FINAL BLOG: AUDIT YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE

 How often do you think about what you do online before you do it? Before really getting into social media, I didn't think about what I posted online. Back when Instagram was just a new company and Snapchat and Tik Tok didn't even exist yet. Back whenever I was only a middle schooler. However, I learned some pretty vital information when I got into high school that changed the way I looked at social media and my online presence, as a whole. 

When I was in high school, I remember having speakers every other week that would come during our lunch time and give speeches about the information that we put online and what the people on the internet can do with that information once it is out there. It was a very similar experience to Sonia Bokhari, a 14 year old student who wrote the article titled "I'm 14 and I quit social media after discovering what was posted about me." In this article, Sonia speaks of an organization that came to warn her school of the dangers of having an online presence. 

"The presenters from an organization called OK2SAY, which educates and helps teenagers about being safe online, emphasized that we shouldn’t ever post anything negative about anyone or post unapproved inappropriate pictures, because it could very deeply affect our school lives and our future job opportunities. They also warned us about online predators, which was something that always stressed me out when I was online, because I could scroll through any profile of a person I don’t know and they could’ve been someone that wanted to do me harm." - Sonia Bokhari

Hearing these things being said to me by adults, I also realized that this was a serious issue. However, as I grew older and started to think about the situation a little bit more, I realized that these companies and organizations are not trying to scare you into deleting all of your social media accounts and going "off the grid." These organizations simply want you to recognize these possible dangers and do with that information what you will. For me, I see a lot of opportunity within social media. As a future filmmaker, social media is one of the most easy and effective ways for people to see my work. However, just because I have public social media accounts does not mean that I put all of my information out there or that I am not careful with how I go about what I post online. 

 

I think that a lot of people see this information and forget about all of the good that social media has also brought. The biggest takeaway I got from this assignment is that I am keeping myself up to date with positive and negative knowledge about the world of social media and my online footprint, as I actively make my decisions on what to post online and what I want to keep private. Wanting a certain level of privacy and being cut off from the online world do not mean the same thing. Stay informed and be careful with your online footprint!

Sources: https://www.fastcompany.com/90315706/kids-parents-social-media-sharing

https://www.fastcompany.com/90333854/to-really-protect-our-privacy-lets-put-some-numbers-on-it

POST ELEVEN: EOTO ONLINE INFLUENCERS

 In the recent years, the rise of online influencers has grown dramatically. With the start of Youtube in 2005, it came the beginning of the start of online influencing and the creation of the job. As Youtube's popularity grew, so did creators on the website. People like Smosh (Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox), Ryan Higa, Michelle Phan, and many others quit their day jobs to make their money only from Youtube. Once people realized that this was a possibility there began a wave of influencers, not only on Youtube, but on other platforms like MySpace. After these influencers gained social media and online fame, they also began to gain fortune. These people would buy expensive cars, expensive homes, and expensive clothes. This fact drew people in, seeing that they started out as regular people, just like themselves, but now thanks to commissions from Youtube, sponserships from companies, and other financial offers, these people were self-made millionares. 

As time went by, more websites began to offer money and fame in exchange for content. This went from Facebook to Instagram to the latest one, Tik Tok. These influencers have grown to have bigger audiences than ever. For example, Charli D'amelio is one of the biggest names on Tik Tok with almost 100 million followers on that app alone. She has gone on to be in commercials, have interviews and photoshoots with magazines, and even have her own drink at Dunkin Donuts named the Charli. This all came from her talent as a Tik Tok dancer along with her positive attitude and promotion of equality for all types of people. 

 

However, social medias do not always find ways to keep these online influencers. Vine was one of the biggest social media platforms of its time, with over 200 million active users. Many influencers came from vine like David Dobrik, Cody Ko, Logan and Jake Paul. All of these influencers found that since Vine did not offer any sort of payment from the company to the influencers, the app wasn't worth spending hours on content. Many of the big influencers left the site for Instagram or Youtube months before Vine was officially shut down in 2016. Vine was bought by Twitter after they had lost so much money from losing their biggest influencers. Tik Tok almost went down the same route, however, in 2020, they created the Tik Tok creators fund, which allowed them to pay their influencers. 

Sources:
https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13456208/why-vine-died-twitter-shutdown

https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-youtube-in-photos-2015-10

POST TEN: EOTO - CORD CUTTING

Despite its name, cord cutting does not refer to the actual cutting of cords. Cord cutting is a term that refers to the decline of cable television and the rise of streaming television and internet content. This phenomenon has grown increasingly popular over the years, including this one."According to new research from eMarketer, the cable, satellite and telecom TV industry is on track to lose the most subscribers ever. This year, over 6 million U.S. households will cut the cord with pay TV, bringing the total number of cord-cutter households to 31.2 million." These numbers were provided by an article posted on techcrunch.com by Sarah Perez, titled "Pandemic accelerated cord cutting, making 2020 the worst-ever year to pay for TV." This phenomenon has grown so much that there is now tons of communities of "cord cutters" that have started in person groups, Facebook page groups, and even websites on how to cord cut effectively. cordcuttersnews.com is a perfect example of these websites. They give articles on streaming guides, payment deals, and reviews of varying services. 

There is also a community of people called cord nevers. These are people that have never owned cable television and have only gotten their content online or from streaming services. The in between of the cord cutters and the people who only have cable are the cord shavers. These people cut down their cable costs by switching to cheaper packages and purchasing a few streaming services.

So, why is cord cutting happening? One of the major factors is the increasing prices of cable television packages. It also might have to do with the limited reaches of the cable networks. In response to these problems, there are cheaper, more accessible streaming services available. Also, with the invention of smart TVs, it is easier to access the subscription services in gathering places like the living room. Along with the more accessibility of streaming, these services have created original content and even offer free trials, which is an extremely high selling point. 

How do you know if you should make the switch and join the community of cord cutters? It is not as big of a step that most people expect. One of the biggest signs of switching is if you already own most of the subscription services. It also helps if you already have cheap prices on your internet and good internet connection. In some cases, cord cutters have complained about paying more in total for internet and each subscription. Another big sign is if you have multiple people in your home watching TV, it gets pricey to have multiple cable boxes, yet many of the streaming services allow multiple people to watch different things at once. Lastly, one of the biggest signs is if your favorite content to watch is streaming only content or content you can access through those services.

Sources: https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/

https://www.consumerreports.org/streaming-media/how-to-decide-if-cord-cutting-is-right-for-you/

https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/the-beginners-guide-to-cord-cutting-2020/?source=home

 

POST NINE: PRIVACY

 Privacy is one of those things where you always assume that your information is being kept private. For example, when you create a password for a website and it is censored by not showing the actual password, but dots that represent the characters. This, of course, keeps your password hidden from people glaring at your screen. Another example might be if you archive a previous post from your Instagram account. This keeps the post, comments, and likes hidden from any followers and non-followers that might come upon your page. However, this password and the Instagram post is not truly private. These two items are kept by the websites that you enter them into, giving the website the power to retain the information. For something like Instagram, the stakes vary because it could just be a fun, lighthearted post to something as serious as the location in which you live. For other websites that require passwords, like bank sites, the stakes are very high seeing as they have tons of information on you and your money. Of course, it is against the law to use that information, give it out, keep it, etc. However, that does not always stop companies. 

 

In 2019, Facebook faced a court case involving the platform keeping personal records and past search histories within a database and keeping that internal privacy information private. "Facebook faces multiple court cases in the U.S. and the prospect of a $3-5 billion FTC fine for its privacy breaches." (Forbes). These multiple court cases have proven that the information that Facebook is given is not considered to be safe. 

 

In the Juan Enriquez Ted Talk titled Your online life, permanent as a tattoo, he speaks of how this information is not private and will be "immortal." These are referred to as "electronic tattoos" and makes you think about the decisions that you trust the internet and various websites for. 

 

Sources: 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/05/31/facebook-loses-in-court-over-privacy-emails-as-zuckerberg-votes-to-keep-full-control/?sh=4dccd9c9560c

https://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_your_online_life_permanent_as_a_tattoo?language=en

POST EIGHT: DISNEY PLUS BELL DIFFUSION OF INNOVATIONS

 For my bell curve that represents the diffusion of innovations, I am going to track the progress of the streaming service, Disney Plus. 

 

STEP ONE: PIONEERS

Disney Plus started as an idea in summer of 2017, after Disney helped to produce ESPN+ and the Netflix Disney deal. Disney Plus was kept a secret between the developers during this time. Disney Plus was finally announced in September 2017. These people who knew about the streaming service and awaited its arrival before the actual release of the streaming platform were known as the pioneers.

STEP TWO: EARLY ADOPTERS

Disney Plus was officially released in the United States on November 12th, 2019. This was over two years of anticipation. The Early Adopters of the streaming service can be classified as people who followed the rise of media coverage of the service and created accounts on the first day. I was one of the Early Adopters of Disney Plus. These people were either interested in new content that was announced to stream on the site, or past content that was said to be on the site, as well. 

STEP THREE: EARLY MAJORITY

Within about two weeks of the Disney Plus launch, there were hundreds and thousands of articles on how much "nostalgia" the streaming service gave to so many different people. This ranged from older teens with shows like Wizards of Waverly Place and DCOMs to Middle aged and older adults who recognized the classic Disney movies and shorts from the 40s, 50s, 60s, and so on. This created a new wave of people searching for that "nostalgia" factor and thus, created the early majority. 

STEP FOUR: LATE ADOPTERS

After the wave of the "nostalgia craze," the streaming service did not slow down. This was when many parents and teens started to use Disney Plus on a regular day-to-day basis, not just for a fix of nostalgia. People began to start to rewatch tv shows, kids would get new content like endless episodes of mickey mouse clubhouse, and parents found their new favorite streaming service for clean and friendly kid media. 

STEP FIVE: LAGGARDS

While Disney Plus is now in the running for one of the most used streaming services on the market now, there are always going to be people who are not into the content it produces. Disney Plus has a smaller market with their actual content. For people who don't like Disney or Marvel or Pixar or Star Wars, there's nothing really on that streaming site for them to enjoy. Compare this to something like Netflix or Hulu that has more of a variety of the type of content and you get the laggards who will never purchase Disney Plus, no matter the hype.

POST SEVEN: YOUTUBE

In class on October 8th, my fellow classmate Nicolette gave a presentation about Youtube and how it has advanced as a technology. Youtube was created in 2005 by three former Paypal employees. Youtube became the breeding grounds for the newly created term, "viral videos." The plus for these videos were that they were easily accesible to people around the world, most of them were short (anywhere from about 5 seconds to 5 minutes long), and they were funny. The platform also allowed for people to share the links to the videos easily, creating the perfect formula for making videos go viral on the internet.

 

As Youtube progressed their growth as a platform, they saw a rise in Youtube creators who produced videos on a regular basis, whether that was weekly or in some cases daily, and that these creators were gaining fan bases and millions of subscribers. Youtube then developed a monetary system to pay their creators based on likes, subscribers, and views. This was an absolute game changer, because it set a precedent for people getting paid to be social media influencers. Some of the first big influencers included Zoella, Pewdiepie, Smosh, Joey Graceffa, and many, many more. Not only did it set precedents from a business perspective, but also from a social perspective. The Youtube community shaped many of the Gen Z teens and was one of the first social media platforms to have such an impact on an entire generation's actions and personalities. 

Extra info not included in the presentation came from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube

POST SIX: EMOTICONS AND EMOJIS

 For my each one, teach one technology, I chose emoticons and, later named, emojis.

A Brief History of Emoticons and Emojis

 Emoticons were discovered by Scott Fahlman in the year of 1982 on an online message board. He found that placing specific symbols in the desired orders of ":-)" and ":-(" could represent faces and indicate whether or not the post at hand was meant to be happy or sad. These two symbols soon expanded as people began to play around and experiment with the symbols, creating even more faces. This gave a Japanese artist the idea to design digital pictures that could be used on a special keyboard to exhibit faces, weather, items, and more. This first ever emoticon keyboard was created in 1999 and soon expanded and inspired many companies after that. In 2010, Unicode, which is the system that unifies encoding all across different platforms,  adopts emojis into their system. In 2011, Apple creates their first ever emoji keyboard. This was the beginning of the rise in what we recognize as the term "emoji" today. 

 

The Positives of Emoticons and Emojis

Emoticons were created to help the true message of a text or typed sentence be conveyed correctly. Using a happy face at the end of a text helps to prevent the recipient in taking that message in a sad context. Emoji and emoticons can also be used despite language barriers. This is extremely useful in online global communication. Emojis and emoticons are also very quick to use. With one tap you can say good luck by sending a thumbs up emoji, rather than clicking eight keys to create the word. Lastly, emojis and emoticons make a message more personal. This usually allows the recipient of the message to resonate with the message more. 

 

The Negatives of Emoticons and Emojis

Emojis and emoticons are often seen as unprofessional and are often described as "inappropriate for the workplace." The symbols can also be used to fake emotion to convince the recipient that you feel a certain way, rather than feeling something different. For example, sending a text saying "i'm fine :)" when you are feeling sad or depressed. Another huge issue is the fact that certain emojis have gained new meanings to them, rather than their original meanings. For example, the goat emoji is now often used to mean "the Greatest Of All Time (G.O.A.T)" instead of just a normal animal. Lastly, up until recent years, emojis have lacked diversity. Since emojis are not held back by a language barrier, they can be used by anyone. However, if you do not have an emoji that looks like you, then these emojis truly aren't as diverse as they seem. Recently, Apple has gotten better at this, releasing emojis of single parents, people with disabilities, different skin colors, and different representations of couples. 

POST FIVE: SPEECH THEORIES

The Eight Values of Free Expression work together as a unit to guarantee and ensure that our needs of free expression are met with grace and justice. In this blog post, I will discuss the importance and role of two of these values; individual self-fulfillment and promoting innovation and how these relate to the LGBTQ+ community. 

 

Individual Self-Fulfillment

The concept of individual self fulfillment promotes the idea of creating your own individual identity. This can be expressed through opinions, appearance, occupation, or anything regarding your individuality. This concept also focuses on the gratuity experienced from having the freedom to create your own identity and individuality in the world.  This type of value of free expression can be seen heavily within the LGBTQ+ community. This community's mission statement is "Empowering LGBT people, building strong community." The first value of free expression focuses on the first part of that sentence. Empowering the LGBTQ+ people to be themselves and create what they see as their own identity. For some this includes being gay, being lesbian, being bisexual, being transgender, being non-binary, being queer, and many, many more. All of these terms relate to "identities" that these people now are empowered to embrace and accept as their own.

Promoting Innovation

The concept of promoting innovation expresses the idea that the free speech that is out in the world is protected and used to create an innovative and new environment for the people who exhibited the speech. The LGBTQ+ community's mission statement is "Empowering LGBT people, building strong community." In this second part of the mission statement is where we see the concept of promoting innovation in play. This community is called a community for a reason. People who express their identifications will often find groups of friends who also identify as something in the LGBTQ+ community. The communities do multiple things to innovate and inspire including something as fun and light as pride festivals and parades, all the way to something more serious and important as fighting for the right for transgender men and women to be able to use the bathroom that they identify with. These actions are not just for the people themselves, but they are actions that the leaders of the community do for the people, so that they feel safe and protected. 

In conclusion, the LGBTQ+ community exhibits almost every single one of the eight values of free expression. However, I believe that the most important are individual self-fulfillment (empowering the LGBT people) and promoting innovation (building strong community). 

Quote from the Gay Center about the mission statement for the LGBTQ+ community:  https://gaycenter.org/about/

POST FOUR: Voices in the Media

 After exploring these websites, I have taken a notice that these voices expressed through these websites take a very strong sided approach to the subject of anti-war. However, it is brought to the attention of the class that these voices are not heard through the media. This is inherently true and could be caused by the lack of support from the government or society, as a whole. While these people, under the first amendment freedoms of the freedom of speech and the freedom of press, have the right to express their thoughts and share them with the public, this does not necessarily mean that the media has to share those ideas as well. 

 

The media is an interesting topic of discussion when it comes to what is shown and what is not. Of course, there is the discussions of biased media and fake news, however, I feel that something that is not talked about enough is how the media likes to focus on very negative aspects of news like war, violence, and hatred. Rarely, do we ever see news that is positive or focused on change. For another example besides the anti-war voices who want to promote peace, the Black Lives Matter protests have a similar light in the media. Mostly, the media likes to focus on the violence protests and looting that happens, however, the vast majority of protests are very peaceful and done with absolute grace. But, do we see these peaceful protests in the news? No. 

 

I truly believe that the media doesn't have the intent of the people or keeping the people informed in mind. If this was truly the case, they would include positive news as well as negative news. Instead, the news focuses on headlines that catch attention. And if they do include positive stories, they tend to promote their main stories as violent and negative news, attracting the attention. Then, they save the positive stories for last, just to say that they included something positive. This disgusting way of controlling the media has taken over how we view the news and all that we can do is speak out.

POST THREE: Black Lives Matter and the First Amendment

 For this assignment, we were asked to choose a news story that involves the Black Lives Matter movement and analyze it through the many aspects of the First Amendment including the six freedoms of the First Amendment, the three bedrock principles about the First Amendment, and anything else we have learned in class thus far about the First Amendment. I decided to pick a recent article about a Vermont Roman-Catholic school that goes by the name of Rice Memorial High School. This school has banned the use of the Black Lives Matter signs and flags on their campus. 

A statement by the superintendent of Catholic Schools, Jeanne Gearon, reveals that the intentions behind this decision are not out of lack of support for the racial inequalities of the United States, however, it is to prevent any political messages on campus. They have also banned "Make America Great Again" flags and signs or anything that promotes political involvement on their campus. Looking at the situation through a lens of the First Amendment, this school is more than entitled to make this action. The very first and arguably most prominent reason is because the school is Private and not owned by the government. 

 

Instead of completely banning anything that promotes social justice or equality, the schools have created an alternative to the Black Lives Matter signs and flags that state "Racism has no home here." This alternative is also allowed due to the matters of the school being a private campus. This relates to the three bedrock principles of the First Amendment which state, "First Amendment protection is not absolute," "The First Amendment is not a shield against laws of general applicability," and "the Freedom of the Press is a fundamental personal right, and not an institutional one." The first principle ties into this situation directly, and proves that because of the dichotomy of public and private institutions that the protection of the First Amendment does not apply everywhere. 

Link to the article: https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2020/09/15/vt-catholic-schools-rice-high-school-blm-black-lives-matter-signs-promotes-racial-justice/5801957002/

POST TWO: The Supreme Court

 The United States Supreme Court was created in 1789, after the Revolutionary War and during the beginnings of America. It was created by Article 3 of the Constitution, stating "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." The very first action taken by the Supreme court was the Judiciary Act of 1789, in order to inaugurate George Washington into his role as President of the United States.  

 

While the Supreme Court is a powerhouse of multiple justices, the highest power resides in the position of the Chief Justice. The Chief Justice does multiple things that reside over the court including setting the agenda for meetings and when the Chief Justice is in the majority opinion, he or she can decide who will write the court's opinion. One of the most recently looked at positions of the Chief Justice is the presiding of impeachment trails. This was used for Presidents Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. 

The Supreme Court holds so much power that not many people realize. Without famous cases like Mapp vs. Ohio, Roe vs. Wade, and Obergefell v. Hodges, we would have limited rights as citizens and wouldn't be able to do things like not having criminal evidence obtained illegally or not being able to have an abortion or even get married in the case of same-sex couples.