La Boqueria

Prior to coming to Barcelona, I had always heard about La Boqueria from friends of mine who had study abroad the year before me. They raved on and on about how amazing it was and how delicious all the little restaurants were. They told me about how they always tried to get their groceries from the local markets, especially La Boqueria, and that is was a great place to stop by for a quick snack in between classes. Needless to say I was more than excited to experience this all for myself. Though I had visited twice before, it wasn’t until I went with my Culture of Food and Wine class that I stopped to think about the different products sold there and how they related to the material and culture of Barcelona that I had learned in my classes. All my previous trips had been either with my friends or my parents to grab some food and explore in between my classes.

When we arrived to La Boqueria I could instantly identify some of the food preservation methods that we had been learning about in my course during the semester. For example, I saw some fish that were canned in a glass jar with a liquid used to preserve the flavor. Prior to my class I would have looked at this and just assumed it was pickled or not really known how the food was preserved. This same mentality applied to the meats I saw hanging in the market.  After these classes whenever I see produce in a market, be it La Boqueria or the local one near my apartment, I see all of the preservations methods that went into creating something we can eat. It has become almost like a second instinct whenever I go shopping; I see passed the foods and see what type of methods were used to make them last, be in salting, curing, smoking, fermentation, pickling, canning, heat and cold preservations, or edible coatings.

I found this kind of special because I feel like I know La Boqueria and the other Barcelona markets on a deeper level. I feel like after talking about it in one of my classes and going on an in-depth field trip I’ve gotten much more out of it than just visiting my local market for lunch. The markets in barcelona will be one of the things I miss the most. It was so nice to be able to just grab some fresh food on the way home from class to cook for dinner, or to get a juice with some friends. Having such fresh produce that viable is something that I think makes Barcelona such a special and unique city, and I will miss it dearly.

Net Neutrality Podcast

If you turn to any American news source in last week, chances are you will have encountered an article discussing the latest vote to change Net Neutrality. In order to understand the debates taking place, it is important to first understand what exactly it is. Net Neutrality is the principle that all internet server providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate by charging differently based on user, content, website, platform, etc. Based on this logic, internet service providers are not allowed to intentionally block, slow down, or charge money for certain websites and online content.

On December 14, 2017, the FCC Republican majority approved Ajit Pai’s plan to gut the Net Neutrality protections that were put into place during Obama’s presidency. The FCC, or the Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency from the US government that was created to regulate interstate radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. The agency is comprised of five members, with Ajit Pai being the current angry executive chairman, as nominated by President Trump.The other four commissioners are Mignon Clyburn, Brendan Carr, Michael O’Rielly, and Jessica Rosenworcel. It is important to note that only Clyburn and Rosenworcel voted against Pai’s new net neutrality plan. The vote removed the Title II designation, preventing the FCC from putting tough net neutrality rules in place even if they wanted to.

Without the Net Neuatraliy rules, companies such as Verizon and AT&T will be able to control which websites and what content is successful. They can now slow down competing companies’s websites or block content that doesn’t agree with their own opinions. They can also charge fees for specific content and certain websites, making them essentially only available to those with the financial means to afford them. The consequences of these setbacks will be felt the most by minority groups, such as the LTGBQ community and small activities groups that traditional media outlets fail to or often misrepresent.

Although many people oppose this vote, mainly due to it being rooted in inequality, there are some that support it. Opponents of net neutrality argue that the rules were never needed to begin with, staying that the internet was fine the was in was in 2015 before Obama created stricter net neutrality rules. However, supports of net neutrality argue that without these rules internet providers can control traffic in anticompetitive ways. They argue that the internet we think of today will no longer be the same, as we will now have to pay for specific content based on which internet service provider we use and that the idea of the free and fair internet will no longer exist if we don’t turn back to stricter net neutrality regulations.

Mobile Journalism

Mobile Journalism, or MOJO, has becoming an increasingly popular form of communication during the past 10 years partially due to the popularity of smart phones. As we shift towards a society where we can access information in a matter of milliseconds, it makes sense that people would want to receive current news at an equivalently fast rate. With citizen journalists who can share information while it’s happening, professional journalists need to report to us with the same sense of urgency if they want to stay ahead of the pack.

During our class I was extremely surprised to learn that mobile journalism is already frequently used on American news channels and that it’s so seamlessly integrated that we are completely unaware of whats mobile and regular journalism when we watch the news. I found this initially hard to believe, because tradition on site reporting includes and professional camera as well as a sound mic, which mobile journalism lacks. However the more we learned about mobile journalism it became clear to me how this was true.

First, as smart phones continue to improve so does their camera abilities. iPhones and Androids now include such high quality cameras that give mobile journalists the ability to create videos that are acceptable for television. Below is a video clip that perfectly highlights how great phone camera quality can make it hard to distinguish what’s mobile and what’s traditional journalism

Second, there are many additional tools that can be used to make mobile journalism of an even higher quality. There are many times of adaptors and tripods that can help solve the issue of stability during filming. Some of these products are expensive, but there are many affordable ones that are of just as good quality. There are also shoulder pods that work when there aren’t flat enough surfaces to put a tripod on. In addition, there are a wide variety of microphones that can be plugged into the smartphones headphone jacket to help improve audio quality and make sure the video sounds like it was filmed with a sound crew.

After this class, I quickly realized how important mobile journalism is and I believe that all major news networks should incorporate this type of journalism if they have not already. The benefits are so impressive, and as I just talked about all of the cons to mobile journalism can easily be fixed through a variety of different tools and softwares that enhance your smartphone. In addition, the pros to using mobile journalism make it clear it’s a useful tool in today’s media driven world. Some pro’s of mobile journalism are the freedom that comes with it, it’s easy to travel with, the videos are of good quality, you have your recording device always with you, its fast to report, and its cheap.

 

Ana Lopez

Last week we were fortunate enough to have Ana López come to our class to talk about her career in social media and public relations and what route she took to get there. López currently is working for her own Digital Marketing Consultancy called La López, which she founded in 2016.

Ana’s whole talk was extremely interesting, in fact out of all the guest speakers I’ve had in my classes she was by far my favorite. Her career path seemed very appealing, and as some one who still doesn’t know what they want to do with their life, it’s always nice to hear about interesting careers.

Before creating her own digital consulting company, Ana worked as the Head of Digital Marketing at Damm Group Brewery from 2009 to 2016. When she first started at Damm, there was no digital marketing team and Ana was the only one there to work on their projects.

The first creative direction they took was creating a video that was different than anything done at the time. Instead of creating a short ad meant for television, they created a video clip that was just uploaded to YouTube. Although there were risks that came with this type of an advertisement, the pay off was huge. The video, titled “Formentera” increased brand awareness by 225% that summer and the song used in the video was the #1 downloaded song of the summer.

After watching this video I completely understood why this was such a successful ad. The focus was placed on the visual elements of the video and not on the product that they were trying to sell. Although you could see Estrella bottles frequently throughout the clip, the video felt more like a music video because that was the way Ana and her team wanted the video to feel. This type of advertising is becoming more and more popular, but is still a second choice when it comes to using the traditional, 30 second clips aired during television.

What intrigued me about the “Formentera” video was that it was so successful that Ana and her team created a second, longer video in 2015 titled “Vale” that feature American actress Dakota Johnson. Despite having such a famous American actress in the clip, I hadn’t seen the video prior to our class. The video was about 9 minutes longer than the first one, and featured more of storylines and dialogue than the previous clip.

One of the biggest take-aways that I got from Ana’s class was that although social media and digital advertising are becoming more and more important to reach all customers, traditional media and PR are still key factors the need to be taken into consideration when advertising a product. As someone who will most likely pursue a career in a PR field, I felt like this was helpful career advice when dealing with advertising in the increasingly online world.

Marketing 2.0

During our class discussion about marketing in the digital age, or Marketing 2.0, we discussed some of the challenges that come from convenient advertising on social media. One of these issues is our ability to instantly post a review about an interaction or service, as well as to instantly read them via our smart phones. We discussed how this is relevant to our lives, because it is shifting towards a society where people behave in a certain manner just to get good ratings. This need to have good ratings makes sense though, because a bad review on a restaurant or shop can destroy a business. This stood out to me in particular because this is something I encounter almost daily. The second you exit an Uber,  you rate the driver. When I go out to eat in an unfamiliar area, I search the restaurants on Yelp to see if it’s worth my time.

However, there are some advantages to this system that need to be acknowledged. Giving a good rating to services or goods may help boost their popularity. On the other hand, giving a a low rating can spare other consumers of the bad experience you had. However, this is not always accurate. I have been to restaurants that have had a couple negative Yelp reviews only to have had a great meal and even better service. Many times the negative reviews resonate with us the most, but they aren’t the case the majority of the time.

 

We also discussed the different types of marketing, and viral marketing was the most interesting to me. Viral marketing is incentivized marketing, meaning that you receive money or some type of discount if you send the ad to other people. When we briefly mentioned it in class, it sounded like a somewhat stupid technique, as I would think I would know better than to spam my friends and family with ads just to receive a little money. The more I reflected on this type of marketing, however, the more I realized how smart this technique is and how much it’s impacted my life without me even realizing. There are many times a site I frequent tells me that if I share the site with 5 friends, they’ll get $20 and I’ll get $50 or some amount just for referring them. Although I don’t do this often, if I feel that its a website in which I spend a decent amount of money on, I am more inclined to send the email to my friends. Another example that is different but very similar are the viral videos that get sent around. Although we don’t finically benefit from sending these videos to our friends, we may benefit in other ways and that’s why we send them. A good example of this would be all the Doritos ads we saw a couple years ago that premiered during the Super Bowl. Regardless if you’re a Doritos fan or not, the videos were hysterical and went viral very very quickly. Below is one of the most iconic ads during this campaign.

 

American Politics

One of the initially things I found interesting in our class discussion on American politics is how different their political campaigns are. We talked about how during the presidential election, candidates can buy as many minutes as they need for television adds and that their campaigns are run by professionals. This contrasty other countries, such as Spain for example, where television minutes are regulated and a candidates campaign is done by members of their own political party. While I was at first taken back by the contrast between political systems, I actually found it to be quiet interesting. Regulating minutes would help candidates from smaller parties, like the Green Party, get a more fair shot in the race. By making the playing field more equal for all candidates it allows there to be more candidates, as opposed to how American politics just have two main parties that make up the government because candidates who belong to these parties have the support and funding to be in an election.

Another interesting topic during this class was how different president were able to use various forms of media and news sources to reach their voters and to create a strong campaign. I was aware of how Barack Obama used social media to reach the everyday voter and how this helped him win the elections, but I wasn’t aware of how FDR used radio during his presidency. To summarize, between 1933 and 1934 FGR had a series of Fireside Chats in which he talked about his policies in a way that was relatable to the everyday American. I found this to be extremely interesting because we typically don’t learn about how past presidents’ tools helped them earn or maintain their presidency. To me, the idea of having campaign managers and strategies to help grow a voter base through media seemed like a very recent trend, when in reality this has always been taking place in American politics.

Barack Obama in a sense was the fire president to use social media to reach his voters. As we learned in class, Obama had public accounts on nine different social media sites, where as Mitt Romney had just five. It was also the type of account that gave Obama the advantage, including sites like Instagram, Spotify, YouTube, and Pinterest. These types of social media helped him reach a younger generation who primarily gets their news from these sources instead of traditional ones like television, newspapers, radio, etc.

Lastly, the Trump/Hillary campaign was especially unique between both candidates used the same forms of social media and were fairly equally active on them during their campaigns. However, social media polarized this elections between Trump supporters would see news posted by other Trump supporters and same with Hillary supporters, therefor being more biases to one candidate. However, other factors seemed to contribute to Trumps election, although his use of turning himself into a brand on social media also gave him a huge advantage during the race.

Multi Media Report

I decided to focus my multi media report on how the Catalan Crisis is impacting American students currently studying in Spain, and what their opinions towards it are. I interviewed two students, one studying in Barcelona and one studying in Madrid. While I was in Madrid I was fortunate to see a protest, which I recorded and was able to put into my video. I enjoyed creating this project because I think it really highlights that where a person is currently living and what type of environment is around them can drastically impact their opinions and beliefs on a political situation.

Citizen Journalism

The topic of “citizen journalism” is particularly controversial because many journalists feel that journalism is a professional field and cannot be used by just anyone. To a certain degree I agree with this idea, but I can also see that opposite argument. As we discussed in class, being a professional journalist is similar to being a doctor in the sense that even out of the office you are still on duty. It is also similar because both professions requirement certain skills and degrees to be considered a legitimate doctor or journalist.

However, just as a regular person can perform CPR or try to dress a wound, everyday people can report and share vital news with the rest of the world in certain circumstances. In my opinion, these people are not in a formal sense “journalists,” but they can still help bring important information to the rest of the world. For example, we talked about Arab Springs in class as a perfect example of citizen journalists. Although these students had no professional training, they were able to act as journalists and share with the world what was happening in their countries.

Another topic I found extremely interesting was the differences between citizen journalism and civic journalism. Prior to our class, I had lumped both terms together and label it as citizen journalism. Civic journalism is similar to citizen journalism because it is produced by an everyday person, but civic journalism is more niche and made for a specific community, while citizen journalism is more mainstream and for the general public.

A good example for a news source that has both these types of journalism is the newspaper at my home university, The Miami Student. Although the writers are technically student journalists they could still be considered citizen journalists because they are not done with their professional education. Some of these are articles  are for the general public, reporting on well known topics like the current political situation in the US or what professional sporting events happened around the country. Other categories, however, are more niche and specific to my home University, Miami of Ohio. For example, only students would care about the section called “Humans of Oxford,” which is a duplicate of the famous internet sensation Humans of New York. This section highlights various students around campus and gives them a platform to talk about themselves in whatever way they wish to. This section is targeted for me because I can learn about the interesting lives my peers lead, but it would not be of any interest for someone that attends a different college.

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Another part of our class discussion that was interesting was the role that peoples reviews on sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc. play in our lives. In my opinion, this type of citizen journalism can have a huge influence on the choices we make. Just last week, I used Yelp to help me find a place to get my hair cut, since I was a little nervous about the language barrier. However, I also have an issue with these comment-based sites, because it’s know that individuals only write these comments if their experience was on the extremes, being that they either had an amazing experience or a horrible one. Although these sites are extremely helpful, with no middle ground it can be hard to determine what places are really worth your time.

The Week My Mom Came to Visit

Last week I was lucky enough to have my mom and step-dad come visit me! There trip started out in Rome, where they met me Friday morning after I had arrived the night before. I had honestly been looking forward to this weekend since I arrived in Barcelona, not because I was homesick but because I love spending time with my mom and was excited to show her the city I am living in.

Since they’re flight landed at 10 AM I got to sleep in a little Friday morning, which was much needed. After they had checked into their room and got situated we took a tour of the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. Though our tour was a little long by the end, it was really interesting to learn about all the history behind all the paintings and magnificent architecture we saw. We then had lunch where I had the best spaghetti carbonara of my entire life.

Three of my friends were also in Rome that weekend so my parents took them out to dinner that night. They’re studying in Luxembourg, so it was really nice to see them.

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The next day we did a tour of the Coliseum and the Catacombs of San Sebastiano. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take any pictures in the catacombs. We also enjoyed a delicious seafood lunch that day. On Sunday we had more of a relax day, which was nice because my flight home was at 7PM. We walked around through the Villa Borghese gardens and then went to the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna. I really enjoyed this trip because I felt like I accomplished all the site seeing I wanted to but still got to relax.

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My mom and step-dad then met me in Barcelona early Tuesday morning. Since I had class almost all day, I told them some places to go to that I had already seen, like Parc Guell and the Barcelona Cathedral. After my classes, they met me and we walked to my apartment in El Born and then explored the neighborhood a bit.

I honestly can’t remember what we did in Wednesday, I think we just walked around and had a fun lunch at La Boqueria since I was also in class all day and gave them more activities to do. It was nice because I got to try some restaurants that I’ve been meaning to go to but are a little bit out of my price range.

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It was nice not having classes on Thursday because we got to do activities together. Although we all spelt in a little, we got to see the Sagrada Familia and walk alone the beach. Although it was chilly the beach was still nice and had my phone not died I would have taken picture of us there.

Having my mom and step-dad come visit was one of the best weekends/weeks of abroad so far. Although I didn’t travel to some crazy, exotic place, getting to spend quality time with my parents and showing them the amazing place that I’ve been studying in these past few months.

VALENTÍ SANJUAN

Last Thursday, I had a guest speaker, Valentí Sanjuan, come talk to my journalism class about his career path and social media, specifically how he uses social media to advance his career. He started the class by talking about how the type of work he’s doing now wasn’t available 10 years ago, when our news came entirely from newspapers, television, and the radio. I found this to be particularly interesting because I feel like that’s always something I forget about. One of the biggest things we’ve discussed in my journalism course is this “new” type of journalism and how we receive most of our new and information from alternative news sources, such as Twitter. I get the majority of my news from links I find on Twitter or Facebook (I’ll then open those links to read the article), and so I found it interesting to have a guest speaker who publishes content vie alternative sources.

Valentí Sanjuan is essentially a social media personality, who primarily uses his YouTube channel to reach his audience. According to Valentí, his channel is dedicated mostly to sports and his content is designed to be funny or inspire people, even if they don’t necessarily enjoy sports. He also uses Instagram, @valentisanjuan, and has a huge following. Valentí gave use advice on how to build a social media following so that it can turn into a career. In order to gain more followers, you need to publish good content and you need to publish it often. This will also help you retain high levels of user interaction, because once you gain more followers you want them to keep coming to your page and viewing your content. One way to help gain followers is to have promotional things, such as contests. Valentí said that he was fortunate to already has a decent social media following because of the radio station he used to work at, but these techniques helped him gain more popularity. Another way to grow your personal brand is to have investors or sponsors. When he first started out he would contact many companies asking to be sponsored, but now the situation is reversed, with companies reaching out to him in hopes that he will sponsor their product. Below are some of his Instagram posts that I found interesting!

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Listos! En media hora empezamos @transcumbres con 600km por delante y 16.000 de desnivel. Pinta un poco más dura que el año pasado, cada día con más de 100 km y 2.500 de desnivel. Y muuuucho calor, loco, que aquí es verano! 🐗🚴🏻💨🤘🚴🏻

A post shared by valentí sanjuan 🤘 (@valentisanjuan) on Nov 13, 2017 at 2:51am PST

 

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Listos! En media hora empezamos @transcumbres con 600km por delante y 16.000 de desnivel. Pinta un poco más dura que el año pasado, cada día con más de 100 km y 2.500 de desnivel. Y muuuucho calor, loco, que aquí es verano! 🐗🚴🏻💨🤘🚴🏻

A post shared by valentí sanjuan 🤘 (@valentisanjuan) on Nov 13, 2017 at 2:51am PST

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SKY IS THE LIMIT, jabalís 🐗🤘🕺🐥 Qué planes tenéis para el finde? PD: y no me digáis que empotrar, que ya nos conocemos 😁🐒🤷🏻‍♂️

A post shared by valentí sanjuan 🤘 (@valentisanjuan) on Oct 27, 2017 at 11:36am PDT

The biggest take-away I got from Valentí Sanjuan’s class was how he is able to use social media to make a positive influence. Valentí isn’t trying to save the world, but he does use social media in a way that inspires the people that watch his videos. Honestly, watching one of his videos in class got me motivated to start running again. Valentí says that one of the most rewarded parts of used his videos as a means of income is when he meets people competing with someone you started with or who had seem his videos and got inspired, and watching them along side of you. Valentí’s class discussion gave me hope at the idea that career paths aren’t set in stone, and that there is the possibility of turning what you love into a satisfying career. Below are some of his YouTube videos that I found extremely interesting, I hope you enjoy them!