Strategies for Analyzing and Composing Content

We covered three main areas of study, and I had to become more familiar with all of them when going into this class.

To start out, I was not aquainted with the backend of Wikipedia whatsoever. In middle and high school, I had heard about my peers going in and editing Wikipedia pages just to make themselves giggle, but I was completely unfamiliar with it. Learning how to maintain a neutral point of view and writing in the Wikipedia voice was helpful for this, but also helpful in ensuring that I do maintain my ability to write neutrally on a subject as an academic even if I am emotionally invested in it.

For blogging, I was the most familiar with that before we started. This e-Portfoilio is something that I have been working on since I started as a freshmen at IU Indianapolis (back when it was still IUPUI), and I am very comfortable moving things around on a webpage to make it look nice and pretty. Additionally, I had made a blog of sorts to house my unpublished poetry project. It was something I decided to do in my bedroom at 2:37 in the morning on a Tuesday night, and I stuck with it for about a year posting poetry at least once a week to create a "grow with me" book to send off to a publisher. When it was time to create a blog for this class, I knew exactly what platform I wanted to use because because I had been creating things on Wix for years. 

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Podcasting was the most foreign thing to me at the time of this assignment. I am much more familiar with writing and editing poetry and prose. Editing sound using Adobe Audition was challenging, but fun. Learning how to insert soundbites and get rid of those nasty, awkward pauses between words really improved and enhance the material I was trying to share via my podcast. 

When editing on Wikipedia, it is adding to an online encyclopedia, so it is meant to inform and educate. When writing papers for my professors, I am summarizing and putting together things that they taught to me. When I’m writing more creatively in my free time, I am entertaining my potential reader. When writing an email, I’m trying my very best to communicate all that I need to. For this, I was the educator. While I’ve been an educator in the more traditional sense with my work in the School of Education, I have not been an educator with this vast of a classroom before.

While I was working on my four articles, I found that all of the edits I made to the Ethel Cain article were reversed. This was disheartening, but it changed my perspective towards writing and ensuring that I wasn't writing like me, but rather a Wikipedia contributor. For my other articles, I did this, but it ended up being a lot of work with little changes made.

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It was so infuriating to see so much work have such little pay off. It’s the most recent edit on the page, and I still feel like there is more that needs to be done, but I cannot determine what I am allowed to do. I suppose part of this is to edit and change things, and you’ll only learn if you do get corrected, but I don’t want to put wrong information out there at all, as an educator. To put something I am not one hundred percent confident in out, that feels like an insult to my profession.

As a blogger, I’ve done a few things. I’m rather familiar with Wix as a blog developer because I’ve used it for my ePortfolio through the university and in my own time when I was just messing around with things. Having someone formally grade me on my blog, however, this is new and scary. There is a lot of focus about what the content strategy is going to execute, so it’s not just a fun little thing to do in my free time anymore; there are ramifications to what is being posted online. That has been the hardest part about this whole project, it’s not for fun, it has purpose and meaning. Thoughtful purpose and meaning, might I add.

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I also tried to make myself more relatable to my target demographic here by sharing some information about myself. “I know that I got diagnosed when I was sixteen, I was so overwhelmed and had no clue where to start asking for help. Even now at twenty, I still get overwhelmed.” I think that helps the reader understand who the intended audience is because I really leveled with them from where I am at.

Taking a concept and turning it into something with sonic strategies, however, was another task and of itself. Looking at what my classmates and myself had been able to analyze out of our selected example podcasts was insightful into seeing how I could bring sonic strategies into my podcast rather than just throwing a bunch of words into a microphone.

The first strategy I tried to utilize was silence at (1:11). When waiting to respond and answer a question that my guest, Theo, had asked, I was trying to build tension and add to the atmosphere of the podcast. I wanted this to feel more casual, but even the most casual of conversations needs ebbs and flows and suspense to help keep it engaging. Leaning into some of the more “dramatic” things helped make it more interesting for the people who weren’t there when the podcast was being recorded. I think that’s the part I like the most of the podcasts that I listen to, it’s the silent pause before the launch into the conversation. 
 

The second sonic strategy I used was sound effects. When Theo got something wrong, I played a trumpet sound effect. The first instance of it being used was a trumpet “womp womp wommmmppp” at (5:31). Additionally, and more commonly used because they got a lot of the questions correctly, was the hooray sound effect (11:50). This kept things light hearted and provided a sense of consistency for the audience. They knew that the effect was going to come, and it provided more variety and hopefully more of a buy in than just my voice as the host. 
 

The third sonic strategy I leaned on was voice (12:48). Here, you can hear Theo and myself go back and forth and dig at each other. This is the personality of the podcast, and this is what makes it stand out the most compared to other podcasts. You can add all of the gimmicks and bells and whistles that you wish, but people tune in and come back because of the voice and the image in their heads when they hear those people talking on the other end of the microphone. I know that I have my favorite podcasts because I’ve fallen in love with what those specific podcasters have to say on the subject. There are hundreds of other podcasters I could listen to and hear those opinions on the same topics, but it is the voice and the personality that makes me click on that specific podcast again and again. It was times like this when Theo and I were talking that I tried to make happen, so my podcast could have that voice I think makes podcasts so special. 
 

The last sonic strategy I wanted to point out my usage of was when I included the soundbite from the original TV show, the infamous “epic highs and lows of high school football” (15:07). I think this is a mix of music and sound effects because of the nature of it, but it truly adds to the podcast because it lets the audience have a true snippet of the absurdity the show brings as well as adds something to the credibility and atmosphere of my podcast. This is backed up and well researched as well as absurd and silly.
 

I think by using the sonic strategies of silence, sound effects, voice, and music/audio tracks coupled with the age of Theo, my guest, and myself, I think that I was able to meet my goal of being relatable to young adults who are into really bad tv shows. At least, that was the reception I got from the two classmates who reviewed my podcast. Both did mention that I should have added music, like game show music, to add to the feel of the podcast and heighten that experience, but that’s something I can feasibly do next time if I decided/have the means to continue this series.