Kristen Jimenez

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Hello! My name is Kristen MaryBeth Jimenez. I’m twenty years old and currently a sophomore at the university of Texas at El Paso. I am currently a multimedia journalism major with a minor in English. I really love to write, one of my favorite things that I have enjoyed in my life. This class so far has taught me so much whenever it came to writing in the first place. I also am obsessed with boybands, throughout the ages. Everytime there is a new boyband, I usually get completely obsessed with them. I also am addicted to social media. As a future in MMJ, I am required to be online all the time. So just being online has been part of my life. The things I took from this class was how to be a better writer, and how to be more organized. The organizational skills have been much better since joining this class, so that has been the best part, getting all my stuff together, for once. Also being on time, has probably beent he best part, learning about turning things in on time was for the most part super important So in the end, the class helped me learn a lot, and I can’t wait to apply it to the real world. Thanks a lot!

Well for starters, I had expected there to be a whole lot of reading, just as much as the writing. And I have to say, if it wasn’t for the reading there would’ve been no way that I could’ve even made the way through the semester if I did not do the readings. The talk of the readings did not live up to the hype of what was actually to come when doing the readings, not to mention what an impact it did on the writing as well. A lot of the main themes that I saw in the readings were definitely organizational skills that we were to produce on. Which it did help a lot. It taught us about the different outlines that were extremely helpful when It came to writing. These outlines are definitely going to be helping me in the future when it comes down to it. I know this will definitely make me a better while. My favorite spots in the book was the outline for the Literature Review. A said before, the lit review is probably the hardest of the three assignments we have had for the semester, the outline in the beginning helped me out the most when working on the review, and I am going to continue using that outline method in the future, thanks to the handbook.

The visual argument was probably the most fun out of the three assignments. As a multimedia journalism, major, visuals are more my specialty, in grabbing attention using different visuals of the media, whether a video or just a simple picture. This time for the topic, at first I was going to continue on the train of manipulation in the media, however we did need more than just proof and examples, like before. We needed to come up with a solution, something definitely difficult for just manipulation in the media. So I changed my topic to a huge problem that had been happening in my field of study, which is the issue of the copyright law abusing its power for the use of fairuse. I had picked a website for this part because it’s part of the media, and is there for the best option. A website shows basically everything, the information, the proof, the links, and even provides the best solution for the topic, and best demonstrates how the media is displayed in the first place, which is why I chose to do it, rather than the poster. At first I thought picking a poster board was just the easiest way out, but in the end, it turned out to be the one that I had avoided to do, the website, that chose to be the best. I liked it’s visual argument the best overall just because of it’s visual aspect. The information was more fun to get and put together, not to mention easier to get up in front of the class rather than writing a long paper.

((The gif represents what I’ve wanted from the projects after all))

The literature review was definitely the more difficult of the three assignments than the other three, however it definitely helped the mentality state more. So I decided to stick with the same topic of manipulation within the media. However, this time the assignment had a twist, with trying to come up with the research questions rather than just talking about the situation. Not to mention we also had to write it in a non bias way, meaning we had to be the moderators. For my certain topic, it was harder to write in that case, simply because there was more of an obvious bias just because of the topic. However, that’s what the literature taught me. The fact that there was a bias restriction let me explore the different options with questions that I never even thought of before. One question that had just kept coming up was “Is it manipulation in the first place?” which was really hard to prove, but it let me dig deeper into my research to be able to prove myself. So even though it is still an opinion that it is manipulated, the point of the paper became that it CAN be manipulated because of the vulnerability of the media audience. A slightly different topic, but a lot easier to prove in a completely non-bias way. I do wish during this assignment I thought it out more before writing, would’ve saved me from a lot of re-writing, but I’m over all proud of the new concept and how it all fit together.

((This gif represents the change i had to make while doing this assignment))

For my first Genre Analysis, I chose a topic that had been bothering me for a long time, which was how manipulation in the media can affect the audience’s point of view. At first, I had thought that it would be easy to just kind of talk about a subject that had been bugging me, almost like ranting. But soon while doing the actual assignment then, it’s when I learned that there is so much more going into than just saying what was on our mind. In fact, finding examples seemed to be easy enough, but it was still difficult to do so. However, looking back on that assignment, it gave me more knowledge than I knew before this was assigned in how manipulation in the media can be accounted for. So, I not only knew what I was talking about, but I learned a lot more than I had originally known. One thing I wish I did on this assignment, was proofread, just because it may have come out a little bit sloppier and all over the place than I had wished, and even though most of the information was there, proofreading would’ve been much more affective on it. However, one thing that I am extremely proud of is that It came out not only informative, but more. When doing the peer reviews for it, I had gotten a lot of people tell me how interesting it was. Instead of rushing through the whole thing, like most people would read, people had a lot of parts that they did like, and wanted to keep reading it. So just the fact that people enjoyed reading the unfinished paper just made me happy, that it wasn’t just another boring paper.

((This gif is representative that I learned more from writing than just reading))

Be Positive:

Sometimes you will get discouraged with the topic you are choosing, or you feel like you’ve missed a lot of days for something, or even a couple of assignments. My advice is to always be optimistic about your options, and try to make the best out of a bad situation. Sometimes, things do not go the right way, and it will show in your work whether you just gave up, just try and be as optimistic and positive as you can, and you’re sure to make it great throughout the semester.

Remember the Assignment Dates:

One of the harder things for me throughout the semester was to remember if I had any assignments for the day or not. So, the best thing to do is either check blackboard regularly to see when assignments are due, or write down/print the dates that you know u have an assignment due, and make sure that it’s the right one. That way you are not stressing if an assignment is late or not.

Be Yourself:

From picking interesting topics to posting funny gifs on the tumblr post, everything is made easier when you are just being yourself. So try and remember that only you know who you are, and with your topic presentations, everyone is going to know who you are through your topic and the way that you present it.

Both chapters eight and nine talked about different ways of arguing. Chapter eight was more about the structure and framing of different arguments. I used to think that it was just two opinions going back and forth with each other, until I learned there is so much more to them, like a main idea, the core of an arguments, and even talks about the different myths of them. I had no idea that there were different types of arguments involved, which end with one or even more different solution, even than the ones from the opinionates. Chapter nine was the actual construction, points and tips for arguments, or at least backing your part of the argument. It talks about reasoning such as deductive and inductive as well as the six components of an argument which are claim, evidence, warrant, backing, qualifier and rebuttal.

((this gif represents both sides of an argument.))

At first, I had thought it would be easier for me to do a poster, for my topic, but in the end, I have decided to use a homepage. I felt this was the best to use for my visual argument. The issue for the homepage is on the current abuse of the copyright law in different social media sites and looking past the fair use law with the right of trademarking. Especially in recent days of social media and technology, the thin line between copyright and fair use has been abused so many times, when there is a clear difference between the both.

Copyright is the law that protects creators of their content being plagiarized or used without permission to protect the content that they created, rather than someone taking it. However, people do seem to abuse this law often with different technicalities, which is where the fair use law comes into play. Fair use is to protect those who use others’ content as parody or criticism, or even as an example. Recently, there have been many cases of people using the claim of “copyright” when it is the case of “fair use”.

Part of the problem is trademarking. When a trademarked word is used, that creator may claim “copyright” instead of “fair use” in that instance to get it’s money’s worth, which makes it harder for the fair use claim to be established.

((I used this gif because claiming copyright instead of fair use is technically considered a false allegation, yet it is still legal))

late again i know >.>

“Made Not only in Words: Composition in a New Key” by Kathleen Blake Yanceys talks about the differences of writing between the nineteenth and twentieth century. When talking about the earlier century and now, it’s simple that you can see that there is no way that back then, there would be any kind of technological distractions than what we have today to back her argument, which implies that they read way more back in the nineteenth century. What she says about not barely being able to read, especially in the age of social media, is true. As a multimedia journalism major, we always try to find a way for audiences to read, because they hardly do anymore. So I think what I got from this is that social media is the future now, and if we can somehow get people to start reading within that, it can cause more reading within what we learn, and can help a lot when it comes to that.

I've chosen to stick with my previous topic proposals on manipulation in the media, but in somewhat a different fashion. I chose to show how dense many people can be affected by certain aspects of what the media is shown to them, because of how much it is an affect on all of our lives. This topic was always fun and important to me which is why I am sticking to it. As for doing a poster or a video, I'm not too sure, but I am right now leaning towards a poster. I am willing to work with a group if anyone else is willing to work with me, and I would also be happy to change my topic around as much as possible if I indeed do work in a group.