12: The Permanence of the Internet

There is a TED Talk that focuses on the permanence of the Internet. It begins by connecting 4 words: Big Data, Tattoos, Immortality, and the Greeks. It was definitely an interesting way to begin the talk, but also a confusing one. I was curious from that point on.

The man speaking makes an analogy that calls your online presence an electronic tattoo. Tattoos tells a story and convey a message. They are part of our personality and communicate something about us. Our online presence does the same, but it makes the message even clearer and we do not know every single person that is seeing it.

The speaker continues on to say that these electronic tattoos that we all have are going to live much longer than we will. While we may not live forever, the online profile that we build is immortal. He draws on some stories from Greek mythology as well. He mentions Narcissus, which I think is the most relatable story for today's society. Everyone is always looking at their own image through all of their social media accounts. They may not exactly be in love with their own image, but they are constantly checking it and trying to improve the way they are portrayed through their online profile.

Narcissus looking at his reflection

Another good point he made is that immortality is not a good thing, but rather it is a threat. We may not care about the immortality of the internet when something good happens for us. However, an embarrassing video or post that we make can be devastating when thinking about how it will live forever online.

All in all, this video is a cautionary speech about how powerful the internet is and how we should think before putting so much of our lives on it. Our electronic tattoos will never disappear, whether we like it or not.

11: Echo Chamber

An echo chamber is defined as "an environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered." This idea relates to my last blog post because media consolidation can create an echo chamber. When one company owns a bunch of television stations, those stations can become an echo chamber that are all sharing the same news and opinions.

According to an article from the Guardian, the early days of the internet promised a space for new ideas to be exchanged freely and people to share their points of view.  It was an optimistic view that most held, but there were also some who saw the possibility that it was too good to be true.  A lot of revelations came in the year 2017 as far as cyberbullying, fake news, and misinformation.  While all of these are problematic topics, they become intensified by an echo chamber.  One bad story could be disproven by other more extensively researched articles.  The problem is that people tend to blindly believe things that align with their own views.  This leads to them only seeing their own perspective in the things they see online.  Whether what they read is true or not, they believe it because it seems correct.  By not seeing other options or perspectives, they do not give themselves the opportunity to figure out the truth.

It is very important to see different perspectives and stories that disagree with our own views.  It opens us up to more truth.  By seeking the truth instead of believing the first thing we see or that agrees with our beliefs, we get out of the echo chamber and actually learn the truth.  After you get out of your echo chamber, it becomes a habit to find true stories rather than immediately believing whatever you see.

10: Media Consolidation

Media Consolidation is defined as the "concentration of media ownership."  This means that fewer people and organizations are starting to control increasing shares of the mass media.  A recent study coauthored by Gregory J. Martin at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Joshua McCrain at Emory University analyzed the Sinclair Broadcast Group.  This company owns 191 television stations, which reach roughly 40% of Americans.  They noticed that as the company bought more stations, their news began to focus more on national news rather than local stories.  They saw that "a corporate take over also made stations slant more to the right politically."

Most people see television news as a reliable source, and this allows these media channels to set an agenda whether they purposely do it or not.  Having their stories skewed by a large company to only read certain stories or support a political candidate with their stories over another is a big deal.  This also creates an echo chamber because if one company owns 191 stations, they are all saying the same thing.  It makes it hard to find news sources with different perspectives to develop an opinion based on well-rounded reports.

Another example of media consolidation is Disney.  They are a large organization that owns many different companies.  They own ABC, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, and many more companies.  Along with these companies, they own Disney World and Disneyland.  They do not necessarily advertise all of the companies they own as Disney, but they control a lot of them and many of them are significantly large companies.

9: Facebook's Real Business and How your Privacy is Invaded

When creating an account with Facebook, or any other social media site for that matter, you agree to Terms and Services or some other document.  This document is a Contract of Adhesion, which means that the company has all of the bargaining power.  As someone joining the site, you do not have any power to change or negotiate that document.  You have the option to agree and join or decline and not join.  Most people tend to blindly accept without reading or understanding about the terms of their agreement.  From this point on, the website begins to data mine.  Every move made by each user is tracked and used as a data point to build a profile about you.  This profile is a combination of what you post, tracking malware that knows what you look at or search, and sometimes even other things you have on your device such as your location or other websites.  Through the third-party doctrine, the website is then allowed to share the profile of you that they have built with third-parties because by signing the agreement to join you waived any claim to privacy.  This is Facebook's real product.  They are not profitable simply from people interacting with each other.  They make money by tracking those interactions and selling a profile of each person to other companies that use that information to for behavioral/targeted marketing.  This is why we see advertisements for Oreo's after we talk about cookies or Nike advertisements when we post a picture from a sporting event.

For example, we can search the internet to see what the world knows about us.  This search would be a lot more in-depth for a company that is entirely focused on doing this for profit, but it is an interesting exercise nonetheless.  I was able to find my Instagram and Facebook accounts.  We can build a profile about me based on the posts, pictures, comments, and posts that I am tagged in.  I am not very active on either recently.  Looking at Instagram, it is clear that I visited Penn State recently and am from Philadelphia.  I like to post pictures with friends and there is the occasional karate video when you get farther down the page.  On my Facebook search, you can find mostly pictures from when I was about 13.  My Facebook posts and tags are almost entirely family-oriented.  There is a karate trophy and an ex-girlfriend in my related photos as well.  However, with a common name, you find a lot of other people along with yourself who tend to be more famous.  When searching variations of my name (Tom, Tommy, Thomas), I find a character Jake Gyllenhaal played in a movie called Brothers, a football player, and an author.  Despite these other people, a third-party is more than capable of finding information about you especially with the help of social media companies to build a profile about you that they can use for behavioral marketing.

8: Roger's Diffusion of Ideas as it relates to Facebook

Diffusion of Innovations breaks down a timeline of how every innovation or idea is adopted and ultimately matures. This social science theory was developed in 1962 by E.M. Rogers. It looks at how a product, idea, or behavior is adopted. In order for this to happen, people must do something differently than they previously had. This could be buying a new product, acting differently, or performing a new behavior. This process does not happen simultaneously for everyone. Within a population or social system, some people adopt innovations more quickly than others. There are 5 categories of adopters who act differently. It is important to understand all of them even though the majority of people fall into 2 of the 5 categories. Innovators are the first, and they are the smallest group. This group is interested in new ideas and wants to be the first to try out new innovations. They are willing to take risks, and companies do not need to do much work to interest them. Early Adopters is the second group. These people tend to be in leadership roles and embrace change. They do not need to be convinced to change, and they are influenced most effectively through how-to manuals and information sheets. Early Majority and Late Majority are the two largest groups, and they are fairly similar. These groups are willing to adopt after some convincing, and they are reached most effectively through success stories of the innovation being used by the earlier adopters. Laggards is the final group, and they are conservative and traditional people. They are skeptical of change, and it takes more work to convince them. Some of the best approaches for this group are fear appeals, statistics, and pressure from the other groups. While focusing on the majority groups may be enticing, they are mainly influenced by the opinions and reviews of the Innovators and Early Adopters. It is important to interact with all of these groups, but each may require different forms of convincing.

Illustration of Roger's Diffusion of Innovations

This theory of Diffusion of Innovations can be applied to any new product, behavior, or idea.  For example, Facebook began as a platform strictly for Harvard students.  College students are a great group of Innovators, especially for technology.  As Facebook expanded, more college campuses and some businesses began to use the social networking site.  After these Early Adopters used the site and the company made adjustments, they began to build momentum and were able to release the site for use to anyone with a valid email address over the age of 13.  Now, the Early Majority were using the site.  It was available to many more people, but not everyone immediately made an account.  As more people began to use the site, they shared their thoughts and opinions of it with friends and family.  This motivated the Late Majority to make an account.  Laggards may still be holding out, but some have absolutely been swayed into joining the site.  With the diffusion of Facebook's site, it currently has 2.37 billion active monthly users and is the largest social networking site today.

7: Protecting Dissent - An Important Value of Free Expression

As discussed in this week's Media Law & Literacy class, there are several important values that are necessary under the First Amendment to maintain truly free expression.  These 8 values are: the Marketplace of Ideas, Participation in Self-Government, Stable Change, Individual Self-Fulfillment, Check on Governmental Power, Promote Tolerance, Promote Innovation, and Protect Dissent.  While all of these are important, I will be focusing on the idea of protecting dissent for this blog post.

As the photo above says, "speech that everyone agrees with needs no protection."  It is important to protect dissent because it is by definition "the expression or holding of opinions at variance with those previously, commonly, or officially held."  Everyone has their own beliefs, opinions, preferences, etc.  We are all unique individuals.  There are very few things, if any, that everyone agrees on.  If there is an agreement, people have their own perspective of the issue even when they ultimately agree.  Every issue has multiple sides, and it is important to protect all of them equally.  If the minority in an argument is silenced, America would not be the land of the free.  As time passes, that minority opinion may turn into a majority opinion.  It is essential that all opinions are shared and heard because it leads to the best outcome.  When brainstorming, all ideas are laid out to pick the best one.  With dissent, everyone is sharing their opinion and they may have a perspective that was not addressed.  We are all entitled to our own thoughts and beliefs, even when they go against the popular opinion.

6: Facebook was an accident?

In 2003, Mark Zuckerberg was a second year student studying computer science at Harvard University.  He was ambitious, and his drive sometimes pushed him to take actions of questionable ethics in order to complete a project.  In October of his second year, he developed a website called Facemash.  This website was for photo comparison, and users would rate 2 side-by-side pictures as "hot" or "not."  It was only functioning for a few days before executives from Harvard shut it down.  They shut it down because Zuckerberg populated the website by hacking into Harvard's security network and using all of the student ID photos as his website's photos.  He faced serious charges, as well as potential expulsion, but eventually all charges were dropped.

In 2004, Zuckerberg created a new website and called it TheFacebook.  The website was a social networking site for Harvard students only, named after directories that all students received.  It was launched in February, and again he was accused of being unethical in its production.  3 other students accused him of stealing their idea that they had named HarvardConnection.  They filed a lawsuit, but the issue was handled outside of the courtroom.

TheFacebook was slowly expanded and other universities began to gain access.  Later that year, Sean Parker became the company's president and changed the name to Facebook, as it is known today.  In 2006, Accel Partners invested $12.7 million into the company.  This allowed them to expand to high school students, and eventually anyone with a valid email address over the age of 13 was allowed to join the site later that year.  In 2009, Facebook was named the world's most used social networking service.

According to an article about Facebook's history, the site's profits, as well as Zuckerberg's antics, led to him becoming the world's youngest multi-billionaire.  He has made many charitable donations and pledges.  However, some people are still unsure about the ethics of his rise to fame.  While making donations and helping the needy is noble, his actions since 2003 have not all been completely honest or favorable.  Whether people agree with his methods or not, he created an extremely successful company that made him billions of dollars.  Either way, he has come a long way from his Facemash idea to a global social networking site.