 Aristotle said, in the case of all things which have several parts and in which the totality is not as it were a mere heap but the whole of something besides the parts, there is a cause. Sometimes now we truncate this or summarize it by saying the sum is greater than the whole of the parts, right? And that's great. That's a very specific kind of meaning, but I think Aristotle is going a little further than that for me, at least in this case. Because he's saying there's something more to this or something else, it becomes something else entirely. I think about this sometimes in relationship to a car engine. If we took all the pieces apart on a car engine and we had them all laid out and we could examine each one, each bolt, each spark plug, see what the head does and what the pistons do and what all these things do and examine each of them and they're all really cool. But we know then that when we put them together they do something even really much cooler than from that combustion engine and can power a vehicle, can power a lot of different things, right? And that's cool and that's where the sum of those things, the collection of things is really greater than the whole of the parts, right? But to me it's even more than that. It's magical. It provides this kind of freedom. This transportation allows us to go places that 100 years ago, 150 years ago, people could never have traveled the country and seen as much of the country as we do and as conveniently as we do and I mean it's just led to so much more than this. The sum of all of these parts has meant so much more than just the creation of this thing, an engine. It's meant this freedom and this ability to travel and experience the world in a way that others could never have imagined before, right? So that's what I think of when I think of that quote from Aristotle and I really think it applies here to the greater whole of critical media studies. We've taken a look at all these different parts, right? But now we're going to see how they come together and providing something even more magical and more meaning and more purpose for us. We have a cause now, at least that's the idea. So when we think about the types of analysis that we've had, these are the parts that we've looked at in the engine, right? We've looked at all these engine parts and we put them together. We had some theories of media industries, including Marxist, organizational and pragmatic analysis that really have to do with the business of media, how that impacts what and what things are created, how things are created, who gets to create them. We looked at the industry and the role it plays kind of as a gatekeeping function. So we are aware of that now. We looked at some theories of media messages, including these things, rhetorical, cultural, psychoanalytic, feminist and queer analysis and looked at the different ways that these messages are packaged and the way that they impact the way media is developed and put together and what is sent out then through those media messages. Then we also looked at theories of media audiences that have to do with how this information is received and processed by people who view the media and engage with the media, right? So reception analysis, sociological analysis, erotic analysis, ecological analysis all have to do with the other side of things, not the industry or the message part, but the audience aspect of all of this. So we've looked at all the different engine parts here. And now we've put them all together. We're trying to put them all together and we have this fuller picture of critical media studies. We're seeing the engine, but now what? What does that mean? How does this become something greater than even that? Even greater than just this understanding of critical media studies? Well, we can apply it in different ways now. We can apply critical media studies in different aspects of our lives. I want to look at just a couple of ways that we can do that with the first one. I want you to consider the role of media literacy. We know what's out there now. We know what it is and how it gets here and we've looked at some of those things that we need to. So whether we're looking at it through the lens of any of those specific frameworks, hopefully when we encounter media, we're at least now more aware of being thoughtful about it. We are aware that there's a message here. There's a purpose here. There's somebody created this and it may mean something to somebody else. And again, regardless of which specific framework, at least we're thinking about, what does this mean? Where did this come from? How does this impact me and all of these things kind of together floating around out there? We're more aware of this and more literate about our media consumption. Not just the amount of media, but where it comes from and who we're listening to and how that impacts us and all of these things. So hopefully we have an increased sense of media literacy as a result of studying these different frameworks. We also have, I think, a better understanding of media resistance and the role that that plays in our society. Sometimes we call this culture jamming, right? This idea of media used as a form of resistance. So you may remember that there was a show called The Colbert Report, right? Now this falls in between, you know, Stephen Colbert got to start TV on the Daily Show. It was a very popular correspondent on the Daily Show. Of course, now he hosts the Late Show after the retirement of David Letterman. But in between there he had the show called The Colbert Report, which really played on the character that he developed on the Daily Show. Kind of characterizing a characterization of a conservative media host. Somebody might see on Fox News or something like that. But sort of pushing back against that because the absurdity of the things that he would say and his ignorance and naivete about different topics, but yet his confidence in the way that he would talk about it was just kind of a characterization of some of the more extreme conservative media hosts in his case. But it was resistance really. It was us saying, look, we see what you're doing and we're pushing back and we're not going to take it. And yet it was incredibly popular as a popular form of media resistance. It was viewed by a lot of people and helped him gain fame, of course. But nonetheless was resistance against kind of the mainstream media types and messages that were coming from that area of the media. We also see it in different ways, in very direct ways with some of the different artifacts we come across like this. Obviously, this is playing on the famous golden arches of McDonald's, but it's kind of turning it around literally and figuratively, turning it upside down to indicate that it's not a pleasant thing. It's not something that should bring comfort to us. It's something that we should be concerned about and trying to connect McDonald's to the epidemic of obesity in our culture and in our nation. But it's playing on those golden arches, flipping them upside down instead of McDonald's. It's a W for weight and instead of I'm loving it, their popular tagline, I'm gaining it. But clearly again using media to resist a popular message, popular brand. Another example of this is here obviously this is going off of Starbucks and using their logo to indicate that, look, this is too much to pay for coffee and it's ridiculous and you're really paying for the logo and not that coffee itself. And so we're paying for this experience and we've got to be aware of it. But it's just sort of a media artifact that is providing resistance to a popular brand, a popular message. So we need to be aware of media resistance, how it's used, when it's there and the role that it has as well. Finally, we need to be thinking about media reform and what our role is as a society in reforming media, in shaping media and how we use it, how we educate people about it and all of those things. Right now we're in a period of time where we're looking at media reform through like, how are we going to handle different social media platforms? What are they responsible for? What are we responsible for? Should they be regulated? If so, how and who does it? And of course, at this moment, we're really just in the burgeoning stages of AI as well. So I mean, looking at how AI impacts media, just as I'm recording this recently had union strikes from the writers, the Writers Guild of America, so TV and movie writers and also the Screen Actors Guild just struck and really those were primarily around not just streaming services, but also AI. So these are things, I mean, should they be, do we need reform? Do we need legislation to monitor these things and to manage these things? Do we need the pushback from the unions or what kind of media reform do we need? Not just in the creation of that, but in the intake aspect of it. Do we need to be protecting people or certain groups of people or do we need to, you know, how do we do this? So as a culture, as a society, we need to be thinking about that and making those decisions and critical media studies, having an understanding of that is an outstanding way to be informed about the discussion on media reform and what, if any, needs there are in that regard. So as we come to the conclusion of this series on critical media studies, I hope that it has been informative for you. I hope that it has provided you a new perspective on media and the different ways that it is used and the different messages that it sends and how it's created and how audiences receive it. I hope that all of this will be helpful to you as we continue to navigate the increasingly large pool of media that we are confronted with every day and that we engage with on a daily basis. And I hope that it will provide that catalyst to become like the engine for you, but provide something beyond that. You know, in the same way that the engine isn't just an amazing piece of technology, but it provides us that sense of freedom and the ability to travel in ways that we didn't have before. I hope that this understanding of critical media studies will allow you to use and to view and to create media in a way that is more purposeful and more meaningful than it may have been before. If you have questions about critical media studies or anything related to that, I hope you'll shoot me an email and I'd love to hear from you there. In the meantime, again, I hope that you will take this knowledge with you, apply it in your daily lives and continue to grow in your abilities as critical consumers of media.