Our Relationship With Techonology

There are many different positive and negative effects that technology and social media in general has on the world today. Technology is continuously expanding and morphing as new things are being invented, some things having potential to negatively affect the emotional and physical health of people while others could potentially be improving their lives. Technology plays a role in every part of people's lives for educational reasons, health reasons, and even general welfare. The feeling of being attached to the lives and people on our phones is great, however it does disconnect people from the real life surrounding them that is beyond just a screen. It starts to become a problem when it is interfering with people's everyday lives and making them disconnected from their surroundings.

I believe that technology has taken up too much of my life for the social media aspects of it. I will catch myself getting distracted by starting to look at one thing on a social media platform such as tik tok, instagram, or snapchat and then noticing that hours of my day go by doing that. This makes you have a feeling of disconnection with real life surroundings and noticing that there is so much more out there rather than just staring at a screen all day and feeling unproductive. There is a way to know how much screen time you personally use a day, some days are more than others, however I personally believe that I need to cut down on it. I believe that managing your notifications is super important to avoid any type of distractions and getting caught up into using any type of technology for a long period of time.

Technology overall plays a great role into my personal relationships, whether it’s with friends or family. This is due to the fact that if I am ever long distance with someone close to me, it is an easy way to stay in touch via text, call, facetime, etc. However, the bad effect that technology can play into my personal relationships is being a major distraction for either side of the relationship. It is distracting because it takes away from having important conversations with one another due to checking social media platforms constantly or just becoming too focused and consumed by your phone in general. Technology does in fact interfere with having face to face conversations, which is a social skill that people should be gaining.

Social media and the internet is a great way to stay in touch with others and to learn new information, however it does in fact open the pathway to cyberbullying. A major negative effect that technology can have on the world today is cyberbullying. Cyberbullying has been continuously becoming more and more common especially for people in their teenage years because the things that they can say to others are behind a screen and can be anonymous. The statistics of victims who have been reporting some form of online harassment have been increasing greatly throughout the years. The impact of certain things being said and posted anonymously makes harassment more effective because these comments can be read by people all across the world and it can also be an easy way for others to try to join in and become a part of the bullying themselves. Cyberbullying can include posting incriminating images, spreading certain gossip about others, and cyberstalking. Once certain types of information is posted online, it is not easy to be removed and can be posted at any time during the day or night. 

Blog 10: EOTO, Presentations

I found it interesting to learn from other groups' presentations about the concept of propaganda for awareness. The overall goal of propaganda is to influence public opinions and behaviors. Propaganda distributes facts that could be truths or lies. A beneficial thing about it is that it promotes decision making and shapes public actions and beliefs. It can manipulate individuals' emotions based on the information that they see or hear about. It is designed to help any leader or government to change different attitudes of people aimed at a cause or even a political agenda. If it is displayed as a negative aspect it is because it can degrade or damage certain things or people. However, it does promote positive changes in a society as a whole. Examples of propaganda may include different types of campaigns along with awareness commercials. It takes on facts that are able to be repeated continuously. Propaganda was used immensely during World War 1 and World War 2 by posters being displayed to show who they believe the real enemy is and win over public opinion. It also helps to persuade one side's own citizens and people in other countries. It is generally most common as a messaged message, an agenda, a targeted audience, and delivery of information.

https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-2-what-is-propaganda-(1944)/the-story-of-propaganda

https://www.ushmm.org/propaganda/resources/

Blog 9: Diffusion of Innovations

An innovation that was created in the past that I looked into through the lens of the Diffusion Theory is Facebook. Facebook was founded all the way back in 2004. It became very popular in the sense that it gave individuals a voice online for them to share with friends, acquaintances, and the world around them. People search on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for different friendship networks to share their different emotions, experiences, and even opinions over anything they want. Facebook is continuously growing throughout the years and spreading worldwide. It is currently the largest SNS in the world as a whole and considered the most influential company in the world. Facebook has hosted up to 90 different businesses and millions of advertisers. It is viewed as a consistently changing platform and not just simply a social networking site. Their net worth is precisely $527 billion. Statistics show that more people benefit in a positive way from using Facebook over negative ways. It helps more people interact with others and stay in touch with different long distance relationships.

No matter how popular Facebook or different forms of social media are, there are still certain people who are not on it. There are a few different reasonings for this, one being that people may just want their own privacy. Certain individuals don't feel the need to share what is going on in their life to the world and would rather just keep it to themselves. 

The advantage of using Diffusion of Innovation theory gives Facebook and other social media platforms a rapid growth rate in their corporation. It also helps make the growth of these platforms more analyzed. Below is a chart that describes the Diffusion of Innovation theory and the different stages adapters. The main definition of it is to understand why new ideas on social media and different technology platforms spread. It also helps in practicing new practices and ideas.

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2017.1104

https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/history-of-facebook/

Blog 8: EOTO

Agenda setting is a very important type of theory in mass media. It was originally developed in 1968 by Dr. Max McCombs and Dr. Donald Shaw. They both had a strong passion for the news and media coverage overall and hearing about other specific opinions. Agenda setting generally changes how viewers understand politics, the economy, and different cultures. The publics opinions on things is set by media coverages either in a negative or positive light. Agenda setting highlights specific issues that viewers chose to believe the level of importance they are. The meaning of this statement is that if the media only shows specific issues highlighted the most, the public will not pay as much attention to other issues that are going on in the world. It is based off of a cognitive process that is called "accessibility", which can be considered a competitive and conflictive process. A specific crisis or event can become apart of agenda setting that requires attention to. However, some issues might not be classified due to them not being recognized as a relevant problem or it is not a legit state concern. Another name for agenda setting is "Mass Media, Mass Culture", which is what and how the media decides on what their audience should focus on. It also reshapes specific events that are currently occurring in the world and environment today. It always succeeds in telling people what to think about and gets their minds going. This is the affect that it makes on the society as a whole. 

There are a few different factors that do affect the concept of agenda setting as a whole. These factors include the concept of gatekeeping, external influencers, and different types of managers. The extent to which these different types of factors affect the process of agenda setting typically depend on the amount of power different factors have on influencing the media as a whole. There are two different levels of agenda setting, one being the first that  is based on the transfer of sets of objects, while the second being based on different attributes competing for specific attention from the media. The first level is structured around certain public issues such as crimes and terrorism acts. There are different studies how each level of these affect the society in their own ways and how impactful they can be. Agenda setting affects different generations in a variety of ways due to which generation has more of a passion for the media and politic aspects than another generation does. It also depends on the focus of the types of issues displayed and the results of these issues that are put into play.

Overall, agenda setting contains many more positive and beneficial affects to the society rather than negative. It is known as being one of the most studied and examined concepts that affects media research and plays a role into mass media communication. It continues to this day to influence local newspaper companies along with national television, which makes the process even more well known.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/usgovernment/chapter/reading-agenda-setting-theory/

Blog 7: Privacy, Online

Privacy is an extremely important thing to any generation. Privacy gives individuals the power to decide on who can know certain things about them with their feelings and thoughts. It generally protects our own information that is chosen to not be shared publicly. It helps people protect themselves from their own reputation and judgements. These issues do in fact affect my personal self and the people close to me because everyone wants their own privacy here and there, and when something is leaked it is not fun for anyone.

The government should make people feel comfortable enough to be able to talk about anything in front of their phones without the fear of anything being heard upon or tracked. Based on the Ted Talk, it is confirmed that the government does in fact have their own ways to go through any single persons phone. Now this sounds as if it is just in a negative light because it is an invasion of personal space, however there are certain reasonings to this. It is primarily based on helping peoples safety by doing it too track immigration enforcement or any type of terrorist attack that could go on to protect the country as a whole. There are always two different view points to every story, with that being said some people may either be for the government doing this for their own protection, or they might be against it for privacy factors.

There are certain things that we can do to protect ourselves from invasions of our privacy. The first step to take in doing this is to limit your own exposure on what you post on social media platforms. Social media is one of the biggest things where people find out the latest gossip and information about other individuals. There are also different search engines that people can use to help them feel for comfortable from the public. 

https://www.nytimes.com/guides/privacy-project/how-to-protect-your-digital-privacy

Blog 6: EOTO Presentations

A technology that stood out to be the most during the EOTO presentations was the typewriter. The first typewriter was invented in 1867 by Christopher Latham Sholes. They were first produced in steel with paper being moved automatically. These different machines were all invented in the 19th century. The first typewriter machine wrote capital letters only which is very interesting. Most of these early machines were also on the larger side and a lot slower to use compared to actually handwriting something. The printing for these typewriters was processed through ink ribbon.

As time went on the practical typewriter started to become more electrical. There were many advantages of this because it consisted of it being faster, easier to touch, and a lot less of operating problems. The first electrical one started to contain a printing wheel along with it. It was used mainly at first by professional writers. Typewriters do remain common still to this day in certain parts of the world.

 https://www.daily-journal.com/news/local/five-interesting-facts-about-the-typewriter/article_93b6b7ec-ac74-11e9-b2d1-6b3a4d442bf7.html

Blog 5: The Progressive Era

The writers on these two different sites are all for antiwar, which is not heard about in the mainstream news. The first website consists of the latest news on how Russia is ready to continue negotiations, however they have a withdrawal of troops in the Ukraine, which makes the drills come to a conclusion. It also states that Israel wants to name Yemen's Houthis as terrorists, while at least 40 of them have been killed. These are very updated facts so that it can be harder for everyone to know everything on these more hidden websites. The second website contains blog posts about the future of American Conservatives, the past events of American Security in a Multipolar World, and even a whole post about The American Conservative Gala 2021. These events are once again more announced on websites that not many people have heard about. It is updates about things in different countries too so it is harder to get information on exactly what is going on easily.

https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0003389/