Hello and welcome back to my blog! In this post I will be talking about the project I was recently challenged with, podcasts. For this project we had to chose a topic that we could use to influence others for good throughout a few episodes of your choice. I decided to make my podcast on social media topics and trends to answer the question β€œWhy are we all consumed?”.Β 

We started off this project by creating a collage to find our story. To go along with this I wrote a paragraph explaining my rough plan for my podcast. I decided that my podcast was going to be all about whats trending right now. This could be positive trends or negative trends but I will be talking about the effects that these have on the people being influenced. The most common social media platforms are TikTok and instagram which are going to be my main focus. If you really think about it those apps can also be a β€œtrend” that people are following. I decided that I would like to try to make my podcast as one that just sounds like an interesting conversation rather then me talking into the microphone. To achieve this goal I decided that I was going to try to include guests to tell their own opinion on the topic rather then me just voicing my own opinion the entire time.Β 

The next steps were creating a podcast name, art and a tagline. But because my podcast was based on social media trends I really wanted a catchy name that was short and simple. After some brainstorming I decided to go with β€œWe’re All Consumed”. For my podcast art I wanted something that could show a bunch of notifications using popular social media platforms like TikTok, snapchat, and instagram. My podcast art went through many stages of revision and in the final product I made it look like an iPhone or iPad Lock Screen.

Now it was time to plan my podcast trailer. This project lasted twice as long as a project usually would so the first month was put into understanding how to use GarageBand and record to create our trailer.

Now for the exciting part, creating episodes! We had lots of space to do our own thing when it came to episodes, however the one guideline was that we needed 40-60 minutes on content.Β  But before we could start creating our episodes, we had to create a release schedule. I was unsure about creating my schedule as I did not know how long it would take me to write scripts and record. However I did know that if I wanted to release an episode a week. Once I started writing and planning my episodes I was able to get into a rhythm and write my scripts Mondays and Tuesdays, record Wednesdays, edit Thursdays and then lastly publish my episodes Fridays.Β 

I created a total of four episodes each on a different social media topic. For my first episode I made it on communicating with friends and family through social media platforms. In this episode I interviewed Alicia who is also a grade 10 student in PLP. In this episode, we talk about how social media platforms shape how we communicate with friends and family. We also discuss strategies for maintaining a healthy balance between online and offline interactions.

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For my second episode I decided to make it on Fast Fashion. I knew from the beginning that I would want to have a fast fashion episode as this is something the world is influenced to give into. So I answer the question β€œHow social media’s influence contributes to the rapid growth of fast fashion trends?”.

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When I first created my first and second episode they both ended up being eight minutes. Once listening to them over again I realized they sounded very scripted. So my goal moving forward with the rest of the episodes was to make them more like a conversation. This meant focusing less on just asking questions and getting answers and having a conversation on each sub topic.

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So in episode three I decided to take a less scripted aspect which bumped this episodes time to 15 minutes. In this episode I interview my friend Alexandra and we dive deeper into the social media platform Instagram as well as discuss the social and psychological aspects that feed the reason why we feel the need to have digital documentation of everything. In this episode I did a little more research then I did in the first two episodes as I talk about Emma Chamberlain and her podcast episode β€œPost it or it didn’t happen” on her podcast β€œAnything goes”.Β 

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Lastly in episode four I talk about TikTok, the addictive short-form video platform that has consumed the world. For this episode I decided to have two interviewees. Along with this I talk about the history of TikTok which I researched before hand. This includes the app it used to be, Musically. But because I included two interviewees in this episode I didn’t realize it would be a much longer episode. So, I asked the same amount of questions which is around five. This bumped this episode to be a whole 34 minutes! As you could imagine this took ages to edit. So I ended up publishing it on Saturday so that I could use Friday to continue editing. However this episode is the one I am most proud of because its so engaging. With three different perspectives instead of two there was lots to talk about making it pretty interesting to listen to. For this episode and episode 3 I also used a microphone making the sound quality super good.

You can listen to all the episodes of β€œWe’re All Consumed” on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Overall I am so happy with how my podcast episodes turned out. I’m so proud of all the work I completed throughout this project. If you haven’t had a chance to check out my podcast β€œWe’re All Consumed” on the Spotify link up above or you don’t use Spotify, you can also listen on Apple Podcasts. I will be back with a few more posts as grade ten is coming to end end. Thanks for reading!

– Makenna