EOTO 2: Reactions

 

One of the presentations that truly struck a chord with me came from the theories group 3 represented. The biggest one that I found to be very interesting was the Spiral of Silence. The concept was created by Elisabeth Noelle Nuemann and she was a German political scientist from the early 1900s and she created this concept. The Spiral of Silence is described as people or a group being less likely to voice an opinion when the majority thinks something else. It is found that the inkling of fear that comes from even the thinking of a separate opinion from a group is what causes a person to go down in the spiral of silence in order to either fit in with the status quo or ultimately keep the relationships that they have formed in a good place. We see this when it comes to politics.

A lot of friend groups have different views and I think that we all subconsciously think about how we can not talk about the views, especially in this year of the utmost importance, or we will create a rift that may not be repairable so we keep the views separate from the friendships. With that being said we notice that those who do voice opinions become isolated from society and that strikes up another fear which also leads to the spiral of silence. 

This fear is the association of negative consequence with the voicing of opinions going beyond that of just being isolated from friends, colleagues, and family. This fear is associated with quality of life and sometimes jobs as well. We see this often and don't even realize that we are seeing it or witnessing it. There are times where I feel like I shouldn't speak on topics for the sake of holding friendships or just staying publically neutral under the looks of so many people throughout my everyday life. It was interesting to learn and it also is interesting to realize. We live in a time where speaking our mind will undoubtedly be met with backlash which isn't necessarily a bad thing in some cases.

Blog Post 7: Antiwar (opinionated piece)

The biggest take away from this class is going to be the fact that there is no trust that can be instilled in any form from anywhere. There is bliss in not knowing. That's how a lot of people feel and thus approach the way that they look into the government and also how they look into the media. This class really opened my eyes to the true realities of what is going on around the world and how the US has its hand in a lot of wars and things that we are told that they don’t. 

Every 4 years there is a big emphasis on pulling out of wars and although we may pull out a little bit we are never fully out of the wars or the countries that have been destroyed by the decades of turmoil that has faced them from trying to mess with the US. We look at these sites and see that the top stories are about the US but they aren't all. These sites open our eyes to the detriment that is taking place all across the world from Canada to Iraq. These governments don't want the people to know what they are involved in. Just as obscure as these websites are, is the information we get regarding what our country is involved in most of the time. We as the people aren't privy to the things we should know like when we drop a bomb on another place, meaning that we as the citizens should know the places that our county has made into our enemy. We should know what we are facing and how we are going about the issue instead of finding out after the action has already been done. 

The First Amendment's main speaking point is that debate and discourse on public issues is open. The government does however fully have within its power to limit free speech if it is a circumstance that presents a danger to the nation's security. It seems as though these antiwar sites stay under wraps because the government sees them as a “threat” to the security of the country again instilling the concepts of being on a need to know basis and discourse between us and those in charge. 

Blog post 5: Privacy

 The information discovered through the videos almost reminds me of some of the issues that we are currently facing in relation to the age of AI that we live in. Privacy is at the forefront of many issues today. Everyone is starting to realize that we don't have the privacy that we originally assumed we had when it came to looking on social media and looking online. The thing about that is, we are doing it to ourselves. We most of the time dont know what we are allowing these big brands to have access to by clicking that button to move a pop up off the screen.

The fact of the matter is these companies aren't the only ones taking our privacy and running with it but the third party companies associated are too. The government needs to have more cybersecurity infrastructure in place for this exact situation. For years that has been a talking point across the state of technology upgrading and becoming more advanced. I think we are beginning to see that become a priority by the blocking of tiktok. I think the issue shouldn't have had to come from the US being scared of another country seeing our privacy and gathering our information when the real enemy is most of the time in our own country. To protect ourselves we need to look at what we share and what we give permissions to. We also need to go back to elementary school computer safety courses for people of this generation. Before we click on sites and ads, we need to ensure that they are safe and overall just know what we are clicking on before we click. Its all about safety right now and monitoring what we do for our own accord because no one else is really trying to help us when it comes to upholding and advancing the privacy that is necessary online.

EOTO 2: Terms and Concepts

MSM is an acronym used to describe mainstream media which is classified as the collective various large media masses that influence many people and shape the prevailing currents of thoughts and culture. The current state of the world and in specific this country, is overly saturated with information. Mainstream media is something to look towards that helps to better explain our understanding of the world. News in itself is a glimpse into the values, hardships, good and overall changes within society. It informs while giving an effort at keeping diversity of views and opinions at the forefront of the media distributed. Within this generation and century, those true intentions of values and integrity have been called up to be explored under a close and watchful eye. Mainstream Media was built upon set of values which had the goal of serving the public and the publics interest. 

In recent years, this set of values has swayed beyond a return point especially currently with the state of the political times we are in. With that comes the sway of peoples votes as well as the sway of violent behaviors and evaluations while also destroying the first level of basic understanding that goes into that of societal groups and societal opinions. A very key quote that I found by Jim Morrison said that, "whoever controls the media controls the mind". This quote is a direct output of how putting the wrong people in the places of control can ruin us as a whole society, That quote also plays into the various cons that are associated. Along with that comes the fact that media empowers the already hateful while spreading hate and false information that homogenizes the culture and overtakes personal connections to effectively ruin those aforementioned connections.  Society is spread into sub groups. That meaning that the spread of society is so vast from the rich to the poor and from the young to old that everyone within these sub groups hears different things through the media causing a complete disconnect between each group in society.  

This is the evidence of how the hateful and disrespectful feelings, thoughts and actions are spurred up and ultimately spilled because there is so much that mainstream media causes that is only in place to tear down instead of build up those connections between the sub groups. Being a minority in this country, I sometimes feel that mainstream media destroys our sub group more than that of others. I feel as though because of the path that this country has gone down in recent years (continues to go down), there is no way for us to trust the media right now and that is because the media has been so tainted and utterly taken over by people who have terrible intentions. There is no other way to look at things. To explain that point I think the perfect thing is the state of the political concept in America and also the recent incident at a college. Gettysburg college had an incident where a student of color was chased down and forcefully had carved a racial slur into their chest. I look at this and I personally feel scared for how we have gone into what feels like a regression after on all accounts. This fact in its entirety is what the mainstream media spews though. To African American and people of minority in general it spews facts for us to be frightened and hold our friends and families closer while for people on the opposite end of the spectrum, empowerment and protection is spewed. The fact of the matter is we all will never be on the same playing ground nor will it ever be close to being equal but media early on had the chance to change that. It had the chance to be something different and in that it did change things and to not discredit its entirety, it continues to change things little by little. The question I'm left with after this project is whether my entire conception of media changing things for the better is real because the more research and time that I've been able to put into looking at it, although there are some good things it does partake in, the overall arching things that it does is bad. This generation is easily influenced and when you encourage kids in this generation with ideas that are negative and give them a sense of invincibility who isn't going to take that? Furthermore, when you give them that sense of invincibility after having not experienced life in its entirety, what person wouldn't truly think, consider and sometimes act upon the things that are being spewed and exhibited?

Blog 10: Age of AI

We live in a time where technology is something that is so strong in our society. It has infiltrated everything that we used to think of as being self-sufficient. From class work when we break down the use of chat gpt to the supermarkets where there are becoming less and less workers being physically in the stores. This in itself is such a scary feat to consider and be able to take in general. The 1 hour and 25 minute mark of the video is what made me really realize the treacherous waters that we are in. It was said essentially that the power AI holds is something that is at a rising boiling point. At the current moment, the use is in a relatively solid state where it is being used to help a lot of people although we have those who use it for ulterior motives like in the education setting. 

The part that speaks to me and scares me is that it was said that the power of AI is so expensive on the flip side, that if someone who controls the tools of AI does not have the interest or values that are essential to sustaining something as big as our democracy and how we run as a society then we are all screwed in one way or another because as much as it has the power for good it also has the power to completely demolish what little semblance of a balanced and safe society we have left. I ask myself the question of how can we stop the power of AI? How can we rein it in to not be controlled but be better monitored because of how dangerous of an effect it could impose? These questions for many raise the opposite end that it is in fact doing good for us so we should let it run as it runs for now and with that I can see the appeal. 

AI, surprisingly enough, is truly enhancing that of privacy because it is a fully automated system for the most part that can monitor things in the background and safe guard against those privacy concerns. I believe this fact to be the same with national security and identity and/or personal security too based off the fact that it is always in a state of constant monitoring. AI has some good aspects to it but we cant discredit the fear and the turmoil that it could and is almost surely going to cause.