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What Studying Strategic Media has Taught Me

One of the remarkable things about studying communications is how it can make your feelings toward a new technology completely flip 180 degrees. Diving deeper and deeper into the literature of this subject gives greater context than what laymen ever have exposure to. An example of this is my view toward social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. There are several widespread criticisms of these websites although the ones that see the most regurgitation often feel shallow and reactionary. There are the usual complaints of these forms of communication being shallow and vain, or of ruining people’s social skills. At their worst, these arguments often manifest as anger-induced hot takes, with no discussion of actual statistics or proof to back it up. It was easy in the past to write them off as the complaints of an older generation who are resisting adoption of a new innovation. However, research into how social media operates reveals a much more nuanced discussion. There is a ...
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Perils of Technology on Younger Minds

  Technology is so omnipresent today that it is easy to take it for granted, especially when it comes to the relationship children and young adults have with it. Research shows that children are now beginning to become aware of their online presence as early as grade school (Lorenz). Mobile devices and online content can provide a much deserved respite for overworked parents, or open up new opportunities for children to learn about the world and teach themselves. However, parents need to be wary about letting their kids have unlimited access to technology. Services such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube actually pose a risk to children’s emotional development and long term mental health. The Social Media Generation In a recent talk Simon Sinek discussed the complaints people have about millennials, mainly them being too entitled, narcissistic and unfocused, and talk about how that is partly a result of their unparalleled access to social media. Millennials, the age brac...
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Personal Branding: Auteurs and Authenticity

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  Personal branding is now instrumental in successfully navigating the job market. Branding used to be the exclusive domain of corporations and their attempts to highlight their product or service. Now that social media has made everyone more interconnected, individuals must also create their own brands, but now the products are themselves (Castrillon). Which means that people have to take the features of social media, which allow you to curate your life, and take it to the most extreme end. Every tweet is an extension of your core ideas, every photo part of a larger story. The result is a precarious balancing act between the needs for personal branding and the truth of your interiority. There is always the danger of relying too much on branding as an end to itself. For a more exaggerated example of this, I always think of the character of Tom Haverford from Parks and Rec (played by Aziz Anzari). The character serves as a sort of parody of younger generations and their relationship...
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On Crowdsourcing and Alternative Forms of Participatory Culture

  The internet has expanded the way businesses interact with their consumer base. For example, before the Internet, crowdsourcing, the practice of asking people online to offer solutions to a problem would have been unthinkable. Most literature I have read about crowdsourcing, however, tends to focus on engineering or marketing, and does not acknowledge how fields such as music, entertainment, and media could benefit from this mind set. This is a real shame, as these fields already experience a similar phenomenon called fandom they could tap into. Modern fandom can be defined as a group of people uniting into a strongly defined community over their shared love for a piece of media. This appreciation manifests in the form of written work (fanfiction) art (fanart) or video/audio pieces that tie into or contribute to the relevant property. Fandom has its roots in the 1960s, when fans of sci-fi stories such as Star Trek would hold convention or create fanzines. What allowed this type...
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Where People Get their News and What We Can Do About It

  As online spaces become the dominant setting for communication, discussion, and discourse in human society, we need to reassess the role social media plays in news. While these spaces are prime places for professionals to update people about the world, it is also an ideal environment for disinformation to spread. The freedom and anonymity of the Internet often removes the sense of culpability that traditional avenues of news often have built into them. To properly ascertain this situation, three questions need answering. First, what are the major sources of news online. Second, why are they becoming the new source of authority? Third, who has the power to address these issues and what should they do to minimize the tide of misleading information. The first question can be difficult to address, because in theory, anyone can be a source of news online. Anyone can post video or photos of a major event that informs the national or worldwide narrative surrounding it. Thankfully, aft...
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Cyber Punk, Foucault, and How Social Media Forces us to Confront Identity

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  In the sci-fi thriller Ghost in the Shell (the 1995 animated movie, not the 2017 live action-remake) there is a confounding scene of a series of seemingly unrelated images of a futuristic city that does not immediately add to the plot. Instead of progressing the story, the film takes its time to contrast different elements of the environment and allow the audience to see older building and modern technology combine to create a distinct city. Far from being random, this sequence reinforces the themes at the center of the film, the way technology changes our perception to identity and its relationship to the physical (Nerdwirter1). This idea, that humanity must reevaluate itself with the advent of a digital world, is present in the entirety of the cyberpunk genre, which combines the cynicism and dirty urban landscapes of 1940s noir films with societal distrust of emerging technology and the institutions that abuse them. Another Japanese film, Akira , shows its characters redefin...
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The Digital Divide: What Do We Actually Do About It?

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Recently Forbes magazine published an article pleading for action to take palace that will close the digital divide. This is the phenomenon where children do not have access to necessary technology to assist them in learning and as a result, fall academically behind compared to more well off peers (Taylor 2020). The piece outlines a solid argument for addressing this issue, and correctly identifies how the outbreak of COVID-19 exacerbated these pre-existing problems. While it demands that people look beyond short term solutions to solve the problem, it does not have much to offer in terms of an actual plan to close the gap. Nor does it address the obstacles a long-term solution must contend with, such as infrastructure, budget, and training. Thankfully, there are plenty of real life case studies that offer valuable insight into restoring equity amongst students. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center broke down how economic standing limits the access people have to technology. For ex...
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