(PERSONAL PROJECT) – For my personal project I am focusing on the issue we face everyday when using social media, and that is the increase in people getting news from these platforms and most of the time having it be misleading or false. With the current trend of more and more people posting about political news, it can sometimes make it feel like that is all that is on social media nowadays. Social media has changed from sharing and keeping up with friends and family to a news outlet that people don’t take the time to make sure if the information is true or credible.

With all that is happening in our world right now from the pandemic, protests, and the election there has been a report that “shows that consumers continue to shift away from the traditional media sources for their news and are moving towards social media and messaging services to find the news” (Vorhaus, 2020). I think the reason for this transition is due to the large millennial generation because they are the ones that drive social media and use it the most. I think this change is headed toward the wrong direction because of how much deception there is online and people tend to take them for their word even though they don’t know them. People will just see something posted so many times they will think to themselves “there is no way that it is fake if this many people are posting it”. This can create chaos and will turn us against each other, which it already has.

“Social media combine the flow of television and the flow of video games to keep the user scrolling through post after post” (Bolter, 2019). This can make social media feel very addictive and not see a problem with it. There would be no problem, but because these platforms have political information and discussion they can threaten the average user with posts they would rather not see. “Traditional conspiracy theories are relatively coherent narratives that seek to explain some disturbing aspect of the political or social world. The new conspiracism presents incoherent, often contradictory assertions rather than a consistent story” (Bolter, 2019). By reading this quote it helps me understand how conspiracies and fake news can easily spread on social media as it is a place where people can say whatever is on their mind and make fake news articles to stir the pot and to try to convince others that their way of thinking is the right way. I can think of these stories as someone just accusing another person they don’t agree with and trying to throw that person’s name under the bus and damage their reputation no matter the cost of doing it. During Donald Trump’s first two years as president he “tweeted more than 600 times about Russia and collusion, more than 400 times lamenting fake news, and more than 200 times each about Clinton and Obama” (Bolter, 2019). Sometimes they would be simple and straight to the point or other times he would be more thorough about it. I think that having a president this vocal can hurt the nations image with other countries and almost make him look a little foolish and childish, at the same time I can understand why he uses social media so much. He tries to clear fake news surrounding him and be more involved creating a less of a barrier between president and citizen. 

With the election finally coming to an end, hopefully most of the fake news, hate speech and misinformation will be gone and finally we can have trusted news on social media outlets. It always seems there will be fake news, but during these two past elections social media played a bigger role than ever before and even pushed Facebook to make a crazy decision. They decided that they will not be posting any paid advertisements for political news and the election because this year there were so much hate and violence due to the virus and the police brutality that has been a continuing problem for our nation. Now more than ever people rely on social media for a source of news and “there are worries that such content could influence audiences unable to distinguish truth from fact or news from propaganda” (Brooks, 2020). That is the biggest issue with getting the news from online is that you have to take everything with a grain of salt, and if you do want to receive confirmation about something you learned you should give it a quick Google search and see how credible it is. We can be shock about how many things we can mistake for being truthful.

With all the use and misuse of social media we have to remember how it is making the newer generations feel. A study linked the platforms to depression and there may be a larger issue at hand. “The researchers found that social media may harm girls’ mental health by increasing their exposure to bullying and reducing their sleep and physical exercise” (Asmelash, 2019). They go on to say that it does not cause harm, but can easily disrupt normal, everyday activities. There was a clear difference between boys and girls, where the girls had greater psychological distress. The article also gives us ideas to how to help teens with this depression because even if social media is the cause there is a very low chance that a young person would want to miss out on what their friends are doing and saying, which could even create anxiety and further that depression. We need to be able to put up a filter so that these young people will not see such nasty things, or “instead the positive effects of social media use, such as encouraging social interactions, can be more endorsed”(Asmelash, 2019). If we can clean up social media from its toxic and hatred it can be a great place to start as we should strive for change. I think that it has to start with fake news because that is usually at the center of any argument and without that false information there will be nothing more to fight about.

Works Cited:

1. Vorhaus, M. (2020, June 25). People Increasingly Turn To Social Media For News. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikevorhaus/2020/06/24/people-increasingly-turn-to-social-media-for-news/?sh=273510bd3bcc
2. Bolter, J. (2019, May 20). Social Media Are Ruining Political Discourse. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/05/why-social-media-ruining-political-discourse/589108/
3. Brooks, C. (2020, June 02). The truth behind fake news and politics on social media. Retrieved from https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2020/the-truth-behind-fake-news-and-politics-on-social-media/
4. Asmelash, L. (2019, August 15). Social media use may harm teens’ mental health by disrupting positive activities, study says. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/13/health/social-media-mental-health-trnd/index.html

This week of our Social Media class we discussed and were introduced to topics that are a bit more controversial. First I read an article on called The Atlantic: Emoji Don’t Mean What They Used To and then viewed a Black Mirror episode which are always very interesting to watch; the viewing was called Black Mirror: White Christmas with Jon Hamm, Rafe Spall, and Natalia Tena starring in the episode.

In the article The Atlantic: Emoji Don’t Mean What They Used To, it talks about the original emoji and how it was created. The Japanese took first on the creation of them from the telecom NTT Docomo in 1999, and ever since then emojis are always being added and used with smartphones and other technology across the world. With the addition of more and more it can be an easy way to communicate without words which back then would almost seem as something that wasn’t intended to happen. But with specific meanings people are communicating with ease and the use of them are going to continue to skyrocket, especially with the newer generations like the Millennials and Gen Z.

The Black Mirror episode starts on Christmas morning with Matt cooking and drinking in the morning, where Matt opened up to Joe about his hobby of hooking up with awkward singles, which did not go as planned. After we see how Matt and his colleagues used Zed Technology to start conversations and keep them going, but one of the colleagues went to get a woman who ended up having mental issues. The woman mistook what Zed Technology and thinks that it means they will both be taking their lives together. After hearing this Matt is quick to cover up and erase the evidence, but in the meantime this makes his partner end their relationship with him. He also goes one to explain about the digital clones and what they can do.

The next we see Matt is further in the future and where these clones are breaking their programming and wanting to feel and be “themselves” as an individual. Then we see Joe opening up about his past and his relationship with Beth. With an unexpected pregnancy she thought about an abortion and hates Joe, blocks him, and then leaves him. This makes Joe uneasy and hurting because of her leaving with no trace and no way to get into contact with her. Joe ended up going to Beth’s father’s house every Christmas Eve to see his child from a distance, but after a few years Beth passes away and he sees this as a way to meet his child and give her a gift from him from himself. About to give the gift to his daughter he realizes that he is actually not the father and that Beth had an affair with his best friend, which Joe ended up hitting Beth’s father with a snow globe that ended up killing him. Joe fled from the scene and the young girl sought for help in the cold snowy winter and froze to death. Joe did end up confessing to what happened and then Matt leaves a cookie with Joe’s clone, and ended up making a deal with the police to not get prison time, but he is now a registered sex offender and is blocked from everyone not allowing contact to anybody.

News Article: Evolving Emojis: Designing for the New Face of Messaging

This article talks about the usage and how emojis are always changing.

https://www.toptal.com/designers/ui/emoji-evolution

For this week’s class we talked about the election and I presented my book Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America, by Jaime Settle. Also we viewed and discussed The Newsroom “Boston” episode, where they recreated the awful events about what happened on April 15th, 2013 and the following days that transpired in Boston Massachusetts.

For my presentation I read Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America, I thought it was very interesting and especially relevant to what is transpiring in our country right now. The book talks about how social media can create a divide between people and how many people are actually posting political content on these platforms. Jaime Settle explains how people that post this content would be people that are supporters of a certain view or those who want their ideas to be heard and they tend to be extreme to get more views and followers , but also to stir up the pot. There are also other people that are posting something and aren’t trying to be political, others can interpret and perceive those as political posts. I thought this was the most interesting part of the book because ever since I read it all the posts I see now I look at them and try to see why others may think it could be political content. Especially with the election at hand people are on edge and taking every post very serious and it is almost like the people commenting and taking it to be a political post are just trying to pick a fight it seems. She also says that how people are to exposed to social media and rely on it too much to get their news, not even caring what is real or fake. She also goes on to say that we should leave political reporting by trusted news organizations and other articles for political issues. I couldn’t agree more with Settle, after seeing something on social media people tend to blow up and they repost without researching it. This makes the news feed have a bunch of posts which can trick people into thinking it is real because so many people reposted it. I believe if people got their news from trusted sites, then there would be less hate and things would become more and more clearer for us to see real political issues. I would definitely recommend this book to gain insights on social media and how it can affect you and others, also it is very relevant because it covers the 2016 election so it can help us with this election as well.

The Newsroom “Boston” episode features the Boston Marathon and at the start we see the newsroom seeing the explosion at the Marathon. They are absolutely shaken about what just happened, but still they have to try to get the story together and is able to find out about two bombs and their detonations. They then send reporters into the field in Boston, while Will McAvoy reports the events that just took place and still trying to uncover and investigate the terrorist attack. After multiple days pass the ACN addresses the false accusations against two men, and one police officer at MIT had been killed in a shootout. After one of the two bombing suspects had been shot and killed. Then the city of Boston does nothing but search for the other suspect and the media is investigating any new leads regardless if the information is true or misleading. At the end of the episode they were able to find information that the second suspect was hiding in someone’s backyard.

News Article: It’s Hard to Escape Facebook’s Vortex of Polarization

This article explains Facebook’s ability to create filter bubbles and increase political polarization. I think this article pairs well with the book because of how Settle talks about these filter bubble social media uses.

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-vortex-political-polarization/

This week for class we looked at The Social Network and Essena O’Neill’s thoughts on Instagram and social media. In the film The Social Network, we get to see how Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook got to be one of the largest platforms online. Next I looked at why Essena O’Neill took down her Instagram page.

The Social Network which shows us Zuckerberg’s story and how he got to where he was with Facebook. It came out in 2010 starring Justin Timberlake, Jessie Eisenberg, and Andrew Garfield. After watching I did more research because of how enjoyable it was watching I found that this film also won three Academy Awards, including Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing. The film starts with Mark Zuckerberg attending Harvard University where he was heartbroken and decides to create a website named Face-mash that allowed him to hack into college databases and get pictures of the female students and allowed people to visit the site and rate their attractiveness. When he is discovered he receives 6 months of academic probation, which I thought to be very forgiving because in today’s society you would be kicked out of school for doing something like that. On the other hand if Zuckerberg was expelled there is a large possibility that we would not have Facebook today. After the site came to an end Zuckerberg and 3 other people worked together with the idea of social media in mind where Harvard students could go there with the goal of making new relationships as well as dating among them. Then this idea was got bigger to where it would be all the Ivy League Schools. With one thousand dollars Zuckerberg built the website, making Narendra and the Winklevoss twins very upset and thinking Zuckerberg kept them in the dark and stealing their idea. They even went to the President at Harvard complaining, but Zuckerberg did not receive any punishment from the school, on top of that Saverin becomes furious when his shares of Facebook took a massive drop from 34% to .003%, but still having ownership of the other parties involved. At the end Zuckerberg is being accused of stealing the idea of Facebook. I think that this film helps us to know who exactly Mark Zuckerberg, which also helped me understand some of his actions after 2010. It was very eye opening, but interesting at the same time showing the process of how the large social media platform of Facebook came to be.

A famous Australian teenager on Instagram, Essena O’Neill was finally fed up with the social media platform and took down her account and page. She hated the fact that you needed to be perfect in every way to get attention and followers. Her decision had many supporting her to create her own website where there will be no comments and likes, meaning it will just be real people and their posts with no negative messages. I think that this website does have a lot of potential because others are also done with receiving hate messages and other comments.

Weekly News Article: Facebook will stop accepting new political ads a week before the US presidential election

This article shows how Mark Zuckerberg is taking steps to protect the election and remove any interference from it. I think that this was a smart decision by the CEO and allows Facebook to clean up any doubt about the election.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/3/21419258/facebook-political-ads-deadline-announcements-voter-registration-mark-zuckerberg

This week in class we had a presentation from group 3 about the book It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, written by Danah Boyd. After we discussed and focused on fake news, politics, and digital activism. I learned more after class by watching the video clip of John Oliver talking about journalism and then looked at the article ”Long time NBC reporter quits…”.

The group’s presentation on the book talked about how teens and adults use different social media platforms, the book also shows her actual conversations with teens about social media and not just drawing conclusions based on other people’s theories. At the end the group’s questions really had to make me think about my answer and even left me speechless and not knowing what I would do or say. After their presentation and recommending this book I may look into reading it when I am less busy with school and athletics.

In John Oliver’s talk about journalism he goes on about how the news and media take information that is on newspapers and they find a way to put them in their own stories. These platforms don’t even do a lot of their own research or reports, instead they use others including the newspapers to get the stories they want out of them, but since the newspaper industry is on the fall, there will be no one for the news and media to gather their information. Oliver ended up giving an example of this video where there were two “reporters”, portrayed by actors looking at the daily newspaper and after seeing a story about puppies and another one about a corrupt politician, they decide to go with the puppies story because they believe it is what the people want to see and will bring in more viewers. That is the problem with media these days and that reporters only care about what will bring in the most viewers and how to make the most amount of money possible. I do believe this to be true in current day situation, although I do think it has started to change because people want to be focused on black lives matter, Covid-19, and the election. These are currently some of the most important events in our lives so we do need to be educated on these topics.

After, I read the article about the NBC reporter quitting and I learned that he ended up quitting because of the journalism that was taking place at NBC. Instead of reporting he said it was more like commentary to what was happening in the world, although he does see how this can be a tough spot for NBC as they are supposed to be non biased in their reportings. This has caused the news to be less in depth and not digging deeper into the story they are reporting. For me I believe all news should be unbiased and promoted that way, because I get to see both sides of the story as well as make up my own mind and not the reporter telling me what is right or wrong. I do know that it can be be hard to be unbiased about everything but news rooms have to do their best otherwise we don’t know if e can trust them.

News Article: The very real consequences of fake news stories and why your brain can’t ignore them

This article shows how fake news stories on the media affects us and the others that are being falsely accused.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/real-consequences-fake-news-stories-brain-cant-ignore

This week in class we got to listen to a group of students’ presentation about sexting and what could happen. After the presentation their presentation we looked at a ted talk which talked about “digital activism” which talk about how social media has changed the way of current day protests.

I thought the group did a great job on presenting their book Sexting Panic, Rethinking Criminalization, Privacy, and Consent, I was intrigued and did learn some new things. I thought that the questions at the end of the presentation were very deep and you had to really think about them. The questions definitely left me thinking about what we can do or how we can change this society of sexting. It also showed me how the younger generation doesn’t really think about the consequences that could come of such behavior no matter how many times we warn or try to teach them. Even knowing fully what can happen, we need to find a better way to educate teens about what can happen. There have been laws and policies made by government to try to protect the youth, but there needs to be more monitoring of this behavior as well as sexual predators that can just be posing as someone younger with very awful intentions.

In the Ted Talk, we learn on how social media movements can possibly be weakening the message behind some of these movements. The presenter would go on to tell us on how in Turkey they would censor many things from the public so they would not know what is going on. The Turkish government would show stories about animals, instead of other more pressing issues like protesting. Thankfully, it did result in someone posting things on Twitter and making it viral, which gave people the awareness of what is actually going on. By using the internet the people could show and learn what is really happening, which allows more people to become involved. The presenter goes on to say how Twitter enables people to share and receive information about the world. This I think could be very helpful to a lot of people under restriction, but also dangerous at the same time because of how much fake news there can be on social media these days. For a person who isn’t seeing news, they can believe it is true and it can start an uproar over something that never happened in the first place, so we must be careful about what we see and always think twice. Later in the Ted Talk, she talks on how many people are on social media, but some of these movements haven’t really succeeded, even though it is easier to communicate with others and unite together. Just because there is an easier way to communicate does not mean that people are taking action to make change in the world, because any can say anything online on social media, but we have to do something if we do really want things to change. For social media protesting to work, we need to have a plan for a goal in mind that all want to achieve and with that we can get things done.

News article: Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History

This article talks about the recent Black Lives Matter campaign and on how many people supported it, due to police brutality against African-Americans. I find this extremely relevant to this week’s subject and also to all of our lives right now, we need to continue to protest and promote this movement so there will be change in the US.

This weeks viewing Snowden, was very interesting to watch and with no Black Mirror episode this week was a let down because they very interesting and entertaining to watch. Snowden is about the consequences of leaks and hacks, and if Edward Snowden’s actions were justified or not. During our class time we went over a lot on how technology impacts society in a negative way

In this film Edward Snowden is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who I recognized immediately from other great movies he has been in. The film starts in the year 2004 where Edward Snowden has been training to join Special Forces until he his injured with a fractured tibia. With this new problem he thinks of a way where he still can help, protect, and serve the country as he goes to work for the CIA. He gets a spot on the CIA Training Center which is located in Virginia. His first task was for him and the other trainees to go to different cities and setting up a covert communications network. With Snowden’s intelligence he was able to accomplish this task in as little as 38 minutes, instead of the average time which was anywhere from 5 to 8 hours. Because of this accomplishment he secures a job in a foreign country, where he also brings an online girl with him. After seeing him move out to foreign country the film skips ahead to 2013 where is in Honk Kong and this is where we see him talking to journalists about the US government. Right after this it rewinds to 2007 where he is posted in Switzerland and it is about one of the first assignment he receives, which was to mainly to take care of the CIA’s security network. He is forced to resign this assignment because of using wrong methods of coercion with a superior. There is then a position that opens up in Hawaii that is dealing with Chinese hackers, which may be a great opportunity for Snowden because he has been struggling lately with epilepsy. Snowden creates multiple programs which proved to be critical in collecting terrorist threats, the only problem with these programs was that they were being abused by the CIA and NSA where they would collect data on any US citizen. Snowden does not like the fact that he is apart of something so intruding and violating others so he decides to take all data collected and transfer it to a micro disk and by talking to journalists all this information was out in the open for everyone to see what the CIA and NSA were doing.

With the release of this story it blew up and went viral and had a great affect on the Obama administration, but Snowden is in Russia awaiting a fair trial in the US. With Edward Snowden’s actions it is possible to debate if he did a great thing by letting the people know or how he turned on the government in the form of treason. It is tough to give a definitive answers because I do think that people should know this information, but at the same I can see why the government has to monitor stuff that is happening online, although they do abuse this and go to far in my opinion.

Weekly News Article: 7 Ways to Prevent a Hacking or Phishing Attack on Your Company

This article shows us a couple of different ways we can protect ourselves from being scammed and to reduce the chances of being in those situations.

This week in class we watched a great episode of Black Mirror: Hated in the Nation, we also take a look at how much one wrong story on the news can cause someone’s life to spiral out of control and how social media can affect those. As we saw while watching the “Aunt From Hell”.

This week’s Black Mirror episode we watched Hated in The Nation, it is about how a journalist posted article and received major backlash from the public. Because of that article she has been non stop receiving hate mail, harassment, and even death threats. The journalist dies in her house and her husband was badly wounded, while the man said that she had killed herself. After this happened there was also another man who received the same kind of messages and threats as long as the #deathto___ trend. The thread was created to pick someone that was the most hated and if that person has the most votes he or she will die. During the episode they found out that their were technology advanced bees in their brains, and the bees were somehow hacked by someone to target the number one person that was voted the most. After trying to save a victim, the hacker then targets the people who are using the thread to teach them a “moral lesson”. At the end of the episode we see the police closing in on where staying, and then the episode comes to end leaving a great cliffhanger. This makes us think about the possibilities that could have happen if the episode even played 5 more minutes. For example does the hacker, get away, get caught, or use the bees to kill all the cops and has to be on the run forever, or even if someone rehacks the bees to turn them back to normal.

During class this Wednesday, we watched how the news can twist a story to make it more appealing to the public eye. They do this without realizing how it can effect the people on the receiving end of it. Especially nowadays with social media, all it can take is one wrong and false story in the news to ruin someones life because of how much hate they can receive on the internet. A perfect example is from the multiple videos we watched from class talking about the “World’s Worst Aunt” or the “Auntie From Hell”. Even trusted news channels were quick to air this story without knowing all the facts, or maybe they ran it anyways because of the possible ratings they could get. The story was originally aired saying how the Aunt was suing her 8 year old nephew for her medical bills, and the news went onto bash her. After the public saw the story aired, it quickly blew upon social media and the had a field day, she received so much hate online that it made it difficult for her to find work. Even after going live on the news with her nephew to clear up any misconceptions about the story to maybe stop receiving such messages online. This did not really workout for her and now she had changed her hair color and her identity so that she may go on with her life. This goes to show us how fake news and social media is capable of doing anything and will go after anyone.

7 reasons why fake news goes viral, according to experts

https://www.independent.ie/world-news/and-finally/7-reasons-why-fake-news-goes-viral-according-to-experts-36283450.html

This Article shows and tells us why fake news can be so appealing, it gives multiple examples on why we are so drawn into it. I thought this article related well to the “Aunt From Hell” story because it was fake news because not the whole story was told and it forever ruined her life.

This week of class we look into how technology and how its role in our lives can be expanded on. Also we learn more about the impact of social media and the many qualities it has. We also take a deeper look into artificial intelligence from the Black Mirror episode Be Right Back.

After watching this episode I thought that there is no possible way for artificial intelligence to replace human interaction. In this episode, there is a woman who loses her boyfriend in a car accident and she is devastated. One of her friends tells her and suggests that she go to this online service where she will be able to talk to dead her boyfriend, because since he was always on his phone, it has all of his social tendencies to talk to her. After getting more invested with this service the woman wanted further her connection with her dead boyfriend. The service also offers an exact replica or clone of the person you want. After a night of seeing her boyfriend and his physical touch she realizes that the clone even though he looks the same, does not compare to the one that has passed away. She becomes so frustrated due to the fact that he cannot argue with her because he just goes along with everything she says. At the end of the episode both of them were at a large cliff with the clone standing on the edge, with the woman not knowing what to do and if she should have him jump. After this it cuts to their daughters birthday party where we see the clone living in the attic. I believe that the woman could not lose her boyfriend again, even though they only look the same it would still be to much emotional pain for her to go through the same thing again.

Even before watching the Black Mirror episode I had always thought that there can be no way that something created by man a.k.a AI, can ever compare or fill the gap of human interaction. After watching the episode it confirmed my beliefs and showed me that if we do that sort of thing we will just be disappointed because even if we want someone fake to be real, it will never become a reality. For me looking through the Replika website and watching their video about what service they provide for people, I thought it was a waste of time. I know that it is a great thing for people because it can make them feel happy and better about themselves, but I believe that this kind of happiness is actually bad for a person because there is no hope for these things to be real. We have enough technology in today’s society where you can find someone on social media, websites, or other places online to talk to and start a friendship or even romance if that is what you want to look for.

News Aricle

I looked up a story about Replika because I did find it very weird, but also a cool way to use technology. In this article in goes into saying on how it was first created and what it is like using the app. The post goes on saying what made Replika so good, and how weird or buggy it can be.