Monday, November 25, 2013

St. George Sustainability- Low Waste

I have lived in St. George for about a year now and from what I can tell we are very behind in the going green attitude that some cities have adopted.  Like for instance my hometown Portland, Oregon is one of the greenest cities in America, so you could imagine my shock when I come to St. George and realizing that there isn't recycling bins at every corner or seeing multicolored bins parked out on the curbs of each resident. When researching to find out about the steps St. George is taking to reduce their waste and any initiatives to becoming a greener city, I had an extremely difficult time. The best I could find was on the city of St. George website, where there was a little blurb about a pretty much nonexistent program called Don't Waste Dixie which aims to keep the public informed about ways to keep Washington county beautiful by anti litter campaigns and recycling. Their supposed efforts I haven't witnessed, but hey at least they're addressing it.

womp, womp.....On the other hand  Portland is making wonderful strides in trying to make their city as sustainable as possible. Portland had a whole website attributed to just garbage and recycling, they had links showing pick up schedules, pamphlets about tips on what to recycle etc. Outside of every home on Tuesday night there is a yellow, a blue and a green recycling bin. Portland has eliminated their use of plastic bags. We have made recycling a little bit more effective by separating compost from the hazardous and non recyclable materials. Portland even gives away $100 cash reward to those who sign up to receive their emails. I think St. George could learn a lot from a city like Portland. What we could start with is maybe awareness and getting people to care about taking care of their city. On a social media note, there could also maybe be an app that could give St. George residents the proper knowledge about recycling and maybe start with some incentives. Our group came up with the idea to possibly link it to the VW Fun Theory in which people invent fun ways to perform certain tasks and see if it affects peoples behaviors for the better. They did one where they put this bottle bank in the street and turned it into a arcade game, and it influenced more people to recycle than ever before. Here is the video.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

"We Can't Stop" talking about Miley Cyrus: Contextual Impact of Social Media Rough Draft

Over the past several months, it seems as though the public and social media cannot get enough of Miley Cyrus and her crazy antics. What once was a small fascination of the Disney cultivated, big eyed southern girl, quickly grew into a widespread obsession all over the world. On August 12, 2012 Miley Cyrus posted a picture on Twitter of her drastic new hair do, and ever since then the world has fixed its gaze on Miley and hasn't turned away since. This hair cut was obviously very newsworthy as it was featured on many online news sources.

The event that got most people talking was the night of the VMA music awards in which she shared the stage with R&B singer Robin Thicke and proceeded to use foam fingers and an assortment of other props as her personal S&M toys. The performance brought on a tornado of various types of feedback. From comments feeding in about how she dressed, and how she acted or how people are disappointed of the former Disney star. I rarely go on twitter except for rare cases such as these, when I know something big has happened and I'm curious as to know about my fellow peers think of the event. And boy did they have something to say. Literally everyone, from my great-aunts in Hawaii, to my mother in Portland and my friends back east, everyone and I mean everyone on my feed had something to weigh in on how they felt about Miley Cyrus's performance. Even celebrities couldn't help but post their two cents about her racy performance.


Facebook was also live with comments and mostly appalled reactions. My favorite and go-to social media outlet, Instagram was already exhibiting really harsh but also really funny memes of Miley Cyrus and the show wasn't even over yet!

 


After her performance Miley was in everyone's mouths the next day. It went viral, a recap of the awards show aired on most TV news channels and major online news sources such as CNN, Fox News, YahooNews, Good Morning America, and many more. "In the wake of her performance the onetime Hannah Montana star skyrocketed in just about every social media metric available. Cyrus topped Google GOOG -0.2% s hot searches yesterday after adding 100,000 Instagram followers and 50,000 Facebook FB -6.48% likes on Sunday" according to Next Big Sound.

 Miley Cyrus rocked the nation, two hours after the event she was a major trend, sparking controversy all over the place. From my school teachers, to friends and family, and even my pastor, the event seemed to affect them all. What surprised me the most was how long everyone continued to talk about it. Usually an event that blows up on twitter lasts for a day or two and then it gets dry but this particular story thrived. It might have something to do with Miley's great timing. On the night of her now-infamous VMA performance, she topped the 2013 Super Bowl Blackout record–with only 300,000 Twitter mentions per second-second only to the record of 327,452 per second during the 2012 presidential election! Those are some pretty impressive numbers for a 20 year old woman with no publicist or handlers dictating her every move. What makes this concerning to me, is that the public was so focused on down casting Miley, and labeling her as a "slut" and bashing her for not being a role model to their kids all while there are more important issues that needed notice. Why was this event on nearly every magazine cover, headlines major newspapers, being talked about on radio shows, but we can't seem to get a focus on the actual things that are going on in our society that we need spend our energy on. In my opinion this should have never been as controversial as it was and still is.

From what I've been reading some people think that Miley Cyrus is a master of media, and I would have to agree with that concession. Miley has taken over every form of media that exists and has maintained control over it. to the point where everything she's doing whether its twerking on stage with a teddy bear backpack, or lighting a joint on stage it has called the attention of nearly every person who has ever been near a smartphone, newspaper, TV, radio, magazine and the internet. Achieving this spotlight all without a publicity team or handlers.  Miley has somehow found a way to turn her numerous scandals to boost her popularity and image to become this worldwide sensation. Whether its good or bad praise Miley seems to enjoy it all and benefit from it all. 






 
 
 

Monday, October 28, 2013

The New Social Media Divide

I hate to say this but I definitely fall under the middle of the road category. I'm that person who could care less about my privacy and the steps I should be taking to protect myself the internet. Even though I do have a Facebook, Twitter etc. I wouldn't say I'm an active user. Its a pretty special day if you catch me posting anything. I'm what you call the silent social networker. I usually just observe and comment on the happening of other peoples posts. After reading the article, I wondered why I'm not as obsessed with social networking as most people my age, and I have come to the conclusion that I guess I'm just a private person and I don't really feel the need to let everyone know every detail of every minute of my life. One would assume that since I'm this big private person, I should be the main one to be concerned with my privacy rights. But I honestly could care less. I really don't see the danger, I really don't have anything to hide, and its really not bothersome to me at all. But if were talking about serious privacy violations like identity theft and such then that's a whole other thing. For the most part, I'm pretty neutral to the whole privacy issue. As the article mentioned, I do feel like I fall right into the category of those who feel that my privacy is lost anyways and I really don't know the steps to protect myself, so I just surrender and give in to it. Its come to the point that almost anything and everything I do online always asks for some type of information from me, whether its my location, my phone number, email , or access to my Facebook its all so very overwhelming, and I end up giving into it. In my point of view, the idea of privacy is so far gone that I have become disinterested about it. And I don't see an end in sight. I feel that pretty soon with the way things are going, privacy will no longer exist. Which is why I am in that middle road position. But, If you asked me what I felt about the issue 5 years ago, my answer would be totally different. Five years ago I was an avid social network user, I was constantly being warned about people  who might harm you on the internet, and the dangers of what might happen if you didn't protect your profiles correctly, granted I was younger then and much newer to technology but I definitely wouldn't have wanted anyone or anyone with permission to know my location or willingly just list my phone number. Its definitely interesting to see how times have changed.

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A Dixie State Univeristy scrimmage game at the Burns Arena on Tuesday, October 22, 2013.
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Monday, September 30, 2013

Splitting up the Work

I have decided to join up with Kaylah Milller to create the Dixie State University Women's Basketball Facebook page. I will be in charge of posting basketball related posts and Kaylah is handling the off the court related activities.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Reaction to Obama Speech

Obama really does have a way with words, he is one of the best public speakers I have ever witnessed. He has a talent for moving an audience with his words, and a knack for swaying peoples decisions and relating to all different kinds of people. He talks very powerfully and with great authority. I found myself very pleased after hearing his speech. I'm not very well informed on the Syria issue but after hearing his speech it made me want to gather more information and research a little bit. While watching the debate and tracking the twitter feeds, I did notice that his speech wasn't even a trending topic until a good 10 minutes after it aired. The only posts I saw before he spoke, were just the casual tweets informing the public where and when to watch. I didn't find much buzz about it until the speech concluded. I searched the hashtag #Syria and the finally the tweets began flooding in. At first most of the feedback was supportive and positive about Obama and his stance, and then I gradually began to see a lot of snarky, sarcastic comments. And there's always the I-hate- Obama-and-everything-he-stands-for group that always has something pleasant to say. Social media definitely has a huge impact on people and our opinions, especially the younger people nowadays because they tend to get all their information about the world through social media. This can be a detrimental thing, for everyone has access to it and has the ability to say what they want, whether its true or not. So what ends up happening, is a lot of people get misinformed and starts to breed ignorance. To me the most dangerous thing a person can be in this world is ignorant.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

URL

https://www.facebook.com/PortlandPressure

Mission Statement

The mission of this page is to promote Portland Pressure Basketball and its journey to becoming one of the foremost elite women's AAU basketball programs in the greater Northwest region. Portland Pressure Basketball is dedicated to not only challenging athletes abilities on the court but also transforming young women athletes to become leaders off the court. Portland Pressure's aims to take athletes and make them students of the game, so that they leave prepared for what's to come in college basketball.

Personas

Miranda is 13 years old and lives in Northeast Portland. In her spare time she plays many sports but enjoys the game of basketball the most. Miranda and her parents have been on an extensive search to find a suitable AAU team in the Portland area. Miranda wants to take her game to the next level and is hoping for a program that will challenge her and get her ready to potentially play college ball. She uses Facebook regularly to maintain relationships with friends and family.

Austin is 27 and from Portland, Oregon. She is a recent grad student from Colorado State University, and has just finished a 3 year tour overseas playing professional basketball in Europe. She is back in the United States and is looking forward to coming home to give back to her community by helping other girls like her who love to play basketball. She is looking for a coaching opportunity around the local high schools. Austin brings a lot of experience to the table and hopes to use that to her advantage when looking for jobs. She is an avid Facebook user, as it was her only stable source of communication when living in Europe. She uses Facebook to connect and network with her teammates from college and former coaches.

Charles is 54, a retired teacher and basketball coach. He moved to Portland, Oregon earlier this year with his wife and 3 daughters and are looking to join a travelling team. Charles has been around the women's basketball market for a long time, is very well known for his scouting abilities and his talent for transforming girls into D1 ready athletes. He is looking for a premier AAU team that will give his daughters the chance to perform in front of college coaches, in hopes of obtaining college scholarships. Charles dabbles with Facebook, only using it to network with other past players, parents and coaches.