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Today in class, we heard 4 Groups speak about the topics awareness, mediasphere, theories, and policy. Similar to the previous round of presentations, many of my classmates remained engaging speakers with visual aids and solid information, while others could have done better in terms of their delivery. Here, I'll talk about a few presentations that stuck with me, including Maggie's presentation on citizen journalism, Jonathan's speech on echo chambers, Santino's presentation on deepfakes, and Barrett's talk on the illusory truth effect. Each had something different to bring to the table, so I'll dive into each one and why I believe what I do about each.

    Firstly, I'll talk about one of the mediasphere topics, which in this case is citizen journalism. Maggie spoke about the importance of citizen journalism, and how relevant it is when it comes to places reporters cannot reach. One thing I really enjoyed about her presentation was that she included examples and videos of citizen journalism. It was crazy for me to think how just a regular person could document history, when it comes to things like hurricane Helene or other natural disasters. I also think it's a really good thing for the safety of reporters and weather people.

    Moving on to another presentation that stuck with me, I liked Jonathan's speech about echo chambers. Similar to the first presentation, Jonathan kept his engaging voice and presentation style, which helped him convey his information a lot more clearly, and it made the tough topic of echo chambers easier to understand. This was important for me as a visual learner, because slides on a screen do not help me learn, but they just hinder my understanding and make it confusing.

    Speaking of a presentation that I thought was a bit difficult for me to understand was Barrett's speech on the illusory truth effect. while by the end of it I had a basic concept of the terms, in that if you keep hearing an opinion you may make it your own, I wasn't the biggest fan of the presentation style because of it's length and lack of engagement. I understand that some people may learn and function better with just the facts, but that's not me, and I would have preferred some more visual aids. 

All in all, It was great learning about all of the topics presented, and I think it is fruitful that we are learning about it to help us better understand the world as it is going to be in the future.