Final Project Review

The aim of the project was to be able to understand and evaluate different sources. Being conscious were using them was very important and then recording them in our Sources Table. We described were we used the information and analyzed to see if it was a propaganda or biased site. Copyright was also key to understand if a sites information had an owner or not, if it is copyright free then we can assume that the information can be legally used and distributed. My group decided to focus on the media progression and how it got to develop since Vietnam to Iraq.

My role in the group was to make sure everything functioned properly as group manager and that everyone followed their tasks assigned. My responsibilities were designing the presentation and filling in two of the sources table columns. I contributed well in this project mainly by making sure the sources table were completed correctly, verifying any improvements and making the PowerPoint engaging to the audience and interactive. On the other hand, motivating every group member to complete their work and tasks, it was challenging but I managed to do so, not to the best of their ability but they tried. I would not work with the same team again because of their lack of responsibility and time management, I really found hard trying to convince my group members to do their work because I couldnt manage to do it all by myself therefore their support was valuable. Above all I think that as a group we could have met deadlines more punctually, however we accomplished targets efficiently because we followed the advice we were given to improve our work. Finally, collaboration through the use of Google docs was very beneficial because it helped us share information and comment on anything we disliked or needed to improve.

Personally I have benefited from working in this project because I have learnt to really think about the information I use in future. Many websites seem to be for educational purposes but sometimes can be biased depending on the authors point of view. This project has taught me about the way information is communicated through media by the use of many techniques to convince the audience to think in a specific way. A clear example is Kony 2012 were many important details are not shared to the public but kept secretly. Kony makes the audience feel sorry and compassionate for what is happening and includes an expiring date to make us feel we must act immediately. This shows how we must not believe information given to us the minute we read it, we must first take in account all of the different variables and investigate before we transmit our findings to other people. Another clear example of biased information is Marc 3 Pax and the Israeli movement, where we are explicitly tried to get convinced to support the Israeli government by making Omer Gershon a gay right activist and making it seem like an important cause. Even a website that uses logic and facts can be biased in what facts they pick to write about.

If I could study in more detail about the reliability of information, bias and propaganda, I would like to find out about how advertising impacts our behavior and way of thinking. I think it is very interesting because adverts really play with our minds making us believe something is good therefore we either follow it or buy it. Furthermore, creating my own propaganda could also be very useful to see if it creates an impact in a specific audience, depending on who it is directed to. Learning about many techniques now a days companies and politicians use to project their ideas to the people is intriguing because we can realize the advantages and disadvantages this leads us to. Lastly, what I would do differently if I had to do the project again is maybe completing some of the sources table columns in more detail because the most difficult column to complete was to analyze if a site was biased or propaganda and to understand this we first have to know if a particular organization or writer has a particular mission in mind, if the author is implying his personal point of views, if a political party has any opposition, if there are conflicts between countries, etc. It is important to remember that everyone has an opinion. Especially when looking

at the Internet, understand that a lot of the websites are self-published and dont require any concrete evidence to back up what the author is saying.