First Blog - Media and Society

 

 My name is Ethan Sparks, I am currently 24, a United States Army Veteran, and I am studying psychology at LBCC. My goal here at Linn-Benton is to complete all of my first and second year requirements, transfer to Oregon State, and then to get my bachelors in psychology. Once I obtain my bachelors, I will either pursue a masters or move straight into a doctorate's program if possible. The goal with doing that would be to become a behavioral neuroscientist, as I am passionate about science and would love to dedicate my life to helping others. If not that, I would move into the realm of therapy/counseling! 

I am usually into current events, and staying informed, but in today's world information can be hard to decipher, and to even know whether or not its real. This class stuck out to me because it seemed like a valuable class to take given the circumstances we find ourselves in, in the modern day. I believe media literacy and freedom of press is important to a healthy society, a healthy democracy, and without it, systems begin to fall apart either slowly or very quickly. I'd like to not contribute to either of those outcomes, and become more literate in media, to maybe educate others in the future as well. All of that is  to say that's why I am taking this class!

Things I am passionate about outside of college are the gym, cooking, space, hanging out with my friends, creative writing, photography and martial arts. In August I started going to the gym consistently and cooking all of the food that I eat, and I have since fallen in love with those two things. Space has always been my first love, everything about astronomy fascinates me, and if I was better at math, astronomy would have been my chosen field, but who knows, that could still happen. Social health is a priority of mine along with physical health, it contributes to the mental side of health, and I have a lot of long-time friends here in the area who I make sure to hang out with and talk to whenever I can! I like to write stories in my off-time, but recently creative writing and photography have fallen to the wayside a bit, which I need to try and do more, as those have been hobbies of mine since I was a young adult, and I need to allow myself time for core passions. When it comes to photography what I like to do most is astrophotography, and subject/portrait photography. Outside of being an Artilleryman in the Army, I was also a social media manager and photographer for my battalion. Martial arts is probably, behind the gym, the most recent passion of mine, and I was doing it for about a year and a half, achieving an orange belt before I had to stop, for now. The martial arts I did was curriculum based and on top of school, it was hard to train the way I liked to train, so for now the gym is my main physical priority along with proper eating habits! As far as sports go, I am a Buffalo Bills fan, because Jordan Poyer, the Bills' safety, and an OSU alum, went to my high school, and I have met him on a few occasions. In the basketball world I am a Sacramento Kings fan, and yes, I know they have lost the plot, their record is not great this year. 

My three main sources of information are Instagram, YouTube, and usually talk show hosts. I try not to watch actual news because I find it to be depressing, but at this point most of what I am seeing everywhere is a little like that now, not to be a downer or anything. In terms of reliability, I think these sources can be reliable based on the pocket I am getting the information from. By pocket, I simply mean that Instagram and YouTube are user based and there are a wide variety of sources within them. I try to stay updated by watching John Stewart on YouTube. I trust him to have a more centered approach, though I know he leans left, but I balance that out with Bill Maher, who is a bit more centered than Stewart, and I appreciate the debates Maher has on his show. 

I am very, very concerned with the current, and most certainly, the future of information reliability in the age of AI. The rate at which AI has been able to produce lifelike recreations in picture and video make it sometimes indistinguishable from reality, and my fear here is that this deception will be abused by politicians to confuse the people and to control narratives. There needs to be regulation to, at the very least, require all AI pictures and videos to be slapped with an AI label. There is so much more that is troubling about it, but that is a conversation for class.

I am excited to be here, to learn, and increase literacy!