REEL CLUELESS: Joe is a television veteran who has worked as a prime-time sitcom writer, field director, video editor - and now graduate student in media literacy education at Columbia College Chicago and intern at the Media Education Lab. Join him and his longtime fellow entertainment news editors (who are also “reel clueless” as they enlist Gen-Zer’s and Gen-Alphas to help them wrap their antiquated media minds around the new normal of endless scroll.

Airing soon on WCRX Chicago!

The week Joe and Chad Rock continue listening to college students and their perspectives on controlling their scroll. Despite some of their savvy tactics, including some app recommendation, Joe starts to get a little suspicious that there is still some naivete that lurks amongst many Gen-Zers. Also AI throws up an interesting artifact when investigating influencers (displayed here).

In this episode, Joe and Chad Rock listen to what students from 3 different college campuses have to say about their doom scrolling woes. We find their remarks timely, in regards to the recent landmark court decisions regarding big tech and their culpability for the intentional addictive platforms they designed. A special thanks to the great students from Cal State Channel Islands, UC Berkeley, and here at Columbia College Chicago.

After an earlier-than-planned “very special episode,” we begin our college campus interviews, finding out what videos undergraduates’ are watching on social media platforms. Today we are at Columbia College Chicago. Unsurprisingly, we found very few CCC students that routinely watch influencers that have been known for manipulative marketing tactics. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that they are mostly media/visual art students and thus, pretty darn media savvy. Thus, we’re dedicating this week to examine a few of their favorites.

Influencer/creators links:

https://www.tiktok.com/@brittany_broski

https://www.tiktok.com/@julesleblanc

https://www.tiktok.com/@reitergrace

Mentioned but didn’t get to:

https://www.tiktok.com/@spencer.barbosa

Yes, a little strange to have a “very special” episode as the second episode. But… the notification of our production getting canceled after 30 years seems like something we need to talk about. After all, this is relative to the new media short-form video normal that we are clueless about. Originally we had a whole slew of input from college students, but we will shelve those for next episode, while we reflect on the state of media’s almost complete transition, which has now hit even closer to home.

In our first episode, Joe summarizes his journey to becoming a media literacy educator, focusing on digital wellness for young people in the way they consume social media content. Later, he is joined by his longtime video editing coworker as they begin making sense of social media content and make some comparisons to the “endless scroll” of their own youth.

Clips played in this episode:

Tara Yummy

https://www.tiktok.com/@tarayummy

Sidemen

https://www.youtube.com/@Sidemen

Sam Sulluck

https://www.tiktok.com/@sam_sulek

Demitra Demitradis

https://www.tiktok.com/@demetradias

Photo courtesy:

CBS Television - eBayfrontback, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31047742