At Solomon Law Group, we pride ourselves on giving back to our community however we can. In 2018, we decided to start a scholarship that lets us give back to the community and enhance our nation’s ability to educate future generations. Our campaign was a tremendous success so we have been happy to continue it every year since. The last submission period for our scholarship– Fall 2019– just came to a close. We were truly humbled by the amount of applications we received as well as the overall quality of every essay.
Thank you to every student who applied!
We’re pleased to announce we’ve chosen a winner.
Congratulations to Tiana Lockett of Country Club Hills, Illinois!
Tiana will be attending Loyola Marymount University as an undergraduate. She’ll be majoring in Political Science and minoring in Ethics.
Here was the essay topic:
How can we better utilize popular entertainment and media (movies, TV shows, online media, video games, etc.) to educate the general public about vital issues?
Here is the winning essay:
A Step Towards Better Media Usage
The age of heightened connectivity is upon us. The lives of millions of people are plastered over our screens and accessible at any time of day. This accessibility drives comparison. A picture of a view uploaded from a foreign country, a picture of someone strutting a new outfit, and the millions of other pictures and videos that capture the best moments of an individual’s life fuel those looking from the outside to compare their lives to the visuals and attempt to count the dollars that it costs to portray a certain visual to others.The media is highly influential in the lives of individuals in today’s day and age. A great deal of information is exposed to individuals through means of movies, TV shows, online media, video games, and other outlets of the sort. Due to this fact, the general public is learning about vital issues from popular entertainment and media, thus bestowing a lot of weight on the shoulders of individuals who are orchestrating and releasing information through means of publication. For this reason, it is important to evaluate how popular entertainment and media can be improved and handled for the purposes of educating the public on important issues affecting the lives of many, whether an individual is personally affected or not. Individuals can only become better beings through recognition of the problem and changed behavior.
A step towards better utilizing popular entertainment and media to educate the general public about vital issues is distinguishing between fanciful portrayals and factually based visuals. When an individual can decipher between fantasy and fact, then an individual is more equipped to address the issue in a real-life setting. The way in which an individual distinguishes this is by evaluating the media outlets in which one entertains and clearly understanding the outlets’ delivery of information. For example, online media is intended to be easily accessible, thus not including all of the important details of various issues. Television shows are meant to entertain. Video games are designed for gameplay. Documentaries are for the portrayal of factual events and information. This is not to say that video games or television shows cannot educate its viewers, but its basis of intent is not solely to be factually accurate in the process of publication. With knowing the difference between what is real and what is not, individuals can differentiate the information retrieved from media outlets and use it to educate themselves on important issues for the betterment of the status quo.
Another way in which the public can be educated about pressing issues through the means of the media is by allowing the consumption of media in intervals. Life is not lived on a screen. For this reason, it is important to know when to leave the comforts of the screen and engage in real world activities. Watching videos, posting pictures, and uploading written messages on a topic is important to learn and teach but being present in meetings, orchestrating events for the community to be informed, leading rallies, and making one’s voice heard through face-to-face interaction is necessary for a lasting impact.
It is the lack of discernment between factual and fictitious and heavy indulgence in screen time that hinders the better utilization of media to educate the general public about vital issues. Luckily, these issues are not without solutions. One solution is understanding the intent of the media outlets that one chooses to engage with in his or her day-to-day activities. With knowledge, one has the power to act on issues that simply are not possible with comfortability in ignorance. Another solution is restricting the amount of media that one takes in, as it often misconstrued with the realities of the world. The world is multifaceted and far-reaching, and the media is restrictive in its portrayal of the world around us. For this reason, it is important to be an active learner and teacher outside of the comforts of media. The media is powerful, so understanding its truths and faults as well as the time limit it has on it for fulfillment of a deep-rooted impact is imperative. The implementation of these two methods in the lives of the masses will ensure that popular entertainment and media is being better utilized for educating the public.
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For more information on the next scholarship period which will be for Fall 2020, please see our law firm’s scholarship page. Congratulations again, Tiana! Good luck in all your future endeavors.
