Megan Roberts

Behind Meg’s thinking

  • A little bit about this photo that I took. This photo was taken in Bastrop Texas on one of the very first mornings that I spent far away from my family. But I woke up my boyfriend and best friend to wake up drinking coffee watching this beautiful view from our garage. Yes there were so many boxes looming around us that taking this picture was stupid. But in my mind I felt like I was right at home. The very next morning I learned why so many Texans were up watching the sun rise. Probably because most days during summer it gets over 100 degrees. But that morning was a new start for me and my friends and many good memories happened in that house watching the run rise and set together.

    Hello world!

    To give a little background on the topic of vaccines and autism. Many of the popular beliefs included that vaccines given to children were what caused autism in young children. But my research has shown me that although the assumption may seem correct it is not. In an article written by Autism Speaks, they state that “There is no connection between vaccines and autism. Autism is often diagnosed around the same time children receive routine vaccinations, which has led to concerns about a connection—but decades of scientific research have confirmed that vaccines do not cause autism,” (Autism Speaks). So when the parents would take their young children to the doctors they would receive a series of shots at the same time. A huge coincidence.  But when the families would follow up with the doctor they would find autism after. But it would be around the same time the vaccines were given. So the moms would automatically think that it was the shots because that is the only thing that has changed to their child at that time. So now that we know that autism is in fact not caused by vaccines. We can look into the other factors that may cause autism. 

    I would like to look at the genetic factors. Genetic factors do play a large role in having autism as a whole. A statistic that I will include is “an estimated 200 – 1,000 genes impact autism susceptibility,” (Bell). With a quick google search, they say that there are about 20,000 genes in the human genome, with a guess of about 200 or 1,000 genes being affected when you have autism. And yes, autism is hereditary. So that an entire side of your family could be carrying that gene sequence.What causes autism is a genetic mutation that runs on one side or either of the parentals. You can get tested. It may not seem like a big deal but it does affect more than what we see on the surface.  Daniel H. Geschwind, MD, PhD states that autism is like a constellation or pneumonia. There could be many different causes for having the same outcome. And autism is similar in many ways to having many different causes but not necessarily preventative measures that you can take. 

    At that time that people thought vaccines were causing autism, the ethos factor of the propaganda is what got the moms of that time. Being scared that the doctors were giving their kids this life altering disease. People happily live long lives with autism, so if there was a way to stop it from happening we might have already found it. But the sad thing is we haven’t. But we should be trusting our doctors because they are well educated and want what is best for everyone. Medical information was not as researched back then and if it was spread by mouth it spread fast. Parents were scared for their children and were unsure of what to do. So they thought not going to the doctor and not getting those life saving vaccines would solve their issue of autism. But in the end, I think that with doctors actually testing for autism and the correlations between the vaccines was essential for new and old parents to trust them. Yes, there are people who still believe that is true today.But with how much research that is out there today to prove that idea is a myth.  

    Social Dilemma

    The movie that I picked is called Social Dilemma. I picked this movie because I have never seen it before but I have heard good things about the concepts in the movie. I also picked this movie because it had real life actors. The people in this movie were not celebrities, they are real people who were involved in what the movie was about. The main people in the movie were people who worked at Twitter and Facebook. More specifically they were in the growth department. This is the part of the company where their entire focus was to create more that consumers can see. Whether this was creating more advertisements or reposting on a different platform. This movie is different from anything else I have ever watched. I spent an hour and a half listening to why social media is so powerful and scary. 

    Quite a few of the people in the movie said that they became victims just like everyone else to the internet. One of them even said that he could not even put his phone down. He started saying that he was only going to be on his phone for half an hour and ended up not getting off his phone until it was time to go to sleep. He was not the only person who said that even as someone who makes the internet more intriguing that they became victims not on purpose. In the movie there is this three person group in your phone that picks when to send you notifications. It is like the good angel and the bad side. One of the characters in the movie tried to not use his phone for an entire week. He went three days bored and unsure what to do and eventually gave in to using his phone. He did not even last a full 72 hours without checking to see emails and other notifications. I think that this is a prime example of how most people are with their phones today. Our social culture is social media, there is nothing else. You are either on one platform or another scrolling endlessly for many hours during the day. Everyone does have the option to unplug but do you think you could go days without checking your phone? Most people cannot even go a full hour with checking and that’s why things like apple watches exist to be even more connected. 

    I think that the entire movie is giving us more and more reasons why social media and the digital world can be negative to our health. These big corporate guys have even talked about getting rid of a certain app that they use, but once that one is gone they just replace it with another app. But our world is completely drowned by how much media usage and how many hours we spend looking at a computer screen. I think it requires a systemic change. Maybe we can normalize having a day off social media, because right now when people take a break from social media it says that something is wrong. But taking a day to unplug may be something that is necessary in the future. 

    The elements of the movie are entirely incorporated with the current conditions that we live in. Although some aspects of the movie may seem unreal, most of the movie was based on facts that the actors told us while making the movie. 

I chose the above stock photo because my schedule may not seem like much, but to me since I have lived in Oklahoma.I feel like the people who live here are okay with working six days a week and having no outside life. I work with many young adults as well and they go to school and go to work. Not much else. There is nothing wrong with keeping to a tight schedule and doing the things that need to get done. But with not much coming to Tulsa it leaves you with basically nothing to do on your days off. I have also noticed that there is a big lack of basic common knowledge when these young teenagers come to work under me. Most of them have not even left state lines. And we live fairly close to the border of Texas already. I just know that living in Tulsa, Oklahoma has been super busy but with not much fun to do around here. Thank goodness I will be leaving in a few weeks.

Stereotypes and the media

A stereotype or generalization about myself from the media that I have seen includes being racist. In high school I was part of a club that had media outlets as their use for spreading awareness. And in high school, the media is your entire world. How many likes that you get on those pictures that you posted less than a minute ago, are all that matter to you in that part of your life. I would like to say it changes but for most it does not. But the real reason I brought it up is because the media can be seen in many different ways depending on your ideas and morals that you already have. When I was in high school, my club posted a lot about President Trump because at that time he was running for election. But because I was also in the pictures holding flags, making rules about our club and much more. The club itself stood for a place where students from any grade can come and ask questions about anything political. In the club, we would also go over the current news that was going around. But since we had some postings about Trump a large group of the school started to call us racist. Never once did we say that we agreed with everything Trump was wanting to do. But because so many people have hate towards that man, which may or may not be based on facts. It made my life really difficult for a few years. But also because I am white privileged young female, I was seen by many as bad because I wanted to learn how to advocate for myself. Which is what I thought high school was all about. It also was expected that my parents were going to pay for me to go to a big university and there would never be a real struggle in my life. But my entire point is that I was judged simply for joining a club and the media it brought to the front did not help me look any better, if not worse. 

In my case I believe that the media was supposed to do good on our end but it just started a rivalry in a suburban city high school in California. I do not know about you but I have lived in four different states and California is definitely the most far out when it comes to politics. All of our media that was posted had to go through a teacher’s approval first. The teacher that approved our stuff was very few teachers that would have even let the club begin. So they did their best to let us do what we wanted. But they did not help us portray a good message. So I think the biggest part of the issue was that our sides of the stories were never heard. We would have meet and greet tables to talk about politics or educational topics. More than once the principal shut us down because he didn’t agree with what our club represented. I also think that with the principle shutting us down, was a simple example of how my school shut down republicans or conservatives. But I think he actually got in the way of us expressing who we were as students and people. His bias along with the teachers under him were not supportive due to their own biases. And at a school that is the last thing that should be happening. 

But people in school now are timid around the idea of authoritative figures. Most young people have an issue with the higher powers. As stated in the New York Times article. Which in reality is not a huge deal, but when groups like this band together, people are bound to get hurt. Whether they do a protest online, or a marching protest. We have seen in the past that protests have ended in bad ways. But historically speaking they do have some good impact. Which brings me to another article that is worth reading, written by Ana Sorgi. She talks about the effects of Black Lives Matter and uses Pew Research to support her claims. And in this case the protests were helpful to bring light to a very large issue. She also writes about the stereotypes that have been created. This issue or police brutality and the black lives that have been lost. But this brings me back to the original thought about my high school club. We tried to advocate for ourselves and got shut down, but I am sure if we tried enough times, we may have gotten somewhere. But because this club did not start until I was a junior there was not much time. And it was really difficult to find a single teacher to support us. 

Leaving bias out of certain decisions is hard but with the media being so far from the truth most times. It is hard to believe anything we see on the internet today. But by only using our bias to make decisions, it will cloud your judgement and become harmful to us as people.

Hi to one of my best friends! Today I am going to give you a lecture on your privacy and your security online. I am doing this because it is essential for you to know why it is important to stay safe. First  I want to talk about why you need to stay safe. If you let certain companies and online businesses have access to what you post. They may use it for all the wrong reasons. They could even use you and photoshop it to be something that never happened. One thing that I can suggest for you to stay safe, is to have a two factor authentication on your social media and apps like gmail. This is so you know exactly when and who is gaining access when you unlock them. I also think that having different passwords is really important too. The people who will steal from you will guess your most used password. I would also read the terms of service on your favorite apps to see what they actually consider you owning your material. You also need to know about these big corporations, they do not care about you. They could probably care less about what happens to your photos once you post them. So stay safe and be smart about where you post and keep those passwords locked away so people can never take advantage of you. 

Hi everyone, this is a little bit more context on the video that I recently added to my blog. I am excited for this project of creating a blog. I hope that I can learn and grow from posting assignments a little bit out of my comfort zone. I hope you will find some things that may interest you. And if it does not it won’t hurt my feelings. But with me getting prompts of what I should be writing about your ought to have some kind of feelings whether they are disagreeing or not. Although it was not much, buying the domain did cost money so I might as well get my moneys worth. I have also found it super fun to send my website to my family members so they can hop on and read about what I learned that week in class. I do not consider my blog or anything that I post to be professional, but I do think that if you read my work you are bound to agree with me or want to learn more. I hope both are true but I know everyone’s preferences are different. I hope those who read this will see my growth as the semester progresses. And maybe I will write something good enough you want to share it with friend. 

Wikipedia and my hometown

This week’s topic is about wikipedia. This platform of websites has always been the last resort for information for me. This was because while I was going to school almost all teachers and professors that I have had said that wiki was unreliable. I have always known that if just about anyone can edit what we read, that there is tons of room for error. Especially after this assignment I have noticed it does not take a genius to figure out how to put the wrong information there. I also learned that people can reply and respond to what you edit. Which I think is a really cool aspect. It would be better if there were certain restrictions on what information you do put out there. But I am not exactly sure how they would do that. So I do understand why they started with editing replies and getting feedback from other people. My view of wikipedia has stayed the same. I still think it is a pretty unreliable source and I will most likely still use scholarly articles and mainstream news articles. I know that the mainstream news platforms can be kind of unreliable too. But I guess in this day and age we need to research on almost anything because anyone can post about anything that they want. I think wikipedia is just more well known for not being the best because it was basically the first of its kind. 

One of the main things that I wanted to add to the wikipedia page that I found is to add more up to date information. I chose to write about the city that I grew up in. The wikipedia page  has facts about what Pleasanton’s economy looked like in the middle and late 2000’s. So I think it would be a good idea to add as much recent information at least with the statistical facts. When you have more recent information generally it would be more accurate. I wanted to focus on a topic I already knew but also to test to see what I heard living there was actually true. I always knew that California was pretty wealthy as a whole, especially the Bay Area. But I did not think it would be on the list of the top 25 places that are the wealthiest. But being a little bit older and living in a couple different states. I have learned that I came from a very wealthy place and had to learn that not everybody’s parents and families came from money. California is not generationally wealthy unless you are more in the LA area. I haven’t done that much research into that portion. 

The few articles that I found were pretty short. But the first one I want to link just has a list of the top 25 wealthiest cities to live in, (Whittner). The second article was written by the consensus bureau, so we know that this list that they gave to use was based on their own records that they have. I would say the bureau has a pretty reliable source for the information. The second article also gives a little backstory of why that city is wealthy. From what I read I found that the two cities of Livermore and Pleasanton both made the list. So I guess you could say I very much grew up in the bubble. Bubble of perfectness in terms of the economy at least. 

Sources:

https://www.worldatlas.com/economics/richest-cities-in-california.html

https://www.cityofpleasantonca.gov/assets/our-government/economic-development/large-employer-list-100-2023.pdf

https://patch.com/california/pleasanton/pleasanton-among-americas-35-richest-cities-report

Who owns us?

Being born in my generation means that you automatically are media literate. Or that is what I have thought about before I even decided to be a communications major. But since I have been in college during the pandemic and multiple elections, there has been controversy everywhere. Even more than I have ever thought could happen. In my high school, the entire population broke into three groups. One for each side of the spectrum of politics and then the group that never really participated in the school much. I started out in the crowd that just did not want to involve myself. But then I met my junior year teacher who encouraged me to find things that I was interested in. She told me that when she was in high school no one taught her how to find information and how to trust it. Because at that time there was no information that people called fake news. Yes there is misinformation everywhere but at that time, there was not a phone in your hand that  could send it anywhere you would like. So I think having complete access to information is helpful, but we still need to manage how and what information we take in as an individual. I think there are many benefits to having highly centralized sites, so a lot of people can get their information, but a drawback is that with the sites that are not major, many do not seem as useful and could lead to the wrong facts. 

One of the main things is that I do not believe we should only depend on the good will of the owners. I think that not every single person is perfect but I know people who feed off the lies that certain people share on their platforms. Not every person is looking out for the good of others. I mean why would they, it does not benefit them. I consider myself different because I do think of others when I post or even have conversations whether you are a close friend or stranger. I will try my best. I also do not think we should go to completely decentralized governments. I think the system we have in place is doing its job, there does need to be some tweaks but overall it seems to be working. Another question is should the government intervene. And I think the way it would go if that happened is the same as how the TikTok ban only lasted like twelve hours. The people of the United States were at an utter shock that it actually happened. I think it would be a similar response if the government tried to intervene anymore than it already has. The changes that I would make would be to have more restricted guidelines when you post something. I also think accessing scholarly articles and the most trusted websites to be the first that pops up on google. It may not be the most popular but it will be the most accurate. I would make simple changes to my own media consumption as well. Nobody is perfect but we can try our best to let everyone live the way they want and intake whatever information but make sure it has a real source.