Combating ennui in virtual internships
Junior Cameron Garber has several strategies for make a virtual internship feel more like a traditional one.
It’s no secret that the social media app TikTok is representative of Western culture. While originally created in China, TikTok’s most popular accounts are from the U.S. Many of its users are as well. This is why I had some difficulty thinking about the global image of TikTok when teaching others about how they could use the app in their reporting and daily life.
I recently created an online learning program on the Thomson Foundation’s Journalism Now learning platform. This program introduces users to what TikTok is, how they can use it as a journalistic tool and how to spot inaccuracies on the site. I had to change several aspects of the project so it could cater to the international audience that uses the platform. This experience has made me realize how much of our media diet is entirely focused on the U.S. and how harmful that can be.
When conducting my research about TikTok and the app’s usage statistics, I saw few studies about usage of the app abroad. I could learn about the trends on the app in the United States, but not in other countries that still use the app just as much. In addition, I wanted to avoid generalizing the app, because I know a user’s location affects the TikTok experience drastically. I decided to keep my lessons more general so they could be accessible to everyone.
This made me more aware of how focused we are on the American experience compared to the global experience. I think it is equally important for journalists and social media experts in the U.S. to understand how news and social media function outside America. I hope to make changes in my life to learn more about this, and it can only create change for the better.