(Personal Project)- These days you can’t get away from the political events and activities that impact our lives so much, to the point where if you were to take a poll of who is getting annoyed by the information that is being shoved in our faces by social media, people would definitely say they were getting annoyed by it. Social media used to be more geared towards what was going on in you’re friends lives and to keep up/reconnect with people that you knew from a while ago, but now it’s so much different. Social media has become more a battleground for political agendas and ideas, and less of a information center to find out what’s going on in the world.

Presidents have been on Twitter pretty much ever since the site came out, but nobody has made it more controversial than Donald Trump. President trump has always been on Twitter, probably longer than most of us have, and he could really say whatever he wanted in those times because he wasn’t the president of the United States. What changed was his nomination to represent the Republican Party in the 2016 presidential election, so naturally his tweets came under scrutiny along with everything he retweeted and liked along the way. Personally I am not a fan of how he used his Twitter account and I think it really just divides the nation even more, and I don’t know if he realizes that. I think that if he never became the president, nobody would care what he’s saying, but now that he is and always will be a former American president, I’m pretty certain there will be wars about wars about what he is tweeting on a daily basis.

The problem with all of these tweets that are bringing bad attention to politics, from people like President Trump, on social media is that social media can be a huge campaign booster and can really get your name out there if you are a small local politician. Turning 18 this year was a huge milestone for me, which also marked the first time that I could vote in my life. I was obviously well versed in the presidential race and knew a lot about that, but if it was not for social media I do not think that I would have been able to make the informed decisions that I did regarding the lesser known politicians on the ballot. This helps people that are running for state senate, local judge positions, and house representatives really touch the lives of young people and inform them that they are indeed on their ballot and not just the president, and what helped get a record number of people to actually show up and do their civic duty instead of staying home this election.

Now don’t get me wrong, Twitter has made huge steps in looking at what goes into the spread of misinformation on their site and specifically who does it the most. President Trump has been guilty of spreading false narratives or straight up facts that are proved to not be true at the given time of the post. Twitter has done a great job of making sure these posts get flagged within the matter of a couple minutes of them being posted. I think this is a great step towards the end goal of making sure that there is only real, reliable things being said by big news networks and very prolific people, like the president, and it will just make Twitter a better all around place for users to enjoy. Now by no means am I saying that suppression of news or media should be tolerated whatsoever, but I think that the majority of the people using Twitter for a news source really want the truth being put out there by courses that they trust.

I do realize that I am spending a lot of time on the topic of Twitter and having it be the main focus of what I want to talk about today, but there are other social media platforms where politics is heavily discussed in various ways. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat are all great examples of where information is spread about politics, but just not in the way that Twitter does it. Snapchat seems like it doesn’t really fit in this category, but over the last couple of years it has really become a place that people can get their news. There are reputable sources like the Washington Post who have spent money to get their news on the homepage of

Snapchat. One of the shows that I really like on Snapchat is called “Verify”. What they do is really take a deep dive into what is true and what isn’t in very noteworthy events, just like the election was this year. They provide extremely unbiased opinions on what is true and what isn’t, and really give me a good grasp on if I am being fed Bull, or if I can trust what is being circulated around the internet. Instagram and YouTube don’t really have that luxury because that is a platform that literally anyone can post on for the world to see,not just vetted channels like Snapchat. That’s why you will see these fact checks all over the place on Instagram, and they even stop you and ask you if you want to really share a post that has been fact checked and proved to be false. I think Instagram and Twitter are years ahead of YouTube, who really hasn’t showed much to me in terms of trying to make sure that false facts aren’t spread around their site.

Don’t get me wring, I think that we are absolutely blessed to have this technology around us 24/7, and most of us probably take it for granted. Twitter and all other social media sites make it so easy to dip your feet in the water, and really get into the political climate in today’s day and age. There is absolutely no doubt that it can be made a lot better for the users looking to obtain information about politics, and we should not stop until we get what we deserve from these companies. And as people, and citizens of the United States, we all need to get better at being together and acting like we are all on the same side. We have to realize that we are not enemies and can set aside our arguments on twitter and make this country a better place. The job is not done, but we are sure getting closer and closer.

Works Cited:

Aug 17, 2020 Podcasts Wharton Business Daily North America. “How Social Media Is Shaping Political Campaigns.” Knowledge@Wharton, knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-social-media-is-shaping-political-campaigns/. 

“Donald Trump on Social Media.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 22 Nov. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_on_social_media. 

Scola, Nancy. “How COVID-19 Pushed Twitter to Fact-Check Trump’s Tweets.” POLITICO, POLITICO, 29 May 2020, http://www.politico.eu/article/how-covid-19-pushed-twitter-to-fact-check-trumps-tweets/. 

This week was one of our last decisions of the semester and I think it was a really good discussion. This week has a good centralization about the different generations and how they act compared to the other. Now these generations are a very loose interpretation of people, and by no means does the stereotypes of these generations identify you if you happen to all into that category, but for the sake of this discussion lets group people into specific categories this time. According to the article, Generations Nicknames and Groupings Theory, there are 10 generations since 1890 that have been identified and grouped. Being born in 2002, I happen to fit into the generation z grouping of people which stretches from 2000-present. The timing on this is a little iffy though because they might cut it off sooner then 2020 so it is pretty much just a waiting game at this point to see what happens.

I think that there are a lot of good things about my generation, but there also some gleaming bad things that happen to be a trait in some people my age. Now everyone knows the classic stereotypes, like millennials are super lazy and baby boomers don’t like to have any fun with anything, but today I think I am going to dive deeper with it and really see the strength and weaknesses of my generation.

Now for starters we are all really good with technology. This comes to no surprise to anyone but if you really look at it e are the next generation to start entering the work force, and the demand is more serious for people like us who are tech savvy. Just look at the series Silicon Valley that we watched this week and see how people then were few and far between, seen as taking a huge risk trying to make a startup, and now there is the highest demand ever for people who know what they are doing with a computer. I also think we know that we have to work for things more than ever now because of the increase of competition out there everywhere. Back in the day not a lot of people went to college because you could just get a pretty good paying job without a college diploma. Now almost everyone is going to college and that means increased competition, and I think our generation is up for it. I think that Gen Z is also the most accepting of any generation which is very evident in the strides we have taken as a country in unity among our age group.

One of our biggest strengths that we can being to the table is creativity and innovation. I think most of our generation is keeping an open mind and hearing new ideas which ties into the ability to listen to the people that have the knowledge, that we need to learn from. Those are the five things I think we are best at as a whole.

Now onto the 5 worst, I think there is a fair share of those also. I think technology has really hindered our abilities to do things that had to be done in years past, like reading a map, or knowing information off hand. I also think that we are a very distracted generation by our phones and I think we are infected by social media, as pointed out in Addicted to Distraction and Social media dependency. I think we don’t go outside enough and I almost envy the old days without technology where you could just go be free from all of this nonsense. And finally I think that we have a lot of mental health issues caused by the increased stress that we put on ourselves week in and week out. So I ask you, do you think that we are doing well as a generation?

Check out this article about covid:https://www.foxnews.com/health/new-covid-19-breathalyzer-test-in-the-works-at-miami-university

This week was a very interesting one where we covered my favorite episode of Black Mirror which is titled White Christmas. I watched this episode way back when that season came out, but it was very nice to sit down and watch it again. Black Mirror is really good at tying us into the storyline, and making us believe that this has something to do with ur own life. This one I think does a very nice job in doing this because they bring in the family aspect with this episode. I bet a lot of parents could feel the pain of not being able to see their own child like that and a lot of us can relate to not being able to see anyone that you love period because of that blocking machine. I think we might be even closer to reality than we imagine. There has been scientists for years the are working on technological advancements, so I think we have to me somewhat close to this technology where we can block people in real life. I think that it could get real scary real quick with people getting these implants in their heads, and before you know it it could be just as normal as having a smartphone in your pocket.

This can tie into what we read this week where it is a lot easier to break up with people now more than ever. These new features in the app are almost like you are blocking them in real life. this is really good for people that were in an abusive relationship because those can be very hard to over come while you are just seeing their life unfold in front of your eyes on the timeline of your account.

The last thing I am going to talk about is the evolution of the emoji. I really enjoyed this discussion and reading this article because I really didn’t tie together how many of the ideas of emojis might have come from early pre historic pictures that were in a sense emojies. There are many many of these little pictures that pop up on your phone, in fact there is over three thousand of them which you have to choose from, with more and more being brought to the table every day for approval from apple or android. This article was written last year, so some of the things stated were a little off, because they did add red heads to the spectrum of the emoji library. But they are right in saying there are some things that aren’t represented in the library at all. I do think that if the creators of these operating systems such as android and apple would embrace third party companies, which apple is starting to do, they could create wild things that would embody the users that all use their phones. it seems like not a significant change but I think it could make the use more enjoyable for everyone.

My question to you is, did you like this Black Mirror?

Check out this election article: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54939212

This week was jam packed with a lot of information of all the messed up things that go on, on the internet. A lot and I do mean a lot of people really do not realize how to act when they are using the internet. You would think this new generation of kids would know what to do and what not to do while using the web, with all of the presentations and agreements and some classes that they have us take all through high school, so we don’t end up like some of these people who could get in some serious trouble. That ends up being the personal side of this very intensive topic, which only ends up accounting for a fraction of what people in other countries have to do with things, as well as the hackers that try to steal our informations or just make our lives miserable.

One of the topics that was a heavy one was the problem around revenge porn for primarily women. There are a lot of guys who think it is a good idea to either film their partners doing sexual acts or sexting them and getting either pictures or videos from them. Now this does not happen just to women, just like any other issue, but they are the primary target of most of these posts. This goes without saying that this is highly illegal and extremely unethical, along with promoting rape, as the article states. What begins to be the problem is when the people behind this and the people who hear about this have two very different knowledges of the situation. The word on the street is that one of your classmates in college could have made a porn, while that wasn’t it at all, so it could really really destroy someone’s reputation if people do not know the whole story.

Another big topic was how social media can be a very bad place for propaganda and terrorist recruitment. This seems to be a huge tactic for a lot of ISIS member that sometimes can be left up on social median for days to weeks without the right people seeing it. I remember one certain case where this young girl, who I think didn’t even graduate high school, ran off to canid from buffalo because she believed what she saw on the internet. That was a caring thing for me to learn about when I was barely younger then that because I was like how could someone be so stupid and not know that all of that is absolute bullshit. But then I started watching some of these videos and if you aren’t a very informed person, I could see how you might think you have this fight to go fight I guess. Personally I don’t think that it’s too easy to get fooled about those but to each their own. My question to you is, have you ever been a victim of unethical online practices?

Heres an article about the election: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/06/georgia-recount-us-election-biden-trump

This week was a very interesting week with The Social Network being discussed in class, along with some other articles we will get into a little later. First off before I get into the class material I want to talk about the upcoming election and the nomination of the new Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett. I can’t believe the election is already here and I’m very excited to vote for the first time. All over social media it is pretty much a war, as it usually is, but this election is a lot different them previous. Due to twitter you have the ability to fight whoever you want and whenever you want. This was seen very much so when Amy Coney Barrett was put into. I saw about 51% of the nation was in favor of this move, so when the country is split like they you are definitely going to get a hell storm unleashed on twitter.

Now onto the film The Social Network. This film was very good for many many reasons. This was a film that was recognized by a lot of critics and reviewers as a great film because of how close it is to the real story and how well it captured the hardships of having a startup, like Facebook and how friendships might be ruined in the mean time. Thats one of the big things that I took from this film. I think it would be great to be creating a startup or a business with some of my best friends, but one of the most prominent sayings is you should not mix family or friends with business.

I had no clue what the story behind Mark Zuckerberg and really had no clue what the movie was going to be about. I had no clue about the controversy in pretty much starting Facebook with how he got dumped by his girlfriend, then made a site to pretty much get revenge on her and her friends where they put up pictured of girls and have people rate their attractiveness. Overall this was a great film to watch and I really enjoyed getting the rundown how pretty much all of the social media as we know it is formed today.

This week we also read an article about how people get mad with celebrities on kickstarter and why they probably should not. It goes on to say how a lot of people can have misconceptions on how much money celebrities really have, because of a number of reasons. I think this can be translated well into professional sports and the money that they really make .The low end guy sin the NFL have a lot of expenses that they have to care about and also have to worry about the taxes that they make. A lot of these guys don’t play very long and need to worry about getting other jobs, or in this case starting a company or a training type thing to help them pay the bills after they retire.

My question to you is, what do you think about the film?

Here is an article about Amy Coney Barrett: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/10/30/amy-coney-barrett-girl-scouts-tweet-delete-congratulations-post/6082801002/

This week we had a very good presentation about how the safety of the internet and social media platforms affects a lot of kids an their parents, as well as when you get older and have to make some of the decisions that your mom and dad used to have to make for you. Back when we were kids, it sounded like a lot of people had the same experience with these kinds of things. A lot of parents want to make sure and control whatnot are doing online, and honestly who can blame them for doing that. The internet, especially social media, is a huge breeding ground for toxic things that parents might not want their teens to be seeing just yet.

Another big topic was how now that we were adults, how do we keep our social network. Personally I don’t really care who is friends with me, as long that I know they re a real person and that they are around my age. A lot of people said that they will only let their friends become friend with them on the social media, and I totally get that too because sometimes you just don’t want some random people getting in your business now a days. Personally I refrain from adding older family members on instagram and places like that, because It just feels weird to me, but the family members around my age that I like, I will definitely add them on those platforms and interact with them through there.

One of the big things we watched this week was a John Oliver video about the crazy world of newspaper and online journalism. He was talking about how it isn’t how it used to be with these news papers now a days, because they are frankly going out of style. People want to get their information from the convenience of online and not have to go physically buy a newspaper, or go out and get it from their mail box. A big problem with these companies now is that all they want to do is make money and get clicks, also known as click baiting sometimes. This is a popular thing all over the internet just to gain some traction, and therefore gain more revenue. I couldn’t believe the owner of that one newspaper who said fuck you to one of his employees because she questioned him on why they wouldn’t be doing actually news research and news work for the people reading their stuff. I think that unacceptable and if was that employee I would have packed up my bags and left for another company because I wouldn’t be able to work for an asshole like that ho thinks he’s the far above all of us.

Personally I don’t like where everything as gone with all of these news papers and news outlets and I think that fake movie shows it all. These companies are just becoming social media outlets at this point. I do get the desire to make the money, but cmon that unacceptable. What do you think about the news papers doing this?

Check out this article about the election: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-biden-presidential-final-debate-recap/

This week we tackled the topic of the fair use policy and the blockers that certain artists and producers put on their music when it is used in other peoples content. I think this whole thing is just so petty on the artists point of view. You would really think that these old artists would want a revamp of popularity, because the people who listen to their music are quite literally dying off and the ones that are alive, like the ones that are our parents age, might not even be on Spotify or any streaming services.

One of the most prominent cases of this is the YouTuber Rick Beato. We watched a couple of his videos this week and I found it very interesting on his experiences. He says that almost all of his videos are demonetized and make no money. That is not even the worst of it that he will get from these artists. This makes me mad even not knowing the guy, but knowing how much work he puts into his videos. The worst is when they full on block his videos from even being posted and people seeing them. I just don’t get the appeal and need ro do this to a guy who is quite literally promoting your content.

In his latest videos he talks about the new TikTok trend where people ride a skateboard or a long board and drink cranberry juice to the song Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. Just typing that was funny but this is 2020. But the point is that even the different song writers in the same band have different philosophies on whether to block a song from YouTube. Earlier in the year he created one of his videos for a series “what makes this song great”. This video got immediately blocked and taken off YouTube, but the thing was it was made by Fleetwood Mac (go your own way). At the time he thought oh they are just one of those bands that blocks people from making content about them. But when this new trend came about with the new trend with the song Dreams he started to wonder why his video got blocked and that didn’t. The reason is that Lindsey Buckingham write go your own way, and Stevie Dix wrote Dreams. Buckingham blocks songs and Dix does not.

This week we also looked at the streaming site Napster where people used to get their music online without paying for it, and depending on you ask, illegally. Now I am not in favor of this type of site at all. I am happy to pay my 10 dollars a month for a legal ethical streaming service. I think these artists need to make their fair share for what they put out, and the hard work that they put into to making, writing, and producing these songs. I think sites like this are ripping off these people and taking advantage of the system that can give us some great content.

Check out this article about the town hall meetings: https://apnews.com/article/town-hall-trump-biden-nbc-abc-b3b8d0b68e7c4628b095d082cd5a1a7e

This week we really took a look at how social activism really has taken a turn for the better with the digital age, whether it be racial injustice, gay rights, or anything else that needed to be brought to our attention. With the recent events that have unfolded with the riots and protests, they are brought to you on a platter via twitter where your only option is to look and listen. Everyones feed’s were stuffed with the events that were transpiring and it seemed like for the first time ever the eyes of the nation were truly on the cause. I think this is one of the good features of all of this technology that he’s made it into our every day lives. Back in the 60’s when some of the first protests were happening, they did not have these means of getting all of their information out in a manner like this. Sure there were a lot of news paper articles, or some coverage of it on the nightly news, but the people who wanted to act like nothing was happening, could just switch of their TV’s and go on with their everyday lives.

One of the articles we read was “These 10 Twitter hashtags changed the way we talk about social issues”. Now this article was written in 2016, so some of the hashtags aren’t as relevant to today such as #IndyRef which I never even heard of, probably because I wasn’t using twitter at that point. But thing such as that are not even close to trending now, where as the hashtag black lives matter, on the other hand would be easily the number one trending hashtag on that list if they relate it today. The number on from this list isn’t far though, which was the incident in Ferguson, which made it up to number one trending on this list.

Another piece we covered this week was the ted talk “Online Social Change: Easy to Organize, hard to win”. This was a very interesting ted talk, which brings up the censorship of media outlets, specifically in other parts of the world. She talks about how great it is that there are outlets like twitter, and instagram, and Facebook, which help get awareness of what is happening to people. Without these technologies a lot of people wouldn’t even be aware of what is going on, but there is a silver lining. She states that with all of these people being aware of what is happening these days, whether it is protests or injustice, why isn’t there more success with these movements? Her theory is that just because it is easier for people to become aware of these problems, does not mean there is a easy and good outcome waiting to be had. I personally think that she is kind of wrong because it would be foolish to not work smarter and work harder. This was done in 2014, so nobody could have seen what was coming, but it has been a huge success with twitter and people raising awareness for the social injustice.

My question to you is, do you think that social media is helping or hurting us when it comes to activism?

Check out this news article about the election:https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/09/us/trump-vs-biden

In today’s day and age everything you do is under the microscope. Last week we went over the concept of cancel culture and what you post online can be subject of ridicule by your peers and fans. This week we dove into the concept on everything you do online can be dug up by hackers or allegedly the us government. It is not only online, that is mostly businesses that track your spending habits to know what kind of ads to give you. Where the government becomes involved, they start tracking your phone calls and listening to what has been said. This is all in order to try and stop terror attacks before they happen, but at what cost to the American people?

This week the big topic on the syllabus was the movie Snowden. This movie was really tied into what I was talking about earlier, but the thing is this is a real story. This movie hit home way more to methane the Black Mirror episodes because of how real it seemed. The Black Mirror episodes were all just things in the dystopian future that probably won’t happen, at least for a while to us, but this literally happened. In Snowden long story short, Edward Snowden is a ex army soldier who looks for a job with the CIA and eventually works with the NSA also. During that time, a few years after 9/11, they are big on the surveillance of the American people to help aid in stopping the next 9/11. It goes without saying that this is a big infringement on our rights as citizens and makes me personally feel unsafe in that regard.

The movie takes into an interesting turn when we find out how many hackers we have to hack into other countries’ infrastructure to survey them and see what they are planning to do to the United States, or other allied countries. We find out that these bases are spread out all over the world pretty much spying on the countries, which I am actually a fan of in some regards because it makes me feel safe, without having them literally spying on the American people. Snowden does not feel right with what he is doing, so he smuggles the info out of his work and sneaks over to Russia where he leaks the information for the world to see.

I do not want to focus so much on if what he did was treason or not, I am more trying to figure out what they are doing to us and what they are doing with our information. If you just take a browse of the wikipedia of the list of data breaches or take at the look of articles about the 5 biggest data breaches, first you see that yahoo really needs to hire a new security team, and second you see the scary about of info hackers can get just from one breach. In the ABC article “The Capital One data breach is alarming, but these are the 5 worst corporate hacks”, it is stated that “The hackers also obtained the security questions and backup email addresses used to reset lost passwords, which are key to hacking into government computers.” Personally that really makes me nervous because I don’t want any of my information with strangers across the globe trying to make money off of me. This is a problem that I think we are really working hard to fix, and I think most of the big companies are really making good strides to prevent this.

My question to you is, do you think that Snowden did the right thing in telling us about this information?

check out this article about President Trump getting COVID.https://nypost.com/2020/10/02/donald-trump-joins-list-of-world-leaders-to-test-positive-for-covid-19/

When people think of bullying, you probably think of the classic “give me your lunch money” scenario, or the physical bullying that happens to someone in the gym locker room. As times change, so does the way people get picked on or made fun of. People, especially teenagers, won’t just stop making people feel bad about certain things, because they need to find a way to hide their own insecurities. With the technology today you can see how it has become even easier for these kids to do this to one another. They can now hide behind a computer screen and say whatever they want, even if they don’t know the person at all.

In class we watched a John Oliver segment where he was shedding light on how the internet can take off and run with a story when they really don’t have the facts all lined up when they are circulating a misleading title for an article or a blog post. He was talking about the case of this little boy who jumped into his aunt, accidentally knocking her over. She ended up breaking her wrist and needing 3 surgeries to heal it back up. The story circulating was that she was suing her nephew for over 100,000 dollars and that she was this monster of an aunt. The catch was that this fact was not true at all. The real story was the insurance company that she had would not cover the costs, but the home owners insurance would that the boys parents had would. The family was happy to help with that and let them sue their son because they thought it would not be a big deal at all just some formality, but the internet had to twist everything and almost ruin this poor wombs life. She even said she had to go through great strides to just get her life back.

Another thing Oliver talked about that I want to touch on was the Jerry Springer show and how this was a pre form of what is going on today. Not going to lie it is a pretty interesting show and it is fun to laugh at how much peoples lives are a mess like that, but we have to remember these are real people.

One of the videos we watched this week was the “Bad Behavior Online: Bullying, Trolling & Free Speech | Off Book | PBS Digital Studios” video. Here they tased about how bad online trolling has gotten. What made me very upset during that video was how there would be memorial pages for people online and there were people trolling them and kicking their loved ones when they were already down. This ties right in with the article “How the internet created an age of rage” where they talk about how easy it is to just get angry and say mean things to someone you have never met. Honestly I think it is just a bunch of losers behind a computer trying to make themselves feel good.

My question to you is, Why do you think people do this online trolling and bullying?

check out this article: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/michelle-obama-mail-ballots