Social Media and ISCORE in the 8th week

This week was the start of social media week. In class, we brought our computers and tweeted for little bit. Social media is something that I am quite familiar with. I have been on Facebook since freshman year of high school, and I started Twitter about two years ago. I wasn’t an avid Twitterer until last year when it was required for social media week. Now I am quite familiar with it. I understand the value of social media as well. Many employers look at it when evaluating potential employees. It is also a great method of getting your name out there, and I think I am doing a terrific job at that. When teaching the recitation sessions next semester, we will have to do a social media week with them as well, and I believe that my experience will help in convincing them as to how helpful it is.

In addition, the Iowa State Conference on Race and Ethnicity (ISCORE) was this week. I could only attend one session, and I found that the session I wanted to attend was cancelled. Instead, I went to a much more interesting sounding session called “But, That Isn’t What Was Shown to Me! Inaccurate Portrayals of Indigenous Peoples in Media and Literature.” This was a particularly interesting session as they showed clips from two movies that I watched when I was younger, and they pointed out how they misrepresented Native American groups. When I watched these movies at a younger age, I don’t remember noticing the portrayal of the groups, but I now realize how easy it was to misrepresent a group to children. One question that the group who was presenting asked was “Is it better to be underrepresented or misrepresented.” Everyone seemed to agree that being underrepresented was better as your group is not being seen in stereotypes. In addition, there were several people who said both types were bad. However, I feel it is better to be misrepresented because underrepresentation leads to people not being aware that your group exists. This can lead to conflict in the future. In addition, if your group is misrepresented, then that gives your group a chance to wow others by showing that you are nothing like the media portrays you. By the end of the session, I realized that there was a great deal of stereotypes and misrepresentation about indigenous peoples in the media. However, there are times when I feel that the presenters overanalyzed such as when they talked about the movie “The Indian and the Cupboard.” Still, I feel like I learned a great deal from this session, and I will utilize this information next semester and in life as well.