Sunday, March 24, 2013

Edmund D. Carlson, Jr.

For those of you who don't know, this is my brother, Ed Carlson. He died Saturday, March 16th. He was 25, three years older than me. I just figured I'd let you all know. This is why I've been kinda... whatever... in class lately. I haven't blogged anything either. It's a bit hard to function right now, so yeah. Patience and all that. Thanks for your understanding, especially to Chris and Dr. Bogad.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Discourse on Teens and the Media

So for the mid-term project, I've been thinking about interviewing - whether on video or voice recorder - people who are commonly referred to as teenagers to see what they think about teens and the media. I'd love to go to a high school and interview some random kids to see what teenagers think of how the media portrays teenagers and how that effects them in their daily life. I'm really interested in seeing what the discourse around teenagers is from a perspective other than a scholar's. I think that it's really important to see how these people view themselves and how they construct their own image of themselves and their generation.

I think that this could give a very refreshing look into what the "in-group" thinks about the "in-group", rather than hearing it from the critique of someone without the current experience. I feel as though there is such a difference between the teenagers of the 80's and 90's (read current scholars of the teenage discourse) and the current generation of teenagers that there could be many aspects of "teenage-hood" that we miss, simply because of socio-technological advancements.

With that being said, I've never actually interviewed anyone for the sake of a class before and I've never tried to put together a video of any kind before. Honestly, the only thing that I'd be worried about is actually stringing the videos together to make something cohesive about what I find. I'm also a bit nervous because I'm wondering how I can just go up to some teenager and ask them questions like that. Good thing CK's brother is in high school and I'm still good friends with some of my old professors.

I think that this is very easily related back to all of the work that we have been doing this semester.