Starting off the summer strong by spending it in USC Annenberg’s Youth Academy, Monday through Thursday, 8:30 to 1:30, on one of the most recognizable media and journalism campuses in the country. There’s something so prodigious about getting to experience this and being able to make friends easily here. You walk in the Annenberg building …
Category Archives: Week1_2026
Engaging as Yourself in Civic Life
By Diamond Rangel Reyes On the first day of AYA, we had lunch together as a class at USC’s Village Dining Hall. I expected awkwardness and silence, the kind where you can hear forks and knives clinking while everyone avoids eye contact. But to my surprise, conversation started easily. People opened up, jokes were shared, …
Stuart Vs Laswell
By Amy Rodriguez Thin, tall, slender trees hid Walis Annenberg when I first stepped foot onto the campus of USC. The air was hot, sticky, and full of anticipation waiting to be discovered. Before me was a massive, colossal building, which had me hooked onto the hope that all my questions and soon to be …
The Media and its Relation to Advocacy: What I’ve Learned
What is advocacy? Before AYA, I’d have probably answered: to physically go out and fight for something. Now, after 4 days of readings, guest speakers, and lectures, I find that advocacy is a little more complicated than that. There’s so many different factors and forms that make up advocacy, from little graphics to online activism, …
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People, Connected
Communication; it’s such a wide range subject which can have so many different meanings. Sometimes people’s wavelengths and understandings just don’t align, leading to unnecessary issues. However, those miscommunications can lead to more than just confusion, but outcomes that affect one’s life trajectory as a whole In class, we learned about how messages are encoded …
Seeing Beyond the Surface
By Amaiya M. Medley This week in COMM 101, we covered topics like representation and interpretation, and it’s made me look at my own neighborhood differently. I didn’t expect a course to change how I saw something that I drive past almost every day. We pass by hundreds of images without stopping to think about …
Rethinking Participation
By Daniela Martinez When most people think about participation, they often imagine someone speaking up in class or taking a leadership role. During my first week at AYA in COMM 101, I learned that participation can take many different forms. Through studying critical media literacy, reading the articles assigned to us, and exploring graphic design, …
Understanding Media’s Role in Shaping Society through AYA
Walking towards the classroom with rows of tables, I scanned the faces of parents and students scattered across the room. Even after reading through emails packed with information about our class schedules, classroom expectations, and detailed bios on our guest speakers, I had no idea what to expect. Nevertheless, I was excited for an opportunity …
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Learning to Read the Screen
By: Angelina Yip The first thing I noticed was the screen. It stretched across the Wallis Annenberg lobby, glowing with stories, announcements, and images that seemed to move faster than I could fully take in. Sitting there with my notebook open and my reading in front of me, I felt like I had stepped into …
Communicating Change 