Blog post #1

 Hello everyone! My name is Kate De Leenheer! I was born in Florida, but I moved to Corvallis, Oregon as a kid and have been here ever since. I am passionate about tons of things! Growing up I was always super active, so weather its going to the gym, or taking a walk with my dogs, I make sure to stay as active as I can! I am also very passionate about the people I love and being able to spend quality time with them means the world to me. 

Currently I am still a senior in high school at Crescent Valley, but I have made the decision to join a partnership program that allows me to take classes and get credits at LBCC. As we all know, the high school environment can get pretty uninspiring, which strongly influenced my decision to continue my work here at Linn Benton. My plans for after graduation are to continue my education at the University of Oregon, majoring in public relations. My future plans influenced my decision to take a journalism class here at LBCC, not only to learn about mass media, but to also determine if public relations is something I am interested in continuing in my future. As I am still in high school, I do not have a declared major, so instead I'm taking this opportunity to take classes I would be interested in taking next year, rather than choosing any random class that would fill out my credit. 

I am most interested about learning absolutely everything about media. I would love to learn the effects of media, the technology used, and especially the history of media to get a deeper understanding of how it really effects society, and more specifically, me. Being someone who uses various platforms of social media, miss information and "fake news" is something I am on edge about all the time. When on one of my preferred social media platforms, TikTok, I need to stay cautious about the information I consume and that it is correct. The other platform that I primarily use other than Tik Tok to get any type of information would be google. Along with various other media platforms google has the threat of miss information but I have learned to be able to find websites or articles that are credible and reliable, but that doesn't mean I am safe from fake news. With that, I hope to learn the ways that different media sources plan to combat the issue of false information.