#letshelpothers

Audience studies COMM 3P18 Blog Post #1

I want to introduce myself to the viewers of my blog and welcome you all to the personal audiences experiences that have been the most impactful in my life. Looking at all the different audience experiences that I have been submerged into, I will personally pick the three that really take it all for being the best audience experiences in my life. The first audience experience that I would like to introduce is one that really hits home for me about a personal experience that I acknowledge for being such an impactful individual in my friends life. Giving a little bit of of background of what the story is and how it allowed me to be impacted so heavily as an audience member starts back in grade one.

It was the beginning of the school year and the first few weeks of grade one were all new to me, I remember being that one kid who struggled to find my groups of friends that I could see myself being to hangout with, but was so lost as to who to approach. With having such a heavy heart and being the caring person I am, I remember seeing a group of individuals who seemed a bit different from other individuals on the play ground. Because I was so young I didn't really know what was exactly wrong with them, so I had approached the special workers that were their to assistance them to ask and see if they wanted someone to hangout with. I remember being very nervous and the one worker saying to me “it is so kind of you to come over to ask Colton and Carling to hangout with you during recess”. At this point hanging out with them became an every occurrence on the playground, and I started to build a friendship with these two. Colton and Carling both happened to be brother and sister who were struggling to fight the same disease called “batten disease” which is a fatal disease of the nervous system and it begins during the early years of childhood. As the weeks went on I started to gain a larger friendship with them and looked forward to spending everyday on the playground with them. I became known around the school for being such an impactful person in their lives for making their experience at school such a better and enjoyable experience. At this time of their lives, they were not seeing any of the major impacts that come along with having this disease, they were only having issues of walking and strength levels that were slowly decreasing. Towards the middle of the school year I was able to finally get the opportunity to meet there parents and because of me being the person who I am I was invited to their birthday party which in my mind was a dream come true because I had finally found friends to hangout with and was starting to create a special bond with them.

The school year was getting towards its final days and for the entire year of grade one I had committed all my time to hanging out with Colton and Carling which turned out to have being the best first year of grade school. Even though I knew deeply inside that they couldn't talk and tell me stories as well as talk about our friendship, they knew inside that we had a special sense of connection that was like no other relationship between friends on the playground.

With this rare disease, it slowly starts to creep up on you worse and worse each year and progressively add more negative side effects. As the years went on Colton and Carling slowly started to become in a worse state of health but that did not stop us from hanging out. I started to engage myself more in what their needs were with regards to helping them eat, their oxygen machine, and pushing them around the school to get them away from their from their special workers once in a while. There were a few kids on the playground that came over to say hi and hangout every so often, but Colton, Carling, and his parents knew that our bond was going to be something for life. The life expectancy of children who are found to have this disease is roughly seen to live anywhere up to 8-12 years old. Unfortunately just shy of Carling’s ninth birthday, she passed away on easter Sunday leaving us all devastated and especially myself because for me to have just lost a friend a friend at such a young age without being fully aware of everything in the situation, I took it very hard. Because of carling’s passing this created a stronger bond toward Colton as a friend and brought me closer to the family. Every summer, their family would have a huge party that they would do a corn roast at their house and I started to receive invitations for their party and every summer I continued to get a letter in the mail for their upcoming party. As the years went on and as we moved up in grades at school, we still continued to have our special bond and would hangout at recess and see each other in the hallways. After I graduated and went off to high school, it was tough because I wasn't able to see my best friend everyday like I use too, but managed to get off at a different bus stop and make my way over to the elementary school because high school ended early then public school did. Colton and I were only a year apart but unfortunately were not able to attend the same high school due to circumstances of help and accessibility. It was Colton’s year to graduate elementary school and it was truly so breath taking for many of us as he was fourteen years old and the life expectancy was only seen to be 12 years old with children in his position. We were able to make the most of it and celebrate at what an accomplishment Colton had made and the milestone that he was making in his life journey.

Suddenly, the day before march break of Colton’s grade nine year, I was in my grade 10 civics class when I was called down to the office by the principal, I was so confused at first and as I turned to my left and saw Dianne, (Colton’s mother) standing there with tears in her eyes and instantly knew right away at what had happened. Colton had suddenly passed away peacefully in his sleep and I had an instant flashback of all the memories that him and I had made over the years and was able to down look at what a life changing experience it was to have him as a best friend.

The following year I had received a call from Colton’s mom that she had referred me to be a potential nominee in the city accessibility challenge where one individual would be chosen for the impact and accessibility you were able to give someone else in the community for that year or over a period of time. Dianne (Colton’s mom) had wrote a story about myself to the city about what an impact I had made in her sons life over the years and how him and I were able to grow a friendship like no other that she had ever seen.

Following up a few weeks ahead I had received a call from the mayor of Burlington recognizing that I had been chosen to receive the “Burlington accessibility award”. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and was asked to come down to the city performing arts centre for a ceremony. The day day had arrived and I was making my way down for the ceremony receive my plaque with my name on it, and listen to a few speeches from Colton’s mom, fellow teachers and special needs helpers, and the mayor himself. When sitting in that room being able to hear each speech being directly targeted towards me, it gave me a sense of warmth and what an honour it was to have people speaking so highly of me. One of the biggest things I noticed was the reaction to people in the room when the individuals started talking about me especially the sense of connection and power in the audience of the people who knew me and were able to share this experience such as my friends, family, teachers/ special workers, and the parents who knew me. This is was such a serial moment for me because the audience was able to connect with one another and all bring them together to create meaning out of what we being said and not just listening. After the ceremony had been complete, I remember posting a picture holding the award with the mayor and having significantly more comments and likes on the picture than I have ever received. You could see this was because the same people shared the same thoughts and wanted to express them in a way for people to see my accomplishment. Lastly, It had almost felt as if I was the town hero for the day because people were starting to tweet and make Facebook statuses about me of how moved they were by the story with a hashtag at the end #Letshelpothers

Throughout these two experiences of being given my award and the all the years of hanging around Colton and being a friend, I realized I was apart of two audiences. The first audience I was apart of was the ceremony of being a listener in a large group of people all listening to the same person which is spectator audience members. And the second audience I was apart of, was constantly being a engaging member of Colton’s friend by visually seeing new sides to his life and always being a bystander watching over his back.

During the ceremony in which I had received my certificate, this would fall into as being a really good power audience. It falls into this category because you could see that throughout the audience members were acting as agents that were feeding off one another to gain a sense of emotion towards the speaker and relate to one another (Sullivan, 2013). When looking at another perspective, you could look at the term of audience identification because what people were doing is they were listening to what was being said about his life story that allowed for them to put theirselves into the shoes of myself to understand why I was being recognized and the importance of what had been done over the course of him and his sister lives (Livingstone, 2010). The biggest area where audience identification was seen was not only across the entire audience, but the parents and individuals who can relate back to their own personal stories of either having a child that has been special needs, or even grown ups who currently live with something as a life complication.

Sullivan (2013), talks about in the textbook about how consumer behaviour can be changed based on what is being said and personally what the audience may get a sense of feel from. Looking back at myself being an individual audience around Colton relates back to the course material because what was being presented to me visually as well as the things that were being said, put me into a different state of mind of not only wanting to help Colton but to become someone to make a difference in his life through my actions. Even though I was seen to follow in the same state of mind that is usually seen against a large group of people, I was able to bring it on a more personal level by the speaker (Colton’s mom or his helpers) to change how I performed in my day to day life.

Social media has always been such an impactful way in peoples lives and for the past decade bringing more people together to share experiences, beliefs and anything about their lives to the people of this virtual world. Relating this back to the Neubaum, G., & Kramer, N. (2018) article it talked about how people in a day to day basis will have such different personalities and sharing of beliefs online and offline. This situation in which I had experienced was a classic example showing that once the bandwagon of someone commenting or making a separate post about myself based on the story they heard at the ceremony, people were starting to join along and become engaged in the hashtag as well as writing their own personal posts about what their thought were towards the situation. This created a mass audience on the social media platform in my age group of people who knew me. People in todays society will not do something to make themselves stand out on social media because it is readably harder to retract of what is said and will sometimes expose people way more than what their general intentions were.

Throughout this blog you were able to see all the different ways in which audience was seen from a personal individual level to a mass audience during the ceremony and an in online setting through social media. Audiences have their differences but in the end all have a sense of connection to one another, even if they seem is as if they are polar opposites. I will post a link to the website to Colton and Carling’s family to see their life story on their behalf. Also showing a picture of myself with the mayor from my ceremony day

http://coltonsprojectpossibility.com/about-colton/