Field Notes: The Media School Travel Blog

Throughout the course of my Media School career, I have taken many classes to prepare for the field of media. I started my journey at IU as a journalism major, but I switched to media management after my freshman year. Because of this, I have taken a variety of classes in The Media School. Each of these classes, even if in a small way, helped me gain enough knowledge to be an effective intern at Kids Know Best.

Kids Know Best is a creative agency that uses kids’ voices to help other companies reach and engage their audience. When I started my internship at Kids Know Best, I wasn’t exactly sure what I would be doing. I knew vaguely that I would be working with their social media, but what I didn’t know was how much went into social media content production and management. My job involves designing Instagram posts and Instagram stories, creating fun and engaging polls for kids to answer and helping with social media engagement.

In MSCH-C226 Visual Communication, I learned about everything design-related, including principles of design, color theory and how humans perceive different designs. I have been able to apply the concepts I learned in this class to designing Instagram posts and Instagram stories. For example, I know that children are typically drawn to brighter colors, so I always try to include photos with bright lighting and colors to draw them in.

In MSCH-S348 Audience Analysis, I learned how to assess the way people consume media. I learned about how companies can target specific audiences using different strategies. I was able to apply this to my work at Kids Know Best, because I am supposed to target young children and their parents. Part of my job at Kids Know Best is to create fun polls for kids to answer. For example, in one type of poll, children can rank images using prompts like “Rank these animals from most to least cute.” After posting a few of my polls and assessing the results, I noticed that polls using image ranking questions received a lot more responses than those that did not, so I started trying to include at least one of this question type in each poll. This has helped bring up engagement on the polls I have created.

While these are just a couple of examples of how Media School courses have prepared me for the real world, I gain something special from each course. Reporting, Writing and Editing taught me how to write sharply on a deadline. Film Adaptations taught me how to dig deeper into things I’m reading and watching and analyze how and why certain choices were made. Social Scientific Perspectives of Gender and Media taught me to be more conscious of how women are portrayed in media and to be mindful of my consumption. Each of these small lessons has influenced what I do every day as a student and intern.