Hello All! Or should I say ‘Goodbye All’… I’m sad to say that this post concludes my CTW Writing Portfolio blog. Throughout this course I have posted a variety of things ranging from research advice, my personal opinion on various learning techniques and, of course, numerous updates on my research project.

Persoanally, I’m very sad to say goodbye to the luxuries of “blog writing,” and the ability to write, well, the way I want to. Like I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I tend to write exactly how I talk and have taken immense pleasure in the ability to turn in such casual writing. In contrast to academic writing, which takes a lot of time and effort, this
blog allowed me express all the opinions I wanted in a relaxed, easy to read format.

Additionally, I loved the fact that our blog posts could incorporate things other than words. Finding little visuals to add to my posts not only made my opinions feel more interesting but I think they often helped me get my point across. Building off that, the ability to add graphs to my posts centered around my research project was extremely useful.

It was these small multimodal components that helped translate to my multimodal presentation. Throughout this course we have stressed the importance of visuals and alternative platforms for our arguments. That being said I was able to come up with a variety of formats for my presentation, that would express technologies effect on social pressures/standards in an entirely unique way from my essay.

All in all I think keeping this blog has been a very interesting experience and really opened my eyes up to different types of writing. I think it is useful in many ways, including that, for those of us who aren’t english majors, this is a much more prevalent writing style post graduation. Additionally, it has been nice to have a platform to express my opinions and feel like they have a chance of being seen by others out there who care about similar things.

Alright well goodbye for now everyone! I hope you’ve enjoyed!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayOyxTtkVeM

This video is a multimodal representation of the all-consuming, yet fleeting atmosphere that social media creates. I created this short film to convey to my audience that social media should not be used as a replacement for social interaction.

The song featured is “Passage D” by flashbulb.

Hello All! So this post is more for me than you but I just wanted to share something a little bit personal about how this class (My English/CTW course) has effected me.

All throughout elementary school and middle school I LOVED writing. I mean seriously, I absolutely adored it. In the fifth and sixth grade I actually thought I wanted to be an author when I grew up. However, as i got older and my fun creative writing opportunities turned into research papers over subjects I didn’t care about, my passion for writing slowly shifted to a hatred. I was constantly getting bashed on by teachers by writing to casually and not expanding enough on “my ideas”. I hypothesized that I’d never actually been a good writer, I just thought I was at the time because I was young and naive. However, throughout this course I have come to a realization: good writing requires passion. 

During this quarter, we have been allowed to research and write about the topic of our choosing. Being an avid feminist and also social media user I thought it would be cool to combine the two topics and study their effects on one another. As you guys have seen throughout my posts that idea has developed an evolved to my final argument: that social media has increased sexual pressures on young women and deteriorated the value of actual relationships.

And guess what… I LOVED writing that.

While many students complained that this project was a lot of worse I enjoyed every second of it, as i had completely forgot what it felt like to write about something I actually care about. And once the passion was there everything else fell into place. Not only do I think that this class has made me a better writer but it has reminded me how much I enjoy the act, and that, even after I finish my English credits, I should never stop writing about what I care about.

A special shout-out to Professor Lueck- Thanks for reminding me that writing can be fun.

Hello All! For the past couple days now I have been working on creating a multimodal presentation (in my case a video) to go along with final paper. Making the video has not only been extremely fun, but it has also shown me first hand how often times we need a visual component to really “feel” an argument. As an extremely visual person, it’s much easier for me to grasp concepts when they are portrayed in a format other than words. Not only do I find this more interesting but it’s often time more interactive and allows an audience to really “see” what the creator is trying to convey. Because of this I think it is extremely important that these components are utilized in the classroom.

Personally, I find classes that incorporate multimodal presentations much more informative. Power Points specifically, display teacher’s information in a clear, concise, and most importantly organized way. This is a far more interesting teaching platform than simply writing on the board and also significantly easier to follow. Additionally, they often incorporate engaging visuals to go along/expand on the information being given.

Another example of multimodal presentations that is extremely useful in one’s education is youtube videos. If a student doesn’t understand something, or a teacher feels like they aren’t the best at explaining a certain chapter, informational videos from youtube channels such as Khan Academy and Crash Course provide very clear explanations of the material at hand.

Multimodal presentations are a crucial part of adding depth to classroom material and, when utilized correctly, help students have a much better understanding of what their learning. Even in classes such as English is important to utilize learning techniques outside of just reading and writing, to expand on what is being said and prepare students for the real world.

When getting assigned the multimodal component of our research assignment I knew from the beginning that I wanted to use a video to convey my point. I decided it could be a cool idea to film myself scrolling through my various social media platforms and then put it in fast motion. After filming the video I knew I liked my footage, but I couldn’t seem to find a song that was conveying the fast-paced and fleeting mood I was going for. After looking on youtube for a while I came across Dove’s “Evolution” campaign, which features a model getting transformed from her natural state to a makeup covered, photoshopped version of herself. The video is also in fast-forward and features the song “Passage D” by flashbulb. The song created exactly the mood I was going for and was extremely effective in getting across the commercials message: that technology allows for extreme manipulation and unrealistic beauty standards (somewhat similar to mine). The commercial, which I have featured below, was extremely insightful when editing and putting together my own multimodal presentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U

When reading through my peers blogs I cam across a post, written by my friend Alex, comparing his writing style to a wave. He does this by explaining that when writing, he starts with a lot and then narrows his essay down to whats really important to his main point afterwards. While this is probably that smart way to go about writing, Alex’s post was somewhat surprising to me primarily because I’m the exact opposite.

When I write I tend to start out with the basic information and then, when I finish the essay, I go back and add in all the minor details that make my argument and also make me reach the page requirement. By doing this, I am essentially broadening and/or expanding on the claims made in my essay – the exact opposite of Alex.

While I personally believe that either way can produce clear and effective writing, I do think that my way can make it more challenging to have good structure/flow because I never know all of the information I’m going to include when outlining the paper.

I think from this point forward I may try Alex’s “wave” technique, at least with my outlining, because I think it could make my essays a little bit more focused and directed.

Hello All! As a chronic procrastinator I know first hand that while it’s not the best idea, with enough coffee anything can be crammed out in time. Right? However, as I have learned throughout my college experience there’s a big difference between “cramming something out” and spending an appropriate amount of time on something.

When it comes to something like writing there are many stages to creating what one would call a “well-written” essay. Throughout my CTW course, my English teacher has required us to write our essays in a series of steps, to prevent idiots like me from waiting until the last minute.

When first introduced to the concept of peer editing I was extremely essay. I personally believe that I am a fairly good writer and was naive enough to believe that my peers would add little to my papers. As a procrastinator I usually wait until the last minute to write and essay and then just pump it out, read it over, and call it quits. However, I never realized how much better my papers would be after going through several rounds of revising.

Additionally, this course has broken up our research assignment into numerous steps. Because I was required to do extensive research including an annotated bibliography, a survey, and 2 papers building up to my final argument, I was forced to dedicate the proper amount of time to formulating my thoughts.

Although I never realized it in the past, procrastination was keeping me from reaching my full writing potential. Since discovering this I have noticed that this translates to my other classes as well. Cramming may work for a simple quiz or test bur it keeps you from actually retaining the information and/or creating something to it’d full potential.

I say this as someone who has repped procrastination her whole life: STOP.

Hello All! So the time has finally come for me to embark upon the final essay of my research project. For those of you who don’t know I have been spending the quarter going through a variety of research techniques and papers trying to formulate my own arguments on whether or not social media has amplified both the social and sexual pressures on young women.

Throughout the project I have been able to find many shocking anecdotes and statistics, from both my research and my survey, that confirmed social pressures (especially beauty standards) have drastically increased thanks to the internet. However, while the articles I researched clearly addressed social media’s effect on female expectations, I found that there was a gap regarding how these expectations translate to the sexual pressures young women face. Throughout my research I heard story after story of young girls being coerced to snap skimpy pictures, even nudes, but not once heard how this played out into their real encounters.

In contrast, the novel, “Girls and Sex,” which I read during my research, discussed a study conducted by author, Peggy Orenstein,  addressing porn’s effect on the sexual expectations put on females. The study concluded that porn has led to more male-dominated relationships; however, it never addressed social media or the idea that, often times, it’s a female’s need to imitate or compete with other female accounts, that influences girls to allow and even encourage their own objectification and sexualization.

Because of this, I have decided to focus my argument on how the poor role models and ideals social media provides have led to the objectifying of women and the creation of a society that encourages girls to serve up their bodies to get ahead. Social media warps girls into thinking that a guy liking your picture and liking you are the same thing and in effect encourages us to use our appearances as a medium to gaining popularity. While this may start online, the increased sexualization of women translates to almost all aspects of our lives. In today’s society, the act of “hooking-up” has lost nearly all of it’s original value and significance. Unlike in the past, when it was frowned upon to “hook-up” with someone you hardly knew, it has become an overwhelmingly normal, even encouraged, act in recent years. While this is somewhat due to my generation’s shift in morals, I personally believe it’s social media platforms that are continuing to make sexual relationships more and more inconsequential.

Hello All! As many of you know, I recently conducted a survey to help determine whether or not social media has amplified the social and sexual pressures on females. The contents of my survey (which are displayed in my last post) asked the subjects an assortment of questions ranging from basic information, like their genders, to experiences and thoughts regarding social media. The results, although not as concrete as I would’ve liked, suggested that my original theory was correct in assuming that females are more affected by social media than males and are, in fact, experiencing increased social pressures.

One of most notable things I drew from my survey data was that a significantly larger percentage of girls answered yes to questions asking if they had ever experienced repercussions from social media (i.e. were they ever bullied and/or forced to share content they were not comfortable with). While this could be tied to the fact that they also tended to be far more active on social media in general, I think a large portion of this could be due to what my research labeled “slut shaming”. Slut shaming, or any sort of online criticism targeted at women, is a term that was used in many of the articles I read and is statistically far more prevalent than male criticism. 

Below are a series of charts displaying the data I gathered regarding social media’s affects on students.

6. Do you ever try to imitate the accounts you follow?

7. Have you ever received criticism on social media?

8. Have you ever felt pressure to post/send something via social media that you weren’t comfortable with?

Despite the fact that a majority of my subjects had not been negatively affected by social media, you can clearly see when looking at the graphs that more females were affected than males. This aligned appropriately with my sources from the last research phase, and reinforced the idea the social and sexual pressures created by social media are usually directed at girls. Building off this, the data also suggested that a greater amount of girls believed social media does, in effect, create social pressures. This section of my survey was conducted through Likert-scale style questions that required my subjects to rank whether they agreed with certain statements regarding social media’s effects on a scale of 1 through 5 (1 being “highly disagree” and 5 being “highly agree”). Although the male and female average scores seen were fairly similar, each of my four Likert-scale questions were ranked higher by women. Had I created a 4-point scale opposed to a 5-point scale (no “neutral” option), I predict I would have been able to see a more concrete gap between the genders.

In conclusion, I found that my predisposed opinion, along with the sources I have read, are correct in suggesting that females are more affected by social media than males. While my results were not as concrete as I would’ve liked, due to a small testing pool and the fact that almost all of my subjects were incredibly active on social media, I think this survey has added another layer of depth to my argument that I can reference moving forward. Continuing my research, I would like to dig deeper into the opinions of my peers, and gain an even closer look at how my age group, myself included, feels about the overwhelming prevalence of social media in our lives.