International Student Interview------What' the Media Like in Your Country?

At lunch, I met up with my friend Cynthia Onyango, who is from Nairobi, Kenya. I asked her to help me with my homework in communications class. We talked about how the media works in America and how different it is in Kenya. Cynthia’s response was different than I thought. She spoke to me about how the United States is a great influence. She believed how the media in Kenya is a melting pot like America, but there are only a couple of differences. The music in Kenya has more drums in the background than what we have in our music. One of the biggest differences is the language is not only in English but in Swahili too.

Cynthia continued to speak about what she first noticed about American media and about our TV programs and movies. She did not like profanity. Cynthia believed we take freedom of the press for granted. She spoke about how we used the freedom of the press to the extreme. To her there was much more violence, profanity, and nudity in our media, and there was no need for them.

We talked about who owned the media in Kenya. She informed me it is mostly private ownership who owned the media. The owners produce programs in English. The government owned one part of the media but, the government programs were entirely in Swahili. Cynthia said, “In the past, the government controlled everything you watched, listened, wrote, or anything one ever did. Now the media has changed to be more like the United States.”

What surprised me was, when I talked to Cynthia, how much it was like ours, but different in another way too. In one way, her media was modern, like ours, but not to the extreme of language, nudity, or violence. I could not believe the government once controlled everything. If the government controlled everything you did, it would be frustrating because one could not make his or hers own choices. The other thing that surprised me was how much she talked about how we used the freedom of the press to the extreme, because I would have never known about it until she mentioned it to me.

The Millennials

Once I finished reading the “Millennials” article, one of the statements that jumped out at me was how my age group drank less alcohol, and smoked fewer cigarettes than earlier generations. This statement surprises me because I thought alcohol has become a big issue in our age bracket. I disagree with the statement since I believe people who are in my age group have drunk more than before. Also, this generation will try to use alcohol at a younger age because those “kids” want to be like everyone else. Since some peers and legal adults do it, people in our age bracket want to do it even more.
An issue I agree with is how we have to have a constant use of text messaging or “IM-ing.” Throughout my day, I see people using their phones because they just received a text message or IM. Then, the person text messages or IM’s back to the person who sent it. I see people doing it throughout the class. While the teacher is talking, I watch them hide their phones under the desk when they are text messaging someone.
However, most of the statements about the Millennials is true about me. I have been using computer technology since I have been a little kid. I never read newspapers or magazines unless I had to for class. I did focus on my achievement throughout my life through work and school. Currently, I do not own an iPod, iPhone or Blackberry. My advice to the older generation is to reach out and communicate by keep on trying to learn new things.
The elderly might find the technology a little pointless, but one should try to use it at least once. It will surprise you what people can come up with nowadays, and how it makes our life somewhat easier everyday. To our generation, respect authority, because the older generation can teach us things we never knew about our world, or they can show us how not to make the same mistake they once made.

Hi ! My name is Valerie Riley. I am from St. Louis, Missouri. My major is Mass Communication and Nonprofit Administration. My career interests are working with television media; with nonprofits organizations; because helping people around the world makes a difference and using computers. I do not know what I really want to do after I graduate. I am just hoping I can find something with my career interests.
My activities at Lindenwood University are working on homework, going to American Humanics club meetings, and helping that club with whatever they need help with, going to the Vine meetings, and helping to plan events with the other Christian organizations on campus. In this coming school year,
I am mostly excited about learning new things about myself that I did not know before. For example, when I first came to Lindenwood University, I was only going to major in Nonprofit Administration. This year, I found out I wanted to do something with either mass media or television. Another thing that I am excited about is learning more about the media and how it works.
My favorite television shows is Boy Meets World, One Tree Hill, and Scrubs. My favorite movies are Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the original Star Wars and the first Matrix movie. Every summer, in my free time, I love to go to the beach. I love to swim in the ocean. If I am not on the beach, I love to make up stories in my free time like writing plays and books. Well that is about it. Val