EOTO Presentation 2

 One topic I thought was interesting throughout a team's presentation was cancel culture. As described by the presentation, the term "cancel" was first created in the 1980s as an odd term for breaking up with someone but soon over the next recent year it would be considered to mean something else. This would mainly be on social media such as Tiktok, Twitter, and Instagram. Cancel culture nowadays is seen as to hold people accountable for their offensive words or actions. This type of culture is used to punish unjustly by others. 

On the other side of the spectrum there are people who do not believe that cancel culture even exists, but at this point it is seen daily. Unfortunately, cancel culture has been seen as doing more harm than good over the recent years and has greatly impacted us as a society as a whole. Sometimes people use cancel culture as a way to get rid of people they do not like for no reason at all. Usually, people come to their senses and see that a person is attempting to get canceled for no reason and there will typically be a person coming to their defense. In a global sense, only in America is cancel culture considered a thing. 

Another point of interest I found to have captured my attention during the presentation is Citizen Journalism. It is defined as journalism that is conducted by the people who are not professionals but distribute information by using websites and social media. Anyone can be a citizen journalist and citizen journalism has grown to become increasingly popular over the years, many people enjoy being one. One of the biggest advantages is that since citizen journalism is not done by professional journalists, it gives average people to highlight non popular stories. They way our society has adapted over the years from social media, cancel culture demonstrates that we are on a path of ongoing change and development in modern society. 

Age of Ai

 Living in a new age with Ai is an immensely complex and diverse world. People all around us are still struggling to adapt to a place where technology is constantly surrounding us more than ever before. Ai is on a vast scale of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Before we get into that, let's explore the basics, so, what exactly is Ai? Ai is a set of tools that maximizes objective function. In simpler terms it is artificial intelligence that allows computers and machines to mimic problem-solving similarly to the human mind. There are many benefits of living in a world that has Ai, this includes 24/7 availability, digital assistance, new inventions, fast decision making, and error-free processing. Where there are pros there are also cons, since Ai is extremely innovative this takes people out of jobs resulting in unemployment, this will lack creativity and future improvement. 

With this being said, we have lost essentially all of our rights to privacy, this is known as us entering the new age of "surveillance capitalism". There have been numerous cases of where online users believe their right to privacy and personal information is protected, unfortunately that has been proven to not be the case. For example, Facebook was fined $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission on the continuation of privacy violations. Google even tracks every web search you complete, doing this creates a sort of profile of what future recommendations you would like to know about. They do this in order to collect data and keep users invested. This personally scares me very much because even if you are under the impression that your personal data is being protected, is isn't. Luckily, you are able to explicitly tell websites not to sell your personal information and you can ask what they have on you. Since it is ultimately your right to know what information is out there about you.  

Sadly it is not like that everywhere, in China the citizens are trapped in their own country by Ai and technology overall. People of China get their faces regularly scanned by Ai wherever they go and are forced to show their Id. They cannot walk freely but instead are confined and live every day of their lives in fear oh what could happen. From this instance, China has been using the Belton road to spread influence globally. At this point in time, technology has become a tool of control for authoritarian government rather than for democratic government. Interestingly enough Ai has played a good and bad role in online security and identity theft. Over the course of 2022 there was a 50% increase in Americans experiencing identity theft. Ai has been very helpful in preventing identity fraud. Although it has been helpful, in recent news Ai can now replicate any humans voice just by providing it with a small sample and Ai will replicate it instantly. As of now if anything Ai seems to be providing more harm than good for our society. 

My Relationship With Technology

 Over the years technology has proved to be increasingly advanced and effective, but is this helping our society in a negative or positive way? My answer? I believe it is both. In my generation, Gen Z we grew up with technology to a certain extent. On June 29th 2007 the first iphone  was created and forever changed technology and people's relationships with technology. Personally, I think my relationship with technology is relatively healthy compared to others, whenever I go out with friends or family or when in school I make sure my phone is put away and I have my full attention on other people and making sure I am fully involved in what is happening around me. On the other hand, whenever I happen to lose my phone, I have an extensive panic attack for the sole reason that everything is on that phone. All of my contacts, photos, social media, reminders, notes, etc. Many important items are on that small device and if I ever lost it my day would be ruined. At this point in my life, technology is taking up too much of my time in a negative way and is immensely misleading. Many major points are going on in our society and most of it is misleading. I have to complete extensive research in order to make sure I am receiving the correct information along with being informed about all sides. That way my facts are the most correct they can be and not biased. If anything at this time in our society it is way easier to become misled instead of properly informed. With how far we are progressing it does have me very worried about what is next in store for us. 

Just yesterday snapchat released your own personal AI chat bot that you can talk to at any time. This chat bot is very scary because they can grasp your personal information extremely and has your location. If you are blunt and ask this chat box "do you have my location" the chat box will reply "I do not have access to your location", but if you tell this chat box that you love Chinese food, the chat box will show you a recommended list of the Chinese restaurants in your area. This pops the question of if AI has your location even if you have it off on snapchat, what other thing is this AI chat bot capable of? People are so excited of this new chat bot but where does the line get drawn here. Or do we only draw the line when we figure that it is too late. With my friends I do not get too concerned about their personal use of technology since they are very conscious of what they download, when they use their phone and the information they give out. I do still think my family needs to alter their relationship with technology. For example, my parents get misinformed more than not about technology and the effects it has on our life but they refuse to change their ways but that is simply because they are more stubborn people. With my sisters, they heavily depend on their use of phones daily and it is constantly attached to their hip. Sometimes I even cannot get their attention for the sole purpose that they are looking at something on instagram or snapchat that has a better grasp of their attention than I do. Mad World remix of moby video does a great representation of how we are prisoners to our phone screen. We no longer care about what is actually out there in the real world, but instead we are so caught up with what is behind a digital screen.  

An article from MedicalNewsToday  released an article back in 2020 describing our relationship with technology. It states that yes it is great people are more connected than ever, we can call a loved one from thousands of miles away, but at what cost? A number of issues have occurred since the first iphone was released in 2007. These problems include but are not limited to isolation, depression, anxiety, eyestrain, and much much more. Moreover depression and anxiety have become increasingly more common today because of technology and it has been growing at an alarming rate. Another topic that does not get discussed as often as it should is people's online footprint. Anything you post is out there forever and you cannot take it back. More times than not this can be used against you, there have been countless times where a high schooler will post something inappropriate (racist, sexist, etc.) it happens to go viral because if this instance. Furthermore their future gets ruined because of what they posted and it will always go back to them. This one of many instances where being aware of your digital footprint is crucial. I always make sure to be aware of what I post and make sure that it cannot negatively impact me for future prospective jobs. If an employer were to google me they would see my instagram and some of my family members. There is nothing on instagram or social media that would impact me in a bad way and I will do my best to make sure it stays that way.

Overall, my message about technology is that it has great benefits that help our society greatly,  but with those benefits there are also downsides. It is important to not be misled, keep track of how much time you use technology, and be aware of what you post online. Nowadays it is very easy to get caught in all the new technology but it is even more important to keep yourself in check. At this point it is a waiting game to see where technology will take us in the future. 

How Gatekeeping and Agenda Setting Affect Today's Society

There will be two theories that I will be discussing and thy also coincide with each other, those two theories are Gatekeeping and Agenda Setting. Firstly, there is Gatekeeping, Gatekeeping was a theory started in 1947 by a social psychologist named Kurt Lewin. It is defined as "The activity of trying to control who gets particular resources, power, or opportunities, and who does not". In more simple terms, the media chooses what information gets released and which does not. This is used as a filter in order to maintain a particular bias. Gatekeeping is mainly about control and making sure the majority of people have a skewed opinion on a certain idea, person, situation, etc. This implies that essentially Gatekeeping is bad and this affects society more than people realize. 

More specifically, we see this everyday through various forms of Social Media. Social Media has become the main form of communication among news rooms, media and journalists. We tend to see journalists posting stories using specific language, presentation, and even carefully choosing which sources are linked in the article to draw the reader in to frame their opinion. This is one of many examples where we see how Gatekeeping is doing more harm than good in any situation. 

 Gatekeeping is definitely seen as classist and racist in one form or another. In my generation it is seen as blocking people out and only allowing a "close knit" community to experience or have something. One term that is used often that I have seen is the phrase "nepo baby", for people unfamiliar with the term it is a child of a celebrity that have very successful careers because of their famous parents. We see this all of the time, including in the infamous show Euphoria where actress Maude Apatow who stars as Lexi in the show. In real time, Maude's parents are comedian Judd Apatow and actress Leslie Mann, many people did not know that those were Maude's parents and this information went viral across all social media. Rumors sparked that maybe Maude did not deserve this role and could have taken it away from someone who was more deserving than she was. Since she grew up wealthy and already has parents in the industry which helps her chances of getting that role significantly rather than someone who was just starting out and does not have someone already in the industry. That is only one of the many examples where people see this as Gatekeeping in one of many forms. 

Now getting into the social media part of it, how does this influence Generation Z? There is a new social media platform once known as musically now referred to as Tiktok. This platform allows a new job called influencers, this job entails endorsing different products and working with various brands but mostly makeup companies. The problem with this issue in my generation is the people who usually end up becoming influencers are white, blonde, skinny, and blue eyed. It does not have much room for minorities to have a say in these jobs or products because their videos do not get shown as much as what can people see as "ideal". Luckily, there are people attempting to break this toxic cycle and have influencers from all different types of backgrounds, body type, skin color and much more. 

Secondly, there is Agenda Setting, this was first theorized by Dr. Maxwell McCombs and Dr. Donald Shaw. It is the "ability to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda", the media uses Agenda Setting to essentially communicate what issues are important and relevant. There are three types of Agenda Setting, 1. Public Agenda Setting, this is where the public determines which stories are important 2. Media Agenda Setting: it is when the media decides which agenda for stories is important and lastly 3. Policy Agenda Setting, both public and media agenda's influence the public policy makers. This implies that Agenda Setting is relatively good, it only brings to light what people think are the most pressing issues at this time, but this can also be seen as a negative. There is a possibility that other problems might get overlooked and in doing that they get increasingly worse. 

This is extremely prevalent in our society today, Agenda Setting determines where we focus our attention to and Gatekeeping will frame our opinion on that certain issue. Both of these theories have their  positive traits along with their downfalls. Like it or not we have these theories and they will continue to remain in our society.