Abby Holanda: Media Law & Literacy

Growing up in the generation of technology, using devices has always been a usual part of our daily lives and I could not imagine it any other way. My generation was the last to use flip phones and I even remember getting my very first iPhone and how excited I was. My two older sisters, who are a part of the millennial generation, did not grow up with technology the way that I did. Because of that, we tend to treat technology differently. For example, I use my phone much more often than they do and I am also very much more present in the social media community. I check my social media accounts every few hours, if not hourly, while they only check there's a few times a day at most. They always tell me that I am on my phone too much and that my relationship with my phone is unhealthy, but I don’t think it is. Compared to some of my friends and other people my age I am considered to barely be on my phone at all.  The reason I check my social media so often is b...

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 ...

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 depr...