My solution for the “grandmother problem” was to have open and honest discourse about the importance of halting the spread of misinformation. I still stand by that, and I still believe that it’s important to engage the people we are able to change and disengage those who will never change their minds.
I ran into the latter. I say ran into, but it was really just another conversation that just so happened to occur in a group chat between a group of my friends. This didn’t occur this week but actually when President Trump’s impeachment trial ended and the result was that he would not be removed from office. I try to keep a pretty diverse-thinking network of friends. One of my friends, in particular, falls pretty far to the right on the political spectrum. He isn’t committing hate crimes or politicking for White Lives Matter, but he is the type of person who was happy to see President Trump acquitted because “it showed the libs” among other things.
He also mentioned that President Trump was on trial for racism and “hurting feelings.” While this conversation was only happening in a small group chat, I sort of took it upon myself to steer him in the right direction as best I could. I explained to him that the president was not on trial for hurting anyone’s feelings and gave a brief summary of why he truly was on trial. It didn’t really result result in any positive change. His main takeaway was that “the Dems lost,” which is par for the course when it comes to most political conversations I have with this group of friends.
I have both liberal and conservative political viewpoints, but I thought, objectively, it was important to let him know that President Trump wasn’t on trial for hurting feelings and that he wasn’t acquitted because the Dems got owned. I’d love to try this with someone who is more open to having their mind changed. In fact, I’d love to have this tried on me. If I ever come to a group chat with information that is verifiably incorrect, I hope I get corrected. I believe that day will come, and I think I’m well-prepared to handle it gracefully and look deeper into the issue.
I think we’d be absolutely crazy if the law didn’t affect the way we see the media. It’s a huge part of how the media goes about doing its job, which is probably the scariest part of the media’s job being to hold those in power accountable for their actions.
I’m absolutely concerned about all of the issues we’ve looked at, and I thought Mediactive did a pretty good job of laying out all of the issues and each way the law affects the media. I actually had a lot of these ideas introduced to me in JMC 402, Media Law here at the Walter Cronkite School, so I was actually pretty familiar with things like copyright and defamation.
I think the book pushed my understanding a bit further and gave examples that I felt suited my everyday life slightly more. I’d say that I’m most concerned with defamation. I don’t want to do it to anybody, and I don’t want anybody to do it to me. I’d have to think that the best way to avoid defaming somebody is to make sure that everything you publish is entirely true. If the plaintiff has to prove falsity, I, as a journalist or any other sort of media creator, have to be completely sure that I am not damaging their reputation with falsehood. I also think that the best way to avoid being defamed is to be open. If I’m the first one to admit my mistakes and stay open, honest, and as Mediactive puts it, honorable, I don’t see any way that I could be defamed. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes punishable by Internet death, or cancellation, but I’d like to think I’ve grown from those.
Next, I’m still very concerned about net neutrality. I think that net neutrality would give Internet companies so much say in what we consume, and I don’t think that makes for a healthy media landscape. If we begin to put that power in the hands of internet service providers, we’re giving them the exclusive right to determine what is easily seen on the internet and what isn’t, which is dangerous for obvious reasons.
I’m third most concerned about censorship, but less concerned about censorship from government. In my experience on the internet, censorship by the people is much more of a problem than censorship by the government, and I think it goes back, once again, to this idea of cancellation we have. We LOVE cancelling, and we’ll cancel anyone who disagrees with us. I’m thoroughly concerned about that to go along with some concerns I see from our government. News broke that Russia would be censoring the new Pixar film “Onward” and its depiction of a lesbian character. This type of censorship would terrify me because it’s regressive at best. Luckily, we haven’t reached that point quite yet in our government, but it’s always a possibility.
Finally, I’m not overly concerned with copyright. I think I’ve been well-prepared to conquer any tasks involving copyright. In fact, we recently had a lesson in fair use in JMC 460, and though the rules aren’t exactly cut-and-dry, it absolutely let me know that I need to remain on my toes for any possible infringements not covered by fair use.
May I be the first to say I am an avid user of Wikipedia, yet I have never thought of editing any page. Most often I use Wikipedia to discover and understand new topics and places I want to visit, or search for people. All of my Wikipedia searches often come from when I’m out and about doing random things. As I’ve progressed through school, I’ve come to see that teachers don’t accept Wikipedia as a reference for any assignment due to the fact that anyone can edit the pages.
When I first began looking through the Wiki Education training material, I was a bit unsure. I’ve never been very big into the technical side of computers so I really didn’t know much about programming and all the unique aspects that go into a page.
With millions of pages on Wikipedia, I felt as if I could never decide on which page to make additions too. Either I felt like the page had too much information already or that I wasn’t the most knowledgable or the best to work on a specific topic. After quite the debate with myself I followed behind my instructor Kristy (hi!) and made additions to the Boulder Creek High School page, where I often volunteer and recently graduated. Spending 4 year in high school and 3 summers before and after I felt like I was VERY knowledgable about the school. Upon looking at the Wikipedia page I was met with little to nothing regarding the school. I saw the high school’s location, population, sports, and departments. All of the information was correct, yet it didn’t showcase any of the great opportunities available. As I looked into the talk page I was met with no active dialogue and only two lonesome post dating from November 2016 and July 2017.
With no one seemingly interesting in chatting about Boulder Creek, I went on to talk about some changes I would deem interesting and beneficial to readers. As to be expected I was met with radio silence. No worries though, I went ahead to begin my additions to the site.
My first addition was adding a section for all the amazing clubs offered at the school. I remember when I was looking into high schools in my area I wanted the opportunity to be apart of the community. Boulder Creek offers a wide variety of clubs that can even compete on a state-wide level. With so many great options, I added it right below the ‘Sports’ section because the two are correlated as after school activities. I kept things simple by adding it as a bulleted list. I had the most trouble trying to correctly format the clubs into several columns per line, instead of one long list.
Further I added information regarding ‘Lil Jags Daycare’, an on campus daycare offered by the Childhood Development department. Often the daycare gets overlooked because it is within the high school. In the section I included information about the program, who runs it, and the opportunities high schoolers have if they are interested in going into the a similar profession. I believe that this is very insightful to those looking into the school; interestingly enough I have friends who have become teachers because they were able to gain an internship through Lil Jags Daycare. I sited information from a childcare reference website that held a lot of information that could be further looked into. Citations were much easier to add than I once thought, the computer essentially does all the work, how great!
Another little section I included was the ‘Feeder Schools’. Deer Valley Unified School District is a large area offering several elementary, middle, and high schools. With more than one high school in the general area, knowing the schools that general fed into Boulder Creek would be helpful to those unsure of the area. If I’m being completely honest, it took me so long to make edits, I was so worried that I’d mess up previous information or destroy the page!
Lastly, I included information on the campus store, ‘The Spot’. As a previous employee and manager I am very knowledgeable about The Spot, which is often overlooked at the school. Offering an array of products any student might need, it’s nice to know that it is there. The Spot also offers internships to students looking for high school and potentially college credit. A great opportunity that others should be aware of. I often kept rewording my writing, as I wanted to sound as professional as possible.
Overall, I felt like I really got the hang of editing and adding to a Wikipedia page. While I see myself as an above average writer, I definitely never saw myself as someone who can edit a Wiki page; I feared that my writing just wouldn’t be good enough and I couldn’t do it. I believe all my edits got added to the page so I was actually really extra proud of myself! This assignment went well over my expectations and I’m actually looking forward to looking into more articles that need editing for future. To anyone who reads this and is either completing this assignment or in general thinking about editing a page, GO FOR IT! Seriously, if I can do it, you can do it too! Don’t overthink things as hard as I did and go change the world, or at least, a Wikipedia page.
Reading and watching the assortment of videos provided this week has really opened my eyes to the affects laws have regarding media and the internet overall. Everything from copyright, network neutrality, censorship, and defamation are important to understand in order to avoid any illegal actions. It’s important to understand these complicated laws regarding the internet and closely pay attention to the information we release into the internet.
While I browse, scroll, and post through websites and social media, things such as copyright, net neutrality, censorship, and defamation are typically not in my mind. I have worried about all of them separately from time to time, but never have they been a large concern to me. When I think of copyright laws I often think of videos and whatnot I see on YouTube that violate these laws. Most often I watch clips from TV shows, especially House M. D., that come from random publishers who have no right to be posting the material. I believe that there is so much copyright infringement out there that it is nearly impossible to keep up with it all. Personally, I have never been a victim of it (that I know of, at least). Net neutrality is important as well now a day. To put it simply it ensures that businesses can compete freely on the internet without having to pay gatekeeper tolls. Internet censorship is the control of information that can be viewed by the public. This stops people from accessing copyrighted information, keeps people from viewing harming content, controls internet crime, and overall helps monitor the billions of users of the internet. Defamation occurs when someone posts slander or libel on a webpage in any form (comment, post, blog, video, etc.). Defamation is harmful to someone’s reputation and published in result of malice or negligence. All are very important and are in place to protect internet users.
Personally, I knew of most of these laws. And as I am aware of them, I haven’t purposely broken any that I know of (I hope you haven’t either). As I stated before I most often see copyright laws being violated on YouTube, but further I see images violated more and more in news. Without really realizing it, I read or hear about all sorts of violations in the news. Most often I see celebrities being sued by photographers when they use their photographs without permission. Everyone from Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian, and Jennifer Lopez have violated copyright laws. I actually had a friend who sued for defamation after an ex-boyfriend leaked her private photos. As I always say, anything ever sent or posted on the internet stays on the internet forever.
Collecting all my thoughts, I probably won’t be modifying the way I use social media as of now. Already I am very cautious on the internet, so I don’t believe I need to specifically watch out for internet laws. I am very grateful and have learned a lot through both this class and others experiences to understand how dangerous the internet can be. Like anything, the internet is a privilege and needs to be taken seriously. Stay safe out there!
I had not been familiar with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prior to this module. I really enjoyed Cory Doctorow’s video, and found much of what he brought up to be disappointing. I say disappointing because, after Snowden, not much surprises me in tech anymore. In his talk, I found it most concerning that people are not legally allowed to find out the code that is running in the devices that they believe they own. I understand in some cases it is brands just trying to protect and preserve their brand, but what about the safety of people. We seem to be in a time where the law could interfere with human safety. These codes and encryptions are protected by the law, and the justice system will protect them.
I think that I am most concerned with the level of unknown that we are exposed to. Cory shares a story of a man who has seen the code for the insulin pump. After seeing the code, he has made the decision not to wear the pump. That may not seem like a big deal but, as mentioned in the video, the pump could improve a person’s lifespan by 5-10 years. It was mentioned that the device could be broken into and inject a person with enough insulin to kill them.
Cory mentions something interesting about the vulnerabilities being abandoned in a way. The vulnerabilities cannot be discussed and therefore never get patched. If I am following this right, the code could be improved if vulnerabilities were patched. An improvement of this sort could reduce the potential of human harm, but it can’t be done with these protections in place.
Over the summer, I worked for a tech center that educated us on ways to secure and protect information that we were dealing with. It seems that it is a common practice now for companies to use encrypted messaging apps, require updates, and two factor logins. That experience helped me realize how unsafe I had been in my online practices, and how I can improve my protection methods.
I have connected that experience to this module because, while I have a password on my computer, I don’t have the legal option to “unlock” or jailbreak the computer. Those options are only available for phones. So even though I believe I own everything on my computer because I have a password; I likely don’t own or know everything about my computer. I think that this is similar to the data on social sites of which I am very active on. I have password protection on my accounts and on some I set my privacy settings to the most restrictions allowed, but we can’t always be sure what is being collected. I think we are given a good idea when we learn about target marketing ads, but there will always feel like there is an element of unknown.
Moving forward, I will always be careful about what I share on my devices and platforms. I think that this module has encouraged me to be wary of new tech and always seek more information about the development and security of the tech.
The law, being a standard set of rules that everyone and everything has to abide by, is most definitely going to effect media as well. Especially considering the fact that media gives people such a large reach to express themselves and utilize freedom of speech, having rules and guidelines is expected and helpful. However, it seems to me as if social media is actually affecting old school media, such as journalism and news papers, more than the law is effecting it.
With defamation, or lies, at the heart of social media, a lot of news has become misinformation, slander, and gossip. Specifically when it comes to public figures, defamation can make any lavish industry a destructive lifestyle. However, its not only public figures who are harmed by defamation. Anybody can come under attack of lies and false information so easily being spread through social media these days.
The reading that stood out most to me regarding law and media was about 13-year old Megan Meier who committed suicide due to cyberbullying (or defamation). Because the cyberbullying took place on MySpace through online hacking, the website had a certain responsibility when it came to the case against Meier’s online attacker, Lori Drew. Drew broke MySpace’s terms of service when hacking into Meier’s profile and because of this it was up to MySpace to criminalize the case.
How did the law help the media in the case of Meier and others’ against Drew? Well, because of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and other laws, Drew was charged for hate speech and intent to harm others through social media (put simply). Free speech is one thing, but hate speech is a completely other problem. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age users have access to many sites that offer them easy access to voice their opinions regardless of whether its something nice to say, true, or hurtful.
When it comes to topics such as defamation and online censorship, I think it is the government’s duty to do everything they can to protect their citizens and more specifically their youth. Freedom of speech should only be allowed to a certain extent. Intent to harm others should not be protected under freedom of speech, its the people targeted that should be protected against online attacks. There is a difference as to what information should be allowed to be kept concealed from the government and what should not. The government is not interested in whether or not an incognito window has the word “boobs” typed into the search bar. But should they have the ability to be aware of whether or not the word “bombs” is being typed into the search bar?
I think that law within the media is so complex that it is overwhelming. There is a certain duty that our people have to protect each other and provide a healthy environment to grow up and survive in. Some media laws such as rights to copyright materials and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act are helpful and in the correct place. But I feel as if there is much more ground to cover as social media continues to dominate this world and give users such easy access to others and sensitive information.
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I’ve used Wikipedia my entire life. Even when teachers told me that it wasn’t a good idea to use Wikipedia, I still used it as a jumping off point to find other sources for projects. I even remember finding out that anyone could edit a Wikipedia page, then going onto random Wikipedia pages and adding things my friends and I thought were funny. Those changes never stayed, but it was entertaining when I was 13 years old.
This semester, we were tasked with finding an underdeveloped Wikipedia page and editing it. When we first began this assignment, my biggest worry was finding something I knew enough about to edit its Wikipedia page. One of my biggest insecurities is a self-conceived idea that I’m not informed enough about anything to do the type of editing that was asked of us, so this was kind of a nerve-wracking process for me.
I initially wanted to edit pages of movies, film directors, actors and writers I love, but I stayed away from that as I wanted to be sure that I was adding relevant information. I have plenty of irrelevant information and opinions stored in my head, but I don’t think Wikipedia is the best place to display those. My next thought was to edit something about my favorite sports teams, the Minnesota Vikings and Minnesota Twins. Again, I couldn’t think of anything relevant, fact-based and unwritten to add.
That led me to thinking about other topics I know a lot about, so I actually went with my place of business, Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches. I do remember the training saying to do our best to refrain from conflicts of interest, but thought that the Jimmy John’s Wikipedia page was perfectly underdeveloped for this assignment. I also didn’t see the harm or help of a conflict of interest by simply adding factual information that any random person could have pulled from the company’s website. I didn’t add any insider secrets or steps to methodology. I went simple with basic information about the Jimmy John’s menu.
My first priority was clearing my mind of everything I knew about Jimmy John’s and simply referring to the company’s website. To be completely honest, it was a bit intimidating looking at the “Talk” section and seeing comments saying that certain sections read as if they had been written by Jimmy John’s employees. That wasn’t my goal, but the “Talk” section was very helpful in my journey. I saw everything that had previously been discussed, even dating back to the late 2000s, though its lengthy periods between edits led me to believe that it wasn’t very active. Also, the most recent “Talk” edit prior to mine was in all capital letters and criticized the founder for his hunting escapades.
Thursday night, I wrote in the “Talk” section that I would be adding some information about the menu. When I returned 24 hours later to see if anyone had any input on my future edits, I was less than surprised that no comments had been added, so I went ahead and added my changes.
Again, I can’t exactly place my finger on why, but I found it really nerve-wracking. I wanted my changes to stay, as I assume all good-intentioned Wikipedia editors do, so I was very careful to stick to what I thought was Wikipedia’s rules in writing. I think I reread my edits about 100 times before finally accepting what I had written. I actually referred to the menu on the Jimmy John’s website to make all of my edits, refraining from adding anything that was not explicitly stated there.
I also made sure to add that citation at the end of my edit, which I found very easy. The citation was one of the things I was a bit scared of because I didn’t want to cite my source incorrectly. I think Wikipedia does a great job of making that nearly impossible.
Finally, I clicked publish, which was a relief, but I’m still checking to see if anyone has changed my work. At this moment, no one has, but I’m probably going to continue to check the page and add it to my Wikipedia Watchlist. I don’t see any reason for it to be removed, but if it is, I’ll accept that gracefully.
I think the most difficult part of the entire process is adhering to Wikipedia’s rules and getting over the psychological battle I have with myself about being completely accurate and voiceless. I will say that my biggest takeaway from this experience is that it’s pretty easy to make the changes once you understand the rules. The training made it easy for me to understand how to make the changes, so when I’m surfing Wikipedia and come across something I know to be incorrect in the future, I’m likely to change it because of this experience.
It turns out that Wikipedia is just like life. If you’re a good communicator, you respect your peers, and you follow the rules, you’ll have an easier time.
As I said, in my last post regarding fake news, I’m not really one to confront others. In light of the assignment, and luckily only talking with my grandma, I was able to speak with her regarding her social media sharing.
I believed my best approach was talking to another and showcasing ways to avoid falling for fake news. Upon this exact conversation I had with my grandma, I realized that their was a better way to go about it. While I have previously corrected my grandmother regarding articles containing fake news, such as dead celebrities or articles regarding the coronavirus (especially since there was a case at ASU), the conversation typically ended with her saying something along the lines of ‘whoops’ or ‘my bad’. Nothing previously had put a stop to the continuing news being sent to my inbox. It never bothered her to send fake news because she’d rather be ‘safe than sorry’. Therefore as I explained the worry and pandemic it could cause, she brushed it off. I spoke about some easily identifiable traits within an article to help showcase the obvious fake news, but again she didn’t seem to both understand or mind. I had to try a different approach.
Everyone loves spending time with their grandparents (I hope). And if you’re like me, you often help your grandparents with setting up or helping with their cell phones. So given this problem, I combined the two and showed her the different identifiers when it came to fake news. Everything from looking at the website to clicking and learning more about the author really interest her. To be fair, she had no idea this was even possible. By sitting down and showing her how to look into these things, she paid very close attention unlike me talking about something she didn’t even know how to do.
It was very interesting to me to see what method worked versus what didn’t. I believe it is important to understand when someone is sharing fake news and how to help identify it to the user. My grandma seemed happy to learn something new and so far, I haven’t gotten anymore fake news article. Given its only been 1 day, I’m interested to see how long before she sends another one, hopefully never again, but we’ll see!
My husband and I argue, a lot about privacy and the internet. I have a devil may care attitude. He on the other hand, has made a career of cyber security and policy. So when I proclaim that I love Google and Facebook’s targeted ads and content, it drives him crazy thereby making it more appealing to praise their policies.
But wait.
After looking over the course materials this week for censorship I began to wonder, what am I not seeing? Could my husband be right? This is a question that I had never really considered. This article with link to a TED talk from Eli Parsier was very enlightening. My filter bubble is likely keeping out quite a bit of important, even necessary information. So perhaps those targeted ads for unicorn wine glasses aren’t as good as I thought.
Maybe everything isn’t rainbows and sunshine in my internet filter bubble.
Eli Parsier points out how he may miss conservative content because he is liberal and how this gives him an incomplete picture. I was shaking my head as I listened and wondered how can I fight for a more accurate and balanced view. It is clearly important so that I remain an informed citizen but I can obviously never let my husband know he may be right.
Why it matters to me.
Even a cartoon version is scary.
Trump must be defeated. It is hard for me to even listen to anything he does or says without feeling ill. This means that because of my choices, my filter bubble eliminates quite a bit of news about him. This is a dangerous situation for liberals. We may not see key pieces of information and this could lead to an oversight which cannot happen this election.
Trump has long said social media was biased against conservatives and even drafted a policy last year to help combat this according to several articles, including this one from CNN.com. While i hate to say he’s right about anything it may be the case that tech giants cannot be trusted. Thankfully Elizabeth Warren also champions this cause and has a plan as always for stopping this censorship.
She is always ready for a fight.
What about all the other issues?
I am still in the air about other privacy issues such as the government being able to unlock the phones of suspected criminals. It is hard to read articles like this and not want law enforcement to have every tool at its disposal. This article is biased towards Apple and its policies because of the impact this would have on privacy. I am still up in the air because while I agree this is important, I am unsure of there are not situations that are more important. Especially those situations concerning human life and national security. Thankfully, this is another issue to disagree with my husband on and I do not see my opinion changing anytime soon.
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Throughout this digital media journey, I have said that I am comfortable being an observer. It is equal parts lack of knowledge and laziness. So while blogging has been a struggle, the thought of editing a Wikipedia entry seemed too daunting to even attempt.
While I understand that Wikipedia’s entire platform is based on editing by people and is therefore, is not always a reliable source. To me, it was still a big deal because I carefully consider every media post response carefully.
How I began
The assignment asked to make the edit on something we know well. While I like a lot of things and feel I am fairly knowledgeable, I felt like I needed to be an expert to really contribute. This left me with a short list.
My expertise extends to a few magical things.
all things glitter and unicorns
pasta
Starbucks
Since the last one has been my gainful employer for eight years, it felt like the logical choice.
Prep Work
I would need a lot of training, right? Not really. I completed about an hour worth of online training through Wikipedia. The training was short and had small quizzes at the end of each module to check for understanding.
This is in addition to the content provided by the class modules, the process now felt very straight forward and not quite as daunting.
I then went to Wikipedia’s entry on Starbucks and read over everything to see where I could add something that would contribute and could be properly cited. After all, I have quite a bit of knowledge working there through internal websites and news. This does not automatically equate to the ability to use this information for adding to the Wikipedia entry.
I also saw that the entry was semi-protected as shown in the photo below.
Not just anyone can perform edits here.
That’s OK! I am still thinking yes, I can do an edit here.
There is a lot of information about Starbucks. The company is almost fifty years old with stores all over the world. Where to begin? The history? That feels solid. I also do not spot any small grammatical errors that I can correct to make an edit on for the assignment. While It would feel a bit like a cop out, I am also starting to worry about what I can add.
And the winner is…
Food Bank donations under the Environmental and Social Policy tab. Their policies on environmental and social issues are some of the best I have seen by large corporations. This is one of the main reasons I have stayed with Starbucks for so long. I feel proud to call myself a partner and it feel like adding an update to this section is important.
Here I go!
It’s only two sentences but they are important for 20 million reasons.
” In September 2019, 60% of Starbucks are participating in FoodShare. This level of participation contributed to 20 million meals served to those in need.”
While I had hoped to add an even more recent update, I understood that I must cite a valid source that can be verified by anyone. I know the number is now substantially larger as more stores are now participating. There was a big roll out over more areas at the start of 2020. This information is not yet available and therefore, I will just have to wait until the information can be validated for that update.
I added in the citation for the source with a simple button. Wikipedia did all the work for me. They converted it to a link and properly added it the reference list. The citation number 268 is all me! The process reminds me of the handy little tool from the ASU library that converts sources into proper citation for every style your professor could request.
Now just hit Submit Changes.
I’m officially a Wikipedia contributor!
It is up and it has been a few hours with no changes. There was mention of submissions getting changed back or removed immediately. Now I am unsure if this is truly immediately or if it is a matter of several days. While I am confident in my submission, I understand that the Starbucks entry is semi protected.
Who is this girl?
I will be checking periodically over the next few days to see if I can now call myself a Wikipedia contributor. At the onset of this class, I would never have considered this possible. While the contribution was small, for me it was monumental. I do not know how of if I will contribute to digital media in the future. I do know, I am about to have a lot of free time on my hands by finishing school so perhaps I have begun a new path that includes the title digital media contributor.
