Harrison's Communication Blog

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...

In a 2019 article published by the website First Things, Les Sillars wrote about the future of news journalism. In the piece, Sillars writes about the ever changing landscape of news media in response to three factors: the increased role of advertising and corporate interests, the unprecedented pushback from politicians such as Donald Trump, and the decreasing level of trust the public places in news as the fourth pillar of democracy (Sillas 2019). While the article does a good job outlining these problems, it overlooks some significant details. Mainly, the piece treats political bias as a new phenomenon, rather than something that has always been present in the relationship between news reporters and their audience. Furthermore, it does not offer any solutions to this predicament. Something that the piece fails to account for is a phenomenon that has always been present in viewership; cognitive dissonance. This is a behavioral theory that explains human actions as an attempt to create...

  Welcome back to my Strategic Communications blog! For those of you you are not long time readers, my name is Harrison and I am a Troy University Graduate student. I started this blog to discuss interesting topics within my field and share some of my opinions and experiences. In addition to my extensive educational background, I also have experience in film production, broadcast news, digital writing, and film/art criticism. If you would like to see some of my earlier work, you can check out my previous articles at https://harrisonscommunication.blogspot.com/ For my first returning blog post, I would like to talk about streaming and its effects on how we consume data. It is no understatement to say that streaming has completely changed the way people absorb content. On the other hand, it also creates multiple negative side effects that will permanently alter the industry and its ability to create fair, unbiased and diverse content for the public. First, the advent of streaming rew...