This was the week our essays were due so I thought I would lend this process post to that whole process. The assignment prompt was: “social media platforms are democratic“.

Please read the essay here: http://sus-e.com/home/essay-one-are-social-media-platforms-democratic/

I approached this essay from the perspective of someone who is involved in the dissemination of social media content. Very rarely do I create or curate social media content so this was the best lens to analyze the assignment through.

I subsequently took a look at current events so that I could have tangible examples to share. The ones I outlined in my essay are Donald Trump’s social media communications, Kanye West antisemitic social media statements, Elon Musk buying Twitter and all the harassment he fosters towards other individuals, and the murder of Mahsa Amini in Iran. Please read the essay to see how I stitched these current events into my argument.

The research process was very smooth. I used the catalogue search in the SFU Library website to find my sources. I also used articles from news outlets to supplement the scholarly articles.

All in all the writing of the essay went very well. The writing prompt was great to work with so I had many thoughts that spilled onto the Word document.

The biggest hiccup I had was when I tried to post my essay to my website. Around 11:51pm, I went to add the essay to the website, but for some reason when trying to publish the post the website would stop working. I tried again three times but nothing happened! It was around 12:02am now so I missed the November 8th due date. As someone who struggles with severe anxiety, I instantly panicked and contacted the TA and professor to alert them to my issue. However, I then tried switching to a different computer at my house and was able to post the essay to my website. I suspect something happened within the cached data on my laptop. I do all the work for this course on that laptop so I had no reason to suspect it would not work when I tried to post.

So, my essay was posted 8 minutes late; hopefully I don’t get penalized for this unforeseen circumstance.