Week 3 Blog

The article I found for this week talks about the risk management done by Generation Z. It goes on to talk about how Generation Z will soon be responsible for important decisions and what the motivating factors of the Gen Z representatives. The article discusses how Gen Z expectations are similar around the world. This article goes into the fundamentals and strategies of training and hiring newcomers into the workforce and about how Gen Z gravitates towards gamified processes because of moble-centricity. Gen Z is formed around technology which makes it feel like social media plays a huge part in world we live in.

I feel as though this article is important to me because my project is about the impact that mental illness has on this generation we’re in. These next few decades are going to be populated heavily by Generation Z. Sooner or later, from every owner of a company, to every house owner, to them eventually taking over the government. Generation Z is the now and the future, so my goal was to talk about the impact that mental illness has on the generation that a lot of us are a part of.

I have not done much work on my project for this week. I’ve been trying to figure out ways to pay for this semester and next semester while also doing side gigs to make some extra money for bills. I ran into some issues with my committee members so last week I reached out to a few different faculty members to see if they could be a part of my committee. Hopefully I’ll hear back from them at some point this week because this semester has been quite stressful for me thus far, and I feel like when it comes to my project, this is the last big hurdle I have to get over before all I can focus on is the research paper and the project itself.

For this week, the article that I found helpful to me was titled Social Media & Mental Health: Benefits, Risks and Opportunities for Research and Practice. The article takes an in depth look at how social media is used and what its purposes are for. It discusses how it can offer peer-to-peer support for people that deal with mental illness as well as discuss the harm that social media can cause. This article also summarizes the current research that is being done to understand the usage of social media among mental health service users and the early efforts by using social media for the delivery of evidence-based programs. The last thing the article touches on is how they explore opportunities by using data science and machine learning, they use this to help researchers see the progressions of mental disorders through social media.

I believe this article contributes to my project because it takes a more in depth look into social media usage and also uses different research methods to find their conclusions. Unlike the other articles that I have that talk about social media usage for people with mental illness, this article provided me with more information about the risks that comes with social media and the impact that it can have on individuals. I find this important because for my project, a major part of my idea and topic is centered around the uses and misuses of social media, how it can be both a benefit and a issue for people who deal with mental health issues, especially ones that are from Generation Z. This article just adds to the information that I have already gathered, which is a big plus for me at this point in my project.

I was unable to stay and hear the feedback on my initial media project, but i do look forward to any feedback that I will receive from my professors when I have my meeting with them.

For this week, I found an article on how the usage of social media could both be a positive and a negative for people dealing with mental illness. The article came from the Harvard University and touched on how social media gets a bad light because of the negative impact that it has on mental illness, but also suggests that it can have positive effects as well. Social media can be used as a mental break for people during a busy day of face to face interaction, but when it comes to its usage with younger people, it can be viewed as a cause for depression or anxiety. My thoughts from this article is that there’s a fine line between social media usage being a benefit and being a problem for mental illness patients.

For this week, outside of working on my initial media assignment, I have begun to work on an outline of my project thesis paper. I plan on beginning to write it soon after I find a few more articles to help me out. I’ve also sent out follow up emails to my potential committee members so that I can see who will be able to join my committee and discuss with them the project that I have chosen, hopefully I hear back from them shortly. My goal for this week is to have my committee chosen and make times to speak with them individually or together so that I may get feedback on the project I have chosen. I also have a meeting with the librarian Kristina on Monday to go over what I need to do next and answer a few questions that I have for her.

Coming into this semester, I knew that for a fact I wanted my project to be a podcast series about something other than sports. My reason for that is because I wanted to step out of my comfort zone, I wanted to use something to help me get used to being uncomfortable. I feel as though at this point in the semester, my project is coming along slowly, but there is some sort of progress made every week. What I was unaware of during this time period is how much time I need to focus on doing research or reaching out to my potential committee members, dealing with figuring out how to pay for this semester and next semester, and still looking for employment until I’m able to land a job in my career field. It’s been a very tiring semester, so I’m looking forward to seeing all this work pay off in my final project.

When the semester began, I didn’t set many milestone goals for myself when it came to my project, my goals have been to get something done each week that will contribute to my project. When it comes to the visualization, I can picture the scenery and guests that I want to have in my podcast series, I’m still thinking about if I want a co-host or not, but I can picture the final project everyday and that gives me hope. When it comes to the production, I do need to do a better job of getting more work done, and make sure that I do these blog post and responses ahead of time to give me more time to focus on my project. I believe I’ll feel better about my project when November comes around.

I believe the best way to showcase what is expected of me from the MA project guidelines is by the way I conduct my interviews/my show. I want the talk to be about mental health, and I want to focus on how it effects men and women of color. I think the best way to showcase my findings is through what I say when I start production. I think I’m most looking forward to seeing how my project turns out, what I mean by that is the final format. After discussions with my potential committee members and peers, I want and am excited to see what my podcast format will look like.

With figuring out the topic that I wanted to do for my MA Project, I decided that I need to look for more articles about mental health, I want my podcast series to bean in depth conversation about why it’s important to take care of your health and how to know when someone is dealing with mental illness. The article that I found was “Suffering In Silence: Mental Health Stigma and Physicians’ Licensing Fears”. Ever since the the Covid 19 pandemic occurred in 2020, mental health awareness has become the topic of conversation in the years since. Physicians can become reluctant to diagnose people with mental illness because of the difficulty and potential consequences that may come with that. mental health is a sensitive topic, and it can be difficult to diagnose someone who’s going through something if they look fine physically. Mental health has grown into a stigma in the medical community, and because of this stigma there are fears that physicians have when diagnosing someone with mental illness.

My reason for picking this article is for mainly two purposes. The first purpose is because I’ve been a victim of mental illness for years before I even knew what mental illness was. My illness came from depression and being an overthinking a lot, the reason I want my project to be focused on mental health is because there are people out there like me, who don’t know that they have it but can feel that something is bothering them. My second reason that I feel like this article is impactful for my project is because I was unaware of the fears that physicians can have from a diagnosis. At first i thought the fear stemmed from the unknown of how a person could react to that news. But learning about the consequences that physicians can face, I can understand why there’s some fear for them.

When it comes to my progress on my project, these past two weeks have been physically and mentally draining for me, so my time of work I’ve spent on my project has not been good. I am still waiting to hear back from two potential committee members and I’ve started to gather some more articles for my research and am beginning to get a binder together for my work. My next steps are two follow up with my potential committee members and begin to write my thesis paper (at least the introduction) and outline how I want the rest of my paper to loos like.

Kristopher McClendon

For my MA Project, I want to do a podcast series on sibling relationships (i.e. twins, step brothers, middle children, etc.) or the effects of mental illnesses. While I’m still figuring out what I want my topic to be, I do know that I want people to want to listen to my podcast. I believe that an important part of a podcast is to get people to want to tune in to what you’re talking about.  The article that caught my attention was “Why People Listen: Motivations and Outcomes of podcast, listening.” This article discusses different ways on how to attract listeners to your podcast, and ways to motivate them to listen. Reading about the potential outcome of podcast listeners and how you can satisfy the listeners basic psychological needs. 

I feel like this article contributes to my project is because I need to give people a reason to want to watch or listen to my podcast. The goal of a podcast is to get the attention of the audience, they should be able to get something out of your podcast, whether your intention was to make the audience laugh, motivate them, or educate them on a certain topic. What I pulled from this article is that when i create my project, I need to make sure people have a reason to listen in, and people can takeaway something from listening to my project.

So far, I haver not begun to do any work on my project. If this is considered work, I’ve been watching some podcasts this week in order to see how they conduct interviews, how they prepare for their episodes, and how they tell a story throughout each episode. I think my goal for this week will be to start reading some more scholarly articles related to creating podcasts and hopefully know the exact topic that I want to do. Also, my goal this week is to try to figure out all of my committee members, so I will be reaching out to one or two more of my old professors to see what they have to say about it. 

 

 

Tobin SJ, Guadagno RE (2022) Why people listen: Motivations and outcomes of podcast listening. PLoS ONE 17(4): e0265806. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265806