Media Writing Lab

By Daniel Scotto Growing up, it is instilled in us to dream big and put every ounce of concentration and effort into achieving those dreams, whatever they may be. Only a select few Americans have the coveted opportunity to represent their country on the Olympic stage. The amount of talent and dedication it takes to be on that high caliber of a team is nearly impossible to accomplish. With that being said, when these sorts of accolades are taken away from someone or tarnished, there is no possible way to make up for this loss. This is what happened to around 350 women that fell victim to Larry Nassar. Larry Nassar joined the USA Olympic gymnastic program as an athletic trainer in 1986. The women on the multiple gymnastic teams during his tenure could have never expected the horrifying events that were to come. Joining the esteemed ranks of being an Olympic athlete puts you on a pedestal. As an Olympic athlete, you expect to be treated as such. Nassar u...

By Stella Ahn Vlogging; video blogging is one of the most common types of user-generated content in social media, especially in YouTube. Increasing attention toward Vlog and Vlogger have made another kind of celebrities. YouTube celebrities make revenue from various sources based on their contents and fame such as advertisement and sponsorship. As they became rich and popular, they have huge impact on their followers. Their contents can encourage social movement and people in minor community. On the other hand, growing trend of Vlogging also can cause negative effect. Therefore, this post will discuss about how Vlogging effect for both producer and consumer.    Vloggers have advantages in terms of communication and interaction, because they can communicate directly with their followers via contents and comments. This characteristic of social media made Vlog celebrities be able to have influence among social movements and communities. Arthurs take an example of...

By John Pasch The United States Supreme Court is arguably the most powerful institution of the government  next to only the President. Recently, a spot became vacant on the Court and President Donald Trump appointed judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the position. The appointment and installment,  however, didn’t go as smoothly as people had hoped or anticipated.                                                After Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, there was a swarm of sexual misconduct allegations, worthy of disqualification. As striking as this may seem, cases like this have become all too common today. They either didn’t exist in such a multitude in the earlier years of American politics/society, which is unlikely, or they have simply become more public, which is what I am willing to put my money on. The question then becomes: how do allegation...

By Jackson Williams Many times, in today’s world, we are bombarded stories about bullying or how social media and social networks enable bullies and give them more tools to spread hate.   As stated by Caroline Caron in the Canadian Journal of Communication, “Bullying has been acknowledged in Québec as a social issue requiring immediate action from institutional stakeholders” (Caron, 2017, p.7).  Although it has been acknowledged, these institutional stakeholders have not made the necessary progress to combat the issue. Younger generations cannot wait for adults to make changes to defeat bullying simply because their idea of bullying is different than the way adolescents experience bullying in today's media-centered society.   Previous generations have experienced bullying in different ways.  For example, in order to get rid of a bully, many kids were told to just ignore the bully’s actions.  This may have worked for some, but today, that notion...

By Brogan Miller Since 2002, the Catholic church has been under fire for its ongoing sexual abuse scandals within the church. These allegations are coming out more consistently as victims and the families of victims are beginning to challenge the hegemony that has been occurring in the Catholic church. Any church is supposed to be a place where people can feel safe, and those who hold positions in the hierarchy of the church are meant to be trusted. Unfortunately, this state of mind is changing very quickly within the Catholic church. The Catholic church is trying to do things to fix these ongoing issues by enforcing new laws and claiming that the people responsible for these scandals are simply "rotten apples" (White & Terry, 2008). Our class examined this issue earlier in the semester and compared it to police brutality. As the abuse within the Catholic church has been dated back decades, ruling it out as a few "rotten apples" responsible is a disgrace....

MAKEUP TUTORIALS ON YOUTUBE: THE POWER OF EXPRESSION Jarrod stiver Youtube is one of the most popular social media platforms. Youtube is the most popular video sharing platform. This platform allows its users to access thousands of videos from many different genres online with one search. One genre that has been increasingly popular is beauty “vlogging,” or video blogging. Beauty vlogging is a way for the user to “ teach new makeup techniques, demonstrate and review new products, or circulate beauty-related information” (p.1). While these videos are meant for the use of beautification, the producers and people in the vlogs tend to share very personal stories of their lives. By telling these stories, they are self-representing themselves to their viewers much like users of other social media platforms, like twitter and instagram. Kennedy says that beauty vlogging is unique due to the producer “not only presenting the self, but they are also visually constructing the...

By Joshua Mundell Sexual misconduct toward women is a growing problem in the United States. Celebrities such as Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein, and Louis C.K have all been found guilty of sexual misconduct within the past two years. You may ask what makes these men’s stories so similar? All these sexual misconduct incidents occurred in their respective workplaces. According to Lloyd Hoffspiegel, “There has been sexual misconduct in the workplace ever since there has been a workplace” (Hoffspiegel, 2002). One of the more disturbing cases of sexual misconduct in the workplace recently occurred within the Dallas Mavericks organization, a team in the National Basketball Association. In February of 2018, Sports Illustrated (SI) published an investigative report detailing the extensive accounts of sexual misconduct and sexual harassment that had occurred within the Dallas Mavericks organization. This report described the situation in Dallas as a “real-life Animal House” and stated ...

By: Joe Zanca Nowadays it doesn't take much to make a viral video. Just film yourself doing something stupid and you'll most likely gain your 15 minutes of fame on the internet. Sites like YouTube allow anyone the chance to make a viral video. But the creators of viral videos never seem to have the intentions of going viral. For example, the viral video “leave Britney alone”. Chris Crocker (the creator of Leave Britney alone) never intended to go viral when making the video.  Chris was simply expressing his emotions about the way Britney Spears was being treated. Going viral in today's world is easy thanks to video sites like YouTube. The idea of a viral video can be perplexing.  What makes a viral video?  Is it the number of views it has or how fast it spread across all forms of media.  Or is it both of those things?  Viral Videos are described as “the phenomenon in which video clips become highly popular through rapid, user-led distribution via the Interne...

By Freddie Coudret Sexual misconduct, sexual assault, and rape are rapidly growing problems in the United States today. This issue unfortunately hits very close to home, as it is such a relevant problem on our campus here at DePauw. Every day I read about men from all areas of society, whether it be politicians, star athletes, artists or even actors taking advantage of their positions of power to mistreat women. However, this is not a new problem, it is age old. The #MeToo movement has played an integral role in the quest of women finding the strength to find a space in which they feel comfortable to be heard as victims of sexual misconduct, sexual assault, and/or rape. Twitter has especially been an extremely powerful fuel to the #MeToo movement. As it functions as a hashtag, Twitter has allowed for the #MeToo testimonies and the subsequent stories to be located, shared, and brought to attention rather easily. This allowed for more women to find a comfortable haven to simply be heard...