Conspiracy Theories
Hannah Powers and Katie McManus
Working together on a project for an online class is very different than in an in person class. Trying to find a partner through email, without knowing anything about them or what they look like and what their priorities are is hard. Thankfully Katie and I decided to be partners pretty early on. We exchanged numbers and started planning. We agreed that the video would be the best fit for us, and was the easiest way to split up the work. The video approach for the project we also felt left a lot of creative control up to us to take the project in the direction we wanted too. In order to collaborate and make this project time efficient and it was difficult to coordinate times to work on this. Some challenges we faced were having work overload this week with midterms week. We also both have separate spring break trips planned, and Hannah’s travel experience was a disaster between flights getting delayed and being stranded in the Orlando airport. This was a damper in our time management for this project, because I had no resources in order to do the work, because my computer was in a checked back. Although there were bumps in the road, we were able to tackle the work and get the project done and sorted out. I would say the most difficult part about this project was the timing that it was made due. Midterms week is very stressful with exams and large assignments, and for most classes these assignments are only given this week so with a week and major assignments due for classes, it makes it very difficult to tackle the work to your bets ability, and feel proud and accomplished of the work you are submitting, when you are stressed about completing everything in general.
We chose to go with the facts and feelings topic. As partners we agreed that this topic was both appealing to our interests, and appeared to be the topic that would make most sense for us to make a video and reflection about. We also touched on the conspiracy topics because they both tied hand in hand as seen from our video. I feel as if our project was a good representation of both topics, and Katie did a great job pulling together the topics, and I worked on the writing portion of this assignment.
In our project we talked about conspiracy theories, and connected the idea of conspiracy theories with the psychology term Apophenia, seeing patterns without brains that aren’t really there. This can be associated with humans . We do the same thing with conspiracy theories by making things appear as if they happened when they haven’t truly been proven real or true. Conspiracy theories tell a story that invokes our emotions. Fear can be a large factor that plays into the belief of conspiracy theories. As humans we are afraid of the unknown, and therefore trying to make sense of the unknown can be comforting for us. It’s important to take into account that fear and conspiracies can lead us down a rabbit hole on social media platforms, but believing false information from online sources, that may not be totally accurate.
In this reflection essay I also wanted to talk about the idea of the power of tow. Group work can be difficult in college, especially working with people you don’t know. We worked together in the best possible way given our circumstances, and were able to collaborate. We were able to use both of our thought processes in order to make this project come together. One thing we liked about this project was the ability for creative control and after picking out topics we could really take this project in any direction, in order to make it more appealing and interesting for us to work on as partners. We also liked the different options given because we felt as if it made it very accommodating to students’ different strengths and weaknesses. It’s important to be able to be on the same page with your partner especially when timing out the project’s timeline. We both agreed to work on this project during the end of the week, because we both had major assignments and exams throughout the week that needed to be completed before this one.
Although we were faced with challenges with this project, we are both glad that it is completed, and we only have one leap left this semester. We are happy with the work we are putting forward and hope that the information we collected from our research and this project can be used in other areas of our lives, specifically pertaining to media and media literacy.
https://www.aafp.org/news/health-of-the-public/kindergarten-vaccine-rates-2023-report.html
https://www.rd.com/list/conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true/
References
Cahn, L. (2020, March 20). 12 conspiracy theories that actually turned out to be true. Reader's Digest. https://www.rd.com/list/conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true/
Handi. (2024). Vaccines and autism. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccines-and-other-conditions/vaccines-autism
Moyer, M. W. (2019, March 1). People drawn to conspiracy theories share a cluster of psychological features. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-drawn-to-conspiracy-theories-share-a-cluster-of-psychological-features/
Staff, N. (2023, January 19). Kindergarteners’ vaccination rates continue to decline. American Academy of Family Physicians. https://www.aafp.org/news/health-of-the-public/kindergarten-vaccine-rates-2023-report.html
