorexia will die within 10 years of having the disease, about 18% to 20% of people will be dead after having the disease for 20 years and only 30% to 40% of people will recover from it. It is very scary fact that the rate of mortality for people with anorexia is twelve times higher than the rate of death of all of the causes of death for females from 15 to 24 years old. (South Carolina Department of Health). Nearly 20% of the people who have anorexia will die prematurely from health problems and heart problems due to their eating disorder. About 95% of people with an eating disorder are between the ages of 12 and 25, about 50% of females between the ages of 11 and 13 see themselves as overweight, and around 80% of 13 year old's have, at some point, tried to lose weight. It is a very sad fact that over 80% of females who have made an effort to go get treatment for their eating disorder, have not received the full treatment that they need in order to fully recover. This often leads to the disorder reoccurring and to the patients hurting their health even more. Obviously, eating disorders are really serious and they should be treated as soon as possible.

Since eating disorders are such important problems facing society today, researchers have used psychological theories to try to solve these problems including group therapy, medical treatment, and nutritional counseling. Eating disorders are treatable, and a person who has an eating disorder does have a chance of getting better, however, if the media continues to idolize skinny celebrities and condone their extremely thin size, it will continue to aid people in trying to lose weight. Having an eating disorder is like a really bad habit that needs to be stopped. A lot of people do not have the ability to stop this bad habit on their own, thus they need help from professional doctors and even family. There are several different methods used to treat an eating disorder. Since an eating disorder affects individuals both physically and psychologically, the treatment for an eating disorder has to satisfy both the physical and psychological aspect of the disorder. Medicine alone wont help a patient get better. In order to get positive long term effects from the treatment, a patient has to receive a mix of medical and psychological help for their disorder. Some therapies that psychologists use to determine the problem and treatment of an eating disorder are cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, rational emotive therapy, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Cognitive behavioral therapy allows psychologists to see the patient's thought process, interpersonal therapy involves dealing with difficult relationships with others, rational emotive therapy involves studying a patient's unhelpful beliefs, and psychoanalytic psychotherapy involves looking at a person's past experiences. All of this information can help a psychologist find the problem, and come up with the solution to the problem. Group therapy is a helpful part of treatment that allows sufferers of the similar eating disorders get together to discuss their problem. Groups are able to discuss coping strategies, ask and answer questions, and talk about ways to change their behavior. Medical treatment is necessary in order to make sure that the patient receives full treatment. Drugs such as anti-depressants can be prescribed by an experienced doctor who knows your condition in order to help treat your illness. Nutritional counseling is another effective and good way to help treat eating disorders. Dieticians and nutritionists can help patients understand what a well-balanced diet is and what foods they should eat on a daily basis. Nutritional counseling can also help patients face their fears about food and get over their fears of being afraid to eat.

A lot of people are confused about what "normal eating" is so they need nutritional counseling to help them get back on track. Not that many people who suffer from an eating disorder go to get treated for it. According to the South Carolina Department of Health , only 1 out of 10 people who suffer from an eating disorder go to get treatment. The cost of treatment for an outpatient is very expensive. Costs for outpatient treatment can be over 0,000. In the US, the cost of treatment for an eating disorder per day is anywhere from 0 to ,000. On average, a person in inpatient treatment has to pay ,000 a month. People with eating disorders need approximately 3-6 months of inpatient care in order to recover. The cost of treatment for an eating disorder is ridiculously high, and the high costs might be a reason that people do not go to get treated. It is very hard for most families to pay for the treatment of their illness, especially when insurance companies don't usually cover eating disorder costs. Another way to help reduce the number of people with eating disorders is to educate people about the dangers of eating disorders through media. The media is a good tool to help educate people on the dangers of eating disorders, but it is also a tool that hurts people by condoning the appearances of skinny people who suffer from such disorders. Another way that eating disorders can be treated and minimizes is through the "Doll Experiment". People were shown that if a human being had the same attributes as a Barbie doll, the body would not be able to hold itself because of its awkward shape and structure. This is a good way to show people that a Barbie doll isn't necessarily what women today should aim towards looking like. In the same way, the celebrities we see on TV are not people who we should try to look like either.

I believe that as long as the media continues to idolize thin celebrities, the effects of education about the dangers of eating disorders through the media will not be effective. For each step that they take forward to solve the problem, they take two steps back by continuing to idolize thin celebrities. It is not a question of what effects have a greater likelihood of causing an eating disorder, but it is a fact that media does contribute to people developing and maintaining eating disorders. There are other causes of eating disorders, such as interpersonal or biological factors, but if the problem of media influencing eating disorders can be changed, there will be fewer cases of eating disorders. We have to take one step at a time in order to solve this very serious problem of eating disorders, and a great place to start is to change the fact that media influences eating disorders. There is not one cause of eating disorders, but media is a big influence to them since media reaches so many people. Personally, I think that group therapy very helpful in the treatment process of an eating disorder. Victims of an eating disorder are able to ask questions and receive answers in order to better understand their situation.

This is very helpful and it might make the victims of eating disorders feel more comfortable knowing that there are other people out there who are going through the same thing. Unfortunately, people are put under so much pressure to be thin by watching skinny celebrities all over the media be idolized. If they are being idolized does that means that they are good role models and their behaviors should be followed? No, most of the time, celebrities are not good role models. I believe that early childhood education is very important because I think that eating disorders start at an early age when children are naive and susceptible to being changed by others. Educating young kids about the media and how to criticize media is a very important step to reducing the number of people with eating disorders. Since media has such a big influence on eating disorders, children should be able to effectively criticize it and not fall victim to its schemes.

Personally, I don't think that the media will ever be an effective resource for people to learn the truth and to learn about eating disorders. The media spreads a lot of false information and people tend to misinterpret the messages they hear on TV. Companies try to sell us products that will reduce our weight and make ourselves look "beautiful" by spending millions of dollars on advertisements. Consumers spend a lot of money and time trying to lose weight and buying these products that are not what the body needs. I believe that our bodies know what they need and ever one's body is different. Everyone has a different metabolism and shape, and we have to learn how to love ourselves for who we are. We need to teach children at a young age that what they say on TV is not what it is cracked up to be and that they need to have self confidence, because if they don't create an image for themselves, the media will do it for them.

The Effects of Media on the Skinny Side of Eating Disorders
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