Casey

The thing I like most about my learning is my new found understanding for how to approach an engaging conversation with a web-based community. Even though I may spend a lot of time online, conversing with others, that doesn’t mean I knew everything there was to how to create something with meaning behind it. Sure numbers look good, but the community is why we create. Learning what made a community want to engage more with my content was an important step I had to take. Before, my understanding was a bit harsh, attributing interactions and engagement to almost pure luck a lot of the time, and maybe it plays a part, but there is so much more to communicating online that I need to be aware of and take into consideration when engaging with any web community.

I am most proud about how far my drafting process has come thanks to the lessons and structure of the class. We have discussed this topic in past weeks, but my drafting process was less defined, and more like writing and editing a final product as I went. It’s not exactly the best method to depend on. When coming into this class my view was challenged due to the complexity of what was required and to demonstrate that I was learning from the material. Not only did this help me draft a better and better paper, but it also helped me with 2 other heavy writing courses I had been taking over the semester. A good writing process is the foundation of any good paper, and fixing mine was long overdue in retrospect, seeing how I write now versus before college, or even this semester is like night and day.  

The thing I like most about my own essay is how I handled the explanation of my areas of content. When deciding on a topic to cover I had to think about the differences in my hyper specific type of content I was observing, cat and human relationship content. I had to define what made certain interactions different from another, how contextually they were different, such as how if a human is petting a cat. I managed to define 3 content types, Daily Life, Rehabilitation, and Rescue, and from there I was able to outline what made an interaction fall into each type of category. For example, if a cat and its owner are simply cuddling on the couch and petting the cat, then it would be Daily Life. If a cat was being pet but its guard was still up, or may still growl and hiss at the foster, it was Rehabilitation. Overlaps like these happened a lot in cat content, so it was important I look at every detail such as were they an owner or foster, was the cat relaxed or scared, did the cat even belong to the human, or were they a foster or trapped cat waiting to receive care. These small details were what made my content types so defined.

Some things I learned about my writing process that will help me after college is that working with segments seems to help my drafting process a lot to continually organize my thoughts throughout. While working on this paper we had to organize each piece of information into sections, this way of organizing my thoughts kept my focus more than normal papers have in the past. Overall, if a paper allows me to write in such a manner or if I can continue to draft papers it has benefitted how I write.

I learned based on the multiple drafts I had to submit for the project that understanding the feedback and the reading material was the only way to make my drafting process have any progression. Over the time constructing the research paper based on the feedback on my misused or misunderstood parts were the most helpful parts I received during the process, but I might not have always understood what was being asked of me because I wasn’t looking at my notes. Referencing the notes I took on the 3rd chapter ultimately helped me understand how to connect the material to what we were learning about.

Having a good revision process will help me beyond this class as revision is a major part of my work, in both visual and literature work. I may be required to revise something fast and effectively for a client in the future and having a consistent, thought out, process to revise my work that I can replicate through any process and adapt when necessary is crucial to keep up professionally with the ever changing landscape of graphic design. Not only as a graphic designer am I required to revise art, but I may be asked to work as an editor or recommend revisions in a client's writing. But the process can apply to either in a similar way.

I am developing a style to build my argument in the content analysis by using my data to form an argument for how the style and type of content I am observing may contribute to the activity levels of each account. Before I was using an unfit question to base my research off of as it didn’t exactly contribute to a conversation about continent analysis. But now I believe I have figured out what I should be observing to add to the conversation about content analysis, which is what content type (positive or negative )  and what style ( focus of the post ) affects the amount of interactions they may receive. As cat content as a whole has its ups and downs from rescues to vet visits, etc.

My final revision process is a bit chaotic, some of my previous submission was messy and rushed, so I am making up for that in this final draft before our actual finalized version. Currently I am taking time to highlight where my weak spots are based on the grade feedback, and working to collect my final graphs and photographs that should be included. After my visuals are finalized I am going to work on revising and adding writing where our professor pointed out I was missing or lacking explanations and information.

Data within my space are the likes, comments, and shares left on a reel and these are directly tied to my analysis as these data points are what I am measuring to compare and contrast the types of content I am observing. My hypothesis directly depends on these interactions and how many are left on a post, such as one post under one content type having over 1 million likes but in the end that content type has the least amount of interactions out of all 3 types.