My Final... So What?

Thumbs-up, double taps, and re-tweets are all forms of income. Income that people are willing to exploit behind the mask of a computer screen and name change of a screen-name. And behavior that advertisers are willing to pay for all for the sake of your attention. We live not only in a media world but a world where the media receives its paycheck signed by advertisement.

As technology had developed media followed shortly after. From pamphlets and newspapers, to the oratory of radio, then visual for the TV and not only affordable but free accessibility to surmountable amounts of information, and it is a beautiful and remarkable resource we have come to create for ourselves. But... it seems to me that in the beginning of these technology and media co-evolution people enjoyed being entertained, but they also valued being informed at an affordable cost. Now it seems we have blended the two values to create "infotainment."

Also the surmountable information provided by the internet seems to have given us the inherent right that information should be free. David Raanan writes in his in his Linked-Post "Do We Care More About Being Entertained Than About Being Politically Informed?," that our culture has put on emphasis on entertainment and we now subjected to a "Darwinian process [where] the less entertaining is weeded out [and] the more entertaining survives to be broadcasted," or now with social media shared, retweeted, and reposted with the identity of a hashtag. Along with entertainment comes the value of escape, because we can opt out when we don't want to be informed or when we aren't being entertained enough. No wonder mediums are now competing with other mediums for our attention and fact and opinion are hard to decipher between the two. Because media is willing to exploit whatever to get our attention for profit, and now we are doing it to ourselves on social media. This is becoming the norm and why we are being desensitized.

Despite the negative intro I don't think everything in the media is bad, there is a lot of good, a lot of information and a lot of people taking advantage of that resource, but I don't think that is of the majority. As Monica Lewinsky had as one of her points that along with our amendment right to freedom of speech and expression comes responsibility and for some reason the internet seems to throw that out the door. 

One thing I didn't agree with that Lewinsky had said was that "shame cannot survive empathy." In some cases it is sadly the truth, but I think random acts of kindness can deter people from taking there own lives and show even the slightest light or bit of good in the self-consumption of shame. Like Lewinsky said "consistency creates change" and that led me to ask the question "How do you build change?" I think like most things that starts individually and individually you can start consuming social media and media with a sense of responsibility.

One way I think we can do that is by using the report feature given to us on most, if not all social media, because its not just for reporting explicit content, but you can even click on the option to say that "I'm not interested in this tweet," or Facebook Post, or Instagram picture. Instagram provides even more options that I think are powerful like "Hate speech or symbols", which could be used to try and break down stereotypes, or "Self injury" that could provide help for people that are seeking it and need it.  The algorithm for those seem like a curiosity to me, but I think it can be a step in the right direction. 

I know over the past two years my consumption of social media has dramatically declined, keeping up with a few people from time to time, but I think it is because I hated wasted my timing on things or even people I didn't care about. I have gone through and tried to filter people into groups, but still haven't seen the changes in my feed like I have wanted. I think the report feature is worth a shot to try and help me filter through social media to make it a more powerful tool for myself. 

To see a consistent change in our culture today I think we have to re-separate our values of being informed and entertained and realize the value and opportunity we have to be informed. Individually that starts we us becoming more conscious of what we want and don't not want to be consuming, which is a goal I have been working toward and want to continue to do so.  

Extra Credit: From Alexander the Great to the so-called Islamic State

My memories of September 11th, 2011 are short, being that I was only the age of seven. The second grade memories I do have started with a class interruption then we turned on the TV to the news and watched as the events unfolded. Beyond that I remember Mrs. Greenland trying to have a class discussion with us explaining what was happening. There of course was a lot of confusion and questions, and it was hard for us to grasp what the bad guys were doing. The only other thing I remember after school is the news was on a lot at my house, more than usual, which I despised because I hated the news as a kid. But then that was it, in my mind 9/11 only lasted a few days.

Only years later was I able to grasp the magnitude of what had actually happened, but honestly since then things haven't gotten much clearer. I am still confused on what the "bad guys" are doing and why.

Shadman Bashir is a very knowledgeable man and an inside view to what is actually going on and was a unique experience to listen to him. Chronologically I am still very lost and I think that I definitely would have a more comprehensible understanding if I could listen to the lectures two or three times over. Then maybe I could have a basic sense of what happened, why and be able to answer those questions contemporarily as well. But the theme that I took away was the fearful question of "Who is our enemies?"

His lecture reminded me of a picture I had posted earlier to my blog.

For one reason or another this picture or more like the statement within the picture resonated sincere to me. "The group most affected by Islams terrorism is Muslims." This was also further supported by by Bashir's lecture. But yet we are ignorant by our own western fear that we are more at risk and the media feeds our fear by reiterating the Paris attacks over again and again, but ignoring stories of Beruit and minimize the attacks because they weren't western?

Terrorism is a tactic of fear but when the trending act of a shooting occurs by one of our own they are labeled as a gunman, but when it is someone foreign to us we label them as terrorism. Yet the the minimal occurrences of terrorism we have had in the US is trending in the middle-eastern daily, but we are the victims? They are truly the ones faced with the question "who are our enemies?" when they are misunderstood by most and therefore feared by all because our ignorance won't let us see past the our fear of differences.

I think the most surprising thing was that is wasn't always religious, but I do think that plays a huge role in masking who the enemies are for us and even more so for them, because they can't tell the difference between a Muslim who has been promised 72 virgins and one who has not. But our western downfall is that we aren't even aware of the different Muslim interpretations and the exploitation thereof for the younger generations born into these desperate times, but instead have we have labeled them by their looks under our western universal belief of their religion.

This inside from Bashir has helped me find some of the pieces unseen in our media. I definitely will use my notes to help put the pieces together on trying to continue to understand what is really going on, but I am fearful that that what I find will only be a filtered westernized answer.

Facebook Final

Originally I was hoping to work with an already existing page titled "NCHC Partners in the Park", but was still waiting to get the OK. Which I did, but not before the honors adviser at SUU, asked if I wanted to do a more specific page underneath the same organization. But if we are being honest, I wish I would have gone with my plan c to scratch the back of a local auto-body shop after they helped me out in the recent collision I was in, just because I believe it would have been a more successful page.


Anyways the page I worked with was the late bloomer titled, "Partners in the Park: SUU," which is     just a branch under the same organization hosted by SUU with their specific adventures, or projects as they are called, down in southern Utah.

Execution of Tactics: So PITP is an organization that was made to give honor students the opportunity to outdoor experiential learning at national parks and monuments across the country. And I was going to try and cater to the projects specifically offered by SUU, such as Cedar Breaks, Zion, Bryce, and Sequoia. I planned on building a specific community of people who already had a experienced, is experiencing, or will be experiencing one of the projects offered by SUU, with potential of advertising to eligible participants. Not only did I want to find these people, but remind them of their experience, tease the experience they were about to have, or let them know what type of experience was offered and start discussions that way. Also was hoping share PITP goal of educating how to love your parks, but not love them to death. My Facebook campaign definitely had hints of what I was trying to accomplish, but didn't reach to the potential I know it can generate, one of my hindrances was lack of guidance from the adviser I was working with on ideas she wanted to see, as well as not having access to old photos, registrants lists, and itineraries. This also hinder my own research for potential content for the page, but I definitely think I could have been a bit more proactive then I was.

Logos: PITP originated at SUU in 2007 with two projects, one to Bryce and another to Cedar Breaks. PITP has now grown into offering 11 projects for 2016 spread out across about ten different states, and yet they don't appear to have a recognizable logo.

So when creating this logo my goal was to try it universally recognizable, but versatile enough to adjust to the individual projects.


 This is the versatile logo. (Not this specific color)












The logo selected for the page.

The logo I'm proposing for the organization overall.
(Also not necessarily this color.)






Likes: I first started recruiting likes by inviting the people I had met on my PITP project and then the students that had signed up for the upcoming trip in Zion, along with the advisers thereof and a few others associated with SUU honors program. All my likes were organic, other than the desperate class likes Professor Young gave me for my second wave of likes, but desperate likes do pop up on the charts. I topped out at 42 likes, got a straggler at the end, and didn't have any unlikes.

Posts, reaches, types:

So a quick screen shot of some of the posts I made. Once I got things moving along I got, I've averaged about a 50 percent reach given the number of likes I had at the time. The interesting thing is that it didn't seem to depend too much on my timing, whether it was nine in the morning, or three or four in the afternoon, it stayed about 50 percent reached. The reach seemed to reflect about what I got, but I feel as though Facebook was lying to me when it came to the shares, or at least I never got notified. 

I was surprised to see that the couple of links I posted reached a few more people than I thought they would and I even got a click, woop woop. Definitely my most successful post by far was an album I posted from the recent project I went on. Pictures obviously a huge context on Facebook in our visual era, more importantly those pictures have people, and more importantly than that is that you tag those people. The album reached 444 and 33 engaged and continuing to do so, so that is exciting and which is why I had access to some photos from those older trips. 

People: So because my audience is such a specific group I wasn't surprised that my main age group was between ages 18-24, the average college and undergrad age. More women are involved and like that page, which might be because women are typically more active on Facebook, but also because the majority of women attend these projects. Something I am hoping to change and think the Facebook page could help accomplish to appeal to young men, like Derek Walters, in my targeted audience. 

The next biggest age group was the one after between ages 25-34, which I would guess are some of the advisers and professors involved thereof and likewise into the older ages. Definitely would like to see an increase in the ages as older trips and brought back and as the page and program continues respectively to really build that community and the memories made there. 

The people ranged from all over the country, which also doesn't surprise me based on the PITP organization, but also exciting to see it branch out in those ways. Below is the map of my targeted audience in the ad I created to give you an idea. 

Self-Evaluation / Summary: This campaign definitely has a lot more potential than I was able to produce over the summer. One of the reasons being I didn't have access to the information I wanted, but I also wasn't as proactive as I could have been. I was a bit hesitate to just "go for it," being that I was representing another organization and university. I am hoping to actually continue working with the page. I love this organization and want to continue to be a part of it as it continues to grow and help it in its growth. Couple things that I would and/or will continue to do differently is; One, become more educated on the parks and the projects that will be and have been offered. Two, if I took on more campaigns I might make a separate individual, but professional Facebook account, so that way I could like people and pages that I need to like for the campaigns, but keep my personal page separate.

I definitely still have a lot to learn about Facebook and its inner workings, but this has been a great introduction.

Facebook Ad

The demographics of my ad were a little tricky. I wanted to appeal to the ages of 18 to 25, specifically, but I feel like it might reach them word of mouth through honors advisers and programs. So I kept  the range from 18 to 35, hoping to accomplish that.

I tried to accomplish gearing toward universities also used the most recently list of participants who are attending the next project in Zion and set my zones on the maps in the cities and towns where their universities were located.

I geared the demographics and interests toward fields like college students, college advisers, honors students and outdoor exploring, national parks, etc. 

I didn't have too many photos to work with, so I just wanted to use to logo I had created, also as a starting point to build some familiarity there. I found it frustrating trying to size the photo to fit well and so it was so skewed. It still wasn't the best, but I am not the most tech savy person. 

For future ads, I would definitely like to see them craved out to be more specific, like gearing toward a specific university or reaching out to more male students, as the majority of the participants are female students. Also if I had access to some of the older photos, definitely using them to re-express what the experience could be like for people. 

Automatic Attitudinal Response: Food Stamps

This post took me a little longer to think about, which is probably a sign that I am not very aware of my automatic attitudinal responses. I tried to think what makes me a little tick and memories of my hometown actually popped up. Now a little disclaimer, I love my hometown and glad I grew up there because I think it helped make me who I am, as did the places or places you grew up, but as always there is a but.

But I had two pet peeves when I worked as a cashier at our one and only grocery store. One, scanning all the junk food that went through the check line before they swipped their food stamps and two, helping them out to their Cadillac Escalade.

Of course I defaulted to finding a source that defaulted with what is wrong with food stamps.

Top 10 reasons Food Stamps Need to be Reformed

This article agreed with some of the points I felt was wrong with food stamps, such as creating dependency, and it is prone to fraud and being an abused system. It also brought awareness to maybe some other issues, such as the programs goal aiming for enrollment versus need.

This short documentary explains some of these same points also, although I am a little skeptical about where the source of the this documentary, very one sided perspective.

I tried to learn a little more about how food stamps work. This video makes it seem like it isn't easy to abuse the system but then how many more people are getting boob jobs while on food stamps? Or is this a marginalized example? 

I am sympathetic to the families who truly do need it like Mercedes. She is very respectful and has an incredible amount of integrity, but is she also a marginal example?

Thinking back to that job now I wish I would have paid a little more attention to who was really using food stamps, to who was buying the junk food versus nutrition, etc. Is it marginalized in my own mind based off my own experiences? Is the media only showing us marginalized examples?

I don't notice food stamps really anymore since I haven't been a cashier and don't see it on a daily basis, but I am still skeptical of the system. I definitely there is room for improvement, less abuse, quality over quantity and so families like Mercedes can have afford nutrition while they are trying to get back on their feet and even buy a few sweet treats to enjoy for her and her family.

OTM #3: The Zika Effect

This On The Media might be a little ways back, but I was curious to learn about Zika and the effect the media has when reporting viral diseases, titled as The Zika Effect. Zika reminded me a bit of Ebola and they do, do a bit of comparison between the two and the reporting there of.

This OTM also reminded me of this clip from Russel Howard's show when Ebola was the epidemic we were fearing in 2014.

When I first heard about Zika, I figured this is what we would see on the media coverage of it and we did, but I felt like the duration was much shorter. If you weren't listening to the news about the first week we came back for the second semester you might have missed hearing about Zika. Or least that is how it seemed to me, granted I haven't been listening to the news lately, because my roommate has taken over the living, basically all semester.

Anyways, Zika is the fourth global health emergency claimed by the World Health Organization and it is because Zika is suspected to cause microcephaly, which is when a baby is born with a smaller head due to an underdeveloped brain, and guillain-barre syndrome, which is a sudden paralyses, but has not yet been directly linked to do so, yet. The key world is 'suspected', but there is no certainty.

OK, so two questions I came away with. One, isn't the first step to remain calm ? Two, don't we preach preventive care in America?

My first question is criticism for the media that seems to dramatize everything for the sake of entertainment, but isn't their job to inform us, not entertain us?  The media seems to play into our human emotion of fearing what we don't know and can't control by dramatizing the information. But maybe the problem isn't their fault, but rather ours, because we pay attention to the drama.

The second thing that struck me was that, things like this don't get funded until it is blown up in the media. But we try to be a preventive culture in America right? That's why we brush our teeth everyday and follow up with a yearly to semiyearly dentist visit, that why they preach getting check ups, etc. Granted Zika might not be as serious as the media is painting it and we can't fund every suspicion we have in the medical field, but still kind of raises a bit of concern doesn't it?

I think this is another example of one of the down falls we have in our instant googling world and that is we want answers and we want them now. Maybe we have truly lost the philosophy that patience is a virtue in today's media society.

Democracy 2.0- More flawed than I thought, but what about alternative voting?

In an election year there seems to be two ways to waste your vote, voting for and less popular candidate in the pre-election and voting in a non-swing state in the general election.

It seems the only way your vote truly has any weight is when you are voting in a swing state, where the outcome is not predictable. You really do have a fifty-fifty chance of your nominee winning and not being overruled by the dominant republican or democratic voting of that state's history.

Prediction of 2016 swing states compared to swing states in 2012.

Earlier today I had asked a friend who he was pulling for in the elections. He said most of the candidates were pretty extreme and there was really no one moderate enough to match his views, but he is pulling for Sanders. He is originally from Washington and I asked him if he was registered to vote and he said yes he is registered in Utah.

After first I was a little puzzled by this, because I thought you had to register in the state you were a resident of, but it seems college students get the option and even kind of an advantage. But there goes his vote in the republic partied state of Utah when Washington has a of being a bit of a swing state historically but has voted democratic the last seven years.

Then I thought if college students can pick where to register to vote, I wonder if other people get the option too? And if that was the case, why don't we all vote in swing states to make our vote matter ? Unless you obviously are already voting republican or democratic and your states tends to do so. Obviously, it isn't that easy to just jump from state to state with registration, there is some effort, but it is a possibility.

So I'll stick to registering to vote in Nevada, where I am from, but I thought as least your vote counts in the primaries. Well that is actually not as straight forward as I thought and more flawed then I thought too. there is actually more to that than I thought too and that doesn't guarantee your vote will count either depending on the state and how they regulate the delegates to vote in the National convention.

There is actually more to that than I thought too  with caucuses promoting more discussion and providing a more educated vote but limiting the number of people who vote do too have to be present at a certain time. And there three types of primaries, but at least those are all-day, but there is no discussion and you better cross your fingers your state isn't a closed primary and your an independent voter. But your vote still isn't guaranteed to count  thanks to state laws and how they regulate its delegates to vote in the National convention, which is where the really voting happens. 

Then to the general election, where hopefully your are as lucky as me and get to vote in a swing state, where your vote actually has some weight to it. 

I get it now, why people don't vote, because in some cases or rather the majority of cases your vote doesn't count if you aren't with the majority. I get it now why people are as engaged and this attitude of "I don't care" has been trickled down through the generations. I get why I, like most of my generation, I was so confused when we were taught democracy is so great, but really it depends. And the reason our people sought so hard for the right to vote was because that was also your power of freedom of speech right?  But now only the majority is being heard in numerous states and candidates only focus on the minority of states to getting them swinging their way. 

Then I started to wonder if the electoral college is so bad and so few voices are heard, somebody for sure has had to have thought about a different way of doing things. 

 

I kind of like this one anyways, because the smaller parties vote can still be worth value, but it isn't lost and you still get a choice even if your first one is vetoed. Which I also think will hold bigger parties, and even all parties, more accountable in what they say and what they do. 

By the way, there is is cool website, www.270towin.com, where you can find each states voting history and can even make you own prediction on how states will vote in the interactive map. Maybe even share it on social media to get a conversation going who you think will win and why? Does that match who you want to win?  

OTM #2: Spotlight on "Spotlight" the movie

This episode of on the media was an extra and short, but I thought it was relevant to our discussion on religion last week and to the Oscars last night having received the top academy award "Spotlight" took best picture.

It was surprising to hear another religion that had tried to cover up shameful things about the church, this time being the catholic church and child molesting that they had tried to cover up.

After listening to the extra On The Media: Spotlight on "Spotlight" the movie, I was shocked I had never heard this about this occurrence in the Catholic and I had missed the news about the movie.

I'm not an avid movie-goer and plenty of people have told me they are going to give me a movification after they are shocked by the number of movies I haven't seen. I don't do this intentionally, I just generally don't have a lot of time too.

As for the article on the Catholic cover-up of child molestation, that was released way back in 2002. I was in 3rd grade and what 3 grader do you know that is concerned with what is going on in the world.

The most interesting thing said in this episode was when Sacha Pfeiffer, who worked for the spotlight team, said was because religion are private institutions by law they are not required to hand over records and they most likely are not going to. It is kind of a duhhhhh statement, but really an ah-ha moment for myself.

After some digging I finally found both parts of the original article.
Part 1: Church allowed abuse by priest for years
Part 2: Geoghan preferred preying on poorer children


Also a book written by the Spotlight.


I also learned found an interesting comparison while trying to find the two parts to the original articles that Boston is very catholic and like the Desert News for the LDS, they have the CRUX. I don't know if the Crux is owned by the catholic church like the LDS church owns Desert News, but the Crux seems to address a lot of problems within the catholic church. Makes me wonder even though they are covering all things catholic, should the job of these papers be to hold the private institutions accountable? Do they?


Going back to the focusing on the LDS church I tried to find topics there of that were controversial, like polgamy and the suicide rate after general conference. I found an explanation of the LDS church justifying use for polgamy and guidance for dealing with suicide, but it wasn't really the detail I was hoping to find.

The story on the Catholic church reminds me of the documentary "Prophet's Prey" that was shown earlier this year and just before "Spotlight" was released actually, that talked about the FLDS branching away from the LDS church and the awful things and corruption that was and is going on in our backyard of Colorado City.

Now, I am not discrediting the LDS from this film about the FDLS or would not even say the film is a reflection of what the LDS history with polgamy was like, but I think it is important to know the history of thereof. And I think it is important if you are LDS to know of the FLDS, because like it is derived from the LDS and call themselves the Fundamentalists of Latter-Day Saints.

There were two things that I took away from this podcast outside of the story.

One, having gone into this major with the curiosity of becoming a journalist, I like that fact that the Spotlight team stands for what journalism really should be as investigation. It is hard with pressure of technology to not scratch more then the surface for the sake of time and  daily entertainment. I appreciate that the movie focuses on this aspect too instead of covering the story from maybe the perspectives of the victims.

"We also that it reminds people on how important investigative journalism is. You have to support this work. That means buying your newspaper, get a digital subscription, get home delivery, that's the revenue that helps us do what we do." -Pfeiffer

The second thing I took away and  I commend Pfeiffer for was her example of civility. Despite the awful truth part of the Catholic church's history that she helped undercover she didn't discredit the church but she hoped that this story would only lead the church to hold itself more accountable.

"We certainly hope it keeps the church working hard to make sure this doesn't happen again."
-Pfeiffer

This is a movie I will definitely be making time for in the future to watch.

Religion 2.0

I went to YouTube and punched in religion and came across this video. I never knew about George Carlin prior, but I was intrigued by the title "Religion is Bullshit." It shed some humor on a sensitive subject and a little light, so I thought I would share it with the class before diving into my own history with religion.

I wasn't religious until... well lets say I was invented to start attending church when I was in the fourth grade. And so my sister and I started to attend church with a teacher, whom we respected and admired, and who later became our sixth grade teacher. And to a religion my mom grew up in, but was not an active member. Does the jargon sound a little familiar? 

Now I don't know if other religions classify their members and their routine attendance by active or inactive, but to clarify things up for people who are unfamiliar I'm talking specifically to about the LDS religion. 

I had my feeling of epiphany that the church was true, just like the missionaries said I would, shortly after their lessons, which would be the beginning to my journey of my faith. I wasn't completely new to the church. I had been blessed as a baby and even remember earlier years in primary. After the lessons from the missionaries my sister and I were baptized by my grandpa, then we followed suit. Church on Sundays to keep the Sabbath holy and because it made your day "just so much better", attending all the meetings and extra curricular activities during the week because "you were putting God first in your life", and when you couldn't find answers to your questions you would "doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith."

I think back on my times of anxiety and guilt reflecting on myself and whether or not I would make it into the celestial kingdom, whether I was worthy enough to; whether my nonmember dad, and other beloved nonmember relatives, would choose the church in the afterlife or miraculously be converted in this life; whether my inactive mother, grandma, grandpa would ever become active again so we could be a "family together forever." I would try to suppress my anxiety with my faith by doubting my doubts and bleach my guilt when I gathered enough courage to confess my sin.  Then motivating myself to remain worthy by reminding myself I didn't want to have those same feelings of guilt ever again and to remain happy and clean. But I still always feared I was never truly clean again and therefor not clean enough and wouldn't make it into the celestial kingdom? But would i even be happy there if I wasn't with my family? I just had to remember to bring in the full circle to doubt my doubts before I doubted my faith. 

But don't worry because the people who didn't learn of the truth in this life, will get the opportunity to in the next. And we are blessed to get to know the truth in this life, but will be damned if we ever deny it. I remember being jealous of the people who didn't know of the true church and got to be worldly with the promise of a clean slate in the afterlife. Where I was damned when I sinned because I denied the truth leading me to think I would never make it to the celestial kingdom while the non-truth knowers got a one way free ticket. Jealousy, another sin. 

I left for college with a clean confessed slate, to a place where no one knew of my hypocritical sins and for a new start to maybe being truly clean. Until I made friends, who gave me my first home away from home, and led me to question the definition of family and rethink again "family together forever." I wanted them and their sinful selves with me in heaven. And then I put myself in "temptation" and opened my mind to the sinful side of opposition. I felt guilty of course and hypocritical again which led to a lot of confusion, because I sinned, but didn't feel sinful. I still felt like the same me people had befriended and loved.

I asked tough questions searching for answer because "ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened" Mathew 7:7-8. But I got tired of not being heard with the reiterated answers people told me because that is what they had been taught their whole lives. 

I even thought I would be a better Mormon when I transferred down to Utah, but it was the same stuff different day. I finally got tried of being told there was only one way to believe and that is all what religion is trying to convince you of. To me it was like saying there is only one true and right way to live and we all know that isn't true. 

Privacy 2.0

What do I believe about privacy? I don’t know. I feel like a lot of this political stuff I am still naïve in a sense of what is going on.

I think back to a recent friend I met here at Dixie who keeps a sticky note over her front camera because she knows how easy it is to hack into them. I asked her if she knew how to do it. She said no. So I'm skeptical as to how easy it is. And maybe somebody in class could enlighten me.

And I am the bit of the opposite, if I knew somebody was watching me I would probably moon the camera or do some practical joking of some kind. But the key word “if”, because I don’t know if or when they are. Or if it is all the time. And I can’t help but think how boring I would be to watch 96% of the time.

I went out hunting on youtube to see if I could be taught how to hack into my own front camera. I have yet been able to do it, but now I am almost kind of determined to figure it out now for kicks and giggles. If I figure it out, I'll let ya know. But I did find this video that showed how to see if anyone might be on my computer that shouldn't be.

My task manager looked a little different working on Windows ten, but I didn't find anything suspicious. Though after watching the documentary in class this week, I am skeptical to think that the FBI and NSA are surveilling my computer and yours backdoor through Microsoft security systems, where they aren't readily noticeable.

Regarding other aspects of privacy, I think it is cool that ads pop up for me, because they are convenient and I have enough self-control not to buy everything I want versus what I need. However I also don’t pay a lot of attention to them either. But I think our generation might be naïve to the idea of privacy and what it truly is and vice versa can be said about older generations by taking our day and age and thinking its all evil under the argument that it isn’t how things use to be.

Are we willing to sacrifice our some of our freedom to be monitored by the government for safety? Or are we going to be more vigilante and start to rebuild closer communities? Maybe we are so opposed to the idea of being monitored because we are afraid of government abusing the power or individuals like ourselves figuring out how to abuse by means of the government?

One last thought on privacy that is derived from journalism, but I think can be applied on an individual basis is... When learning about journalism in college they pose the question “why are journalists able to exploit private matters of celebrities and public figures and not individuals within the community?” And the answer is because they are a public figure as a celebrity and public official they have willingly put themselves out in the public. So now my question is, are we giving up our rights to privacy by putting ourselves out there willingly through social media?

Learning 2.0

Trying to think of a different way of learning is actually abstract for me, because the system of how we are trained to learn is all I have ever known. I have never questioned it or even questioned there was a different way of learning. I have always just accepted it for what it was. 

Now I am not a student who follows the philosophy the "C's get degrees" and have always resented the idea of doing the bare minimum in school just to get by. 

Maybe part of the problem is how we have evolved in the way we learn. The video helps illustrate that evolution. 

In the beginning of the video states "Education has never changed its definition" and at the end says "It just changed the way of teaching and learning," but is that the problem.

This is just a speculation but I feel as though memory was more valued in the beginning of education. This leads me to reflect on Postman's argues in his book "Amusing Ourselves to Death : A public discourse in the age of show business." Could we replace the words "show business" with "education" and see the argument that the only way we can teach is if is entertaining? Would it be valid with the argument of the evolution of technology of a projector, to power points, a smart board, ebooks, etc?  Is the value of memory only valued long enough to get through the standardized testing and move on? Almost could be paralleled to the Postman's chapter of  "Now.... This." where our culture only values on the completion of the system and the speed thereof and not the process. 

I have always thought the way of thinking to do the bare minimum was just wasting your  own time, and that if we have do it anyways than you might as well get the most out of it. But I am an optimist and like this perspective on life, but I think it defaults me to omitting that a negative perspective might have a valid point. Like the fact that those students probably felt exactly as I had described them about the school system, that it is wasting their time.  

This video animates along with Sir Ken Robinson talk and it helped put my optimistic default in perspective. 

But I am still left to wonder how do we change the system? 

Facebook Campaign

I will hopefully be getting permission to administer a Facebook page titled NCHC: Partners in the Park.

The acronym NCHC sounds for the National Collegiate Honors Council and their mission is to "support and enhance the community of educational institutions, professionals, and students who participate in collegiate honors education around the world."

One way they are doing that is through the program Partners in the Park. The program originated out of South Utah University by a man named Matthew Nickerson, who has the honors director for sometime. He partnered up with Paul Roelandt, a ranger from Cedar Breaks and they did the first snowshoeing "project" as they call them. The program is designed to educate honors students who they believe the majority of them will become leaders and teach them about the outdoors. Different ways you can experience, educate them on the history of the parks and the land, how to take care of them so generations to come can have the same experience. They hope to create advocates to not only care and respect for the parks, but to show support for the parks so the government one day doesn't decided to shut them down. They hope students will take these experiences you will continue to share them with her family and friends and then share that experience with the people they love, so on and so forth.

I think it is a great program and I had the opportunity, thanks to the funding provided from the reestablishing Honors program here at Dixie, to go on that same snowshoeing at SUU that started the whole think and meet both Nickerson and Ranger Roelandt. I never experienced snowshoeing, snow that deep, or winter camping and I loved it. I thought it was a great experience and I definitely will be passing it along to my friends and family.

But..... they could use some help promoting themselves.
This is their Facebook page: NCHC: Partners in the Park

Tactics:

• Most projects are during the breaks, great timing for students.
• Post about past projects, contact people who have experienced those past trips.
• Post about future projects, contact people who plan on attending those projects. 
• Get in touch with people who put together and host the projects. 
• Post news and information on national and state parks and monuments. 
• Encourage students, advisers, honors programs to share, tweet and insta their experiences. 

Communication Objectives: 

1. To promote an opportunity of outdoor experiential learning for driven students in honors programs across the country by gaining outdoor skills and knowledge.

2. To show how to love the national and state parks and monuments, but not love them to death.

3. To teach and build a partnership with the students and the parks so that future partnerships will be taught, shared and flourish and the parks and monuments will have advocates to support and care for them for generations to come.

Target Audience:

Jade Poulmen, 20, Gainsville, FL

Alice is a sophomore at the University of Florida. She has never traveled any farther west than the Mississippi. She has also never seen snow or camping, but she loves to travel, meet new people, and learn from new experiences. She has googled beautiful pictures of the red rock out in southern Utah and thinks snowshoeing in the winter sounds like a great first visit.

Caroline Peebles, 22, St. George, UT

Tanya is a senior,originally from St. George, and attends Dixie State University because out-of-state is out of the question. Tanya loves the outdoors and jumps in her car every weekend she can to experience the wonders southern Utah has to offer. She is an experienced hiker, rock climber, canyoneerer, kayaker, swimmer and mountain biker. She loves to travel when she can afford it and would love to experience something outside of the desert. She wonders if Olympic National Park is as green as she has seen on Pinterest.

Derek Waters, 18, Crow Agency, MT

Derek is a freshman who choose to start college at a Little Big Horn College, because it was cheap, close to home and he figured a community college was a good starting point.  Derek is young and inexperienced in may things and like most freshmen still undecided in his major, but he is a hard worker, bright and very intelligent. Montana is all he has ever known and wonders what the warm ocean feels like washing off the sand in between his toes. He can't wait to hear back to about the scholarship he will win to venture to the US Virgin Islands where he will find his inspiration to become an environmental scientist.

Rascism 2.0

It is a bit of a funny question to look at the rubric and ask what my position on racism is. When I was younger I use to think racism was a thing of the past but as I've gotten older I have realized just how short a hundred to fifty years really is.

I think of my earliest realizations that racism still existed was actually a conversation I had with my mom. I can't remember exactly how the conversation went, but it was basically me telling her how I had more of an attraction to darker men and then her making the comment that "I tried telling your Dad to be prepared that you might bring one home." To that I asked why she would say a thing like that and she said your dad is a bit racist, which was a complete surprise to me. I had a cousin (whom I consider an Uncle due to age) that made it quite clear he was racist, but not my dad. I can't quite remember my age, but I believe I was a senior in high school or the end of my freshman year of college. Up to that point I had never even dated anybody white. I had dated Mexican (because the was the majority of the community population in high school) , my high school sweetheart was half indie, half white (but he didn't look white), and I hadn't ever been in a relationship with someone black, but I had hung around with a few different black guys.

I was so surprised by that conversation with my mom because my dad is one of the most caring people I know. He is the guy who has swallowed thousands and thousands of dollars helping out his other six siblings and his parents, the man who was the first one to come upon a car accident and immediately start pulling people out of the wreck,  the man who wanted me to take a sip of his drink as a kid just so he could laugh at the face he knew I would make, the man who jokes around with my first dates, and the man who would do and has done absolutely everything to give his wife and girls a good life. Him racist? Was news to me.

Then my mom had made the comment of "think about your kids." I laughed at this," Think of my kids? Mom we are living in the 21st century." I think that was the moment I realized how short a century is, that was when I became skeptical to think how many white people who still are.

I am not racist, but I am still fearful. Is it from the stereotypes made? Not the ones we all joke about like all black people like fried chicken or all white girls crave Starbucks. But the ones like all black people steal or all Muslims believe in the resolution of violence.

So is stereotyping racist? I don't think I am superior because I am white, or personally attack anyone with racial slurs under my breathe while passed by someone of a different race. I don't think 'damn those niggers and those self-exploding bastards,' but I am skeptical when I sit in a room with a Muslim in traditional dress or pass a black citizen in the street alone in the evening.  Does my skepticism make me racist? Has stereotyping lead me unconsciously through antipathy to being racist?

And actually these thoughts of skepticism don't cross my mind if I see a female Muslim in a head dress or pass a black woman late at night, it is only with men. So then am I sexist?

Stereotyping is defined as a generalization, where as racism is defined as a general belief of superiority due to race. Positive stereotypes I think can be humorous, a way to laugh at ourselves and even a starting point. I saw this humor when I searched the hashtag I'm racist.

Sometimes we expect ourselves and others to live up to our stereotypes (below).




And others admit their biases.

Negatives stereos types is what is dangerous. I think they imply superiority and can lead to aversion and antipathy which is racism.

I think we can live with stereotypes, we just need to remember the negatives come from a marginalized percentage.

On the Media: The Language of Terror

I am afraid of Muslims. I won't deny that when I am in the same room as a Muslim that I am skeptical, but I hate that I am. Maybe they are just as skeptical of me that I will do something out of fear to them because I am white, just as much as I am skeptical of them that they will do something out of hate because they are Muslim.

I find my skepticism ignorant of fear and I hate that is probably due to the lack of my uneducated perspective. That us why I chose this On The Media "The Language of Terror" on a whim it would help me bring my trivial closer to full circle. It did a bit, at least a starting point.

During this episode on On the Media Jack Shafer said the media likes to dramatize while Habib Battah said the media only confuses on the drama.

Shafer said in our culture we portray villains always as diabolical and the media plays on this using words like "mastermind" and "unprecedented" but Shafter said says aren't geniuses but what they are doing is "about as sophisticated as ordering a pizza."

J.M. Berger, who wrote a book titled "ISIS State of Terror", said that we either over estimate terrorists or underestimate and both our to the terrorists advantage. If we over estimate them then we make ISIS bigger than they are and we underestimate them and they execute a plan then everybody freaks out.

I think they are simply trying to say that we overthink things. Have we done this to ourselves through our pop culture and media? I think it is a bit humorous that we always preach to stay calm in serious and dangerous situations like fires, earthquake, etc. because when we panic we don't think straight or logically. Then why should we act any different when faced with the serious situation of terrorism?

Habib Battah at the end of his interview criticized the media for not focusing on more stories about people like Adel Termos, but instead they continue to focus on the drama of the Islamic actions. I thought the media was suppose to present both sides, all sides to a story? We don't get context from the media on how marginalized ISIS is to the number of Muslims.

But are we the public any better? Joanne Stocker is a managing editor of Grasswire, a website that uses crowd sourcing, which I am assuming is social media, to fact check breaking news. Stocker said that "we have a human need for answer" which is why we are scapegoating to refugees. I thought it was crazy to hear of the picture she has come across where a selfie was photo-shopped to make the person appear as a terrorist and deemed him to be one of the attackers of Paris. Like it was probably just an average day person ruining another average day person's life for the sake of a social media hit. How could you ruin someone life like that? How many heroes like Adel Termos are you willing to Photoshop for the sake of your fear?

A couple more points. One is that J.M. Berger had hit on the point of name-calling and we call them ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh because they are suppose to have a negative connotation like name-calling. Berger points out though that we still include in the acronym Islamic State and this doesn't de-legitimatize them. So why go with Bergers idea separate the terrorists from Islam and give them another name, one that doesn't legitimize them? Then maybe we will stop stereotyping the rest of the ordinary Muslim citizens as terrorists.  

Point two, Mark Lynch, a political science and international affairs professor at George Washington University, had said that ISIS believes that is wrong to have coexistence with Islam and non-Islam, but the majority of Islam, those everyday citizens don't agree with this radical idea. So one of the goal of ISIS is to make it impossible for Islam to live in peace in the west and so we literally are playing into the hand of terrorists by dramatizing the marginal actions we have seen from ISIS and further stereotyping that extremism to all Muslims.


We are not at war with Islam we are at war with terrorists.


The podcast definitely help me a little less fearful and a little more skeptical of the bad and more vigilante for the good. I am tried of being fearful for the lack of my understanding. I'm tried of us all being fearful for the lack for all our willingness to not understand.

I think this podcast and handbook can put a little more context to our fear of terrorism.

#SOTU

Before I watched the State of the Union Address I decided to jot down a few thoughts I had about Obama to see if my thoughts have changed.

I honestly don't know if Obama is a good President or not. I haven't followed the government too much and I am ashamed to say, like much of my generation I am an uneducated in this area. Which is the reasoning why I don't have a very strong opinion, I like to listen a lot before I make one, but even then I also myself vulnerable to change.

I was registered to vote and am ashamed again to say I was an educated voter that canceled out an educated vote, which Professor Green here at DSU argues why it is pointless for people to vote. I didn't vote for Obama, I felt like the country was voting for him because he was black and that is my honest opinion. I voted for Mitt Romney, because I had learned he helped Utah come out of debt utilizing the Olympics when it was hosted in Salt Lake City. Again, I am ashamed to say I never checked these facts and simply voted off of a gut feeling.

Now I am not racist. In fact, St. George is the whitest community I have ever lived in and is, for another fun fact, actually dubbed whitetopia according to Rich Benjamin, who traveled the US and studied whitetopias and whom I listened to in the Ted Radio Hour podcast titled Adaptation.

I think Obama is a good man and means well, but I don't know how well of a job he actually did.

#SOTU

I missed the beginning of it SOTU, but I don't think I missed much when I finally found it on the forbidden channel of Fox and didn't want to waste time finding where CNN is on the unlabeled sea of channels of cheap cable.

"The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period," Obama had stated. First of I was a little spectacle of this especially after the frame cut to a group of military personnel, who didn't smile, clap, or stand.

Now they could just be a group of angry old white conservative men, but I don't know. At the very least I don't think it is shameful to be skeptical. Second, I feel statements like these more or less puts a target on our back. We are not in a giant international sports league with other countries, these people will kill us.


Obama did say right after we don't make good decisions, but why do we say these things in the first place?

So I am not the most tech savvy or the most social media savvy, aka why I am taking this class. So, because of that I was confused at first when I first was following the twitter feed and watching SOTU and not seeing any radical comments. Then the light bulb went off and I realized there was a top tweet feed and all tweet feed.

You could find some tweet criticism in the top feed, but I felt like I was scrolling through advertisement. Click this, get involved here, etc. I also found it humorous that "Obama" was tweeting as he was speaking.


I appreciate the humor for keeping things light and the skepticism because I like being exposed to opposing views for the sake of keeping us on our toes, but it made me wonder how top tweets were choose and interesting to see some of the irrelevant things people paid attention to.

Then when I switch to the all tweets the feed was more balanced of negative and positive, and the radicals popped up that I was looking for.

I spent some time trying to find my own chirp in the vociferous amount of tweeting going on in the all tweets feed, but was unsuccessful. I also tried looking through my feed to see what my friends were saying, but like the rest of our generation they are as guilty as I had previously openly admitted to falling in the stereotype of not being involved.

One of my favorite parts of the speech was when Obama said we needed to be better citizens.

" It's a lot easier to be cynical; to accept that change is not possible, and the politics is hopeless, and the problem is all the folks who are elected don't car, and to believe that our voices and actions don't matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future."

"... our collective futures depends on your willingness to uphold your duties as a citizen. To vote. To speak out. To stand up for others, especially the weak, especially the vulnerable, knowing that each of us is only here because somebody, somewhere, stood up for us. We need every American to stay active in our public life and not just during election time so that our public life reflects the goodness and decency that I see in the American people every single day."

This to me is one of the biggest problems in American, we are inactive and therefore uneducated and I hate that. I hate that about myself, about my generation, but we are not the only ones guilty of this. It is time for us to start getting involved, to become educated, learn to care again and to reestablish civility as a value quality in our culture. I want to be educated so I can be a good citizen.