Twitter is the Democracy

By Kendal Clawson

Social Media, but especially Twitter is one of our main ways of communicating in our society today. It should be censored more, but we also need it to keep our Democracy alive and well.

Personal Component: As an aspiring journalist, writer, author, and photographer, I feel that I have a responsibility and obligation to continually post and publish my work on different forms of social media. I love the saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words" and I love it because of my love for writing and photography. I like the idea that both of the things I love can be one. Knowing that saying to be true, I know I need to be careful about what my images could convey to someone when they see them. 

With that, I feel it necessary for me to post accurate, true and censored content. There are many sources that do not do that and create false news that others so easily believe. Expressing ourselves freely and openly on online platforms was not the start of Freedom of Speech, in fact, it dates even further back before the digital age.

Planning My Post: Is Twitter Destroying Us?

Blue Twitter Logo

Reflecting on my last blog posts and on the way my perspective has changed through my experiences and the different readings I have spent time with, I have come to the conclusion to pick a narrower and therefore, more controversial topic rather than Freedom

of Speech rather, our modern public sphere: Twitter. It may be understood that Twitter is a place where people can post whatever they want whenever they want making it a much larger scale public sphere than what they had in the Enlightenment period. This is relevant because we live in the digital age.With that comes an easiness to life that people before us did not know, but it also brings up a new set of problems. We can say whatever we want, but where is the line drawn?

Freedom of the Press: 5 Thesis

A Coffeehouse Disscussion

Introduction

Life as a writer in American Society has never been easy unless you make it. There is history of writers living in Grub Street in the 19th century as "hack writers." A hack writer is one that is paid to write low quality, rushed articles or books very quickly. These writers were paid per word so, as you can imagine, what these hack writers produced was of low quality. There wasn't much freedom in what they were writing at the time because they were writing to survive. The passion in writing that is needed in order for writing to inspire or to change the perspective of others was probably lessened in this process. What was the point in writing if it did not inspire? Can words just be words and where did these writings take us?  

Previous Posts: Hotspots in Journalism Revising Hotspots in Journalism

Revisiting Hotspots in Journalism

1. Journalism in Politics

(How Politics effects the way that journalists write)

• Historical Connections: During the reformation, reformists like Martin Luther took action on what they thought should change within their society. For Martin Luther, he saw a lot of problems within the Catholic Church and he did something about it. He wrote his famous 95 Theses and nailed them to the door of the Wittenberg Castle. His tone within his 95 Thesis is said to be remarkable in his manner of questioning and not acusing the Church. He wrote about the sale of indulgences and not works to reach salvation. It was through Luther's written word that the Protestant Reformation could take flight. It was because of Luther's bravery and dedication that others joined the ranks to fight for a reformation. The Catholic Church made changes through his great courage. 

• Communication Connections: When it comes to communicating in journalism within a political genre, Journalists uses a lot of persuasive appeals. It is just part of the job. In order to be good at it, you need to persuade. When it comes to logos, journalist need to write things that make sense and appeal to reason because if they write something that doesn't make sense, people will just think that they are crazy. A great persuader also can draw upon pathos to persuade. This part may be hard to do, but knowing your audience can help one understand what emotions to bring up through writing. And lastly, ethos, this has a lot to do in politics. If a journalist working for a candidate on the opposite side of the spectrum can tear down another candidate successfully with good facts, people can be persuaded instead to maybe vote for the other candidate.

Photographing A Christening While Studying the Reformation

A couple of weekends ago I had the unique opportunity to attend and photograph a Christening in the Catholic Church. This was an interesting event to attend while learning about the Catholic Church and the reformation. Most of my exposure to the Catholic Church and to Catholic people came while serving my mission in Mexico where I’d always run into some very dedicated Catholics every where I went, but actually participating in a religious ceremony with them a couple days ago opened my eyes. Their decorum in this ordinance and love for Christ and their love for love is explicitly evident and that cannot be denied. Though, I do not agree with the religious practices in the baby baptism, I still feel that what happens in those churches is a way of acting in faith even if it isn’t the way that I believe in. Those people chose to be in that room and I think the Lord sees that and accepts that faith acted upon. All of this brings me back to Martin Luther and his thoughts on faith. In “Martin Luther’s Conversion,” he mentions that “The righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written: the righteous shall live by faith.” This stands out because we all were created by God and He loves us and accepts our types of devotion to Him no matter what they are. This concept of sola fide is interesting to me. I might have this wrong, but my understanding is that the Protestants believed in this concept with Martin Luther and the Catholics were more the works part of faith. If the catholics were works based people back in the reformation, I believe that this has shifted in a way. I can see that these people had a lot of faith in their practices, but then again the question is, “does that faith only happen within a religious ceremony?” I guess that is a question that we can all ask ourselves. Do we really live what we believe or is it all to merely look a certain way. The reformation, even though it was a hard time for some people, it was a time where all faiths and beliefs were challenged. It served as a reminder that whatever was believed in needed to be firmly believed in to be able to last the test of time and pressure from the outside sources that were surrounding the religious people of the time.
Art in this stained glass window brought me to a familiarity that I couldn't feel within the ceremony, but it did remind me of Christ.