The fifth week of Social Media & Society has introduced us to another fantastic episode of Black Mirror and The Outrage Machine. This week’s discussion in class (Zoom) advanced on these topics and their relevance to society today.
Black Mirror: Hated in the Nation is the final episode of the third season. Directed by James Hawes in 2016, this episode tops the charts for my all time favorite Black Mirror viewings thus far. In this foresightful episode, it encapsulated drama, mystery and suspense. It also touches on current issues in 2020 that directly relate to the subject and storyline of this episode. I believe the Black Mirror production team did a remarkable job producing and perhaps even foreshadowing the future implications of media and technology.
It begins with the hearing of Detective Chief Inspector Karin Parke (Kelly Macdonald) as she seems very unsettled in an ominous courtroom. The following scene flashes back to May 15th of the previous year, “Day One”. Jo Powers publicly criticized disability rights in one of her publications and started receiving massive death threats. Wherever she went; social media threads or walking on the sidewalk, people were using slander to voice their outrage against Power’s article. Her story received mass media across Europe and she was found dead shortly after. Inspector Parke was head of the investigation with her shadow Blue Coulson (Faye Marsay). Power’s had taken her own life with a glass bottle and severely injured her husband. At this point in the episode, it is unclear to the two detectives direction on the case and most of their leads are dead-ends. The following day, a popular Hip-Hop artist (Tusk) received major backlash and media attention for his disrespectful comments regarding a young fan. He too felt terribly ill and started having effects similar to a seizure. He was transported to a hospital and died unexpectedly during a CAT scan. After the second suspicious death, the killers are identified as the artificial ADI bees. These robotic, solar powered bees were intended to pollinate flowers after the extinction of honeybees. The detectives also discovered the correlation between the “#DeathTo” hashtags and the current victims of the ADI bees. The investigative unit rushed to the next trending hate victim before the bees could terrorize their next target. That poor woman happened to be Clara Meades. She posted a picture on a media platform pretending to urinate on a memorial. Meades is moved to a safe house but a swarm of ADI bees prove to be too much and claim their third victim. However, it seemed someone had hacked their programming and used facial recognition to identify targets. A closer analysis of the ADI bee also revealed a manifesto belonging to Garrett Scholes. The gist of the manifesto stated people will be held accountable for their actions on media platforms. The team tracked down Scholes last known location and raided his complex. There is no trace of Scholes but they discovered a disk containing IMEI numbers of all the people that used the “#DeathTo” hashtag. They were attempting to shut down the active hives when the bees started targeting all the individuals that used the hashtag. Over 300,000 people were killed by the ADI bees as we returned to the courthouse with Inspector Parke. The closing scenes display a message between Parke and Blue stating she had located Scholes in a remote foreign country.
In class on Wednesday, September 23rd, Dr. Schlegel shared a viewing called The Outrage Machine. The video from RetroReport.org shared the story of Jennifer Connell and her lawsuit involving her then 8 year-old nephew. Media was quick to attack and judge Ms. Connell without understanding her true circumstances surrounding the class. The health insurance would not cover the $127,000 in medical coverages. She was required to sue an individual, rather than a third-party homeowner’s insurer who owed her no legal duty. According to the family there were no hard feelings whatsoever. However, their mainstream media was quick to crucify and labeled Ms. Connell as “The Worst Aunt Ever”.
The connection between the Black Mirror episode and The Outrage Machine video stood out to me immediately. In fact, instead of the “#DeathTo” hashtag like Black Mirror, the REAL angry online mob dubbed Ms. Connell as the “#AuntFromHell” to voice their displeasure. What I find most appalling is how quickly people believe information on certain media platforms. These individuals show little interest in factual information and rather join the bandwagon. It is important for us all to self-monitor our social media feeds and be considerate of everyone’s opinion! Do you believe Ms. Connell was treated unfairly? Why or Why not?
Published by: Samuel Erickson
Weekly News:
This article explores the media’s impact and the different and difficult positions regarding the Jennifer Connell case.
SOCIAL MEDIA & SOCIETY 
I think a lot of what is talked about in the video “The Outrage Machine” where Jennifer Connell is target as the worst Aunt ever is part of a big problem today. Social media has made news so radially available to everyone and people want to know about things as soon as they happen. So to meet with this high demand news companies try to get stories out as fast as possible and a lot of the time do so without all of the facts needed. Much like this case with Jennifer and her suing her 8 year old nephew to get the insurance to pay for her medical bills and not to get actually money from her nephew. This quick and wrong story then led to mass amount of hate toward the Aunt when she did nothing wrong and this has become a big problem. Now we as a society have to change and stop demanding news as soon as things happen so we can get the full story and I think this will also cut down on the amount of fake news.
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Jennifer Connell was treated unfairly because once you get the full story you would understand that she wasn’t angry at her nefew for hurting her but the fact that she was unable to pay for the medical bills due to her injorys and that the only way for that to happen was to put her nefews name on the lawsuit. people took her choices to heart and trethened her to the point that she had to start all over. They even went to the extreme to call her job and even cancel interviews for her and that is no way to live.
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Hey there Sam, I enjoyed reading your blog this week. Personally I thought it was verY interesting and weird when we watched the “Aunt from Hell”, it was very eye opening to me on how social media can blow up or even the news. I do think it is wrong of news channels to report that kind of thing without telling the whole truth, just because it can take over someones life. If we would know the full story then maybe she would be okay, but that never is the case. What do you think about all this, would love to hear more from you!
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Hey, what you said in your blog is exactly what is happening in our society right now. People use to accept anything that got viral on the social media without even knowing the actual cause or reason behind that particular event. What happened in The Outrage Machine is one of the example of it. In my opinion I think that we do not have to believe what we hear about others on the social media because that’s what we do not like for ourselves right? So, I think if a news goes viral then the victim must be given a chance to prove his/her dignity.
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