Media and Society: Week One

Topic One: About Me

My name is Rhett Iverson. I am currently a senior at Oregon State University and I walked this spring. I am taking my last few classes at LBCC to finish up my major so I can go on into the workforce. My major is Public Health with an option in Health Promotion and Health Benefit. Since coming to corvallis my career goals have changed many times, as I am sure they will continue to change. I came in wanting to be an orthodontist, almost finished my pre-dental major,  and then dropped it and switched to Public Health. Since then, my career choices have changed numerous times, but what has continued to stick with me is being a High School teacher. I currently have four jobs, such as working with Dutch Bros, head coach of the freshman at Corvallis High School baseball, a property manager for Principle rentals, and finally a front desk representative at the Marriott. 

This is my fifth year as a coach for Corvallis High, and my second year as a head coach for the Corvallis High Spartans baseball team. I do work year round with the freshman, and this is what has sparked my interest in teaching. Realizing that you can be the positive influence in a child’s life has really spoke to me, especially since children do not have as many positive role models in their lives (my personal opinion). I have noticed since I started working with kids that only half of the children’s parents show them the support that they need/deserve. The other half use organized sports as a daycare of sorts for their children, happy to drop them off and not have to worry about being around them. This has really rubbed me the wrong way, being as I grew up in a family where quality time is really valued and desired.

Seeing this has made me want to give every child the best positive influence that I can. You can literally be the difference in a kids day, or even life. My only goal is to have a kid be better off, or in a more positive state, from when I met them until I am done coaching/teaching them. I also hope to have children of my own some day and I also use this coaching/teaching mentality as a trail to being a parent.

I am interested in Media and Society specifically because the media runs every aspect of today’s world. People as a whole use media for every aspect of their life, rather it be to vent, argue, show appreciation, etc. There are many positive, as well as negative, aspects to media. I am very interested in seeing this dynamic in all aspects of life and studying how it affects the general public. This is my first real media class I have taken in college, and I am very interested in learning. It will be interesting to see a different side of study since I have been so primarily focused on biology and health sciences.

Topic 2:  The Information You Consume

To be completely honest, the 3 main sources of information I consume come from 1. Facebook 2. Twitter 3. The NY Times (brief overview of info sent to my iWatch). I don’t know if I would consider these my “go to” sources, specifically because I never actually seek out information as to what is going on in the state, country, or world. This is not because I do not believe its important, because I truly believe that everyone should be well informed in what is going on around them and what is effecting their personal lives, legislature, etc. Unfortunately never created the habit of looking nor watching the news. This is something I would like to get into a little more because the current events are a very good way to keep up, but if I decide to do that I now that 2 of my 3 sources are the opposite of what I should be using (Times maybe being the exception). I hope that this class can spark this into becoming a habit for me.

I feel that Twitter and Facebook are NOT reliable at all. There is so much fake news now a days and after watching the ted talks and looking at other articles, it only backs this up. I think that it is cool that the Philippines are working with the bill to try to keep people honest with what they report, with different penalties if they do not abide with the law.

I am a little concerned with the fake news going out in the media ecosystem. I feel that the fake news causes a lot of unease and anger in the community, especially within the younger generation. That being said, even some adults are guilty of believing anything that they read. It’s sad that people cannot differentiate between fake news, or even recognize that their source (a lot of the time social media) is not a proper source of relevant true information. I have seen it time and time again where someone read some fake article online about multiple government figure heads, and instantly start a rant about what they read, when in reality this is the farthest from the truth.  

I mentioned this in my last topic, but as a head baseball coach for freshman in high school, I’ve overheard them talking about a wide variety of things they have read on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. An extreme example is when a “mythical creature” was “found” and the whole team was raving about it and passing around pictures of the article they had read. It is amazing how quickly they spread information, true or not, and how it catches like wild fire. This is an extreme example, but this just goes on to prove that if people are not well informed on correct information or appropriate sources, that false truths can be spread and do more harm than good.