The Illusion of Autonomy: What Media Systems Teach Us to Believe About Ourselves
Stacy Morrow’s University of Denver grad school admissions essay answers that awarded me a scholarship
In your opinion, what is the role of media and public communication in contemporary life? Please reference specific social, political, or cultural issues and discuss how your background and experiences have informed your perspective.
“I don’t think about you at all,” Don Draper coldly dismisses Michael Ginsberg as the elevator doors close in Mad Men. Culturally, this line has been celebrated as the ultimate “alpha” dismissal. It circulates endlessly through memes, GIFs, and short video clips as a shorthand for emotional detachment. Over time, the internet has cultivated an admiration for indifference, framing it as power and emotional distance as admirable, even comedic. Yet, much like a game of telephone, this line has been copied, stripped of context, and repurposed so thoroughly that its original meaning and creative integrity have been lost.
For viewers familiar with Mad Men, the context is clear. When Don Draper claims he does not think about Ginsberg, the statement is rooted entirely in insecurity. Draper is threatened by Ginsberg’s creative prowess because his ideas are sharper, fresher, and, most critically, better. Positioned as the “alpha,” Draper cannot tolerate being outperformed by a subordinate, as it destabilizes both his authority and self-image. His response is not indifference but sabotage. He undermines Ginsberg, appropriates credibility, and emotionally and professionally severs the relationship at the elevator doors. The episode ultimately reveals that Draper’s dismissal is not proof of dominance but evidence of personal fear.
A similar dynamic unfolds in The Devil Wears Prada when Miranda Priestly snaps at Andy Sachs, “You think this has nothing to do with you.” Irritated by Andy’s apparent indifference to fashion, Miranda dismantles the illusion that Andy’s “lumpy blue sweater” represents an independent choice. She traces its lineage from high-fashion runways to luxury brands to mass-market retail, exposing how Andy’s perceived autonomy is, in fact, the product of a carefully curated industry. What Andy considers trivial or personal is revealed as systemic, engineered, and culturally manufactured.
The paradox shared by these scenes lies in the distance between claims of insignificance and the effort required to assert them. Both Draper and Priestly perform dominance by suggesting their subordinates are beneath notice, even as their actions demonstrate deep investment. To claim “I don’t think about you” requires thought, just as lecturing an assistant on the genealogy of a sweater requires sustained attention. In both cases, superiority is not proven through detachment but constructed through engagement. Authority reveals itself as fragile and dependent on constant reinforcement.
This is where the role of media and public communication becomes impossible to overstate. Media does not merely reflect culture; it constructs the frameworks through which individuals understand themselves, others, and their relative worth. Today, that framework increasingly resembles a black box: opaque, algorithmically driven, and optimized for engagement rather than understanding. This is deeply dangerous because it is remarkably easy to become trapped inside it, mistaking manufactured signals for authentic feeling and curated narratives for personal truth.
Within our AI-engineered environment, self-worth is aggregated, categorized, quantified, and siloed. Individual attention becomes currency through data extraction and invasions of privacy. Comparison becomes constant, with no resolution or endpoint. Metrics offer a numerical system for human significance. Biology and lived experience become secondary reference points. The concept of “perfect,” nonexistent in any physical sense, manifests digitally as a manufactured ideal designed for global exploitation.
Technology, particularly AI systems, algorithms, and platforms, is profoundly addictive and widely normalized by what I would describe as radical conformers, many of whom do not realize they are fully embedded within a manufactured system. The assumption persists that failure to conform to a highly curated, and ultimately impossible, version of desirability or success risks social irrelevance and invisibility. This system shapes perception without consent while simultaneously producing the illusion of autonomy.
We now exist in digital spaces flooded with synthetic language and content. These systems distort the informational environments on which they are trained, creating feedback loops that flatten discourse and erode collective understanding. The result is paradoxical: both the technology and its users become dulled. Individuals grow more isolated, more entrenched in existing beliefs, and increasingly disconnected from a shared communal reality.
My academic and professional background in media, communications, and digital culture has made me acutely aware of these dynamics, not as abstract theory but as lived experience. I have observed how systems designed to connect people can instead fracture communities; how narratives of autonomy can mask deeply unethical structural influence; and how communication technologies quietly shape identity, agency, and belonging. Not everyone recognizes the complexity embedded in scenes like those in Mad Men or The Devil Wears Prada. The paradox is that we believe our lives are guided by personal choice when, in reality, that autonomy is often a manufactured product of the communication systems that surround us.
I am not interested in viewing the media as spectacle. I see it as the veil in front of a vast power infrastructure. I am interested in the unseen architecture: how meaning is governed, how credibility circulates, how power is gained and maintained, and how individuals come to understand their place within these systems.
In contemporary life, media and public communication are not peripheral forces. They are the terrain itself. To study media critically at a global level is not optional for someone like me; it is necessary. I believe the University of Denver’s Media, Film, & Journalism Studies program is the right place for me to begin a lifelong pursuit of reclaiming agency in a tech-obsessed world, restoring personal memory as a form of autonomy, and educating others on how to recognize and resist the illusions constructed by media and large-scale technology systems.
What are your current professional goals and how can the MA in Media and Public Communication help you achieve them? Please reference specific classes, professors, or other aspects of the program that interest you.
This question genuinely perplexed me. I have long been drawn to so many dimensions of mass communication that, for much of my life, I made nearly every aspect of media my professional pursuit. I studied it, worked within it, built with it, and lived through it without ever articulating a singular endgame. In honest humility, my current professional goal is simple but exacting: I want to be a really great journalist. Not in an aesthetic or performative sense, but in the classical sense as someone who investigates, contextualizes, documents, and explains power in a way that can be understood, challenged, and remembered.
My professional journey has never been linear. In many ways, I was Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada, gradually engulfed by a corporate ecosystem few are meant to survive and even fewer are meant to truly understand. I learned how to wear the mask. I learned how to conform. At times, I even found comfort in conformity. Yet beneath that fluency was a persistent dissonance. I always knew I was not of the system I was so deeply fascinated by. I was sacrificing pieces of my individuality to fit a mold I did not inherently identify with, and yet I continued. That contradiction eventually became impossible to ignore.
As I advanced in tech, marketing, and digital media, the paradox clarified, and I could no longer unsee it. I gained intimate knowledge of the systems that sustain manipulation at scale: how individuals are hooked to products, ideologies, identities, and narratives through behavioral design, algorithmic reinforcement, and emotional extraction — often through profound invasions of personal privacy and autonomy. I learned sales funnels, digital advertising, social media strategy, content creation, publicity, and music promotion. There was no behind the scenes layer of media production I did not encounter.
Over time, a pattern emerged. The most glorified versions of “success,” particularly those celebrated in status driven professional spaces, were largely inaccessible to most people. Despite this, they were framed as universally attainable, reshaping public perception and normalizing conformity to deeply corrupt business, internet, and media practices. These practices stripped individuals of autonomy while dehumanizing the very audiences they claimed to serve.
The corporate world excels at gaslighting, but the deeper issue is hierarchical and systemic. The dehumanization of the human is not instinctual; it is trained. History offers countless examples of this process through spectacle, distraction, and the dramatization of power. While mass manipulation tactics within the media are undeniably complex, the deepest layer lies within narrative construction itself. How does the public arrive at a shared understanding of what is good or bad, normal or strange, worthy or disposable? The further one interrogates this question, the more unsettling the power infrastructure becomes. In my view, it all leads back to mass communication.
This is precisely why I am drawn to the MA in Media and Public Communication at the University of Denver. The program’s emphasis on media theory, research methods, and media law directly aligns with my long-term goal of pursuing a PhD with a strong focus on research and AI, while also preparing me to become a journalist who does not merely react to media systems but rigorously investigates them. Courses such as Media Theories, Methods in Communication Research, and Mass Media Law offer the intellectual and ethical grounding necessary to produce work that is credible, defensible, and impactful. The Media & Globalization focus allows me to situate these systems within a broader transnational context, examining how power, technology, and narrative circulate across borders.
I believe the communications profession is both profoundly underestimated and central to addressing many of the world’s most pressing challenges. Media shapes perception, behavior, and belief at a global scale. My goal is to research these systems deeply, write about them clearly, teach others to recognize them critically, and contribute work that restores agency rather than erodes it. The University of Denver is the environment where I can refine experience into scholarship and instinct into disciplined inquiry.
