For this week’s blog post, I am choosing to respond to “I’m an Addict” and Other Sensemaking Devices: A Discourse Analysis of Self-Reflections on Lived Experience of Social Media.” By Katrin Tiidenberg, Annette Markham, Gabriel Pereira, Mads Rehder, Ramona Dremljuga. In the reading, it talks about how young people negotiate their own experience and existing discourses about social media. Social media addiction is a phrase sometimes used to refer to someone spending too much time on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other forms of social media so much so that it interferes with other aspect of daily life. For example, I find myself being addicted to social media because I’m always checking my Instagram or Twitter to discover the latest news. The authors stated “social media use is pathological and leads to psychological problems. “This discourse utilizes the above-mentioned addiction grand narrative, relying on the reified rhetorical elements of narcissism, FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) or vanity.” FOMO is an issue for everyone from middle schoolers to adults that spend too much time on social media. I think FOMO is like getting invited to a party from your friends and not showing up because you gotta go to your little cousin birthday party that you don’t like. People are afraid to miss out on stuff becuase it makes them feel uncool.

Work Citied

Sources: Tiidenberg, Katrin, et al. “‘Im an Addict’ and Other Sensemaking Devices.” Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Media & Society – #SMSociety17, 2017

Stories are shared among everyone. Everyone has a story to tell, a story can be important or it could be a friendly reminder of something that went wrong. But when it comes to writing a story on the computer it’s different because you have the option to add pictures, highlight some words or insert gifs and videos. I told my story about my cat when it attacked my brothers. This story has been talked about since it happened among everyone in my family. Although I was only two years old at that time I could imagine how terrible it was.

After completing each of the three stories assignments, I learned a better understanding about the importance of telling stories it connects back to orality, written and through technology. For the oral part, I told my story the way I remembered it and heard it from my mother. The written part, I was asking my mother and brothers about the story. Lastly, for the technological aspect of storytelling, I think adding gifs would be a great way to give the viewer’s attention and highlight certain elements in my story.

By far the most difficult process of turning a piece of literature into a serious of tweets, was deciding concisely which words to use, due to the 280 character count. Despite the original 400 word source material, it was very difficult to pick which words to cut and shape for the lower amount of space. I chose to discuss the setting, how it was told to me later in life, and why John Douglas is still relevant to me. I found myself using more relaxed and non-academic wording, trying to ‘tweet’ it like I was speaking the story out loud.

I think that the twitter link I provided is an extremely prevalent example of communication and computer technology. Twitter has become, politically and socially, more important in terms of the most recent information being available. Therefore, if I would want to tell many people, my followers, this story it makes it much easier. I also used a GIF to display an emotion my father had because it was easier to convey visually, rather than use a sentence. Overall, I used a much different style or writing for my tweets that I would describe as very conversational and relaxed.

https://twitter.com/Douglas199714

I normally like to talk a lot but when it came down to picking a story it was difficult. I ended up choosing a story that at first I thought had no big significance to me. When I said the story out loud I tried my best to just get to the point so it would be quick and short. When it came to the written part of the story, I then tried including more details and a background to my life that can sort of help you understand the story a little more. When it came to the digital part of the story it then pointed out 3 words that I repeated 7 times which was grandpa, grandparents and time. My reflection to the three parts storytelling is that although I kept telling my story there was still some changes in all 3. There are so many stories that we have that we have probably told a couple of times. We tell a story to make sure the point gets across but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is told the same way all the time. I think that it is almost impossible to tell a story the same way various times because either you missed some details or you forgot to mention something. I liked this small project a lot because I would’ve never realized this about telling a story.

https://voyant-tools.org/?corpus=efa5c56cae99eeba7ed4772ad83227d3&view=Cirrus

What stuck out to me the most when I put my story into Voyant-tool was the words that were used the most. There were 3 words that I used 7 times which was grandparents, grandpa and time. This amazed me because I didn’t realize how often I used these words until it was put into Voyant-tool. These 3 words are significant to my story because this story was a time in my life that I shared with my grandparents that I will always remember. I didn’t realize the significance of these words during the other two parts of storytelling because these 3 words didn’t stick out to me until now.

Personally the hardest part of this project would have had to be choosing a story to tell out loud. We are constantly hearing stories, passing them down, and experiencing something new which later becomes a story. I originally told a story about my dog but it was hard for me to stick with it as I entered into part two of this project. Although I tell this story a lot, it was difficult to give insight on any written details, or keep one idea for the very fact I wasn’t there when the events took place. Most detail I did know was told to me afterwards with the gaps filled from the people that were there. My new story has also been told many times but it was a personal experience that I didn’t find as difficult to write down. It was actually nice to finally put this story on paper because it something I never really got to chew on, I tell it due to its unexpected, and strange qualities but while writing it I could finally fully understand the emotion behind it. When going into the final part, allowing the computer to visually display my work, I realized how bizarre this story actually is. I usually tell it in a humorous way because it’s all in the past but when looking at what the computer generated ironically there’s very little humor in it. This is something I would have never noticed if it wasn’t for computer functions like text mining.