The Progressive Era

The Progressive Era

After reviewing both ANTIWAR.COM and The American Conservative we notice that both websites have strong takes on war and that they are against it. But what makes these two sites different is that The American Conservative is more right winged, where as ANTIWAR.COM seems to be more left winged. Although both sites have the same anti-war message they highlight it in two different ways. 

One of the biggest things about the content on these two sites is, yes we hear about it, but we never seen the anti-war point of view. Mainstream media acknowledges the Ukraine war, the bombing in Gaza, and other horrific things that are happening in our world, but we never see people who are speaking out against all of it. 

Anti-war has always been a big thing because the public can't fully agree on everything so the country isn't going to be all pro-war or vise versa. United States citizens in WWI and WWII both expressed their opinions on anti-war saying that America shouldn't get involved, and that we shout just do nothing. However, America does a good job at publicizing patriotism which tends to create an untied front within our citizens. In the beginning of WWII U.S citizens were divided to three opinions; pro-war, anti-war, and pro-aid (helping our allies with resources). With all of these different point of views, although we disagreed we co-exisited. Unfortunately the citizens came to an almost full united from of pro-war for WWII after the Pearl Harbor bombings which shows that certain events can change our perspective on situations. 

Although we never see any anti-war speeches, articles, protests in our mainstream media we still know it exists, just not at a grand scale. We don't tend to see this type of content in our newspapers and news channels because it tends to affect the public perception and influence. Many major media outlets have financial ties to other large corporations therefore negative influences on war would effect the media outlets source of finances,

Another reason we don't acknowledge anti-war ideologies in mainstream media is in order to not portray out military and government in a poor light. As I said before, the media heavily influences our thoughts and opinions; to highlight anti-war content on a platform like ABC News it may cause our government and military to be viewed as a system that like morals. It is the media's job to help encourage our patriotism and American citizens.

Overall, although I think reading and hearing different views on big events going on in our world, such as wars, is incredibly beneficial to help the public form their own opinion on the matter; I do understand why the mainstream media choosing to ignore it instead of highlighting it. 

Eoto 2 Reaction Post

 EOTO #2 Reaction Post

During my peers EOTO presentations three presentations really caught my attention; those topics were whistleblowing, alternative media and citizen journalism, and gatekeeping and agenda setting. In each of these presentations I learned new theories and terms I didn't know before. 

Whistleblowing

The definition of whistleblowing is someone who reports waste, fraud, abuse, corruption or danger to public health and safety to someone who is in a position to rectify the wrongdoing. Their main purposes are to be transparent by exposing the wrong doings of others. White-blowers act as the behind the scenes information for journalists and news outlets. They could do things like report people in power, regular citizens, anyone they deem important to spread news about. 

Their main impact can be good because it helps expose wrongdoings to protect people as well as promoting fairness and accountability. Although whistleblowing can be seen as very beneficial it also comes with risks such as losing your job, legal consequences, threats to public safety, and other consequences that can harm your reputation. 

Alternative Media and Citizen Journalism 

Alternative Media is defined as a non traditional source of news and information that challenges the narrative presented by mainstream media; some examples include podcasts, video platforms, and independent journalism. Which leads us into our next term which is citizen journalism which is the practice of ordinary individuals reporting on news events, often using technology like social media or blogs, rather than traditional media outlets. When looking at these two terms defined we can see exactly why the go hand in hand. 

Although alternative media and citizen journalism allows for the public to vocalize their opinion through journalism there are pros and cons to both terms. Some of the pros include social movements, accountability, communication, diverse perspectives, and independence. On the other some cons are potential misinformation, biased reviews, defamation, and negative influence. 

Gatekeeping and Agenda Setting

The term gatekeeping is the activity of controlling and limited the general access to something; a example would be if you asked someone where their pants were from and the didn't want to tell you because they didn't want you owning the same pair as them. Agenda setting is a communication based theory that explains how media influences what we think is important. These two terms go together because they both explain how media influences the public perception.

Gatekeeping in the media can cause people to decide which stories are newsworthy which determines public awareness. It can shape perceptions by choosing to highlight or ignore certain events and topics going on in our word. While agenda setting does the similar act of viewing those topics that are being highlighted as important while not really caring about the topics the media chooses to not highlight. 

Age of AI

 Age of AI and Privacy Concerns

Over the past couple of years AI has grown and developed, it has been deemed useful but also rising some concerns for peoples jobs, students cheating, etc. After watching Frontline PBS: The Age of AI documentary they highlighted AI's effect on the impact on employment, ethical and societal impacts, and surveillance and privacy concerns.

One thing that frightened me most was the surveillance and privacy concerns. One of the main concerns to the public is how governments use AI to monitor individuals. In the documentary they talk about China's usage of AI to surveil their people. China has multiple things like facial recognition through their security cameras that can detect every person the camera catches. They also have a social credit systems that assigns scores based on behaviors as well as monitoring minorities with their country. Although these issues don't affect me personally they still make me uncomfortable for Chinese citizens because their government shouldn't need to monitor them this much. 

Although not as extreme the United States and European countries use AI on their citizens as well. They use it for things such as license plate readers, surveillance drones, and predictive policing which is a system that uses data to identify potential criminals. So yes, the United States usage of AI isn't as extreme as China's, it also could make people feel just as uncomfortable. The predictive policing, although could be useful in some cases also feels like a big invasion of privacy because it allows the government to go through your data and analyze it. So things such as google searches, apps, texts, etc could all potentially be used to surveil you as a potential criminal. 

As we all know AI is here to stay and it will continue to grow. Although there are a lot of concerns around what people will use it for, at the moment there isn't a lot we can do to regulate it since it's still such a new concept. However we can acknowledge how some people may use AI for invasive things and continue to stay aware on the issue. 

Diffusion

Diffusion of Innovations: Instagram

The Diffusion of innovations theory according to Wikipedia is, "...a theory that seeks to explain why, and at what rate new technology spread." To look at the diffusion theory I want to highlight the innovation of Instagram. Instagram is one of the post popular apps in social media today, it is a platform that allows you to share photos via a post or a story to show all your friends what you're up to, the app also allows your to share content with others such as videos and pictures. 

Instagram was released on October 6th, 2010 and was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. The two first photo up a location based check in app called 'Burbn', however the noticed the photo sharing aspect of Burbn was more popular, so they took the idea of sharing photos and created 'Instagram'.

The app gained its popularity from its main feature of sharing photos in a quick manner, in fact Instagram gained one million users just after three months of people released. A lot of people started to use Instagram as a way to show their friends what they're up to; if they're at a coffee shop they'll post that photo, out shopping, on vacation, etc. We as people love sharing the exciting things in our lives and instagram gave the people a platform to do that.

I go Instagram back in 2015 so I've had the opportunity to see the platform grow over the course of 10 years. My original use for Instagram was to post silly selfies, slime videos, and photos of my Barbie's onto a private account that only follows my family and a couple of my friends. 10 years later I only post events I go to such as concerts, formals, dinners, but sometimes there just a casual post for no event at all. Instagrams purpose has no changed but the way I use it has. I will now only post "content" if I'm doing something exciting for if the photos come out really good, which were not concerns of mine back in 2015.

Although Instagram is a fun form of social media, between posting photos and sharing videos with friends, it also has negatives. Since everyone is constantly posting photos, you find yourself constantly comparing your life to the lives of others. If someone I follow is out going to different countries, concerts, other fun events, I find myself wondering why I'm stuck in my room doing nothing exciting. But I have to remind myself that I have good opportunities coming and that just because I'm not always doing something exciting, doesn't mean I'm not happy. 

Another issue is the constant comparison of like counts, I find myself beating myself up for not having enough likes while other people get hundreds of likes within the span of an hour. Comparing isn't healthy. In May of 2021 Instagram acknowledged the issue of like counts and choose to implement a feature where the creator can turn off their like count to the public eye, this feature is a life saver that I use all the time.

Overall Instagram plays into the diffusion of innovations theory because we as people are and always have been nosy as to what other people are doing in their lives. This platform allows for the indirect communication of just liking someone's post and having it count as you acknowledging them even if you don't leave a comment of actual words. I think we like the fact that this communication is so effortless and not at all time consuming that we gravitate towards it.