My First Blog: Introduction/Media

Hi, my name is Kendra (or Kenny), and this is my first year at LBCC, where I am studying Journalism and Mass Communications. I've always had a fixation for storytelling and creating; my grandma used to tell me I had a wild imagination. At the beginning of my pursuit of higher education, I wanted to move and attend a liberal arts college. Unfortunately, the amount of debt it would put me in was a significant deciding factor for me, leading me to stay in Oregon and earn my associate's degree. I'm not a lover of school, so who knows if I'll go beyond community college, but I think life has a funny way of taking us toward success; it just matters how much we desire it.

My hobbies include: dancing (15 years going strong), crafting, watching hockey, creative writing, film watching, traveling, photography, quality time with the people I love, and listening to music. Music is a huge part of my life; it influences the way I interpret things (like movement, writing, art, etc). My current career goals are to dance until my feet fall off, network, get better at writing, and hopefully one day write a movie. I've always seen myself as one of those podcast hosts who are secretly best friends with celebrities (like Owen Thiele and Emma Chamberlain). I'm chronically online, but don't get it twisted, I don't buy into the brain rot and continue to expand my knowledge daily through my phone. This class interested me, because I'm very present online, and I've seen how the media affects my life, so I was curious on how it affects marginalized groups, and how it shapes generations.

My main sources of information come from TikTok, Instagram, and CNN Reliable Sources. My most used apps are TikTok and Instagram, and I try to follow reliable news outlets on those apps, so I can stay up to date. I recently signed up for CNN Reliable Sources, and I am loving it! I can argue that TikTok and Instagram are probably not the best apps to use for reliable information, and can be very biased at times.  Learning about "deep fakes" and "fake news" is honestly so terrifying to me, especially with the use of artificial intelligence in a harmful way. As someone who uses social media daily and practically surrounds herself in different forms of media, it is very difficult to believe in certain posts nowadays. Ways I check the reliability of information: Googling, checking hashtags/comments, looking for watermarks (indicating ai), and making sure the account is a legit news outlet.