About the Author
Hello, my name is Jasmine, and I am a first year college student at UNLV, majoring in journalism. I was born and raised here in Las Vegas. I recently quit my fast food job that I have been working at since I was 16 years old which means I have nothing but free time on my hands. So, as an official hobbyist, I enjoy seeking new hobbies in order to think of myself as an interesting person, and along with growing deeper into the hobbies I already have to be productive in my spare time and not waste all my time and energy into the same old apps on my phone. I do, however, have an addiction to Instagram.
The media related questions I had always brought a lot of curiosity to mind without realizing these questions were pretty relevant and already had answers that just needed seeking. I asked multiple questions about how do influencers and content creators shape our reality? What role does media play in social constructs? What are some ethical concerns we should have with digital and social media? In Module 2; media and its effects, Manipulation in the media is shown a lot behind individuals or corporations controlling what gets produced and we see this throughout the film Trust Me. Influencers and content creators get to decide what they want to give attention to on their platform. As long as people are engaging with their content, it allows these creators to be intertwined with culture. Individuals spend so many hours consuming media everyday which allows culture to evolve a lot faster through the algorithms.
The second question, What role does media play in social constructs? Is very similar to the first one in the sense that certain lifestyles, behaviors, or characteristics become extremely normalized. Media plays a role in creating tailored algorithms to individuals which means an exposure to the same things is happening. This sort of repetition becomes expected and normalizes framed realities to be expected. The media controls and frames everything including what individuals choose to consume. For the third question, some ethical concerns we should have with digital and social media are misinformation and privacy concerns. Since the power the media has is evident to be able to shape our realities, misinformation being spread across the globe so quickly can be dangerous. If the media can put out information so quickly then that can also go for an individual’s personal data if in the wrong hands. This can lead to many issues such as fraud, impersonation, identity thefts and more. These are some of the biggest ethical concerns revolving around the media and its massive scale of consumers.
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As for my hobbies, I enjoy reading books. This is one of my older hobbies, I have been reading outside of school for fun for as long as I can remember. My dad created this habit for me when he would sit down with me every night the year before I started kindergarten and we would read books together and continued to do so up until 3rd or 4th grade then I began to just do it on my own. I also have a love for pottery and would consider it a favorite hobby of mine. I have been doing pottery for 5 years now and hope I never stop growing in art. I enjoy making christian art work but also which is really ironic, I really like creating scary pieces that are just unsettling. One of my favorite ceramists that creates creepy art that I love is Ronit Baranga who I especially like the pieces she creates with human like fingers and mouths.
In addition to enjoying creepy stuff, I love films, specifically horror. I’m not a big fan of gore but again I like the unsettling and creepy films especially the ones that have a good plot twist on top of everything.
Drawing is a more fresh hobby of mine since I didn’t start it until my senior year of high school and haven’t been the most consistent with it. I also started scrapbooking the summer before I started college and continue to do so with every random event life throws at me. Another hobby I started that same summer was hiking. I made a great group of friends who enjoy hiking, invited me out to do it and I ended up really enjoying being surrounded by nature. I also like to have some seasonal hobbies such as playing tennis in the spring/summer and snowboarding in the winter. I used to run 5k’s a lot my junior year of high school and every now and then I’ll train for a race but I want to be more consistent with it this year and continue running even if there’s no upcoming race. Overall, I believe complacency is boring and find it exciting to learn about many new things in life along with always having a project to help me grow deeper into whatever it is I am discovering.
