Workspace

Fraser begins the article by addressing what a public sphere is. She explains that a public sphere is a community where people deliberate about their common affairs. These topics discussed about in a public sphere are usually meant to help the common good. This, in simple terms, is a democracy. Fraser emphasizes the need to eliminate any social inequalities within a public sphere. She believes that there should be multiple publics, which will push us to a greater democracy. While she strongly believes this, she also notes that lifting restrictions on a public sphere does not always suffice for a full inclusion practice. She goes on to note the political struggles of different minorities within the public sphere. Examples of these are women, African American citizens, and lower class. By assuming we are all equal is being unaware of our surroundings, social inequality is real, and disrupts the public sphere by having one and only one race or gender run the society. Overall, she believes that we need to fight for a more fair, egalitarian democratic society. She thinks that revision of the public sphere is a necessary step in society. All people should be able to participate in a public sphere.

9/8/16

9/12/16

Four takeaways I got from this week's reading were:

1. In radio you must show your story rather than tell it because you have no image to go along with the words. Radio is not a visual medium but it should be by the way the broadcaster shares the story.
2. It is important to always reflect on what you say. For instance, the chapter talked about how in a story you speaking chronologically, listing the events. After the events are listed, the speaker should reflect on those series of events.
3. It takes A LOT to create a radio broadcast. An hour of interview is recorded to be cut down in 15 minutes or so. Numerous steps were taken after the interview: the interviewer who recorded the interview must write out a transcript of the interview, then break it down to the most important points made. Afterword, an editor makes comments and the script is revised.
4. Lastly, I learned that when interviewing it important to open up personally to the person you are interviewing so they are able to open up to you. Doing this will encourage the interviewee to tell a story rather than just simply, and bluntly answer the questions asked. While the interviewer runs the interview, the interviewee should be the person primarily speaking.

While writing this poem, I struggled finding just the right words to describe who I am. Usually when I describe where I am from I share where I live, but this made me think more critically than that. I thought a lot about where I came from in my family heritage, and why I am who I am today. Writing my life down in few words, and in a poem manner was hard but the work I put into it, I believe, paid off. I enjoyed this assignment because I remembered a lot of things about my past that are important to my future. I decided to not share anything to personal, none of my devestations in my life, but rather all the things that have positively affected me. I decided not to share the deaths of some of my family members, or any other devestating moments in my life. Overall, I have had a very blessed life and I want to share that with others. I came from a great background, and was brought up in a very fair and loving manner.

9/15/16

1. Do you find it easier to talk about personal experiences or something that you were not directly related to?

2. What pieces of subject matter would be the hardest to talk about?

3. How can an interviewer indepthly ask questions of your life without insulting you, or striking any poor memories?

4. When sharing your story with an interviewer, have you ever ignored a quesiton because it was too hard to answer?

5. Is it easier to talk about your story if quesitons are asked, or if it is more like a conversation?

6. Would you rather tell your story in one smooth try or would you rather be interviewed?

7. Is talking about your story empowering, or would you rather not always have to share it with others?

9/19/16

9/26/16

A lot of the information that was said in our conversation with the two refugees, Chanda and Sana, on Thursday was very important for my future interview with another refugee. The girls emphasized that making the interview more like a conversation is always better. Not starting the interview instantly was another tip they gave us. Instead, the girls believe that you should make small talk as you meet them, and then dive into the conversation. One thing that the two girls emphasized over and over again was that an interviewer needs to be well prepared, and have a large background on what the interview is about. The interviewee will be more excited to open up and tell more information if the interviewer is fully invested. The interviewee wants you to empower and support their story, do not take anything from the that would offend the interviewee. An example of this would be the interviewee crying. If they do not want this in the final story, then respect that. Interviews can be emotional for both the interviewer and the interviewee. Therefore, both parties should take care of themselves and stop if it becomes too hard.

The feedback that I got from my colleagues was:

-To add music throughout the entire piece

-To add someone else's voice rather than my own when I have dialogue with another person

-To fix some of the spaces with too much breathing

I plan to use all of these comments and change them. I noticed that in my editing I edited a couple words out, and I want to fix these because the story is partly not coherent because of this. I also want to add some spaces between different thoughts because they run into each other. I also want to attempt to make my audio biography shorter, but it is very hard for me to tell such an influential story in such a short time frame. I am excited to use this feedback to make more story better.

In Chapter 4 of Out on the Wire, it stressed the structure of a story and the importance of certain aspects throughout a story. Some important aspects I took a way from the reading were that anecdotes aren’t enough to make a story, you need the person to change in the story. Also, you need to put a vivid image in listener's head, and to do this you need to have active description and show, rather than tell. In journalism, there are no rules, but rather theory. There are guidelines you can follow to make an intriguing story, but your structure is different based on what your story is about, and what you believe is the best way to capture the audiences attention. Another important idea I took away from this chapter was structure of scenes. You do not necessarily have to start with the first scene you filmed. Rather, you can start with a scene that might hook the reader. Scenes also do not have to have a start to and end. You can use bits and pieces throughout to make the story more dynamic. Lastly, working with a group is a very positive aspect of creating a story. The space between two writers helps writers collaborate and create a really succinct and appropriate story.

This being said, I can use a lot of this information in completing the refugee interview assignment. I don't know if I would've necessarily reframed the questions we used, but I do believe that putting these questions in a different order may be interesting for the final product. We are lucky we can edit and move around the clips to make the story more interesting and hook the listener from the beginning. Also, from the reading I learned about how imperative it is for people to work collaboratively together to create a great story. I know I can work with my partners to create a story for our refugees, that empowers them.

10/13/16

10/24/16

This chapter met-aphorizes sound as the "Deep Sea" because there is a lot of depth in music and sound effects that can be conveyed within a radio show. Sound can create an emotional tone by it's self, it can put you inside the point of view of the reader, and it can help paint a literary picture. This metaphor shows that sound can help a listener really understand the truth, and emotion behind the story. It can make a story emotional, or make a story happy. With sound people can hear the feelings of the speaker. This will help in terms of our video story because sound will be able to help the listener understand the story of the refugee just a little bit more. With the sound we can accent times of sadness, or struggle, but also use sound for happy times. Sounds help the emotions peek through the story.

11/3/16

1. Editing is the literal cutting of tape to shorten and shape quotes and sound for a story. The purpose of editing is to make a stories flow better. Edits are where you find solutions to problems in places you never knew you had. Therefore, you need others to see these problems. Editing is best practice when it is done with a group of people. A story should contain sensations, and feelings; two aspects that are important to look at when editing. The story should not just be words tied together in an attempt to make a meaning. It should be concise, but also captivating, which is why editing is necessary. The process of editing involves a lot of talk, as others break your story down. Then you go home, work on it, and make it your own. Again the process of editing might happen, until the story seems like it is the best possible version it can be.

2. The framing of a story means that not only do you have to tell a coherent story, but it also needs to be connected to something bigger. It means that your story should be grounded in real world experience so it is not only relatable but also extremely realistic. It is how you choose to share the story; the perspective you want it to be seen from. Signposting is where you break from the narrative to tell the reader that something new is happening, or when something important happened that the writer wants you to remember.

11/10/16

1. Overall, my colleagues believed that our video was moving, and really geared toward showing the horrific things our interviewees suffered through. Some of the people who gave feedback to our video understood that we wanted to share with others not only what these women suffered through but also how it has affected them in the long term (PTSD). Some of the major revisions I want to consider based on the reviews of my peers are:

- Change the subtitles at the beginning so that they make more sense to the stories the ladies are telling

- Make sure the font is the same size in all of these slides.

- Try and add a little more of Sarah's story so she is not an "after thought"

- lower the music at the end

- add better transitions

My group and I will address these revisions collaboratively, and we hopefully will work together to figure out the best possible way to change our video to make it the best it can be.

2. My outside viewer deemed the video as a way to show people like us, living in America, to be grateful for what we have. It was interesting to hear this because it was a completely different take than what I was expecting. She said a video like this would want to make her help. She understood the purpose to share the ladies tragedies with others; to bring awareness. Revision wise she thinks that

- the paragraphs/slides at the beginning are up too long
- the transition from the talking to the end music should be smoother
- there should be music throughout
- and that some of the cuts are choppy

- add translation at the bottom

I think again, that our group can work together to accomplish these tasks. Giving this feedback from an outside source, I believe, was very useful for our editing process.

11/17/16

1. I believe there are multiple purposes to this article, depending on what angle you may look at it from. I think the first purpose of this article is to show people like us, who are interested in multimodal writing, how significantly different writing an online piece like this is compared to a written essay. This academic piece shared with us how difficult it is to make an online piece that has all the components you want it to, but still look put together. I think it also shows us how to incorporate not only graphics, but also audio to work nicely with the text. Secondly, I think this academic piece shares with us how words can be defined differently based on a number of things such as audience, context, history, etc. There are a lot of terms having to do with multimodal , and multimedia writing, and several authors share that this can change from person to person. Not everything is exactly the way it seems, and that is what this article truly stresses.

2. The two concepts that were talked about that I found most interesting was the talk of how audience can change the way a word is defined, and how the context can change a way a word is defined. In the audio clip: "Every second time"- (2010)- the author has an extreme emphasis on audience. Based on our audience we will use different words to define the same thing. Having awareness of our audience helps us craft a message to meet the needs of who is reading our piece. The audio clip: "Future of the 'digital'"-(2008) talks about how the word digital may be used now because we are used to it. Our world is very contextualized in the digital age. In another time when the context of our world was different and people did not know what digital was, a different word would have been used in place of it. Terms can change based on location, and historical events. I really liked how the audio clips were used to explain these terms and perspectives to us. It was interesting to not only hear one audio clip, but several for each topic.

11/21/16

1. Specifically, in the beginning I was the notetaker when we interviewed the refugees. From here I went home, and I typed these notes into the most coherent list I could. This helped as a guideline for my group to decide what order we wanted our video to be in. I also, personally did some research about the Liberian Civil war and made the slides that are now seen in our video. Alongside my group members, I helped to create a coherent video, and gave my input on it. The three of us met often, and every time each group member was in attendance. I feel happy with my contributions, and thing I put forth the best effort I could for this project overall.

2. Overall, I think our video came together very nicely. What pleases me most what are ability to figure out the translations (aka how much we wanted our translator to be talking vs how much we wanted our refugee to be speaking herself). With over an hour of footage we were able to make a video under 8 minutes that accurately depicts the lives of these ladies, and expresses the issues of PTSD. What still displeases me is the background of our video being a window, therefore you can see people walking by. Also, I think some of the transitions could have been better, but we are only amateur video editors so I think we did the best we possibly could. Lastly, I think the switching of content areas throughout the video may be a little confusing to the viewers.

3. If I had the opportunity to do this again, I would make sure each refugee had an equal amount of speaking time and answered the same questions so we could compare and contrast there answers. While our refugees led the conversation, I think it may have been a better video if the specific questions we prepared were asked throughout. Also, it may have been nice to have a little more video editing experience. Sometimes my group and I got frustrated with Imovie. I'm not sure if it was the program itself or rather our lack of experience with the video editing system. Overall, I learned a lot from this experience.

In the reflections I viewed today, I admired the use of pictures to draw the attention of the viewer. Right now I think my slideshow is bland, and may need something that is appealing to the eye. I also noticed the use of in-text citation throughout the pieces, something that I want to emulate in my audio throughout my slideshow.

My next steps are making my slideshow a bit more appealing; adding pictures,etc. I also plan to record some new audio pieces with some direct quotes from course text to ground my arguments. After that, I plan on editing some of the audio pieces so their is no sound in the background of them so they sound more professional and put together.

Writing 321

Kerry Allen