‘Social media and contemporary politics’ podcast discuss the pros and cons of social media in a political context and the effects it has had on information and political discourse.
Throughout the podcast the topics of the online public sphere, social media censorship, security breaches, access to information, fake news, political discourse and political power are discussed. When discussing these issues, I have researched the topics with various academic journals, and news publications to reach an educated conclusion.
The argument presented throughout the podcast is that while there are some benefits to social media usage in a political setting, there is also many dangerous acts of censorship, freedom of speech and access to information which hold back the integrity of the platform. It is important that the podcast topics appear well researched to the listener, to assure them that the information being presented is factual and has a large amount of empirical evidence. Being a very detailed topic, it is difficult to cover every area of the matter.
The podcast was informed by research into journals and workshops conducted by universities. Throughout the podcast, the sources were used to present information to the viewer and support claims, it was important to make use of this research because it provides a trustworthy and reliable source of information for the listener. The research was also used to provide information to ‘set the scene’ at the beginning of the podcast, providing the listener with an understanding of the current social media usage. Research journals and university workshops were paraphrased throughout the podcast to allow the viewer to understand that the information has come directly from a legitimate source of research.
The research into studies and workshops conducted by educational institutes provides an insight into the understanding of the impact social media has in an academic setting with participants ranging from different age, economic, geographic and gender groups providing a varied insight which can assist with a good indication of the overall information being presented.
Throughout the podcast, music has also been applied with CC BY-SA 4.0 licenced music being used to provide a more inviting setting behind the talking of the podcast. It was selected that jazz music will be played as an upbeat introduction tune to engage the audience and then a more relaxed background music throughout the podcast to create a comfortable setting and remove the awkwardness of just vocals throughout the podcast. Creating a mood that was appropriate for the content being spoken about was challenging as many of the creative common’s music was not effective when creating a casual setting for a topic that is quite serious in its presentation.
Many challenged were overcome when developing the podcast such as software and hardware incidents and failures. As I have worked with audacity before it was easy to regain my understanding of the program however I had troubles when the software would fail and recording seemed to be unable to work with the external microphone, which could have an impact on the podcast’s overall sound quality. Troubleshooting solutions were adopted, making sure the appropriate drivers were installed for the hardware being used which enabled it to be recognised correctly by the audio recording software.
I learnt from this podcast that it is very important to research and create a diverse and informed understanding of the topic being spoken about it, this can not only help the speaker when talking on the issue but it assists the listener when wanting to have a resourceful and legitimate source of information and lay trust in the information they are receiving.
