Abby Holanda: Media Law & Literacy

In the article, How One Mom Talks to her Sons About Hate on the Internet, Joanna Schroeder, mother of two boys, talks about the things her children see online & what it has done to their ideas about the world. To start, her sons proposed some controversial questions, which naturally made her a sk her own questions. One of the main ideas in this text is that social media exposed these young white boys to some very right-wing ideas. For example, one of her sons asked why black people can use white culture but white people could not use black culture. This question raises many disputable conversations, but she simply asked her son if she could see the post about it. She did not want to come off as judgemental, so that her sons will continue being open with her. The main question Schroeder proposed is: what kind of content are current children looking at, and how does it change their own values and ideas? As a parent, she taught her children their morals and values, and over

One of the largest issues with the United States political parties is that the American people never know what information is actually true versus false. We commonly hear the term “fake news” from our president, but how do we know if it is actually fake? The answer is we do not fully know, and one of the causes for this could be due to the illusory truth effect. The illusory truth effect is the act of repeating certain information until people actually start to believe it. In the article, Illusory Truth, Lies, and Political Propaganda: Part 1 by Joe Pierre, he talks about when this effect is at its strongest. He claims, “The illusory truth effect tends to be strongest when statements are related to a subject about which we believe ourselves to be knowledgeable, and when statements are ambiguous such that they aren’t obviously true or false at first glance” (Pierre). This effect seems most applicable to our political parties, and especially on the news channels.  The illu

With the new invention of technology, people have been more open about themselves and less private with their lives. Social media has allowed for millions of people to post about where they are, what they are doing, who they are with, etc. However, people are starting to dig deeper into the private lives of others with the use of wiretapped phones and tracking devices.  Although technology is probably one of the greatest inventions in human history, it has more recently been causing many problems. An example of this is cyberbullying. This is a new term made to describe harassment through technology. There have been thousands of cases where people have taken photos or leaked information about others in order to ruin their lives. An example of this is Darieth Chisolm, and in her TED talks she talks about how her ex-boyfriend created a website with her name, and posted explicit naked pictures of her while she was asleep. For months after Darieth was struggling with depressi

In today’s society, technology has become an essential part of people's everyday lives. People cannot go a day, let alone a few hours without checking their notifications and social media, myself included. Even when my phone does not buzz with notifications, I constantly check it, anticipating some sort of interaction with my friends. In Sherry Turkle’s TED talk, she talks about how technology has negatively impacted today’s society. People of all ages in modern day society are addicted to their phones, and because of this people have lost social skills, changed who they are, and use technology for companionship.  Sherry Turkle has been doing research about technology and its effects on our social skills for years. Through her studies, she found that people prefer to talk over the phone and through social media rather than face to face interactions. During her studies, she found that an 18 year old boy said, “someday, someday, but certainly not now, I would

As a teenager living through the booming age of technology and social media, I myself am a big user of social media. I have used just about every form of social media- Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, Tik Tok- the list goes on. I use social media as a way to check up on my friends and family to see what they are doing, and I also follow a few celebrities that I consider to be role models. Social media started as a fun way to pass time, however millions of people are now obsessed with it. People are constantly checking their phones for notifications from their social media and spend hours on it at a time. I can even admit to myself that I have accidentally spent more time than I wanted on social media because I get caught up looking through so many accounts.   People’s social media pages are basically giving a shallow explanation of who they are- or who they want to be. The content of the posts depends on which site you are posting on. For example, I

One of the more recent innovations that has become adopted is touch screen electronics, specifically the iPhone. This new technology could be represented by the diffusion of innovation theory as it has in recent years become a product owned by over a 100 million people in the United States. This product obviously was not an immediate success, it took many years for innovators to market, perfect, and change the product to fit the needs of its users. In 2007, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone to the public. This product was designed to maximize efficiency and condense the needs of other electronics into one. Early adopters gravitated to this product due to how different it was compared to everything else on the market. The iPhone was almost fully touchscreen, something people had not yet seen before. However, this new technology was not immediately accepted. One of the most personal examples of this was my father. My father always used his Blackberry phone (competitor of t