As of last week, there are now 3,053 emojis, including the 230 recently approved group of people of the year – yes, thumbnails are now receiving annual releases, such as Microsoft Word or tax refunds.This is too much emoji. We now have icons representing people with disabilities – which are an excellent digital representation – but we also have badges, many train types, fingers wrapped in all styles, great heroes, and gangs. This year, we got garlic and yo-yo. All the new additions make it difficult to find the right icon Also, not all emoji represent everything that is possible. There are no brides with redheads, for example.

There are no white men with brown hair and a beard. The new emoji features hand-held pairs of different skin tones, allowing racial couples to have their own mobile graphics at the end. However, incorporating different skin tone options for each family member in multiple groups, such as a family, could result in obtaining 4,225 permissions. This year’s emoji category adds stand-alone gender-neutral options, but those aren’t available as jobs like a doctor or an astronaut. Unless the emoji meets the creators of the Bitmoji style, they will always leave other people out. And then, who wants to create a new avatar for everyone they want to expose in an instant message? As a white man whose identity is always flawed in emoji, let me be clear that the growing diversity in the world’s favorite language is a good thing.

Ted Talk:

Henry Jenkins said that there are here are many ways to think about such a topic. An important choice I faced was between the studies of fan culture, which would be at the center of what fans do and think, as well as fan studies, which would highlight the emergence and influence of a new field of education focused on hypocritical research and other forms of participatory culture. At the undergraduate level, I would have taken the first course but at the graduation level, I chose the second – to try to mark the emergence of a research field that focuses on the study of fan communities and show how they have addressed a wide range of issues in media and culture over the past two decades.

As you will see, I am teaching a lesson right now, I have found that it is impossible to separate the cultural dialogue of followers in contemporary discussions with web 2.0 so I made that problematic, controversial, and evolving relationship an important topic for students to investigate. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think it’s a simple game between three words in my title. The dynamic relationship between those three words is the most important thing in the classroom. I think it’s about the richness of the fan research site that I’ve put in so many jobs that I have and I still feel worthless because it’s easy to see gaps and omissions. Some of the topics are overly explored with research.

References

1. EMOJI DON’T MEAN WHAT THEY USED TO (2019)

Accessed at:” https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/how-new-emoji-are-changing-pictorial-language/582400/”

TED: Ideas Worth spreading (2010); TED^x NYED

Accessed at:” https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/223”

I found some news abou DoorDash company As the company’s losses reached 149 million in 2020, this is a complete change from the previous year, where losses were 533 million:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/13/doordash-releases-s-1-for-ipo.html

Communication is key. This is one of those ideas I think will never change and will always hold true. We communicate every day in a variety of ways such as speaking, signaling, texting, or sending images. After all pictures can be wroth a thousand words, right? Although Communication is a broad topic, I’d like to focus on the communication on social media. Not only is this important but I actually think it’s interesting that having being born in 1997, I feel positive saying I’m seeing  that he evolution in communication in social media unfold and get more interesting. It’s actually quite impressive, but is it too much?

If we are asked about emojis, I think most of us would agree that the first thing that comes to mind are all the emojis that have appeared on our key boards. It seems that after a certain period of time the collection continues to grows and in general this sounds like a good idea. I’m sure many us use emojis wether its use to send to our friends to express reactions or to decorate our Bio’s or even screen names on any other app that allows. I think it’s fair to say that emojis have taken communication a little further in a digital platform. They are basically universally known and are even seen on commercials and listings on sites like craigslist. 

With around 3,053 emojis as of 2019, we have seen it expand by adding several skin tones to reflect that of society and even included a lot of variations of a general idea. For example, Ian Bogost who wrote “Emoji Don’t Mean What They Used To” mentions that a general idea such as a beer has gone through expansion such as now being able to pick a beer mug, two beer mugs clinking, and even cocktails are included. Ian Bogost, expresses the idea that perhaps an expansion to the library isn’t at all convenient and even maybe defeats that purpose of the emoji.

“Pictograms (including ideogrammatic ones) are powerful because they are specific but flexible. The train can represent a light-rail line, a subway, a toy, and so on. A snowman can mean a literal snowman, or a warning that it’s cold out, or even a gripe about the office thermostat. The pleasure, and power, of emoji arises from the ambiguity inherent in pinto-ideographic writing.”

To back up his claim Ian Bogost gives us a brief history of the beginning of the emoji. We learned that the original emoji was created by Telecom NTT Docomo in  1999 for Japanese cellphones. At the time they were simple because of the technology back then but the simplicity also was what made them unique. They were so simple and general that they could serve several purposes to express and idea or emotion. It still benefited communication because there was context through the chat.

Ive come around to the idea of using Emojis, and it’s been real entertaining because to me, it feels like i get my ideas across more. Maybe, it’s because I’m a visual person. I do believe that Ian Bogost has a great point that perhaps the Emojis shouldn’t try to cater every aspect and combination of life. After all its just pictures and such. However, I admit that emojis have also made some of my personal communication experience better and it does help to sometimes have the emoji that fully straight up says what you have to say. Where do you stand on emojis? Do you think they’ve lost their meaning along the way trying to cover all aspects and variations or should they have stayed simple enough to be used in any situation? 

Worthy News of the Week.

lhttps://www.cnn.com/2020/11/10/health/pfizer-vaccine-distribution-cold-chain/index.html

In the Black Mirror, White Christmas Matt is a romantic services guru whose services uses “Z-eyes” to helps Harry who hired him to talk to girls.  This technology can focus in on certain people and do a picture scan to find out information on the person.  Simultaneously, Matt is streaming everything that is happening and has 8 or 9 other people watching to see what happens and providing feedback.  Matt tries to guide Harry through talking to Natalia, a girl who Harry is interested in.  He says that the key is building rapport and that people just want to be heard and have someone who listens to them.  Natalia turns out to be mentally ill and kills herself and Harry.  Matt’s wife finds out and blocks him because of what happened.  In this episode, blocking means that you can’t see the person anymore.  They are just a fuzzy outline, and you are unable to talk to the person or communicate with them.  So, Matt’s wife left him and took custody of their daughter.  He has spent the last five years at a polar station with his roommate, Joe. 

Aside from his career as a guru, he is involved with a company that uses Smartelligence, a copy of you that is extracted from your brain and placed within an egg-shaped device.  The copy is a full code simulation of the brain and does not have a body; it is a cookie.  The service takes a blank cookie and inserts it into the brain soaking up the hosts brain and gives it a simulated body.  It is essentially a personal assistant and completes everyday mundane tasks for the host.  When a cookie pleas with Matt to free her, he tortures her by turning time ahead.  Eventually she accepts what she is and begs for work and something to do.  I felt sorry for this “cookie” who seemed to be human-like and have feelings.

Joe, Matt’s roommate’s story is a tragic one.  His girlfriend, Beth blocks him when he finds out that she is pregnant and does not want the baby.  He pleas with her to talk to him but she blocked him and won’t speak with him.  He runs into her later and she is farther along in the pregnancy and still refuses to speak with Joe.  Eventually, he tries to see her at her father’s house that she goes to every Christmas, but he only sees her outline because he is blocked and the outline of a child.  He believes this to be his child and visits every year to watch them from afar.  Several years later, he sees on the news that Beth has been killed in a rail car accident and now that the block is gone, tries to go see his daughter.  He lets himself in Beth’s father’s place but when he sees the child, he realized that she looks like a former friend of his and that Beth had cheated on him.  He refuses to leave and ends up hitting Beth’s dad over the head with a snow globe killing him.  Afraid, he leaves and leaves the girl there.  The girl stayed in the house and refused to go because it was Christmas.  Eventually she wandered out into the cold, snowy blizzard to get help and is shown face down in the snow. 

We then see that Matt has been coercing Joe’s cookie the whole time into giving a confession and the last five years were just time manipulation.  In order to avoid going to prison for his role in Harry’s death he gets the confession but is now a registered sex offender and is blocked by everyone.  Joe is tortured by a police officer who sets his cookie to experience time with the song “I wish it could be Christmas Everyday” playing on repeat, which was playing in the background when he killed Beth’s father.

Question:  Would you use AI intelligence?  Did you think that the cookie experienced feelings like humans do?

Work Cited: Amazon Prime, Black Mirror, White Christmas

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/

In the Black Mirror Episode “White Christmas”, we follow the characters Mathew and Joe who are stuck in a cabin with nothing to do but talk to each other about how they messed up in the real world. We start off with the story of   mathew who has a side job of helping men get the women that they cant get on their own. In this particular situation Mathew witness a murder of the guy he was helping but failed to report it. The women who killed the guy was hearing voices in her head and thought the guy was also hearing voices in his head when in reality he was really talking to Mathew. Mathews real job was talking to people about the technology cookie. Which is the same technology that Mathew uses to get into Joe’s head to make him confess to the murder of his ex girlfriend Beth’s father and child.  We learn that Jo killed Beth’s father after learning that Beth died and was able to see is child which we learn was not his child. He didnt know weather the child was his because Beth blocked Joe so he could not see her or hear her which blocks offsprings too. When Joe killed Beth’s father he left the scene leaving Beths daughter to die in a blizzard looking for help. We learn at the end that Mathew help get a confession out of Joe to get a lessened sentence for failing to report a murder. MAthews punishmwnt is that is he blocked for the world leaving him with no one to talk to or see which is a harsh punishment.  This eposide showed a socity where yourt thought are not your own because it could extracted from your body without you knowing and used against you and that you can black people from your life. 

In the article “Breaking Up Isn’t as Hard as It Used to Be (on Facebook)” you learn how easy it is to berak up with someone on facebook. I learned about how  facebook has procedure to help you get over a relationship. It asks you “Would you like to untag all photos of you and your ex? Would you like to receive fewer prompts about tagging them in a photo or a post? And, finally, would you like to never see your former partner—both their name and photos of them—in your News Feed?”. That is very interesting because people use social media differently and I was never the type to put my personal business like who I am in a relationship with on the internet. Facebook actually will help you get rid of your ex, that is funny. Susan Blackmore is someone that studies memes. She talks about Darwinian evolutionary theory which is survival of the fittest. She says Meme are something passed down form person to person. Useful information is copied and can be altered and still meaningful. Memes are an effective way to communicate on the internet and are fun to use like emojis. 

Weekly post: History in the making!!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54875344

SUBMITTED LATE WITH APPROVAL

The internet has become a place full of different knowledge and some of that being good and some being bad. It also a place where anything can be posted and shared will millions of people all around the world in a matter of minutes. Sometimes we just scroll through social media giving out likes and retweets or shares with out really looking deeply or at all into what the post really is. This leads to a lot of misinformation or fake news being spread and then no one looks into where the information is coming from and how creditable that source may be. This has lead to many problems in recent years with stories that either don’t have the full truth or are just running off of what some random person wrote to just get some likes and shares. While most of this blame fall on the news media for not trying to find the whole truth and even looking into see if there is any truth to what is being said. The other falls onto us and making sure that we hold the media accountable to telling the truth and not waiting to be the first to publish a story to get an advantage and get more views to make money on something that isn’t even true. We also have to make sure we fact check and do our own research into topics before we share something so that we know for ourselves if its truthful or not.

This is talked about in the article “Should Reddit Be Blamed for the Spreading of a Smear?”. This article that we read this weeks talks about the Boston Bombing that happened during the Boston Marathon that happened just a couple of years ago. The police released a rough looking picture of the two suspects of the bombing. During this time and prior to the bombing the Tripathi family was looking for there 22 year old son who had gone missing from Brown University. The family made a website dedicated to finding their son that showed pictures and messages from loved ones hoping for his safe return. Then a little after the pictures of the suspects was posted a Reddit user put an image of Sunil Tripathi, the missing son, and suspect number 2 and commented on how much they looked a like. Then after just a few hours the family started to receive hateful messages and then someone random account tweeted that the Boston police had indicated Sunil as the second suspect over the scanner. This misinformation then spread like wild fire being retweeted or the information being tweeted our by popular accounts getting thousands of retweets and this lead to even more hate. This then lead to the family taking down the website and this lead to more speculation that taking down the site meant that Sunil was the second suspect but in reality the family didn’t want him to see the hateful messages and go even further away. Taking down the site lead to even more hateful messages all caused from a reddit post and an uncreditable tweet that should of never effected the family had anyone done a little more digging.

Two more article we read “6 Reasons Why Revenge Porn Is Really F*cked Up” and “The Humiliation of Katie Hill Offers a Warning” which talk about revenge porn and how its kind of become a norm of the internet era. Revenge Porn which most of the time is videos or pictures that were taking with or without consent then being posted to the internet with out the consent of the people in the videos. I think this is something that needs to be dealt with and the posting of such content should not be allowed unless consent if given in person from all parties involved in the video or pictures. The articles also talks about how most of the time nothing ever happens to people who share the videos or pictures but nothing ever happens to the website that they are posted too. Then for someone to get the video or pictures down from the site they have to pay a fee. I think its ridiculous that the website that has the videos or pictures can’t be forced to take them down when found to be revenge porn and that they charge the victims fees to do it. This is something that needs to be looked into and change as soon as possible because no one deserves to have that done to them. Do you think that consent should be need from all parties in the videos or pictures for them to be posted online by websites or journalist?

News Article:

With most of the articles this week focusing on the bad spread of news and pictures on social media. I figured my news article this week would cover what LIVE:PD has done to help finding missing children. They do a segment on missing children looking for tips from views on there children which has lead to many families being reunited with there missing loved ones.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/year-girl-missing-2016-found-safe-tip-tv/story?id=54082171

The topic “Ethics, Privacy, Porn (Revenge) and Terrorism” covers a lot of the material under one discussion. The reading material provided was quite impressive and informative in order to understand this topic and make a discussion on it.

Let’s begin the discussion with the article: “Social Media Spreads terrorism and Propaganda” opened up a discussion about how Uzbek immigrant Sayfullo Saipov has been charged with the death of eight people after ploughing them into the truck in downtown in Manhattan. He was also stand accused of “providing material support and resources” to the terror group ISIS.

The author further added that: “The link between online ISIS propaganda — easily found on a variety of social media platforms — and the death of eight people is linear and clear. A guy found some crazy stuff on a site, like we all do – regardless often of whether we even want to or not.”

The second article i.e. “Should Reddit be Blamed for the Spreading of a Smear?” was another article which is based on the spreading of terrorism through the internet. In this article, the detail discussion was made on the topic that the impact on the Sunil Tripath’s family as a result of the false identification of their son in the Boston Marathon bombing. It was a large article that comes to the simple conclusion: Maybe. Because there was misidentification on Reddit and no evidences were shown that goes against him. But what happened to that person and to his family was questionable.

What are your opinions on this topic?

Coming towards the next article i.e. “Why Privacy Matters Even If You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’” is a debate that does the privacy really matters or it is only taken under consideration when a person has done something wrong and want to hide it from the world? The author has further added that: “The nothing-to-hide argument speaks to some problems but not to others. It represents a singular and narrow way of conceiving of privacy, and it wins by excluding consideration of the other problems often raised with government security measures.”

He further said that: “Commentators often attempt to refute the nothing-to-hide argument by pointing to things people want to hide. But the problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is the underlying assumption that privacy is about hiding bad things.”

And the last article: “Why Revenge Porn is Really F*cked Up” was covered the whole of the discussion topic here. The social activist and YouTube star made a charge against his ex-boyfriend when her boyfriend made a video of her and spread it on many of the porn websites. I felt so sorry about her and I think that every girl must be strong enough to stand up against the humiliations and assaults if they have to face. The author further added that “Chambers’ reported her ex to the Atlanta police for rape, but, unsurprisingly, they decided not to press charges. That’s when Chambers made the brave decision to seek out justice in the UK. Because her ex had posted the videos while in Britain, she could still bring charges against him as they related to the revenge pornography.”

I really did not understand the mentality of the men who think that by doing such a shameful act they would become so famous or able escape easily. They need to understand that this not only made them guilty of charge but also is a shame for their families. I do not consider such men as humans but the animals who do not think while responding.

I am going to share a news article on the same topic i.e. “Revenge porn new normal’ after cases surge in lockdown”. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54149682

This week’s topic is very interesting yet alarming for many of us because it opens up the side effects of the technology even more to let us all know and be aware of it. The topic “Ethics, Privacy, Porn (Revenge) and Terrorism” covers all of the aspects and the material provided for the reading was sufficient enough to understand this topic.

Starting from the article “Terrordotcom: IS’s Social Media Warfare in Syria and Iraq” has enlighten the fact that how social media and internet is being used in order to spread terror around the world. The author in the article made a discussion on the fact that how the terrorist organizations today use internet and most notably social-media network in order to create the effects they desire through a series of on-line activities. The author said that: “From a strategy point of view, IS has employed social media to gain attention to mass media and strategic audiences, amplify and control its messaging in support of its narrative in order to recruit and radicalize followers.”

The second article “Why Privacy Matters Even If You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’”. If you have got nothing to hide, you have got nothing to fear was a common sentence we all have listened in our lives so many times and the debate is not new to make. But the author suggests here that if you have got nothing to hide you still wanted to have your privacy and your personal life being secured. The author further put light on the difference “between nothing to hide” and secrecy by saying that: “The deeper problem with the nothing-to-hide argument is that it myopically views privacy as a form of secrecy. In contrast, understanding privacy as a plurality of related issues demonstrates that the disclosure of bad things is just one among many difficulties caused by government security measures.”

From above this, I think the author is so on point. We all wanted to have some privacy no matter if we have got something to hide or not.

What do you say about this?

The third article i.e. “Why Revenge Porn is Really F*cked Up” was not a new thing for many of us to hear or read but we really do not pay attention to the sensitivity of this topic. In this article, the author has made a discussion about Chrissy Chambers and what had happened to her.

Chamber has been known to many of us by an American activist and YouTube star and she had made a history as being the first ever person in the UK to bring both civil and criminal charges against her former partner who posted the revenge porn. After reading the article, I felt so bad about her. I believe that every person got the right to say NO when they are not OK in a relationship but taking revenge is not maturity rather cruelty which shows the mentality of a person. What happened with Chamber was not a new story, it is happening with many of the females in the same or in different form but it is happening and not all the women raise their voices against the criminal which made them more powerful I think.

What do you say about this? Do you think that we all have to raise voice against the criminality? Does females have to speak up against the humiliations and assaults they bear?  

Keeping in mind this week’s topic, I am going to share a news article on the topic of “The Privacy Project: Does Privacy Matters?” which further includes many of the articles on the same topic.

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/privacy-project-does-privacy-matter

This week, I read a few articles called “Should Reddit Be Blamed for the Spreading of a Smear?”, “The Humiliation of Katie Hill Offers a Warning” and a did a presentation this Wednesday. The articles were are all interesting when talking about the harsh truths that people go through trying to keep their own lives stable. This week is also learned about a book called “Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America” and how it’s very influential in people’s lines of communication, connecting with one another, datum induction, and the polarization of people through social media. When using Facebook features, it can negatively affect the political viewpoints of many people. On the internet, there are people who send treats to those who oppose their political views.  The propaganda,  fake news, and the never-ending cycle of harassment that comes with the online risk but only in misbehavior.

Social media fills up netizens who need work, campaigns or campaigns, and other ways to support young entrepreneurs. Online, there are many ways to improve, especially if someone starts to catch a certain trend, it can attract many consumers during the epidemic, so people will have more reasons to buy or support your viral activities. Online trends can be anything that attracts the attention of a mass quantity of people online or the main topic in many posts.

 Propaganda now is more dangerous than ever, because propaganda is faster due to many developments in technology. In society today a terrorist can post on popular social media websites and cost the lives of thousands of online people. The sounds that the internet provides can cause youth to do irresponsible acts such as drugs, criminal behavior, and be part of certain groups that cause nothing but trouble. 

 This week I saw the show called “Newsroom Boston episode” the people were tryna to find who caused the attack at the end marathon finishing line. The way people treat one another in the show is like a family and tough love meaning being truthful even when it hurts. In the article “The Humiliation of Katie Hill Offers a Warning” Katie has suffered abuse from her late partner who made her lose her job. Katie is a victim of nonconsensual pornography which Congres hasn’t been doing too much about it. Katie said “I refuse to let this experience scare off other women,”  on the internet there many women who have gone through similar situations who can relate to Katie Hill’s experience with her late partner. If you were in her shoes what will you do to help other women who suffered similar abuse? Do you know anyone that has been humiliated in such a way they lost a job or life? Have you ever had to deal with narcissistic people or family members?

Work Cited: 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/katie-hill-and-many-victims-revenge-porn/601198/

Newsroom “Boston.”(50 min) (AMAZON PRIME)