EOTO Terms & Concepts Blog #10 -keypost

 Terms & Concepts

        The term that I researched is disinformation. The basic definition of disinformation is false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth. Disinformation is everywhere, and we do not even realize it. We are constantly being controlled to think a certain way through the news, magazines, newspapers, and even ads that come up on Instagram and youtube.

    Disinformation can be used to control a whole entire country as well. It is very powerful, destructive, and is actually a common tool of espionage. Countries often have an interest in intentionally spreading fake information to their rival nations, as the Soviet Union and the United States did during the Cold War, for instance. When a country or group coordinates a complicated plan of spreading disinformation, it is often referred to as a disinformation campaign. This can also be used with Propaganda, which is information spread to make someone or something look bad or good. As a recent example, the United States State Department accused the Chinese government of supporting an online disinformation campaign that spread false information about COVID-19 and blamed the outbreak on the United States. This online disinformation campaign essentially could have gotten the entire Country of China to believe that the United States started the Covid-19 outbreak which obviously is not true at all. It is crazy to me how often disinformation is spread, and how easily it is for someone else to manipulate the way you think and your own opinions.

    As dangerous as disinformation can be, journalists find themselves in a difficult position when investigating it. journalists generally don’t outright accuse them of being a liar or spreading disinformation. This is because journalists cannot usually be 100% certain of the intent behind the disinformation, and they (and all writers) can be sued for libel if they wrongfully call someone a liar. A term that is often associated with disinformation is debunking which means to expose the falseness of an idea, myth, or belief. But the era of smarter technology will be upon us soon. These fake campaigns will grow more powerful which will cause society as a whole to believe them more. With these innovations, and alongside the uptick in the general understanding of digital disinformation, They are changing how they launch their operations on the legacy social media platforms, making their people act more like bots, and their bots more like people, in efforts to confuse the algorithms built to track the inorganic spread of content.

    The spread of disinformation can affect me and you individually in a negative way. Methods to control society are all around us constantly. Social Media is a main method of disinformation. An example of this is that on Instagram posts, if the people who control Instagram see a post that explains something that is true, but they don't want the public to think that way, they can literally put a banner on it that says false information. Disinformation is stopping society as a whole from having a personal opinion. For me personally, I try not to fall into this trap. I will look at the facts on both sides and base my opinion off of that. Of course, I can not avoid disinformation, but awareness on this topic is all you need to not listen to the one opinion that they want society to believe.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1464884919868325

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/information-overload-helps-fake-news-spread-and-social-media-knows-it/

https://en.unesco.org/fightfakenews

Final Exam Post

The Internet

  

    The internet can affect our lives in many ways. It can get people amazing careers and set them up for the rest of a wealthy lifetime, but it can also potentially ruin someone's lives and their chances of getting a job. In many jobs today, you apply to them online and it is an easy way for them to see your resume and experience, and see if you are qualified for the job. Also, it is much easier for storage, Organization, and Access to Digital Information. The bad side of being on the internet is that you can potentially make a small mistake, and be canceled for it. Therefore, all of your future employees will see it and not hire you because of it. To sum this up, the internet is both an astonishing and horrific place all in one. 

    Overall, I like the internet and I think my relationship with it is pretty healthy. However, I do think that I spend too much time online. Sometimes it is a nice day out, and I really should be outside enjoying it but instead, I get distracted by my social media and I never end up going outside like I intended. Also, when it is time to get my school work done, I always stay on my phone longer than I want to because it is easy to just forget about the work and instead let my focus be absorbed into my phone. I am recently trying to spend less time on the internet by deleting apps that I go on too much for a day or two. This keeps me from being tempted to go on it and staying on it for way too long. Obviously, not all of the internet is apps and social media, the internet can actually be a great place to learn. With the pandemic, most people have been learning online around the world and it really is not that bad. I prefer a classroom setup, however, if you think about it, even when you are in a classroom you are most likely going to use your computers which means you are online and using technology. Or another example is if you don't understand a concept that your teacher taught, you can easily look up a video explaining it online, or even if you want to know almost anything, even completely random, you can look it up on the internet and find out the answer in 10 seconds. So even though too much internet may not be great for you, there is definitely learning that comes along with it. 

    Another positive effect that the internet has is actually on friends and family in my opinion. Speaking from experience since I am about 10 hours away from my parents, I get to talk to them any time I want because I have a cell phone. I cannot imagine being away here and not being in contact with my family. When my dad went to college in the early 80s, he did not have a cell phone so during those four years, he was not as close to his family which is crazy to me. The internet also helps keep friendships alive. In today's day and age, if you have a best friend, you most likely talk to or at least Snapchat them every day. I cannot imagine being as close with my friends as I am now without the internet. It would be so weird to me to not be able to talk to them when we are not physically seeing each other. One last good thing about this is that the internet essentially keeps long-distance relations alive. You can facetime and see your significant other every single day. You can hear their voice and see their smile. The only thing that is missing is physical touch. I hear that long-distance relationships are much easier now than they used to be because you can actually talk to each other and keep each other updated on your lives. So in my opinion, the internet helps family and friends very much.

    Speaking for myself, I do not have much of an online footprint. I definitely do have one because I have social media like Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram, however, if you google my name no pictures come up. The people with the biggest online footprint are probably Social Media Influencers. They are all over the internet, you cannot avoid them at all. They are a part of many ordinary people's lives and they are looked up to by many. It is crazy to think that posting pictures and videos of themselves is their career. It is a well-paying job that actually gets them through life. So compared to them, I do not have much of an online footprint, and I would actually like to keep it that way. Essentially, from this whole blog post, I think the internet is a good thing, you just have to have boundaries and be careful in the ways you use it. It can be very distracting so you have to distance yourself from it sometimes in order fr your mental health to stay good, and you cannot post your whole life because if you slip up on one thing, you can potentially ruin your whole life. 

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2006/01/25/the-strength-of-internet-ties/

https://hbr.org/2009/10/why-the-internet-is-so-distrac

hrillist.com/tech/valuable-skills-you-can-learn-online-websites-that-will-teach-you-something-duolingo-online-harvard-courses-mit-courses

Blog #12 EOTO Presentations

 Online Influencers 

    I am writing about what I learned from online influencers which was in the category Mediasphere. This term I found very interesting. The reason for this is because obviously many social media influencers are loved and looked upto by others, but in reality, it seems ike they are hurting us more than helping us. Unlike conventional celebrities or paid product endorsers, influencers tend to be viewed by their followers as trusted peers. This is a big deal to advertisers, because there’s evidence that your peers — more so than strangers or celebs — can influence your interests and purchases. Even small-time influencers — those with fewer than 50,000 followers — can make hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a promotional post. And while many of them maintain a posture of “calibrated amateurism” and financial instability, much of this is orchestrated.

 

   In reality, their lives aren't real. It is pretty obvious that social media is fake- from acting like you are always having a good time, to editing how you look in pictures, most people understand that isn't real. However, when all you see every second of the day is perfect people who act like they live the perfect life and get everything that they want, it is hard to be happy with your own life. We expect everything t to be perfect in our lives, but it isn't, and this can bring us down to wonder why we aren't good enough to be them. So even though influencers do motivate and help people, in reality, all they really do is create a fake life that is not possible for anybody to have.

 

     On the other hand, influencers are pressured to be perfect and act perfect online, when even they know that they are not perfect. Everybody has bad days- but they are not allowed to. If a celebrity makes a mistake that happens to every human on this earth, they will get canceled for it. If they do not come off as perfect online, they will get bullied until they fit in and look like the rest. Many influencers are not happy with their lives because they are being forced to be something they are not. So in reality, this is a toxic situation in both way, for the fans and the influencers and it seems to make both more sad than happy. 

 

https://www.theteenmagazine.com/the-negative-effects-of-influencers#:~:text=As%20teenagers%2C%20influencers'%20worlds%20can,and%2C%20unfortunately%2C%20create%20anxiety.&text=Our%20mental%20state%20is%20being,something%20you%20do%20not%20need.

https://yourstory.com/weekender/good-bad-ugly-age-social-media-influencer-facebook-instagram

Eight Values Of Free Expression- key post

 Eight Values of Free Expression

There are eight values that are apart of Free Expression:

•  Marketplace of Ideas
• Participation in Self-Government 
• Stable Change
• Individual Self-Fulfillment 
• Check on Governmental Power
• Promote Tolerance
• Promote Innovation
• Protect Dissent: In my opinion, this value is the most important.

    In my opinion, the value of protecting dissent is the freedom of all United States citizens to have the right to express their opinions without being held back or silenced by the government. The right to dissent pretty much means freedom of speech which falls under the first amendment. I truly believe that one of the reasons why the United States is considered to be so special when in comparison to other nations is because United States citizens are given the opportunity for freedom on all topics. Also, we are encouraged to have our own viewpoints and thoughts. If someone has a different opinion than you on a topic, it is completely normal and it happens all the time. In different countries, this would not be normal, and you can even get in trouble with higher powers just because you stated your own opinion. Freedom of speech is for sure one of the many reasons why the United States is so powerful. I feel that U.S. citizens' right to dissent is a right that will continue to be important in our American society.

    Something that happened pretty recently in the world was the presidential election in November. I think we can all agree that this election was a little different than the rest with all of the waiting that we had to do. An example of freedom of expression comes into this presidential election because many people believed it was rigged. They were posting articles about it and some people even went to the extreme of accusing others of voter fraud. The reason that some citizens thought this was because the states were taking a very long time to count the votes, and they thought during this time, somebody was fidgeting with the numbers to make Joe Biden have more votes. This was broadcasted on many news stations and it even made headlines on news websites. This was obviously never proven to be true, but if freedom of expression was not a thing allowed in the United States, none of the news stations or websites would be allowed to say or post this. It would not have blown up as a "conspiracy theory," and if journalists published this, they would have been arrested since it was never proven. 

    Our right to freedom of expression goes together with our right to dissent. To me, the right to dissent is not only one of the most important values of freedom of expression like I said earlier, but it is also a fundamental human right. There are even activists who are looked up to for having their own beliefs and opinions. Some of these people are Charles Darwin, and Martin Luther King Jr. It is very clear that the right to dissent paves the pathway for those who become and those who are already famous for being an activist. The right to dissent is very inspiring to me. It allows for some of the most important events in history to be talked about by those who we consider activists. If it was not for the right to dissent and freedom of expression, the United States would be a completely different country (for the worst in my opinion) today. 

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/cc-sixth-grade-math/cc-6th-expressions-and-variables/expression-value-intuition/a/thinking-about-changing-values-of-variables-and-expressions

https://www.ishr.ch/news/right-dissent-manual-international-law-right-protest-and-dissent#:~:text=Dissent%20involves%20the%20exercise%20of,about%20issues%20of%20public%20concern.

https://www.aclu.org/other/freedom-expression

Blog Post #7

 Diffusion Of Innovations

    Diffusion Theory has always been quite a hard concept for me to understand at first. Although I never attempted to learn it, I always heard the phrase being thrown around during class. After finally doing some research on it, it is a surprisingly easy theory to comprehend. The basic use of diffusion theory is to see how, why, and at what rate new technology or ideology can spread through a certain type of population and culture.

     Everett Rogers was a Communications Professor who wrote a book promoting the Diffusion Theory in 1962. He claimed that four main elements were the cause of the spread of new ideas. It was innovation, time, communication channels, and social systems. It is a crazy concept to get into when you think of how it affects us every day. We constantly hear advertisements to buy certain products or see reviews online trying to persuade us to spend money. These are all prime examples of seeing the Diffusion Theory in our everyday lives.

    The Diffusion Theory requires a five-step process that has to go through communication channels to hit the social systems to fully spread. At first, the individual has to use or see an innovation. The need to experience it for the first time. After the individual will be interested in the innovation and proceed to ask questions. Next, the individual decides whether or not to use the innovation and if it will benefit his life. They then start to implement the innovation to help them out and then finally start using it on a daily basis and recommending it to others. Overall the Diffusion Theory is a very interesting topic to look into and definitely gave me a new perspective when new ideas are found and watching how they spread through society.

https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/sb/behavioralchangetheories/behavioralchangetheories4.html

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2017.1104

https://cjni.net/journal/?p=1444

Blog Post #2

   

Supreme Court

 I was always intrigued by how the Supreme Court worked. Why was it so Superior to other courts? Were the worst cases of murder only allowed in the Supreme Court? Where did it Come from? All of these questions would pop into my head whenever I thought about the Supreme Court. Eventually, I learned that the Supreme Court was created by the U.S. Constitution in 1789. It made up of nine justices who will serve as a justice until they die or retire. The main idea of the Supreme Court is to have the largest jurisdiction over all and any laws. The Supreme Court also has the power to check on if a law is constitutional and the court can watch over the other two branches of government as well. They have a large role in the United States government and have a lot of jobs to do.

    The Supreme Courts' first meeting was held on February 2nd, 1790. Although they never heard a case in its first term, it was still an important term to set up the organizational workings of the Supreme Court. The first actual court decision made by the justices was held on August 3rd, 1791. The court case was West v. Barnes and was a financial dispute against a farmer who owned family money too. 

An interesting thing I learned about the Supreme Court was from History.com. They explained how "For more than 100 years after the foundation of the Supreme Court, the justices were required to hold circuit court twice a year in each judicial circuit". This means that for twice a year the Supreme Courts would have to travel around the States to get from case to case. This became very hard to do with the addition of new states in America and the very little transportation the U.S. had that they abolished this rule in 1891.

In Conclusion, the Supreme Court is one of the most necessary branches of the government. These 3 branches need to stay in order to not fall because they all keep each other in balance. Although we cannot vote injustices to the Supreme Court it is still our power to keep the Supreme Court going and keeping our government in balance.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/opinion/supreme-court-elections.html

Blog Post #3

               Black Lives Matter

    Back in May 2020, the tragic death of George Floyd caused protests all around the world against racism. Flash forward to February 2021, in the article I read, it explains that the BLM movement is receiving a Nobel Peace Prize Nomination. This is obviously happy news and amazing, however, not everything that came out of the Black Lives Matter movement was good. One of the 6 freedoms listed in the first amendment is the right to peacefully assemble. This is the individual right or ability of people to come together and collectively express their shared ideas. This is what most of the BLM protests were like.

 

The protests that were peaceful and made to bring attention to the problem of racial inequality are what are nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Another freedom that is included by the first amendment is the right to petition the government. This grants people the freedom to stand up and speak up about injustices they feel are occurring, and also it grants the power to help change those injustices. These rights are allowed because the government needs to know what is on the peoples minds and what they are fighting for. These two rights that I just brought up support peacefully speaking your mind, not violent actions.

 

The first amendment does not cover violent action or speech that can cause incitement to violence.  This means that the peaceful protests were amazing enough to get nominated for a Noble Peace Prize, because the marching is welcomed and protected. As soon as the protests got violent and the looting and destroying of property started, it was no longer protected. The First Amendment does not protect actions of violence whatsoever. 

 

https://oracle.newpaltz.edu/blm-receives-nobel-peace-prize-nomination/