Composition Multimedia Project - Juliet

 by Juliet

The theme of my project is the importance of taking notice of false information that spreads on social media, and how being ignorant of the things we hear without solid proof and inferring them in real life is harmful to society. In Damon Brown's TEDTalk, he states, “So how do you get the truth, or something close?” (Brown 00:01:47). People want to be seen as reliable and efficient with all they say or do. I made a short story about a child who’s struggling with the rumors of covid that she found online. This little girl who now believes that the pandemic isn’t real tries to prove it to her parents, so she can finally get out of the house. She does it by showing them what she found on the internet, only to later have her parents explain why it’s false. I will also make a PowerPoint to prove that I did put time and energy into this project by showing in the slides my thinking process of how I made the story.

The connection I made from Andrea Lunsford's chapter in Everyone's an Author, and Brown's TED Talk towards my project is to not believe everything you read on social media. Social media is a source where many speculate and brainstorm their theories of what might happen. Everyone on the internet is a “professional” and some people don’t know how crucial it is to make sure their information is accurate. “One of the best ways is to get the original news unfiltered by middlemen” said Brown (00:01:50). Although, many speculate that everything on the internet is true, especially if it looks accurate enough. “Of course, whenever you use online sources like these, it’s crucial to read defensively--checking out the information you find to be trustworthy” (Lunsford 487). Both the chapter and video inspired my project because I fell victim to this several times. One of the incidents that I remember happening to me was when I was researching on whether to get my pets spayed and neutered. I searched if it was the right thing to do and based on what I found, I decided not to. Fast forward to a couple of years later, there was a problem that happened to one of my pets and I had taken them to the vet. I explained to the veterinarian why I didn’t get them operated on sooner because of what I found out online. The doctor explains to me that everything I just said wasn’t true, and that it was the complete opposite. When I read Lunsford’s chapter 21 and watched Brown’s video on how to appropriately research data; I tried it again. Using what I learned, I found everything that the veterinarian had informed me on my last visit.