Report on My Interviews

Alas, after 1 trip to the hospital, 2 cancellations, and 1 box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch later, I'm officially done with my two interviews and deadline 6. I feel like that's cause for a celebration. Maybe another box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch? I think yes.

• The most interesting genres that I learned my interviewees used a lot were Youtube videos, case studies (not that interesting, just very common), and a whole lot of emails. 

• The three genres that I mentioned all have wildly different genre conventions, content, purpose, audience, message, and context.

• Youtube videos: these videos are meant to be educational and available for the general public to know what new discoveries are being made in the field of psychology. They're meant to be anywhere from 5-15 min long and mostly it's just the person talking to a camera with pictures and videos to explain a point being made. 

• Case studies: these papers are (as mentioned in my previous blog post) supposed to inform other professionals in the field of new experiments being done and why. It starts off with an abstract, which goes into an introduction, which then follows the methods and procedure, then the results, and lastly the discussion section where the floor gets opened (metaphorically of course) to other professionals who may have questions and they're own hypothesis to offer.

• Emails: emails are crucial to professionals in the psychology field since that is the easiest, most direct, way of contact. The content can be range from securing interview plans, to getting clarification on a certain point, to arranging plans to start and carry out a new experiment. The audience is typically other professionals, but can also include students, assistants, other researchers, etc. Most of these emails are kept as short as possible with just enough words to get the point across.

• The challenging part about writing/producing in these genres (from a professional's point of view) is:

• Youtube videos: making the content easier for the general public to understand. Since professionals that produce these types of videos need to keep in mind that the majority of their audience has likely never even taken a general class about psychology.

• Case studies: the fact that after going through all the hoops of setting up and performing an experiment just to have the null hypothesis be accepted (the opposite of what they wanted to happen) since a case study can take months or even years to prepare and it's hard when after all of the preparation there's still no change.

• Emails: keeping all the emails straight and trying to remember who's who and who still needs a reply and who they're waiting on a reply from. Especially if they're trying to set up or conduct a case study, a professional's email can be overflowing with important emails that all require a reply in a timely manner. Not stressful at all.

• The rewarding part about writing/producing in these genres (from a professional's point of view) is:

• Youtube videos: the fact that the video you made is helping to educate thousands, even millions, of people who otherwise would have no idea. It's always a rewarding feeling when you put in hard work for something you know for a fact will help people not only be more educated, but also hopefully they'll be able to apply what they learned in their own life.

• Case studies: just knowing that you could (potentially) be changing the way people think about a certain belief or thought process makes it all worth it. To think that you're on the brink of discovery gives professionals the drive they need in order to complete a case study and the amount of work it involves. 

• Emails: the most rewarding part is knowing that you're one step closer to finishing whatever it is you're tyring to accomplish. Whether it be setting up an interview, starting to set up an experiment for a case study, or even just emailing a student back, sending an email is a check on the to-do list and makes a person feel more accomplished.

• Examples of a Youtube video in mass media is too easy. Youtube alone caters to the social, academic, and popular aspects of mass media (with a lot of overlap between all of them) with it being the largest and most popular online video site to date. As for case studies, most of them can be found in any scholarly journal, or on any credible database. Emails are a lot more difficult to place, since the only place in mass media that they could be found would be on a person's personal email account.