It has been a week since I recorded my first political podcast for Ears of East which discussed Trump’s attempts to ban Tiktok/Wechat.

{LO6} We had the opportunity to engage with issues of global significance as the ban was yet another example of the power struggle between the 2 hegemons and the pursuit of maintaining the USA’s national security. The fact that both Tiktok and Wechat are largely seen as mediums to communicate one’s ideas, many saw the attempted ban as an infringement on people’s right to free speech. They also saw it as Xenophobia towards Chinese people who have been facing more oppression due to the racist rhetoric that they transmitted the virus overseas. What I learnt about this issues is the varying perspectives on both sides with the USA viewing TikTok as a violater of user privacy policies and an enabler for China’s cyber espionage units whilst TikTok denies any connection to the Chinese government. Participating in this activity made me think about the impact of social media, not only in our daily lives but also in the fragile relationships between countries. It also made me realize the sheer amount of information that social media users give to the apps and how it can be taken advantage of.

{LO5} Working collaboratively when recording the podcast was ensuring that you left an opening in your ending sentence for someone else to jump in and build on it. Each person had a responsibility to ask questions for each other to develop our ideas. Good collaboration was a huge part of having a good conversation because we needed to build on each other’s ideas to develop ideas and have a productive conversation. The people I worked with were all grade 11s so we had the critical thinking skills necessary to have a good political discussion. The challenges that we faced while working together was that none of us had a pre-established relationship so we lacked chemistry which made our conversation stale. It is difficult to overcome these challenges as we are in different grades and different classes so we don’t have many opportunities to form a relationship.