By: Teagan Staudenmeier
This course, COMM 365, has taught me so many insights into the current digital and social landscape. In this article I will tell you: two important skills I’ve learned in this course, the two most important lessons I have learned, and why, how I envision this course impacted my future career and life, and my reflection on this course as a whole.
Two skills I have learned:
The two skills I learned were in the GNI readings we completed for this course. And they were, how to reverse search an image and how to use Google Pinpoint. As a photographer it is important to me that my images are properly credited if used in publications. Reverse image searching helps me track down if my images I have been used unfairly. Second, Pinpoint is an excellent tool to manage and organize content as a journalist. It saves a lot of time under deadline.
Two lessons that I’ve learned in this course are:
The fact that FOMO runs deeper than I originally thought, and social media has incredible power for good and evil. Growing up with social media I often experienced FOMO because I would be left out of plans and then see my friends posting there fun times on social media. Before this course I wasn’t fully aware how deeply the issue of FOMO was and how many people suffer from the phenomenon. It certainly made me feel less alone. As far as the way people use social media, I think that there is a lot of power in the hands of the everyday person. You can either spread news that helps you connect with likeminded individuals, or you can publish fake news to manipulate and control a certain demographic. This class taught me how seriously we should be treating our right and access to social media. We must do good and educate, and not spread hate and false information.
Course Impact
This course will stick with me through my future career as a journalist because, it has taught m extremely valuable lessons in the world of social media. Which is the playing field for content in the digital age. Knowing your landscape helps you better collect information. I will also walk away a deeper personal understanding of the social implications of new media.
Final Thoughts
Overall, this course lets me walk away with some new found knowledge, good memories, and new friends. I really enjoy COMM courses such as this because they allow so much room for discovery and growth. I also really love how this course is relevant to the here and now real world. COMM 365 taught this valuable even for the non-communications major. We are all better if we know are world better.