Social Issue Reflection
There is a correlation between media and society to share themselves about past, present,
and future events. The media plays a very constructive role in today’s society. On different social
media platforms, we can see that media content is interacting with public awareness and
collected views, information, and attitudes toward certain issues. It is a powerful tool of
communication in the emerging world and presents the real stage of society in some way. I agree
with what Hull and Nelson (2005) asserted, “multimodality can afford, not just a new way to
make meaning, but a different kind of meaning”(p. 2 ). Therefore, through our multimedia
project on the social issue, our goal is not only to arouse people’s awareness of this issue but also
to provide a new perspective and give indeed help and suggestions for the group who are under
the pressure of the issue.
What is the issue?
The topic of the media project focuses on group interview stress and anxiety. With the
influence of Covid-19, more and more people are struggling with job hunting. Even if the
candidate has outstanding education experience, well-qualified ability, and has put a lot of effort
in job searching and resume creation, she/he would still feel stressed to get a satisfactory job.
Moreover, in this process, sometimes the skills of promoting oneself are even considered more
important than the real ability. Of all kinds of skills, interview related topics are most mentioned
on various media platforms.
Interviews are often seen as "high stakes" environments that cause many to experience
nerves and anxiety before or during their interviews. Sweaty palms, elevated heart rate, racing
thoughts, and the inability to focus are common symptoms of interview stress and anxiety. For
those who have limited or no interviewing experience, preparing for an interview may be a
nerve-racking experience. Even seasoned professionals with years of interview practice can feel
anxious or overwhelmed while preparing for or during an interview. The situation of the group
interview is even worse because it not merely requires communication with the interviewer, but
also needs interaction with other candidates.
On social media platforms, many people are using short videos or memes to share their
bad feelings about group interviews. Some difficulties are that they don’t know what to say
within the inadequate thinking time provided, or other candidates are so talkative that they don’t
have opportunities to talk, or introverted people feel nervous and cannot speak up in that
situation facing a large group of people. All of these issues can cause group interview stress and
anxiety and thus may make the circumstance even worse and finally probably leads to failure in
job hunting.
Why this issue?
Both my partner Bohan and I are about to graduate in next summer and we are struggling
with job hunting during this semester. Group interview stress and anxiety is the issue we are
facing personally. We are both introverted people, and we feel it’s our disadvantage to talk about
our opinions in front of a crowd of people. Through our discussion, we found out that even
though we got well-prepared before, it was still hard for us to show the real level in the group
interview scene because of nervousness. Continuously, this feeling would cause unsure about
ourselves or make us lose confidence. This stress and anxiety are not just emotional feelings but
serious issues that may influence the career path.
We also noticed that on social media platforms, such as TikTok and RED ( a popular
social media platform targeted at young groups in China), the recommendation systems are
always providing us with some vloggers or influencers who are creating short videos to present
this issue and show their worries. Many of them are interesting and original. They play the roles
of themselves and other candidates in those short videos and try to restore the scene, which is
very real and funny and made the audience feel what they feel. We frequently click on
job-related topics, so the recommendation algorithms are continuously recommending the related
content to us. However, we found those topics and tags are not given enough attention. The first
reason might be that the topic, even if it’s a social issue and has an impact on individuals’ future
development, only people who are struggling with job hunting may feel related to it. Also, those
videos are presenting the problem and the personal emotion without giving useful suggestions or
solutions.
With those being considered, we decided to create a media project to arouse people’s
awareness of this group interview issue and also try to provide them with helpful advice and
some solutions by using media technologies.
Media project: video + website + online community
After analyzing the existing media materials related to our topic on different media
platforms, we found several problems. For the video form, as mentioned above, most of the short
videos focus on performing and complaining, which are attractive and interesting to watch but
lack some practical solutions. The articles or information in text form on the website are kind of
abstract and face all groups of people without specific references. Besides, through research, we
found that group interview problems may not easily be solved by tips such as “Don’t be nervous”
or “Answer carefully”, which are too general and hard to achieve without specific instructions.
As a result, we decided to create a combination of a video project (to introduce the issue and
point out the difficulties and challenges), plus a website (to provide specific suggestions and
practice instruction) and a community (to gather people facing the similar problems and help
them practice in groups).
In the part of the video, we developed the content from three perspectives— issue
presentation, reason analysis, and basic solutions and we looked for information from various
media materials considering how knowledge is represented, as well as the mode and media
chosen, is a crucial aspect of knowledge construction (Jewitt, 2008). To introduce the issue in a
straightforward and funny way, I picked up a movie clip from the film “Man of Black”. The
movie has a group interview scene and the character acts in a confused and bewildered state,
which could resonate with our target audience. We also included “memes” in our video to
dramatically show the fear and stress when people are preparing for the group interview. Memes
are ideas, behaviors, or styles that spread by means of imitation and often carry symbolic
meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. When creating the video, we felt
memes are an effective and direct way to express emotion. And to present how serious the
situation is, we edited a video from a candidate posted on a short video platform talking about
the various roles in a group interview and her confusion and frustration. The combination of
different forms of materials in our video enriches our content and helps the audience experience
a multimodal representation. Through a process of braiding (Mitchell, 2004) or orchestration
(Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001), in our project, the multimodal text created a different system of
signification, one that transcends the collective contribution of its constituent parts.
For the website, we consider it as complementary material for our solution in the video
project. At the end of the video, the link to our website will be provided to guide the audience to
get detailed information to prepare for their group interview. As a result, the style of the website
is designed differently from our video. The web page was created in a more official style rather
than focusing on whether it’s interesting or funny because it is used to give advice and
instructions and the official style would make the suggestions more trustworthy. In addition, we
also share some of the sample questions we encountered in our own experiences with some
referring answers. The examples aim to give detailed directions for the preparation and also
could be used as practice materials.
Besides, we added the online community as a crucial part of our media project. From the
website, people can join the community by scanning the QR code. In the group, they could share
their worries about the group interview. An online community can act as an information system
where members can post, comment on discussions, give advice or collaborate. By discussing
with other people stuck by similar issues, they would relieve their anxiety and feel beneficial to
their emotional problems. They can also share their former experience of group interviews and
learn from each other, which accounts for these larger systems of power as they shape and are
shaped by individuals in particular cultural contexts (Lewis, 2003 ). More importantly, they can
improve their practical skills by building mock group interviews with other members. Simulating
the group interview scenes would equip them with knowledge of different sessions and provide
opportunities for them to learn more about themselves and find the roles that are most suitable
for themselves.
Challenges
The challenge we encountered was when deciding the form of our project, we thought
about creating an interactive video game for the candidates to practice through play and make
decisions for the characters in the virtual simulating interview. The game would give the
evaluation to help them reflect on their performance and make progress. This form is also an
interesting and effective way to help the interviewers. But then we considered the difficulty of
bringing in all the possibilities because the interviews are filled with incidental factors and
cannot be easily simulated in the video game design. So finally we decided to build a website
and create an online community to realize real interaction with humans. Through this
communication with real people, not the programs or machines, the candidates can improve their
interview skills in practice.
Rethink about media
When reflecting on our media project, there is a problem that comes to my mind: Will a
large number of videos on this topic help people release their anxiety, or instead, it is this
overload discussion that makes the pressure more serious? The overload of information on
various media platforms every day creates a kind of media ecology that spreads anxiety in some
way. The metaphor of ecology was used to emphasize the characteristics of an overall technical,
social, cultural, and place-based system, in which the components are not decomposable or
separable (Ito et al, 2009). The meanings, uses, functions, flows, and interconnections in people’s
daily lives located in particular settings are also situated within people’s wider media ecologies.
The Internet's emotional overflow may negatively impact people’s cognition and thinking, as it
exaggerates difficulties and worries. As a result, in our project, we hope the audience could bring
home more solutions and real support, not merely the emotional contagion, and attract their
attention but relieve their anxiety. In addition, we have a deeper understanding of multimodal
and get experience on how to apply this theory in practice. More equitably valuing different
ways of thinking, knowing, and communicating, multimodal research can facilitate wider and
more diverse participation in the production of knowledge, offer a more nuanced and ethical
mode of inquiry, and emphasize different ways of knowing and connecting (Literat,2018). The
project organized various forms of media materials and build a virtual community to facilitate
and support different ways of communicating and thinking.
Reference
Boyd, d., Horst, H. A., Pascoe, C. J., Ito, M., Herr Stephenson, B., Bittanti, M., Lange, P. G.,
Robinson, L. (2009). Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from
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Hull, G., & Nelson, M. E. (2005). Locating the Semiotic Power of Multimodality. Written
Communication, 22(2), 224-261.
Ito, M., Horst, H. A., Bittanti, M., Herr Stephenson, B., Lange, P. G., Pascoe, C. J., & Robinson,
L. (2009). Living and learning with new media: Summary of findings from the digital
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Jewitt, C. (2008). Multimodality and Literacy in School Classrooms. Review of Research in
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Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes of media and
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Lewis, C., & Moje, E. B. (2003). Sociocultural perspectives meet critical theories: Producing
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