Blog 5

Topic: 

My topic is about my experience on the High Point University Dance Team. Through this video, I am hoping to explain that being on this team is more than just performing at the basketball games. Being on this team means a lot more to me than just the small amount that we are performing. It is all about the connections, team mates and life long friends that I have made through this team. It is also about helping others, volunteering and giving back to the community. The HPU Dance Team has a lot of volunteer hours that we have done as a team to better our community. 

Experience:

My experience with Adobe Premier has been pretty positive so far. I think that Premier has been easier to catch onto than Adobe Audition in my opinion. The controls and commands seam a little more self explanatory and logically places. 

The only area that I have really struggles with is the animation aspect. Figuring out how to do those things took me some time however I eventually figured out how to use the scale and location features.(Discover Audio Effects in Premier Pro). I find it interesting that you can start off my zooming in on one part of a photo the slowly backing up to show more of the photo and create a wider view. 

Imported Video:

Social Media News 2 Blog

 https://animoto.com/play/tGDBR1W4Zvoee0gHDOayUQ

Blog 4, very rough cut

Video:

Screenshot:

 

Blog #10

One of the EOTO topics that I found especially interesting was "The Spiral of Silence". The spiral of silence is when a persons opinion on an issue is effected on whether that opinion is popular or not. People want to avoid sharing their opinions if it goes against what the majority thinks because they want to avoid being criticized. People do not like being criticized by others and they want to avoid the feeling that their opinion is different from what others are thinking. People constantly seek approval from others and by voicing an opinion that may not be popular it can cause a lot of unwanted confrontation and conflict. 

I found this very interesting because I have actually seen this happen in my own life. Even something as simple as being in a group of friends and they decide that they want to go to the mall. If you are the member of the group that does not want to do this activity then it can be hard to go against the group and voice your opinion on the activity that you would like to do instead. On a much larger scale this is hoe dictators rise to power, people are scared to go against them which leads to silence. 

I not only thought this was a very interesting concept, but I think that the girl presenting did a very good job. First off, she was very captivating with the audience. She had different tones in her voice to keep the audience engaged and was not monotone throughout the presentation. She also explained everything every well on her slides but did not ramble on and loose the attention of the audience. She had very good posture and hand gestures as well as spoke at a good volume for everyone around to hear. The examples she used were very relatable and made it easy to understand this topic. 

Blog #9

Instagram is a part of technology that has spread very quickly. Instagram is now seen as part of a persons daily routine. If it is not Instagram, most all people have some form of social media in order to stay connected with the outside world. Instagram has defiantly gone through the Theory of Diffusion because it has evolved and spread rapidly across the public to become a staple activity in everyones life. 

In the Theory of Diffusion there are five main stages. According to PSU.edu these five stages are awareness, interest, evolution, trial, and adoption. For Instagram this would be making people aware of the app, making people interested in what this technology has to offer, the evolution of the app over time, having people try out certain features of app and then adjusting accordingly. This theory is very useful in public relations and advertising because it it shows who the target market is and the process and how specific technologies become popular. 

In the Theory of Diffusion Diagram, it shows the percentage of people that adopt to different forms of technology at a particular time. A small percentage of the people are innovators and laggers. Most of the population (68%) lie in the early/late majority.  

I feel that Instagram caught on and started to spread because it was something for people to do in their life that is free. There is no charge for Instagram and the concept is for people to post about themselves. Between these two things I feel the app caught on quickly because people love free things and talking about themselves. I feel that people became early adopters to this trend because they liked the concept and probably had something similar already like facebook. There were late adopters because they were probably not a big fan of the app at first however so many people had it at that point they felt they were missing out. There are defiantly both benefits and drawbacks to being a part of Instagram. A benefit would be staying connected to family and friends and a drawback could be low self confidence in always comparing yourself to other people. I feel that this positive outweighs the negative because I love staying connected with others. 

Blog #8

 The Illusory Truth Effect

The Illusory Truth Effect is something that I find both very interesting and alarming. An easy way to remember what the Illusory Truth Effect is basically it is an illusion of the truth. This effect occurs when people start to believe that false information is true through repeated exposure. This is also known as a form of brainwashing. This is a commonly used technique among cult leaders, politicians and even marketing professionals. 

According to The Decision Lab the average human has to make about 35,000 decisions per day. Because the mass amount of information that is entering our brains every day, we as humans do not have enough time or energy each day to process all of this information. It is essentially a weakness in the brain that we can not critically analyze all of the things that are told to us. As a result of this a lot of the information that we hear we just believe to be true subconsciously. 

A common example of the Illusory Truth effect would be Vitamin C.  This example from The Decision Lab says that Vitamin C is a common misconception that it will actually boost your immune system to prevent a cold or getting sick. There is no actually scientific evidence of facts behind Vitamin C preventing colds this however because so many people think this and it is repeated so many times, a lot of people found it to be true. Because of this many people ran to the store to buy Vitamin C supplements and in fact this could have been something said by the companies producing them in order to sell their product. 

The website psychologicalscience.org says that " if repeated enough times, the information may be perceived to be true even if the source is not credible". The surprising thing about this is that even if a particular person knows that the information is false this method can still be effective. Every single person is susceptible to this even if they think they are smart or have a lot of knowledge on a topic.  

I personally have fallen a victim of this when my parents told me that if I swallowed gum, then it would not digest and it would stay in your stomach seven years. I thought that this was true when I was younger because my parents and siblings would tell me this time and time again whenever they gave me a piece of gum. I never actually critically thought about this and because I heard it so many times, I just found it to be true. 

This Illusory Truth effect can be very dangerous because of how effective it actually is. This can effect society as a whole because they can start to believe that false information is actually true just if they hear it enough times, even if it is not coming from a particularly credible source. This occurs a lot more than you would think and the best way to recognize it is to always be aware and not to automatically believe everything that your hear even if you hear it multiple times, it does not make the statement true.