Media Law & Literacy 2020

Positives & Negatives of Technology  Technology is one of the greatest inventions this world has ever seen. Technology has allowed our society to thrive in all different subjects. It has allowed us to learn new ideas and opinions in a split second. We are able to keep up with what is going on in the world around us at all times. Although technology has connected us all together, it has also drifted us apart as well. Technology is permanent, it never forgets your mistakes. Technology allows people to destroy the lives of others with a click of a button. Technology can be both very helpful, but it also can be very hurtful to society. Throughout these two videos, I learned a lot about technology as a whole. Technology was developed to improve mankind. It was made to provide society with a simpler path to commerce and communication. In many ways, it did just that. Technology has allowed some of the greatest inventions,  such as cell phones, GPS, and computers. However, technolo

Social Media Use & Covid-19 The media is the prime way for us to receive information updates on the coronavirus. We rely on the news and social media outlets to inform us about what is going on within our world today, especially nowadays with the Covid-19 outbreak. We need to pay very close attention to the media in order to keep our society safe. However, what if I told you that social media platforms are not the best way to stay updated on the virus. According to this article, social media platforms are actually making the spread of the coronavirus worse because they are accidentally spreading misinformation. People are able to write their thoughts, feelings, and opinions on all social media platforms. Social media is all about expressing yourself and what you are feeling in the present time. Today, people are expressing their thoughts and opinions on the coronavirus and how the virus is making them feel. The public on social media is believing these thoughts and opinion

Disney Parks & Covid-19       Covid-19 has taken a toll on our society as a whole, especially in the most magical place on earth. Disney World and Disneyland have both had to close due to the coronavirus outbreak. Disney is all about bringing together individuals from all over the world to celebrate light and laughter together. There is never a dull moment in Disney, it is constantly packed with people making memories with their friends and family. Everywhere you go to in Disney, you are surrounded by tons of people enjoying the same Disney stories as you. However, because of the presence of the virus, we don't even know if Disney will ever be the same again.       Disney World and Disneyland are taking very cautious measures to make that when they do reopen the parks that their customers are completely safe. Disney World is focusing on reopening in stages to make sure they are being extra careful. They plan to reopen up to 75 percent capacity. They are encouragi

Will the Covid-19 End Reality Television Forever?       The Covid-19 outbreak has changed society forever. There is no guarantee that our lives will go back to the way there were before the coronavirus pandemic. The coronavirus has affected all industries, but especially the entertainment industry, All production for scripted movies and television shows have been rescheduled for a later date when Covid-19 has settled down a bit. But, what about reality television? How will reality television survive if they are unable to film many people in a crowded place at one time? Reality shows are all about people interacting with others in close corners. Does reality television even have a future after Covid-19?     All reality television shows airing on right now were filmed before the coronavirus outbreak got out of hand. Soon, those shows will run out. Televisions shows aren't able to film any new footage or content because of ordered quarantine. It is too dangerous right no

Will Colleges Return to Campus For Fall 2020 Semester?      The big answer all college students are waiting to hear is that we are able to return to our college campuses this fall for a normal semester. However, at this point in time, colleges are unable to make that decision. The constant unknown related to Covid-19 will allow these decisions to be made at the last minute possible.      Some colleges such as Boston University have already realized that it may be unrealistic to open in the Fall of 2020. They have already expressed to their students and faculty that they are aiming to open up the campus in full for the spring semester, which would begin in January 2021. Ultimately, they would like to open up in the fall, but they take the safety of their students very seriously and would never put them in a dangerous situation.      The amount of uncertainty tied to the coronavirus is what is keeping colleges from making their official decisions. This virus changes

New Stylish Protective Masks       As the Covid-19 has grown out of the control these past three months, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends to the public that they were medical masks in order to try to slow down the spread of the coronavirus. Naturally, these medical masks have become scarce, because the whole country is constantly trying to buy them to keep their friends and families safe.        We need masks as a protective gear these days. Many designers and creative professionals took it upon themselves to design fashionable and colorful masks to sell online. I find these creative masks to be an amazing idea because these masks will work to keep individuals healthy, and they are also a fun and creative way to boost up morale during this pandemic time. I find it so inspiring that individuals and companies are trying to find a way to be helpful during this global health crisis. For example, Etsy is a website that focuses on all handmade items. Etsy has deci

Key Post: EOTO Terms & Concepts 2 Agenda Setting Theory      The way in which our society communicates with each other is through the media. The media is a source that everyone in the world looks at to gain information. Have you ever really thought about how the media is portrayed? There are many communication theories that display how the media can be portrayed in several different ways. One theory is the Agenda Setting theory. Agenda Setting theory focuses on how the media uses its influence to attract the public's mind to a specific story or issue they consider to be important. Agenda Setting theory focuses on information that is deemed to have priority over other stories. This theory is very important because it can be used to sway a person's mind to believe a specific perspective.    The Agenda Setting theory was developed by Maxwell McCombs and Donald L. Shaw in 1968 during the United States presidential election. The Agenda Setting theory can have both a brigh

Privacy, Online & Off      Technology allows us to connect with people from all over the world. However, sometimes technology doesn't allow us to choose who we want to connect with and share our information with. Online privacy is a massive issue within our digital society today. Some information we ourselves expose to the outside world, while other information is leaked to the outside world without us even knowing. I watched three separate TED talks about how our online privacy isn't as secure as we would imagine it to be.      The first TED Talk video I watched was called "Your Online Life, Permanent as a Tattoo". In this TED Talk, Juan Enriquez talks about just like tattoos, your social media profiles speak for themselves. People can make judgments and assumptions about the type of person who is based upon what is posted on your online profiles. Enriquez calls our social media profiles, electronic tattoos. These electronic tattoos are based upon t

Key Post: My Online Presence              It is so scary how much the internet really knows about us. We don't realize how much information we put out into the world through the use of social media. There is no such thing as privacy when it comes to the internet. The internet knows everything about everyone. When we create social media accounts and voluntarily give our personal information, we never ponder the consequences that can come from that. We all see the good in these social media sites and try to block out the bad. Our online privacy being taken advantage of isn't our fault, but what is our fault is what we allow to be out there about ourselves.       I decided to google my name to see what would come up. When I googled my name, my Linkedin profile is the first thing to appear. My LinkedIn photo is the first photo that appears. My Facebook and Instagram do not appear because I have made them private. There are no inappropriate pictures that appear becaus

The Innovation of Snapchat    Snapchat is a mobile app that allows people to send pictures and videos to each for only a short period of time. It was created and displayed to the public in 2011.  The co-founder of Snapchat, Evan Siegel, created this app as a way to encourage a natural flow of interaction through the use of images. It allows you to have a private person-to-person conversation through the use of timed images. They're all different types of filters you can put on your images in order to make your conversations fun and interesting!    I think the reason, why the idea of Snapchat has caught on and spread quickly throughout the world, is because it gives you the ability to express yourself through a unique conversation. All the different filters within Snapchat allow people to be their real and funny self by not having to take conversations so seriously. The use of the different components on Snapchat caused the app to spreadly widely over social media beca

Key Post: Eight Values of Free Expression The First Amendment is based upon six freedoms. The freedom from religion, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition. The First Amendment gives us the people the right to free expression. Freedom of expression focuses on how the government doesn't have the right to forbid the public from talking about or writing about whatever they want. There are eight different values of free expression. I personally feel that the most important values of free expression are the participation in self-government (#2) and the value to protect dissent (#8). The value to participate in self-government is very important because it relates freedom of speech to self-government. It is very important for the people of society to be informed on what is going on in politics and in the government because then they will be able to make smart decisions and know exactly what is going on within the

New York's COVID-19 Outbreak      There have been many misconceptions related to the coronavirus outbreak. A misconception that is spreading is that young people cannot get the coronavirus. However, that is completely untrue. According to the Governor of NY, Andrew Cuomo, young people can get the coronavirus and transfer it to others very easily. People between the ages of 18-49 years old can get the coronavirus and get sick from it, but they probably will not die from having the coronavirus.     Another misconception is that only elderly people and people with underlying medical conditions really have to worry about the coronavirus, not everyone. That is not a true statement. Yes, elderly people and people with underlying conditions need to be more cautious when it comes to the virus,, However, everyone who lives in the United States needs to be aware of the deadly coronavirus. The only way we can save lives is if everyone takes this virus seriously. These misconcep

The Influence of the iPod The iPod was not the first MP3 player created, but it was the first truly impressive MP3 player ever made. The original iPod included a simple user-friendly interface accompanied by a strong industrial design. The iPod was a truly great invention because they were no other portable devices like them developed yet. Apple introduced the iPod as the first music sharing portable device back in 2001, and it changed the history of technology and music forever.  The original iPod was released in November of 2001, it was both smaller and easier to use than the MP3 player. It was a Mac product, so it required the use of Mac online service. The iPod included a scroll wheel with four buttons, such as menu, forward, play/pause, and background. It included a center button in order to click on specific items. The specific design of the iPod made it very easy for customers to navigate the product. People were listening to their favorite music so easily in com

The Impact of Instagram       Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms that exist in society today. Instagram was born in 2010 as the first photo-sharing social media network service. It has become a significant part of people's everyday lives, in that people check it constantly throughout the day. It gave people the opportunity to post their lives through pictures and make their lives seem eventful and inspiring through the use of photo filters and enhancements. Instagram has impacted our society tremendously in the 10 years it has been alive, both positively and negatively.             Instagram has changed the way in which we view beauty throughout the media. Instagram filters have allowed people to drastically change their appearances. These filters give people the impression that they must make their bodies look a certain way on the social media site in order to be deemed as "pretty" and "cool". Instagram has created an unrealistic

The Upbringing of Youtube        Youtube was born in 2005, by Jared Karim, Steve Chen, and Chad Hurley.  The name Youtube was created for a very specific purpose. "You" represents that all content created on the site is user-generated and "Tube" is a term for television.  Youtube is a television created only by users. Youtube is the largest and most popular video distribution media platform there is on the Internet. It is not only where you can watch innocent videos, but people are given the opportunity to create and display their own original content on the site as well. Youtube has developed tremendously from being an average video content platform to becoming a billion-dollar company. Youtube was inspired by the 2005 Super Bowl malfunction with Janet Jackson, and the devasting tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean. They designed Youtube as a way for people to get their news about the world through the use of video.      Youtube generated their big

The Opinions We Don't Hear        I have never seen or heard of the Antiwar and The American Conservative websites until now. I personally have never even been exposed to these types of opinions until now, because all the news that I come in contact with is either through television news or social media news.       I believe I have never heard these strong antiwar opinions before because of the dominant stance they promote. Antiwar and The American Conservative strongly stand for non-interventionism. Non-interventionism is a foreign policy that focuses heavily on avoiding to interfere in foreign nation affairs but still remain cordial and diplomatic. It also focuses on not participating in wars unless it is absolutely necessary for the well-being of the United States. These websites stand for putting the United States' needs first, by protecting its own rights, power, and stability before getting involved with other countries. We don't hear about these str

Breaking Twitter News On February 3rd, 2019, a massive security incident occurred on Twitter where people's phone numbers became matched to their username, leading people's personal information to be exposed all over Twitter.  A large network of fake accounts hacked into Twitter's API system and matched usernames to phone numbers. This process is known as scraping, in that fake accounts focus on collecting huge numbers of people's personal information and share it all over social media networks. Scraping is highly against Twitter's terms of service. It is completely illegal to gather and access information that way. The fake accounts were linked to several different countries, such as Malaysia, Iran, and Israel. Twitter released a statement tweet on their site that day explaining how they have corrected the issue, and they are going to embark on an extensive investigation to make sure this event doesn't occur again.     These types of scandal

Fake News is Everywhere       Facebook has focused a lot of their attention on making sure that their site is free from misinformation and fake news. They have even gone as far as to make new policies in order to keep fake news completely separate for their site. However, the editable link previews that Facebook had previously abolished because they caused misinformation, have recently resurfaced about six months ago. The editable link preview on Facebook gain people the access to edit images, headlines, and descriptions on public posts. Facebook terminated this feature back in 2017, because of the huge amount of fake news that was created because of it, but in September of 2019, it came back.      In my opinion, I am very impressed by how serious Facebook took this fake news information from the beginning. I believe that the fake news within our media culture has gotten extremely out of hand, especially on social media. My favorite aspect of social media is that everyone is

Key Post: The Rise of NETFLIX        Netflix has become one of the most-watched streaming services all over the United States. But how did the service become so successful? The evolution of Netflix started over 20 years ago, and it continues to thrive and expand every year. The history of Netflix is very intriguing and I acquired a lot of knowledge about how Netflix has really shaped our media culture. Reed Hastings & Mark Randolph, CEO of Netflix, came up with the idea of Netflix when Blockbuster charged them 40 dollars for an overdue rental of Apollo 13. We the students of High Point have had the privilege to meet Mr. Randolph when he came and spoke at our university.          In 1997, Netflix wasn’t a subscription service, it was an online-based DVD rental service. DVD subscriptions were born in 1999. For 16 dollars a month, you could subscribe to NetFlix.com Program and receive DVD rentals per month with no late fee. The first attempt of online streaming th

THE POWER OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT      As I was watching this video about the U.S. Supreme Court, there are many tactics I learned that the Supreme Court performs that I never knew before. This video explained to me the everyday life of the nine justices and the ways in which they come up with their overall decisions.       The Supreme Court was made in order to draw the boundaries of governmental power. The Supreme Court's main focus is to interpret the U.S. Constitution into everyday life issues and cases. John Marshall played a very crucial part in making the Constitution a key part of the judicial system. The nine justices' job is to use the words of the Constitution in order to solve problems that are occurring over 200 years later. The nine justices would use the same approach for each case in order to be as straight and fair as possible. Every petition gets the same individual consideration. They receive about 7,000 cases a year. The consideration starts off

President Trump has received funds to build the border wall The Appeals Court has now denied the injunction that was trying to prohibit President Donald Trump to reallocate military money that was approved for other military projects.  President Trump is reallocating some of the military construction funds to build a border wall between the US and Mexico. Trump’s administration claimed that the country will suffer harm if it didn’t build the wall. He declared it a state of emergency last winter. The Appeals court ruled in Trump’s favor. Trump made a campaign promise to build a wall in 2016. In my assessment of this case, I believe the money should not have been diverted from other military projects and should have been used the way Congress intended it to be used. This is a democracy and when something is voted on it shouldn’t be changed just because you don’t like the outcome of the vote. I feel that it was important for the injunction that prohibited the wall to be den