John's Weekly Blog

Often times, we portray a different version of ourselves depending on the person we are engaging in conversation. For example, when someone is on a job interview they act more professional and dress in very nice attire. We do this to portray a version of yourself that we think the people around us want. This same thing happens on social media but can be more extreme.  From my own experience on social media I have seen myself practice impression management but have seen others in a more extreme fashion. On Twitter, I purely post about Washington D.C. sports and engage with other like minded people on the app. Although I have other interest, my twitter account is used to keep up with the teams news and usually post my disapproval of the teams decisions. On Instagram, I mostly post about fishing and sports because I believe my friends find that part of my life most interesting. The most engagement I get on my post are the post of big fish I catch. I feel that I mil...

      Dissociative Anonymity is when a person on the internet can live a separate life on the internet while living a normal life that is completely separate. People use this so that they can say stuff that cannot be tracked to their personal life. Usually people who partake in this, use an account on social media with a generic profile pic and username. For the most part people use it to say harmful and controversial things that they could not say in their regular lives. I found myself wondering if there are any positive examples of dissociative anonymity?     Although I could not think of an example that was one hundred percent positive, I did think of someone using it to fire back at internet trolls.   Kevin Durant      In 2017, Kevin Durant was revealed to be behind a "burner account" on Twitter that had hundreds of tweets. Kevin would take time to respond to trolls on Twitter that were bashing him by throwing insults ...

 In social media class this week we had a series of visiting scholars that each taught us something different. The most interesting topic discussed was Ms. Riley's presentation on online advocacy. Ms. Riley discussed how advocacy has been affected by social media. She discussed how movement such as #BLM and #MeToo have taken off over social media and gone viral. When we looked at these online movements, we discussed how social media opens up the opportunity to help make the movement go viral. These movements have taken over our social media feed and has brought these issues in front of the peoples faces. As a group activity, we even got to try to practice making our own online movement and creating a hashtag for the movement.

This is my first blog and to start off I will introduce myself. I am John Horning and I am a student at Mount St Mary's. I major in Communications and hope to use that to work in sports in some kind of capacity. I use to play lacrosse at the Mount but have struggled with anxiety and depression that made it difficult to continue to playing. I have a long connection to the Mount having had many family members attend here including both my parents. My interest outside of school includes fishing, lacrosse, and golf. During the summer, I spend the majority of my off time offshore fishing on my father's boat. Fishing is something that I am passionate about and it runs in my family. My cousin, Jimmy, starred on National Geographic's "Wicked Tuna Outer Banks," and my Dad is a successful captain who has won the White Marlin Open twice. The White Marlin Open is the largest billfish tournament in the world that takes place in Ocean City, Maryland.