Activism ever changing influence on social media

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In my podcast, I wanted to inform and allow my listeners to understand what activism is, how it is possible, and what the risks are in regards to attempting to drive social change with the help of social media.

In the podcast, I also stated that I will talk about activism and body shaming/the beauty ideal, speaking about how social media is influencing beauty standards, what is considered to be the norms for most people using social media, and talk a bit on both sides of how social media is affecting it.

I wanted to convey to my listener to start thinking about how social media is influencing people's lives, dictating or telling people what their preferences, standards, and society's expectations of them are. I told my listeners that "you may not know, but this is what's happening," and rather than telling them to go against it and be activists to fight back, I wanted them to choose it for themselves since it was only going to repeat the process of people being influenced.

For my strategy and planning, I use a simple structure: intro, explaining general information, good and bad, and outro.

During my podcast, I summarised and used some of the main points that I found helpful or that stood out for my topic. I selected those points and put them in my podcast. Using those, I tried to be short with each piece of information I found, only saying things that were necessary, as I didn't want my listener to be overly complicated with information.

In my podcast, I only use one source of music for both my intro and outro, which I found easily on YouTube with the help of the search guide for creative commons music that I can use freely without copyright. During that, I look out for the appropriate licence that I can use. For creating the whole podcast, it's really straight-forward. I just use my mic, hit record, and do some trials and errors until I find that it sounds correct.

Although it might sound easy, I just hit the record button and dragged them out to make the podcast. I didn't think there were that many issues with the sound and background noise. I tried to record them again multiple times, but every time there was still some part that caused some buzz or parts that were either too loud or too small or had tram noise in the background, I ended up having to record back and forth over 50 times. In the end, some of my audio still has some buzz or is too loud, but I was able to fix them using some audio repair on Adobe Premiere Pro and lowering the volume to 6–12 dB, which is the best level for dialogue. I also learned some new editing techniques that I use for my music intro and outro and even dialogue transitions so that they sound smoother and less out of nowhere popping in, which made my overall audio quality improve quite a bit.

References:

Cabrera, NL, Matias, CE & Montoya, R 2017, ‘Activism or slacktivism? The potential and pitfalls of social media in contemporary student activism.’, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 400–415.

Dayswag 2023, From Likes to Looks: Unraveling the Impact of Social Media on Beauty Standards, Medium.

Engeln-Maddox, R 2006, ‘Buying a Beauty Standard or Dreaming of a New Life? Expectations Associated with Media Ideals’, Psychology of Women Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 258–266.

equlmag 2021, Social media and beauty standards - EQUL, equlmag, viewed 22 May 2024, <https://equlmag.com/2021/11/26/social-media-and-beauty-standards/>.

Li, J 2021, Body Shaming in Different Forms for Males and Females in Modern Urban Chinese Society, www.atlantis-press.com, Atlantis Press, pp. 239–243.

Quittkat, HL, Hartmann, AS, Düsing, R, Buhlmann, U & Vocks, S 2019, ‘Body Dissatisfaction, Importance of Appearance, and Body Appreciation in Men and Women Over the Lifespan’, Frontiers in Psychiatry, vol. 10, no. 864.

Roodt, K 2015, (Re)constructing body shaming: Popular media representations of female identities as discursive identity construction, scholar.sun.ac.za, viewed 22 May 2024, <https://scholar.sun.ac.za/items/176fef63-edc2-4bf1-b7fb-535cf27692b1>.

SERIOUS DOCUMENTARY BACKGROUND MUSIC | NO COPYRIGHT - ROYALTY FREE MUSIC by JMFX🍊in Feb 29, 2020 Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)