Anna's Blog

For this discussion I chose this  online Reddit discussion about the season 46 Survivor winner.  (Spoiler warning). This was the discussion I selected as I am a huge fan myself. Season finales and winner picks always cause a lot of stir. People either love or hate who the jury of previously voted off contestants choose to win a million dollars and the title of sole Survivor. With a loyal fanbase, I expected this discussion might reveal some of the negative elements of online communication we have learned about.  One issue I have with this argument is commenting on someone's real life experience as if they are characters. In this TV program, the contestants are real people who are authentically themselves on national television. Some speakers in this thread seemed to speak about the contestants as if they were merely characters. Similarly, a user called winner Kenzie's story about her upbringing, which was one of poverty and struggle, a "sob story". This is offensive ...

For this blog post, I listened to the podcast "The Art of Listening: How to Master Relationships Through Communication" with Chris Lee. This podcast focuses on the principles of being a generous listener, and how that can benefit your communication and therefore your personal relationships.  The podcast mentioned how about "70% of communication is not the words you say" (Lee). This makes communication larger dependent on tone, facial expressions and gestures. This reminds me of the concept of a "channel-rich context" from the textbook, which describes how some conversations "involve many different communication channels at once" (Green). This is especially important in face to face conversations, and an element we miss in online conversations. This is why Chris Lee recommends that for important conversations a face to face conversation, or at least talking on the phone, allows you to be a much better listener. If I think back to important convers...

These days, we have access to a lot of information online and it can be very dangerous when it comes to forming opinions based in fact versus fiction. This prompt reminded me of a study mentioned in one of our chapter readings for the week that spoke of how people mainly shared posts on Facebook that confirmed their own prejudices, instead of focusing on accuracy of information. Social media can be an echo chamber, meaning that we can see and hear our own thoughts reflected back to us and then believe them even more to be truth. A sort of mob mentality starts to form and we do not stop to take information or opinion with a grain of salt.  A successful and very viral online campaign I immediately think of is the Me Too movement. This movement used a hashtag to immobilize people especially women to speak out against their oppressors and share their experiences. It exposed many influential figures and made them be held accountable. This campaign used the power of how interconnected we...

 For this week's post I chose to explore Cafe Yumm's online communication and presence.  Cafe Yumm is a restaurant based on elevating rice and beans, with their own trademarked signature sauce. They have locations throughout Oregon, including ones in Portland, Corvallis and Eugene. The company does a good job communicating online in terms of having a clear efficient website. It looks updated with a recent new menu item to try. They also have social media, in which customers can tag them - perhaps using their sauce in their own recipes. Cafe Yumm's Instagram reposts these stories to their own, which is a great way to show appreciation and create an online dialogue and community.  On their website at the top there is the option to see menu and locations. In the center is the new menu item, which rotates with other images of different popular menu items. On the bottom is different sections labelled " Seed ", " Flame ", " Bowl " and " Life ...

 When talking about the digital world's intersection with learning two terms arise; digital natives and digital immigrants according to Prensky. Digital natives would describe me and my age group well. We are equipped with the language that comes with the rise of the internet, social media and the digital age. We are used to reading, writing and communicating online. Digital immigrants on the other hand, are less familiar with this technology and communicating style. They have been raised learning from physical material, processing and answering sequentially. This is often what causes a divide between an older professor and their college aged students. When I think about my own learning as a creative writing major, I realize we often utilize methods and strategies from digital immigrants. Instead of editing a poem in multiple ways in one revision, we are often trained to complete a revision with one snippet of feedback at a time. We also usually print out and mark up an actual text...

     When thinking about drawbacks and positives of social media, I think of the two I have primarily used over the years: Instagram and Snapchat. Where Snapchat can be a lighthearted way to communicate with friends, I have found Instagram to offer what feels like an overload of information. I think this is the drawback of a platform designed more to look into the lives of others versus communicate with others. Instagram has the potential to create a lot of anxiety in the way it shows highlights of people's lives. Feelings of missing out  can build causing anxiety that leads to depression and sleeplessness. Instagram is now inherently connected to capitalism and promoting goods, which can feel overwhelming. I think for me a key factor in my choice of what social media I use depends on what makes me feel connected versus simply overstimulated.           I believe that the community one has online affects whether social media can be anxiet...