Category: Uncategorized

Overall, my semester in this class has been successful. I enjoyed the class vibe and everyone around me wanted to succeed and they helped me if I ever needed help with something.

I knew coming into this class I was going to have to work very hard since it was a 400-level class and I am only a sophomore. Even though I was one of the younger students in the class, I was not going to let that stop me from being successful in the upperclassmen class.

I ended up doing pretty well in the class overall. I understood what was going on for the most part and tried as hard as I could on each assignment.

I also enjoyed learning about the content of the class because it was very relatable to what we go through in our daily lives with technology. I will take what we learned about in this class in my future with technology. I have noticed so much that goes in our lives with the technology that I never even thought about. Technology has taken over all of our lives and I have come to realize that it will only get worse from here on out because technology is advancing so much.

This class was very cool to learn about and I am glad I took the risk of taking a 400-level class. It was worth it in the end.

Our meme presentation was on the Yodeling Boy from Walmart.

He has recently become one of the most popular ‘memes’ in our generation of 2018. He has only been famous for about 2 months, but he has already been on Ellen, performed at Coachella, and many other big stages. Many celebrities are also putting his name out there, so we decided he was the perfect fit for our presentation.

We split up our presentation equally, but I was the person in charge to talk about the larger conversations, which are bigger socially and culturally.

I talked about his performances in various big name places and how that has made him so much popular. He was invited on the Ellen Show and that was what made him so huge. But, the start to the spread of his name came through Twitter and Instagram. Social media has definitely had a huge influence on his popularity in the last couple months. He is very popular for yodeling and that is not something people listen to every day, but now there are people that love watching his performances.

We all worked very hard on each part of our presentations and it turned out very well!

My peers were very helpful when we got into our groups to talk about our research papers.

My topic is on how technology is personally being used on social media sites. Specifically,  I am going to be looking at social issues through media, especially cyberbullying. We see this issue everyday in our lives. It is always happening to someone and that is not fair. I believe this is due to the technological advances that are occurring in our day-to-day lives. It has become a very popular part to our culture. This is why there are so many issues with the younger generation and I want to research why this is causing so much harm into making technology seem worse than it really is.

My group members really helped me out with this. They told me to look at specific cyberbullying examples and try to tie it in to the research that I am doing in order to make it all valid information to make it a strong paper.

Being able to have specific examples within a research paper makes it so much stronger.

They also mentioned to have good citations and scholarly articles to back up my information.

My group members were very helpful with my research paper and I have a better understanding how to make sure it is a solid final paper.

For my feature story, the pictures were easy to capture since I knew exactly what I wanted to take pictures of. I love taking pictures, so this part of the feature story came very easy for me.

I liked the photos part of this part of the project because we were able to find specific pictures that resembled the topic we were talking about in other forms aside from audio and video.

Learning about the different kinds of photos to take was very interesting as well because I did not know that there were different kinds of shots that make or break specific ways that you view pictures.

Overall, my experience was very positive taking these photographs. I never really struggled while finding pictures because I knew exactly what I was looking for and I was able to take photos on campus, in my house, etc.

This entire project was so helpful with my major, especially because I learned SO MUCH that I will take forward with me in my future classes.

I enjoyed doing the audio portion of the project a lot. I am someone that does not stop talking, so doing the interviews was so fascinating and being able to edit my findings was so interesting.

I used the program, Audacity, to edit my audio for our NCT project and I thought it turned out pretty well. My interviews went by very smoothly and the editing process was okay for me. At first, I did not know how to properly edit on Audacity since it was my first time ever using the program. Eventually, I got the hang of it and finished my editing pretty quickly. In the end, my final product came out very well and I am proud of what I accomplished doing the audio portion.

For future assignments, I believe audio is my stronger point vs. doing videos since Audacity was easier for me to understand. I am very glad we had to use two completely different programs for this project because I have learned so much and I cannot wait to learn more with working on projects like this in the future!

Doing this project was definitely something that I was not familiar with, since I have never had experience working with Premiere Pro for the video portion of our project.

I recorded all of my interviews on my cell phone and that part was pretty easy for me, since I am comfortable with interviewing my peers.  After I recorded all of my interviews, I uploaded them to my computer then eventually put them into Premiere Pro.

Once the videos were in Premiere Pro, I just edited them down to the 2 minute maximum time limit. At this point in the process of the project, I was pretty confident with what I had made for my video portion of the project.

My only issue with the video portion was exporting it to send to Dr. Wachanga. I have never worked with Premiere Pro and I did not know the specific requirements in order to export the video properly. Exporting the final product was the main struggle that I encountered throughout the project process.

Overall, I thought this project was very helpful for future assignments in the journalism area. Being able to work with video is very important and once you have the basics down, it will pay off in the end. This was a very good experience for a project and I will only have more experience from here on out.

My topic for my feature story project is the dangers of technology in our society through social media, cell phones, and texting.

I think this is an interesting topic to talk about and get the perspective from students across campus. Social media, cell phones and technology have all become so advanced lately, which makes this topic a stronger argument. There are very dangerous situations that people go through every day behind a screen and that is what I want to find out when interviewing my interviewees.

I will ask the interviewees different questions but in audio and video, they will remain the same questions so every answer is fair. I will also do my research online.

I will be taking the photographs with people on their technological devices and photos of social media.  By doing this, it will give a great perspective on how their can be so many dangers that could be happening behind the screen.

I have never done a project like this before, so it is cool to work with video and audio to incorporate it in with the interviews. The hard part is figuring out how to properly make the video with the edits to make it to the minute requirement.

 

Throughout the 4 articles that I read, they all relate on some kind of level.

1. Why I just asked my students to put their laptops away: Clay Shirky talks about  his reasoning for choosing to ban any type of technology in the classroom. He begins the article by establishing his role-he is a professor of “theory and practice of social media” at NYU. This causes the reader to immediately question why he chose to ban technology because technology is the driving force through the entire class.
2. Is Google making us stupid?: This article talks about how the internet has become a primary source of information, it begins to affect the ability to read books and other long pieces. Even though this process may offer knowledge efficiency, it flattens our brain’s learning experience in the process.
3. Nine propositions towards a cultural theory of youtube: All of the nine propositions are similar but all basically come to a consensus that youtube has become a cultural movement, meaning that many people use it on a daily basis and a lot of information comes in and out of the media site. Sometimes, the media in and out come from other social networking sites.
4. Does the internet make you smarter?: This article talks about how media and technology have made technology very available at alarming rates. Because of this, there is an overall fear that with each technological advance, the youth become less intelligent.

 

With each of these articles, each cover the idea of how technology has become so important in all of our lives in today’s society.

Facebook has become one of social media’s top site for people to go on to see what others are up to, update their friends with their lives, sharing videos, etc.

But is ‘Facebook making us lonely?’ Stephen Marche, tells us his side. Social media- from Facebook to Twitter- they have made us more densely networked than ever. Marche goes on to talk about how we live in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, and yet we have never been more accessible.

The entire article talks about loneliness and how people become more connected to social media, especially Facebook, the lonelier people will become. But in the second article titled, “Facebook Isn’t Making Us Lonely” was written by Eric Kilienberg. He referred back to Marche’s article a lot. He said that in Marche’s article, there is zero evidence that we are more detached or lonely than ever. He does not think that the first article is reliable, due to sources and not a lot of proof.  This article is basically bashing Marche on his article. Being lonely can lead to isolation. If people are isolated, they are disconnected. Disconnection requires little more than shutting down your computer and smartphone.

The third article titled, “The Intimacy of Anonymity” talks about oversharing one’s personal life which could potentially feel like reality tv. In the ’80s and ’90s, anonymity was linked to online culture. In today’s generation, anonymous  outlets on these apps are making it clear that they’re looking for a break from Facebook and other social media.

The fourth article talks about the idea of how Facebook has the issue of identity problems. It is not everyday that Facebook releases a public apology. This article is directed at drag queens and their rights. The issue is that there are people who have 2 identities online to help separate the different personas and social networks that belong to their on-stage and off-stage selves.

Every article talks about the idea of Facebook and how it affects everyone but in different ways. Facebook has evolved so much over the years and it will be evolving in the upcoming years, due to how advanced technology is becoming.

 

Someone’s reputation in life is very important, especially if they love seeking attention. Social media has everything you can think of on it, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. You can look for anyone on Google, and you will find multiple results. “The Future of Reputation” contains three points that make up our society: gossip, rumors, and privacy on the internet.

The article starts off by talking about a young woman in South Korea on a subway train with her dog. The dog pooped on the train and other passengers asked her to clean it up. The woman snapped back and told them to mind her own business. The passengers were not happy with her response, so they took the issue to the internet. It only took hours before she was everywhere on the internet. Everything spreads SO FAST, because of technology.

In the article it states, “The free flow of information threatens to undermine our freedom in the future.” This quote applies directly to the situation with the woman from South Korea. She will be known forever as “dog poop girl” because of how quickly the story got out to the public and rest of the world. She will hear about this small incident forever, especially since it should’ve been handled in a better way.

Everyday people express themselves to a worldwide audience. Instead, one of the passengers expressed the woman’s actions to the world.

The article is split up into:

• the internet as a teenager
• the norm police
• privacy
• generation Google

These four points all talk about the way people present themselves and others on the internet and how it can affect people either in a positive or negative way.

The lesson in this article is that rumors, gossip, or shaming on the Internet have had serious effects. “We must protect privacy of ourselves and others to ensure that the freedom of the Internet doesn’t make us less free.” Being protected in society is the most important thing, but social media and the Internet could ruin that in an instant. Be careful.