I enjoyed diving deeper into the Build-A-Bear Pay Your Age event crisis, especially since I remember a few of my friends sharing the promotion on Facebook about a week before it took place. I had never heard anything of it again, so it was eye-opening to see the massive amount of attention this company received following the event.
I will admit that I did find it a little difficult to connect theory to this real world situation; however, after taking a moment to really soak in the content and sociologists we have read about thus far in this course, I was able to get the ball rolling. It was intriguing to see that Robert Putnam’s cycle of social capital was so well displayed through the example I chose. I appreciated the opportunity to complete this project because I see and hear about communication crises all the time, but have never taken a step back to see how leadership at various companies approach crisis response and bounce back from these mishaps.
In terms of media production, I have had an interest in creating a podcast for a while now. I found it empowering to complete trial-and-error programs, until I finally decided on using iMovie (audio only). Here, I was able to play around with theme music and transition sounds to add some character to my podcast. I never figured out how to record my voice via iMovie, so I proceeded to record all voiceovers on my phone in the Voice Memo app, and AirDrop them to my laptop. Once I was done editing, exporting the mp3 and uploading it to SoundCloud was fairly simple.
I would definitely say that I pushed myself to achieve a better result beyond media productions I have completed in previous courses. For the first time, I listened to multiple podcasts including The Friend Zone and Therapy for Black Girls, to get inspiration on the format and layout of my podcast. Since I already love tuning into these podcasts for content, I thought “What better way to plan the template for my own?!”
Along with this, I realized the importance of scripting. In the past, I would write my scripts as if I were writing an academic research paper. For this podcast, although I stuck to the script, when I wrote it, I did my best to incorporate things I might say in conversation with my friends. Hopefully I was able to add a little personality to this one as opposed to others I’ve done.
Let me know what you think! I welcome all feedback.
Tierra Thomas 