I decided to help my mother and attempt to try and assist her in understanding the severity of sharing misinformation on her social media and how to improve her approach overall. As stated in my previous Module 6 post, the first step in this process, was to be honest and respectful, so I made sure that my chosen words were not demeaning or misunderstood in any way.

I then showed her multiple times where she had recently shared misinformed posts for her followers, and I explained why these posts she was sharing were not credible enough for her to even read, let alone to share on social media. Next, I described what has helped me and fellow journalists abide by a criteria to have credible sourcing through our social media, which are the SPJ Code of ethics that have been the pillars to journalism and what can help as a guide to follow for not just her, but all of us.

We then went through her social media following list, and eliminated double or triple pages of the same account. I explained to her there are verified pages that are credible enough with just that one page she follows, having too many duplicated pages of a news network or any form of media outlet can lead to confusion and sharing false information.

I reiterated to her how costly it can be to share misinformation, especially because social media is the place many people turn to for recent news. Just as much as she use to rely on Walter Cronkite every night for accurate news, people depend on social media daily for world news the same way. So it is essential to be accurate and verify more often before actually posting something.

Overall it was a productive talk, and it was civil between us. In the past, when social media was just starting, I remember getting impatient at times with trying to “teach her” how to use the different types of social media pages she wanted to be a part of. Now, as I have gotten older, I realize how much more effective it is to teach someone with a lot more patience initially. In the end, I left her knowing that this is all a learning process, and it would take us multiple times of repetition to make sure sharing accurately and effectively is more her style. I also mentioned to her, if she ever needed, she shouldn’t hesitate to call me and ask a simple credible source or verification question. I rather her do that than share another misinformed post.

The way law and media intertwine with each other and affect one another can be not only a confusing concept to grasp, but also an incredibly overwhelming one. Being a very “surface level” internet user myself, the role that the law plays in media is something that I have never given much thought to aside from clicking the “I Agree” box on whatever terms and conditions I need to accept.

I know I am agreeing to something, but is it really going to affect my daily life? Is anything I am doing on the internet so interesting or different from what anyone else is doing that I need to worry about the laws? Why would law and media be at all relevant to my personal life?

While working through module 7’s content, I first and foremost found myself a bit overwhelmed by the amount of gray areas between the media and law. In particular, the article published by The Washington Post pertaining to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act really made my head spiral a bit. It seems to me that the law’s place in media is something that is being defined and redefined quite often, and something that users, creators, and owners alike are all a bit unsure about.

The idea that Terms of Use and Cease-and-Desist letters are practically the same when it comes to legalities, and that it can be considered a crime to visit a public site just when told not to really surprised me – And in my opinion, shed a light on just how new this whole territory is in terms of the law. My biggest concern about law and media is that no one really understands where the lines need to be drawn, and that online platforms in particular have gotten too big for there to still be so much confusion and gray area.

In addition to The Washington Post’s article, the Medium article pertaining to the four kind of privacy also really caught my attention. Beginning with their mention of the 24-hour news cycle, this really brought to my attention just how much content we are trying to police. With the information turnover being practically lightening fast and the potential to reach millions in a matter of seconds being at the fingertips of all, it seems like it is impossible to enforce the law in all aspects and channels of the media.

In addition to this, there is blatantly no such thing as private on the internet. The author pointed out the crucial fact that in the United States, freedom of speech takes priority before the right to privacy does. Therefore, it is so important that individuals take the responsibility upon themselves to protect their own privacy (the law really isn’t going to do it for us).

The concept and issue of privacy really concerns me because of how young many of our internet users are today. Today we have school aged children having access to the internet, and while there are technically legalities protecting them online we still cannot guarantee that posts or content created while underaged will not have the potential to impact a child’s adult life future.

Personally, I plan to modify my media usage by seriously cutting down on the amount of personal information I choose to share online. While I can make changes now and delete some things from the past, I can’t say it doesn’t concern me when I think about some of the things I shared online when I was younger and more naive. While the likelihood is that all of that is buried deep in the depths of the internet where no one would ever find it (or even care to go looking for it), plenty information is still somewhere out there and there is really very little I can do about that.

I think moving forward it’s incredibly important that we teach about just how public (and permanent) our media usage really is and the gray areas that surround how it can be used for us and against us. Media is an incredibly powerful tool that we are still working to get a firm grasp on, and I think our law is definitely in a purgatory of “catch up” when it comes to getting ahold of it.

This week, our reading and viewing material for MCO 425 covered some of the many legal issues that affect the media. As a user and creator of media, I found this helpful. While I am familiar with topics like defamation and net neutrality, some of what was covered is new to me.

For example, learning that John Deere used (or abused, depending on how you look at it) copyright law to prevent farmers from fixing their own tractors blew my mind. Up until a few days ago, my concerns about the ever-growing Internet of Things centered around privacy. The copyright angle has given me something new to think about.

Overall, my takeaway from the readings and videos is that the law affects the media in both positive and negative ways. Many of its negative impacts are troubling, if not outright scary, but I think it’s important to acknowledge the good stuff too. The First Amendment is certainly a big deal here in the US. A free press is an integral part of our democracy. Our copyright laws are more of a mixed bag, but fair use is an example of a protection that encourages further creativity and commentary. Journalism wouldn’t be the same without it.

Now, let’s move on to my concerns.

Censorship is an issue I find particularly troubling. While I don’t currently worry much about being censored myself, I am worried for others. Governments around the world are jailing journalists, restricting Internet access, and banning social media use.

Just this week, major digital players like Google, Facebook, and Twitter threatened to pull out of Pakistan in response to new censorship laws. Rather than lose access, Pakistani officials have agreed to conduct a review and meet with citizens and representatives from the tech companies to discuss the law. I’m glad Big Tech decided to throw its weight around to fight government censorship. This should happen more often.

Defamation is another issue I am concerned about. It’s not that I think our defamation laws are bad. In fact, I quite like that it’s so difficult for public figures to win a libel suit in the US. The actual malice standard is a good thing. What I worry about is that the laws will be loosened, making it easier for the powerful to go after criticism or unflattering portrayals.

President Trump has been loudly complaining about the need to “open up” libel laws for years. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has said that the New York Times v. Sullivan ruling should be revisited. I hope their take on this issue does not become the predominant one.

Will this week’s readings lead me to change how I use media? Probably not. However, the readings have inspired me to become more of an advocate. It’s easy to take for granted the freedoms we do have as media users and creators. If we let our guards down too much, we might lose them.

Calling my representatives in support of free speech, net neutrality, and smart copyright reform is the least I can do. Given that it’s an election year, I will also make sure to vote for candidates who will do right by their constituents on these issues. Talking about this stuff with my friends and family to explain why it’s important is another way I can make a difference.

In my younger and perhaps more naive years of college, I was convinced I wanted to go to law school. I majored in Pre-law, I was a paralegal intern in a firm in Memphis and in short – I learned to hate it. Family Law made me lose hope in people as a whole, divorce Law made me end relationships before I even began them, and the overall well being of my mental state was sub-par, to say the least.

Reading through this week’s learning materials, there were some things that were familiar to me. (like the rights you have as a photographer and the four kinds of privacy.)

I will say, one of the articles that did surprise me, would the Blogging Rights article. Of course, I knew that Bloggers can be a journalist and are entitled to free speech and political speech, it was the last two that got me.
I had no idea that a blogger had the right to stay anonymous as well as having freedom from liability for hosting speech. I personally don’t read many blogs in my spare time, I actually feel that I have read more blogs in this class than ever before, but this article gave clarification on the protection that I didn’t even know was offered.

Another point of interest that I found was on two of the articles that had similar issues but had two separate outcomes. The first was the Michelle Carter case, an instance where a 17-year-old girl convinced her boyfriend to kill himself.

In this case, it’s obvious that free speech would get involved, however as explained in the article, Michelle Carter’s argued that her verbal conduct towards her boyfriend was protected by free speech, however when the case was brought to the supreme court, she was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and ordered to serve 15 months of a two and a half year sentence. I personally believe that she should have had to serve her full sentence and believe that with her knowledge of her boyfriend’s depression and suicidal thoughts already, her pushing him to do it crosses the lines.

The other article that caught my interest regarding the law and media, was the overturning of the case against Lori Drew, who was accused of cyberbullying a 13-year-old Megan Meier, who later committed suicide.

However, this case was acquitted for a number of loopholes. One of them is that nobody in the hoax actually read the terms and agreement, and it was actually another person who sent the message to Megan, telling her the “world would be better off without you.” As the article continues, to actually convict drew, the prosecutors would have had to prove that drew accessed Myspace without authorization and did it for the purpose to torture Megan.
Reading through these articles and just how logistical the terms get when it comes to “proving” things, reminds me why I didn’t want to go to law school in the first place. After reading through these articles, more especially two mentioned, I think I’ll take more time and care reading through the terms and conditions that I have been so quick to scroll and check “yes.”

In our pursuit to become digitally literate, we consequentially learn some Doctorharsh realities and helpful insights to ensure that we remain on the right side of the law. Many digital users view their activities as free game with little to no restrictions. New content creators or curators are faced with the task of making sure that all content and curation is original work and if not must give credit to original creators. This can be as simple as making sure that you have permission to use your favorite song alongside the YouTube video you have just created.

So how do we know what is free game and what is off limits when it comes to the law and the media we use? The first step is to educate yourself on laws regarding copyright, privacy laws and other legal issues that often go overlooked. Even with insights on this mind field landscape, ensuring that you are using digital content legally is a must.

In an article found on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website titled How The EU’s Copywrite Filters Will Make it Trivial For Anyone To Censor The Internet writer Cory Doctorow presents us with a look at legislation that could allow anyone the power of censorship over the internet. Doctorow begins by defining “notice and take down” explaining that ” it offers rightsholders the ability to unilaterally censor the Internet on their say-so, without any evidence or judicial oversight.” We quickly learn that the problem with notice and takedown is that the material can simply be reposted once taken down.

Doctorow points out that rightsholders would prefer a “notice and staydown.” This process involves rightsholders submitting their content to platforms and then those platforms having the right “filters” in place to determine if the content is copyrighted.  The article elaborates by highlighting legislation “Article 13,” “which makes Content-ID-style filters mandatory for the whole Internet, and not just for the soundtracks of videos—also for the video portions, for audio, for still images, for code, even for text.” This presents the argument that the censorship will not help artists or curators.

In an article title 9th Circuit: It’s a Federal Crime To Visit A Website After Being Told Not To Visit It writer Orin Kerr touches on a case between Power Ventures and Facebook. Power was a service that allowed users to “aggregate their contacts on different social media sites.” Facebooks disapproval came with the reality that “Power users also authorized the software to send Facebook messages to other Facebook users for them.” They answered with a “cease and desist” letter to Power telling them to stop and they even went as far as blocking their IP address. Where Power really messed up is by completely ignoring the cease and desist and simply changing their IP address.

It is easy to conclude that when it comes to law and media we must be vigilant in knowing our rights and limitations as users. In striving to become digitally literate, legality can never be overlooked. This module reinforced the principle that when it comes to creating or curating media there are indeed set guidelines that must be adhered to. We can somewhat tie this reality into the concept of “slow news.” Before engaging with media, creating media, or curating media we must make sure that we can legally move forward.

Francisco Healy

Learning about the “Grandmother Problem” was very helpful in talking with my actual Grandmother about this issue. She joined Facebook a couple of years ago and as the political tension has grown in our country, she has become more active in commenting, posting and reposting information. I think the most untrue information that is shared are articles that someone else has posted. Usually before fact checking them, she would just share it after reading because it aligns with her views and justifies her way of thinking. As someone who is very rooted in her beliefs, I knew addressing this issue was going to be sensitive. With taking the advice I learned from Craig Silverman’s article “What to Do If The Older People In Your Life Are Sharing False Or Extreme Content”, I kept it positive and personal and told her about the website snopes.com. Snopes is a fact checking website for all internet urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation. She was a bit defensive but after relating to her and admitting my own faults in times that I shared misinformation on Facebook she realized that everyone does this and why it’s important to always share current, relevant, and factual articles and information.

Of the issues discussed in the reading, I am concerned about them all, but I am most concerned about network neutrality, often called net neutrality. Net neutrality is “the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.”

It really concerns me that internet service providers could begin to strike deals behind close doors that hurt the average American consumer. If we cannot access the internet equally, you lose a large breadth of knowledge that everyone deserves to have. In my opinion, internet access should be something that everyone in America has access too, especially as the internet is becoming more popular and is the source of so much information. For example, tribal land has very poor access to internet, and it translates to issues in literacy. If there was no longer net neutrality, their internet could get even worse.

Additionally, some forms of censorship also concern me, specifically government censorship. I worry that if governments begin to take reign over the internet, access to things like journalism that uncovers bad things in the government or even opposing views will not be represented. This is not something I particularly worry about in America, but it happens in other countries and is very concerning. Plus, even private media companies could begin to censor things, like Google or Facebook, and that is also concerning. For example, Google could stop showing content that is critical of certain viewpoints.

I don’t plan on shifting the way I use media as it stands right now, but the readings definitely helped me know what I am worried about for the future and how that could affect me moving forward. The one thing that really touched me throughout the readings was the Wired story on cyberbullying. As someone who has grown up on the internet, I view cyberbullying as a serious problem, and this judge’s ruling is completely unacceptable. I have reported things on various platforms, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Many of these times the posts I reported were not removed, despite (in my opinion) being completely inappropriate. The ability for a media company to essentially decide right from wrong is really worrisome, as I don’t trust many of them, specifically the large social media companies that thrive off of things like this.

To think that someone lost their life over posts on the internet from people they did not know is horrifying, and I think the overall lack of coverage surrounding cyberbullying in the news is a huge issue that should change.

This assignment, when first introduced, gave me a lot of anxiety. There are not a ton of topics that I know a lot about. I had to dig deep to find one I knew enough about to make an edit on.

Anthropology is a secret love of mine, and I’ve done a lot of research and reading on that topic. The article on just anthropology, however, was already too developed. So I decided to go with a “Start Class” article, which meant there was plenty of room for improvement.

The article I chose to edit was Anthropologist. I read the article a few times to see what I could add to it. I wanted to more than just a simple edit. I wanted to add actual information.

In the end, I decided to add information about cultural anthropologists, a sub field of anthropology. To do this, I started by finding sources. I was not adding a lot, so I felt like three sources would be enough information to go off of.

Once I found sources and had enough information, I knew what I wanted to write. This is when I took my information to the talk page.  I wrote in the talk page what I was planning on adding.

After adding in the talk page, I drafted in my sandbox. I thought about what I wanted to say, and how I wanted to say it. I took what I already knew, as well as what I had learned from the bit of research I did.

I felt like I had a good enough understanding to start drafting. I wrote a few sentences, and then deleted them, and rewrote them. I did that about three times until I was finally satisfied with what I had written.

The next day, I took a look at it again. I wanted to add more. Three sentences was not enough. I did not feel like I was explaining well enough what a cultural anthropologist did, so I erased it all and started over.

Finally, I wrote something I was happy with. I did not want to move it into the article just yet, though. I wanted to wait another day or two to make sure no one had any objections to it in the talk page.

The next day, I checked the talk page again. There still was not a single comment on what I wanted to add. I took that as a sign that no one objected to it, and I was good to go.

I did some final edits to what I wanted to add. I made sure it was perfect. I double checked my sources were input correctly. I also checked to make sure none of my work was accidentally plagiarizing.

I decided it was finally time to move my contribution over to the article. I was a little bit nervous doing this. I had never edited or added anything to an article on Wikipedia, or anywhere for that matter.

I knew my information was good though, and that I was adding a serious contribution. With that in mind, I did it. I moved my article over.

Publishing the change felt surprisingly empowering. I was proud of what I added, and it felt good to be contributing to someone else’s knowledge and information.

Even if it eventually gets taken down, this is still an accomplishment in my book. I felt like my contribution was successful.

After publishing the changes, I immediately sent the article to my friend saying “check out the cultural anthropologist section, I did that!” I do not know why I was so proud of something so small, but I was and still am.

Overall, this was a nerve-wracking assignment. I tend to doubt myself a lot, and I felt like this was an assignment that just was not for me. I felt like I was not smart enough, or good enough, to actually edit an article.

The training supplied by Wikipedia truly was helpful. When I could not remember how to move my article, I simply went back and looked at the training module for it.

All of the modules in the beginning were also incredibly helpful. It refreshed my memory on simple things like editing and plagiarizing. I would have been lost without the modules. I would not have known how to work the talk page, or how to find an article.

Overall, this assignment is definitely one of my favorites that I’ve done so far in college. It was fun and interesting. I have never done anything like this. And like I said before, it really was an empowering assignment.

To finally hit publish, and see your contribution added to the article, was a feeling I was not expecting. I was expecting to not care, to just be glad that the assignment was over. But I felt good about what I added.