On the Media II: Zika Virus

This week, It seems we really only had one choice of topics and that was the Zika virus. I listened to a few of the excerpts highlighting some of the different viewpoints of the Zika Virus. Apparently, this virus has made huge waves in the media and is reminiscent of the panic surrounding the Ebola virus in late 2014 and early 2015. My remaining question: is this virus worthy of panic or is the media sensationalizing it to get higher ratings? After some listening and further research, I think the latter is true.

Apparently the Zika virus, isn't even new. It was first discovered 70 or so years ago. It is only now getting attention now that there is a "treat "on American soil. So far there has been one confirmed case in Boston, and in the winter in a cold climate like Boston the likelihood of it spreading is so slim. Why is the media up in arms about it? Because it now fits into our context. Now that there is a threat of it spreading here, people suddenly care. The exact same thing happened with the Ebola virus, West Africa got no media coverage and no attention was given until the virus hit home. Once there was a single confirmed case in Atlanta the media swarmed, going as far as to live-stream the ambulance ride from a news helicopter. Once things become relatable, the media jumps and the public suddenly cares.

OTM began this week's podcast with a series of actual news reports about the Zika virus. As an uninformed observer, you would think the world is on the verge of an absolute meltdown just from listening to these sound bites. The first guest was Jonathan Katz, who wrote an article depicting his contraction of the disease while in Hati titled "Reporting Zika When You Have Zika." I found his perspective really interesting because he expressed similar feelings on the sensationalizing of diseases (as well natural disasters.) He had the interesting perspective of listening to these types of news reports while actually suffering from Zika. He made it clear that the news made it sound much worse than it was. And should maybe start diverting its attention to much more severe mosquito-carried diseases.

On one hand I do believe it's a vital part of our human nature to prepare things that are are seemingly out of control. However, while everyone prepares only a few are really ever affected and those who prepared are left feeling embarrassed, feeling a little boy-who-cried-wolf. Maybe that is why I haven't seen much about this on my social media feeds, maybe my peers are growing weary of this over sensationalizing. I know I felt the panic with the Ebloa virus. I traveled internationally during the outbreaks and had to fill out extensive paperwork to be allowed to exit the plane. I remember when my flight landed our plane had to be quarantined while men in face masks filled our plane with what I would describe as a bug bomb. It was really unsettling, yet shortly after we never heard anything else about the virus. I will not be likely to send myself through this psychological turmoil over the Zika virus, no thank you.

All in all, I  believe the media is over sensationalizing a disease that probably won't affect many of us. Yet, I am still grateful that other nations are getting some much-needed attention. I wish Americans could care BEFORE the outbreak or before they felt personally affected. It is hard to ask people to understand something that is out of their context and doesn't resonate with them.

Learning 2.0 Homeschooling: Not Just for Hippies and Religious People Anymore

I have been thinking about different institutions of education for a while now, and why some are valued more than others. This topic is especially relevant to my family because in the past few years my high-school-age sister has switched from public school, to charter school, to private school and now online school. She never really enjoyed the dynamics of school and had a lot of trouble making friends with her peers. Now she loves online high school and is accelerating academically. I think learning from home really took the pressure off of her, she doesn't feel isolated or judged by her peers. She now can be honest and ask her teachers or parents meaningful questions without feeling embarrassed. This switch was the best option for our family, but there are a lot of options out there.

This has lead me to think are some forms of education better than others? Why did my fiance's parents pay $6,000 a year for his private education yet mine was essentially free? Is he better educated than me? What about homeschooled children do they have any hope of exceeded academically and socially when they are taught by one single person? While researching this topic, I found a podcast by "Stuff You Should Know" Click HERE if you would like to give it a listen. I highly recommend it.

Compulsory education has an interesting history in the United States. Through 1852-1918, the states slowly began mandating attendance by law --Mississipi was the last to require this in 1918. This made homeschooling illegal even as recent as the 70's. Free and public education meant free babysitting for some people, with the added bonus of creating indoctrinated unquestioning little drones. Eventually, a grass roots group decided to lobby to make homeschooling legal in the states. They attempted to take it to the supreme court to create a federal law all around protecting families who chose to homeschool. They failed on a federal level, however, each state now has its own homeschooling laws.

Parents choose homeschooling for different reasons. Most states require you to fill out paperwork with the intent to pull your child out of school. In these forms, researchers have found 30% of parents say it is because of the environment of the school, 30% say it is for religious or moral reasons, and 16% say they are dissatisfied with their students education.

This podcast pointed out some interesting bits about learning through classical education --the education that you and I probably received. There are three main components that public schools still use. 1. Grammar school age, which focuses on memorization and facts. 2. Middle school age, which focuses on critical thinking 3. High school age, which focuses on rhetoric. To me, these approaches seem very streamline, cut and dry. I have especially strong opinions when it comes to memorization, I have little memory of what I memorized in elementary school. I do remember how I learned to make friends, the stories my teachers would read us, and the tactile and creative learning that took place. These I feel are much more lasting and beneficial for a young child.

There are several other approaches that I learned about that can help cater education to children. Among these, my favorite tactic was called narration. You basically tell the child everything you can teach them about a subject...say whales. Once you, the educator, feel like you have explained everything to him you then ask him to teach you everything he knows about whales. I feel like this is ridiculously applicable to real life. In real conversations, whether they be social or job-related you can't look at your notes. You don't pull out your book report and cite your sources. Instead, you tell people what you know and understand and they tell you what they know and understand. This is one of the few ways we open up a dialog and is the basis of communication.

I could go into greater depth comparing the different approaches to eduaction. All in all, it is hard to say which approach is better, I think the best thing a parent can do for their child's education is to be honest about it. Ask real questions with real explicit answers. Is this working for my child? Do I have the time, energy and resources to change it? Does my child want to change? By opening up this dialog we can choose the education best suited for each child. Thankfully to the few who have fought for homeschooling, private school vouchers, and charter schools, parents now have viable and legal options.

Facebook Campaign Revisited: DSU Films

As I have discussed before, I am in the midst of launching a broad social media campaign for DSU Films. Many people are still unaware of the Film Department's existence, we are using the influential nature of the social media to change that.

While meeting with Phil Tuckett, we decided we wanted to reach both future students as well as future clients. DSU Films has been fortunate to generate enough paid productions to finance their equipment. It is through these paid clients that the department is able to purchase the "latest and greatest," which then better prepares students to enter the job market. Students not only graduate with a resume, they are also very familiar with equipment used on real sets.

Ideal Followers:

Jared: 30-somthing project manager from California. He has been delegated to create a promo for dirt bikes. He has chosen to show off these bikes in the gorgeous red rocks of Southern Utah. He knows little of the area and is looking for an all inclusive production crew. Ideally, someone he could rely on to direct the commercial, shoot and edit it. He finds out about DSU Films from social media, he is directed to the landing page and fills out at enquiry form. Someone contacts him to do a follow-up and he chooses DSU Films to produce his commercial.

Josh: a first-year student at Dixie, he knows he wants to go into something media related but isn't quite sure. He finds DSU Films through social media and likes a lot of the student's behind the scenes photos. He clicks on the hashtag #dsufilms and is immediately connected to current students as well as successful Alumni. Josh then decides he wants to be a part of the film department and takes the initiative to declare his major and enroll in the classes.

Abby: 22-year-old student at Dixie. She hated her generals and was really turned off by school, she had no desire to finish. While on facebook, she saw some of her friends liked some DSU Films photos. In the pictures, students were pushing each other around on a dolly and laughing. Abby realized that this picture was actually taken during a class. She couldn't believe it, up until now all of her classes had been a total snooze-fests and now this class actually seems fun. Abby signed up for the intro class and discovered her love of filmmaking, she continued to work hard pursuing her degree in the Film Emphasis.

In a nut-shell, this campaign will help draw more attention to the film program and hopefully generate more enrollments as well as more paying clients. I believe through some consistency we can make more people aware that the Film Department is alive and well.

Racism 2.0: Should the Oscars Have a Token Nomination?

In search of this week's topic, I first turned to social media. The following clip has been circulating my feed for a few days and I thought it summed up some of my feelings about the recent Oscars controversy.

I'd like to pose the question... are the Oscars about race or eligibility? If it's about the former, then it would seem all past nominees and recipients who are minorities would be offended for being considered. If this were the case, then how would someone ever know if their accomplishments were based on merit or the color of their skin.

I believe the biggest mistake the academy made in regard to this controversy was responding to it so quickly. By promising more women and minority nominees, they gave validity to an otherwise fallacious argument. Voting based on gender or race does a great disservice to the nominees.

This video also raises the question that perhaps there are not enough roles for those of color or for women in Hollywood. I defintely believe this to be true. While writing an outline for a script with some friends we switched the gender of our lead character to female, so now a woman was meant to be playing a role initially imagined as a man. This made for an interesting concept and we had a lot more fun creating a non-traditional character.Or really just a character we didn't default to. Perhaps its not te fault of the Acedemy but of the creators themselves. Maybe they are defaulting to certain characters and creating them on repeat without any reach as to what they could be.

Either way it will be interesting to see some of the changes that happen over the next few years. I am interested to see if we move closer to integration or further into segregation.

Facebook Campaign: DSU Films

This semester I was asked to establish a web presence for DSU films. The program has been fortunate enough to grow very organically with little advertising outside of word of mouth. Its time we succumb to the internet and really kick things up a notch.

My plan includes:

1. Creating a landing page for future professional clients. Most of the funding the film program receives is through professional projects. These clients are often lost when coming to Southern Utah and find DSU purely by happenstance. Last I checked I couldn't even find a phone number for DSU films. This page will also have short professional reels to show off some of the past work students have done.

2. Facebook I will be collaborating with students and faculty to create a stream of content. I know many students and Alumni share behind the scenes photos on their personal accounts that get a lot of attention. By collaborating with them we can gain a lot of cross promotion and followers

3. Instagram This will be a very similar tactic with facebook. We will be sharing a lot of behind the scenes stuff to gather follows like future clients and future students. I will be setting up a drive where students can upload their photos to get featured. I will also be reposting photos and tagging collaborators. DSU has received a lot of donations this year from companies in L.A. I will be tagging them to cross promote their gear and in exchange, they will be reposting our photos for future students and clients to find.

5. Linking them up. I will be usuing each platform to promote the next. Each will build a relationship with clients and students. I am also looking to collaborate with other departments on campus. I'm looking for members of student government, the dance department, the alumni association, and many others to help promote one another.

This won't be easy, but I am excited to see how much attention and growth I can create during my last semester as a student at DSU.

On the Media

This week, I chose to listen to the episode about Aaron Swartz called 'The Wunderkind of the Free Culture Movement" this episode interviews Justin Peters author of the book The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet.

The interview, like the book, compares the life of Aaron Swartz with evolution of copyright laws. It begs the question: who is an information moralist? Is an information moralist the author who believes stealing is wrong? It he the publisher who takes established works of literature from overseas and sells them for nothing? Is he the one who spends the entirety of the 1980's transcribing the bible so that it may be searched one day? Is the moralist the advocate for copyright who convinces preachers to sneak copyright into their sermons? Or is the moralist the person who creates open access to eliminate the privatization of information?  

This question is especially tough to answer for me. I see media in two parts: the creator, and the consumer. It is difficult for me to separate my feelings between the two because I see myself as both. Like Fitzgeralds wrote, "I am both within and without." I am both a consumer who wants open and easily accessible information, and a creator who wants to benefit from my work. While examining the life of Aaron Swartz the author brings to mind a quote from Stewart Brand: 

"Information wants to be free!"

Justin Peters expands upon this slogan saying information wants to be free because it so infinitely cheap to recreate, however, it also wants to be expensive because it is so valuable to the creator. In the information age this becomes more and more true. How much money did Amazon make off your last Ebook purchase versus how much it cost to produce? Imagine a world where we could download our entire textbooks for free. Who is the REAL benefactor of this information, especially information created by those no longer living?

Swartz was first inspired to pursue free and open information when reading the book Understanding Power afterwards Swartz said he could not unsee it. He then pushed what he called content liberation. He wanted to honor the ideal of civil disobedience, claiming it was our duty to share to prevent the privatization of information.

Much like the author in this interview, I surprisingly sided more with Swartz by the end. I too have seen friends lose job opportunities because people are no longer paying for content. However, while learning more and more about the conception of copyright, it seems more and more like a fiscal issue that is being presented as a moral issue. It was fascinating to learn of the push of international copyright in churches. It makes me wonder what other issues have been pushed as "moral"?

What do you think?

Does copyright encourage more creation?


Or does it only benefit a few? 

All in all, this was an interesting conversation that needed to be had.

#SOTU

I had an interesting perspective during the State of the Union address. I was unable to stream it live due to an evening class on Tuesday night. Because of this, I couldn't help but be exposed to social commentary before watching it. Many news outlets and individuals were saying President Obama brushed a lot of issues under the rug, such as foreign policy. Because of this rhetoric, I went in with preconceived notions about the speech and found myself carefully looking for the president to glaze over these issues. To be fair, he kind of did.

So, yes, I was affected by this rhetoric because it distracted me from his speech from the start.

I had also seen a lot of conservatives pointing out the cameras catching the Joint Cheifs not applauding when Obama claims america is the strongest nation. Is this a hint at our readiness? Or something else? After reading multiple tweets and facebook posts I went back to rewatch this portion of the speech again.

All in all, I surprisingly liked his speech. I don't feel like it was the most appropriate for SOTU. At one point I said,"Wow if this guy were running for president, I might actually vote for him." He pointed out a lot of problems, but offered very little in the way of solutions. I'm all about preeching optomism, and while I appreciate it, I know its not the reality of the world we live in.

I liked his focus on climate change and sustainability, a real issue we all need to get behind, regardless of our party. I also appreciated his preeches of kindness and tollorance, something I believe we as a nation have lost. All-in-all I will consider this one of his more memorable speeches, even though I know its all a big PR-gasm, it made me think optomistically for a minute. 

Below are some fb posts and tweets that affected my view point: