Blog 11: Presentation Impacts 2.0: What I Learned

I have always been passionate about the arts in all forms. I have always been fascinated by street art, although I have known little about it. Caroline's presentation on alternative media was extremely interesting to me. I was not aware that alternative media encompasses so many different forms of expression. I have seen Banksy's girl with a balloon piece (pictured above) many times, but it was interesting to learn more about it and the meaning behind it. Street art is an amazing way of expression that can be controversial, but allows the artists to project their message to a large audience. I really enjoyed how Caroline made her presentation personal to her as she is an artist herself. She even talked about a street artist that had visited her hometown. 

Caroline also touched on underground newspapers, which I had never really heard much about. One of the facts that stuck with me the most was that some underground newspapers published stories and scandals that mainstream media would not, but sometimes they ended up being true. The most well known incident being that an underground newspaper published the story of Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky after no media platforms would publish the story. After the scandal proved to be true, it came out through mainstream media much later. 

I learned a lot from Corrina's presentation as well. I did not really know about the differences between misinformation and disinformation. The part of the presentation that really stuck with me was comparing misinformation and disinformation to a game of telephone. Misinformation is like the person "who genuinely can't hear the person who is whispering," and disinformation is the person "who wants to change it to be the jokester of the group." I also got some tips on identifying misinformation and disinformation in the media such as analyzing intent and author credibility. Identifying fake news is a very important skill to have in today's age because we are bombarded with so much information everyday, it is beneficial to have some ways to sift through the information and be cautious of what you believe.