My Life as Reid

           As I was thinking about which companies use social media and online communication to their advantage, the first 'company' to come to mind was the National Parks Service. While they are technically a part of the government, I believe that they use social media and online communication to their advantage in many ways. For example, this week is bat week, so they'll post all sorts of information about bats, including funny montage videos etc. Even their website is user friendly and informative, all in all, they use all sorts of online communication in order to get interaction with both their websites and parks.           To start, their social media is up to date, which is often a struggle with older businesses and corporations. The NPS readily accepted the challenge and made their social media friendly towards the younger audiences (who they're likely trying to get more interested in nature and the national parks). We c...

            Both Marc Prensky and Paul Kirschner have seemingly conflicting ideas on the idea of 'digital natives' and 'digital immigrants'. To elaborate, a 'digital native', as Prensky states, is a person born with, and raised on, the new digital technology we have today. Whereas a 'digital immigrant' is a person who was born and raised without the technology, so likely someone of an older generation. The idea is that a digital native will always be more comfortable with digital media, while a 'digital immigrant will "always retain, to some degree, their "accent," that is, their foot in the past" (Prensky, 2). Overall, they both bring up good points about the adoption of digital technology and media today, with newer generations being exposed to it earlier and earlier.           Following the definition Prensky set, I would likely fall more into the category of 'digital native' rather than 'digital immigrant'. Th...

           Knapp's relationship model is a 'ten step' model that shows the development and eventual termination of a relationship. Simply put, it breaks down interpersonal relationships into ten 'phases' of sorts. i.e. Initiating to bonding (Relationship Development) and then differentiation to terminating (Relationship Dissolution). All in all, it's an interesting chart documenting how relationships tend to thrive and fail.  This model was designed by a professor/researcher Mark Knapp, who is known for his findings in the communication, relationships and lying/deception. (more about Knapp can be found on his wikipedia page  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_L._Knapp) My (not so quick) synopsis of the ten points are listed below.  Relationship Building: Initiating This is the earliest of stages, when the parties of the relationship meet each other for the first time. Maybe they bumped into each other at a bar or coffee shop, or maybe they me...

           It is truly inevitable in today's day and age; social media is synchronous to owning essentially any piece of technology. Some might be able to have their only social media accounts be things like Google accounts for work and such. However, most of the time, owning a phone or computer means having some sort of social media. It's not based on generation either, social media has existed for a long time, starting in the latter half of the 1990's. So, all in all, everyone who has learned how to use a computer or phone, likely learned how to use, Facebook, Instagram, Myspace, Tumblr, or some form of social media, right afterwards. But the big question is always whether or not there's any benefit to these sites? What are the downsides? Can they even be considered healthy? or would we be better off without them?                    The first question to ask would be if there are any benefits or drawb...