Digital Cult: Is Online Dating Making You Socially Awkward?

Perspectives in Digital Literacy

The current, editable version of this book is available in Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection, at
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Perspectives_in_Digital_Literacy

Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Introduction

Welcome to Perspectives in Digital Literacy! The goal of this book is to encourage critical reading and thinking of the origins, evolution, and underlying values of the Internet and the World Wide Web so that readers may reflect on the consequences of such values to their selves and their society.

As the collection grows, we hope to label each lesson based on the specific characteristics of its target audience (right now we are thinking of age, but we are open to other classifications). This means that there could be more than one lesson for a specific topic, if the lesson is clearly targeted for different audiences.

Since Perspectives in Digital Literacy was set up as a school project, the majority of its contributors will be students exploring how they wish to "teach" others a specific topic they studied while taking a composition class; nevertheless, we welcome all contributors who wish to offer a reflection on a notable topic about issues of the Net and Web.

Below you will find some ideas of how to create a simple lesson for your text(s) of choice. If you wish to suggest ideas for lessons, leave a note on the page of this introduction, or on my Talk page.

Dr. X

February 9, 2021

How can I create a lesson for my favorite text(s)?

The way you create your chapter will depend on your target audience and what you want them to focus on when thinking of the text(s). Here is a list of typical information that helps a reader understand a text and reflect on its purpose and significance:

• Epigraph: a short quotation or saying (may be more than one) at the beginning of the chapter that suggests its themes or concerns.
• Context: the circumstances that frame a text and provide resources for its appropriate interpretation. In other words, the historical, cultural, and/or textual situation in which the text was created, perhaps including relevant biographical information about the text's creator(s).
• Summary: an account of the main points of a text. Summaries are useful if the text is long or complex.
• Quotes: a selection of passages from a text that reflect some particularly important idea that cannot be paraphrased. Quotes are useful if you want to attract the reader's attention to specific moments in the text or to the way language is being used. It is especially useful when combined with close reading questions (see below).
• Images, sound, and/ or video to illustrate or explain a concept, theme, and/or purpose in a non-textual manner.
• Textual analysis: an examination of the elements and structure of a text to explain it, explain its importance, and its relationship to other texts or to the larger culture.
• Notes: a short comment on or explanation of a word or passage in a text; an annotation.
• Glossary: an alphabetical list of words found in the text with explanations; a brief dictionary. It is particularly useful if your text uses words in a language other than English.
• References/Works Cited: a list of sources of information used in the chapter or sections of it.

If you want your reader to engage with the text(s), you may try adding a few of the following sections:

• Comprehension questions: questions intended to help readers process and understand the information they are reading. These questions usually have right and wrong answers; if so, you may want to include the correct answers in a separate section.
• Close reading questions: questions intended to help readers to "micro-read" selected segments and/or aspects of the text(s) such as their structural elements, rhetorical features, and cultural and historical allusions.
• Critical thinking questions: questions intended to have the reader reflect or inquire, such as open-ended questions, (re)search questions, comparison questions, problem-solving questions, connecting questions, and meta-cognitive questions about the text(s).
• Further reading: a usually chronological or alphabetical list of texts which a reader may consult for additional and more detailed coverage of the topic or themes of the text(s). It may include brief annotations.
• Extension activities: Ask the reader to create something connected to the text, like writing a poem or putting together a collage or a video in response to it, or writing a sequel or a different ending to the story. Or have the reader conduct a search, a survey, or an interview on a topic connected to the story. If you want them to have lots of fun, try some of the extension activities recommended by teacher Marilyn Pryle.
• Games: Create a crossword puzzle using key vocabulary from your text. Or put together a Jeopardy! interactive game using a free template from JeopardyLabs. Or choose one of the four game styles offered at Trivia Maker.

Notes

What is Digital Literacy?

Digital Literacy: “[t]he capability to use digital technology and knowing when and how to use it.” --Mike Ribble, "Passport to Digital Citizenship."

Is the Internet the same as the World-Wide-Web? How does the online world work and how has it changed? What are some useful, proper, and safe ways to navigate it? What is my role in it?

This book intends to help you become better educated about the Internet and the World-Wide-Web. Thus our definition of “digital literacy” includes the capacity to decipher online media, how to behave and communicate properly in online environments, and how to manipulate online tools to create content on the Web.

Misuse of Smartphones: A Device Meant for Connection Slowly Isolating Society

Perhaps the best way I can express this idea is to say that the question, “What will a new technology do?” is no more important than the question, “What will a new technology undo?” Indeed, the latter question is more important, precisely because it is asked so infrequently.

-Neil Postman, later cultural critic and professor at New York University.

Steven (an arbitrary name chosen for anonymity) is a 14-year-old teenager that I deeply care about. Since he was a toddler, he always seemed to be highly social. I remember his days in middle school when his teacher would constantly send letters complaining about how she would try to sit Steven in different spots during class, but the child somehow managed to always find somebody to talk to. When he joined high school, however, Steven became introverted. After school, you would always find him hanging around friends, but now he would spend this time continuously scrolling through social media or wasting hours watching videos on apps like YouTube while in the solitude of his room. I felt worried about Steven; he, who was always full of energy and seemed to find conversation and make friends with even the driest of kids, slowly became socially awkward and withdrawn. Many months after his first day of high school, I finally asked him, "Hey, how's high school going? I haven't seen you around your friends that often. Does schoolwork make you that busy?" to which he responded, "I actually don't have any friends… maybe just one, but he's always busy… but it is okay, I text people online every day with my phone." Instantly, I knew Steven was not okay; worried I tried to understand the boy’s switch in behavior. High school was the time when Steven got his first smartphone. Therefore, could this device have enabled or even influenced his depression and asocial behavior?

An infant using an Smartphone.

Today smartphones are regarded as a must-have among adolescents; these devices are commonly used for leisure, connecting with others, and learning new things, according to Pew Research Center. In addition, Freelance writer Sarah J. Purewal wrote an article in 2015 detailing some of the not-so-obvious but still valuable services smartphones can provide. In one of her points, the author mentions how smartphones can keep users relatively safe while in scary situations by allowing them to share the personal live location with friends. This tracker proves handy for parents who naturally want to ensure their child's safety; it can alert them of unusual behavior or possible dangers their kid could be facing while on the outside. And there has been evidence of the GPS tracker saving teens' lives. For example, in 2019, reporter Allyson Chiu wrote an article for The Washington Post detailing how teenage Catrina Cramer Alexander suffered a car accident while driving through a dense forest but was found and eventually rescued after her mom received Alexander's location through the "Find My Friends" app. This information adds to the idea that, if appropriately used, smartphones can be a beneficial tool for adolescents.

And what could be more beneficial than saving a life?

The Pew Research Center showed an increase in teen's smartphone access from 73% in 2015 to 95% in 2018. With this in mind, I find it redundant to keep talking about the pros of having this technology around us. Otherwise, why would the majority of people keep around something that could be harmful to them?

But, as famous author, NYU professor, and cultural critic Neil Postman once said, "Technological change is a trade-off... Think of the automobile, which for all of its obvious advantages, has poisoned our air, choked our cities, and degraded the beauty of our landscape". We must try to understand what we are giving in return for providing this seemingly exceptional technology to people that are now growing up with these devices.

Problematic Smartphone Use

The Common Sense Media, a non-profit organization that promotes safe technology and media for children, reported in 2019 on the average screen time teenagers spend on their phones. The research showed that the average teen spends an alarming amount of seven and a half hours a day using their smartphones devices. However, to talk about the problems that smartphones bring to teenage lives, we need to first discuss Problematic Smartphone Use (PSU).

you may wonder: why call it PSU instead of smartphone addiction?

In the study titled "Smartphone Addiction of Adolescents, Not a Smart Choice" made for the Journal of Korean medical science, researcher Seung Min Bae mentions that psychiatry has not considered smartphone addiction a proper illness because of current disagreements at the moment of measuring withdrawal and tolerance. Because of this, scientists prefer the term "Problematic Smartphone Use" instead of considering it a proper addiction. Surprisingly however, in the Forbes article "The Truth About Smartphone Addiction, And How To Beat It," Brian Scudamore explains that similarly to how we get a dopamine rush by eating our favorite meal, we also get a dopamine rush whenever we receive a new notification in our cell phones. Being the "feel-good hormone," dopamine usually motivates the behavior that caused its release; Scudamore then explains how this dopamine rush can subsequently lead to an addiction to said behavior, similar to what happens with cocaine users. In another article made for Insider in 2020, senior health reporter Anna Medaris references an extensive study comparing smartphone addiction effects to those found in people with drug addiction. Medaris mentioned how the study related both types of addiction victims' tendency to have fewer brain cells, a lesser sense of empathy, impulse control, emotions, and decision making. While problematic smartphone use may still not be considered a proper illness or addiction, it is scary to think that the issues it brings can be compared to those that real substance abusers often face.

And it is scarier when you consider that the teenage population has been identified as a major risk group for PSU, according to Bae's research mentioned above. Bae describes that one of the main reasons for this is that the teenage years are a period of brain development in which one is more susceptible to addiction. A literature study by Linda Fischer-Grote for the Neuropsychiatrie medical journal also backs the previous information since it also shows data linking PSU to difficulties in self-regulation and immature control competencies commonly present at a young age.

“Too much of anything is bad,” and these studies have proven excessive use of smartphones may turn that valuable tool into something detrimental to their users. In addition, we have identified how Problematic Smartphone Use compares to substance addiction and how teenagers are especially vulnerable to it. We can now proceed to the harmful effects of PSU on teenage lives.

The negative effects

The teenage years are when people learn and develop their social skills; smartphones can negatively impact this process by altering how teenagers communicate. In the article "Can You Hear Me Now," professor of social studies of science and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sherry Turkle explains that teens need to have some time alone to develop their personal feelings and ideas to then share with others. Still, with smartphones, Turkle warns it is easier for said teens to express online whatever thought comes to mind quickly. This ease of communication is problematic since it removes that necessary self-reflection time in which teenagers can develop, change or discard said thoughts. Smartphones are designed for an easy, quick, and simplified way of communication. Yet, if people adopt said way of communication from an early age, profound and meaningful talks are lost in the process. Therefore, the usage of smartphones in youth can affect the development of one's persona.

Smartphones are often used during late night hours, causing disruptions in sleep schedules.

Years later, Sherry Turkle also gave a TED talk titled "Connected, But Alone?" in which she warns about how new technology such as smartphones has influenced human interactions, evolving them to superficiality. Turkle elaborates by explaining how humans have a natural inclination to connect with others, and the way of communication that smartphones provide is unnatural to us. The main reason is that technology such as smartphones provides us with easy, surface-level text conversations in which we control how we are perceived. This issue is especially harmful to young people who are still learning to manage themselves in social situations because it gives them a wrong idea of human interactions. In the words of an 18-year-old who reached out to Turkle: "Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I'd like to learn how to have a conversation."

The Center For Humane Technology is a website that compiles summaries and references to lots of studies proving the harmful effects of smartphones on users with PSU. One of the referenced studies showed a relationship between smartphone use and sleep difficulties; these sleep difficulties were then proven to connect to high levels of depression during adolescence. The website also referenced another study proving a 66% increase in suicide-related outcomes in teenage girls who spend more than five hours daily on social media through their smartphones. It is ironic then how this device that could even save lives, as we mentioned earlier, can also be the reason for someone's tragic fate.

On a last note, the data center Statista provided information about the preferred methods of communication of teens and their change between the years 2012 and 2018:

	Texting	In-person	Social media	Video-chatting	Talking on the phone	Other
2012	33%	49%	7%	2%	4%	5%
2018	35%	32%	16%	10%	5%	2%

Conclusion

Smartphones are helpful tools that make our lives easier. However, supporting evidence shows that these devices can also contribute to the depression and isolation of teenage users. The harmful effects demonstrated in this research are just a few of many others that PSU brings to those affected. However, this research aimed to shed some light on the negatives that seemingly good technology can bring to people growing up with it. I encourage further reading about the issue and spreading information to help and prevent an increase in PSU victims. Do not let Steven’s experience repeat itself on someone you love.

Libérate de la Esclavitud Digital

La conectividad es un derecho humano - Mark Zuckerberg, fundador de Facebook

Manteniendo las redes sociales bajo control

Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, Evan Spiegel y muchos más crearon las redes sociales para conectar a la gente. Gracias a Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram y muchos otros, personas de diferentes estados, países y continentes pueden informarse de las últimas noticias e interactuar con personas que comparten los mismos intereses. Pero expertos como Neil Postman, Sherry Turkle y Nicholas Carr advierten sobre los peligros que conlleva esta nueva tecnología.

¿Cómo puede usted tomar el control del tiempo que dedica a las redes sociales?

Siga estos pasos importantes para poder utilizar las redes sociales sin ser esclavo de ellas. Empiece con sus dispositivos e invite a sus amigos y familiares a unirse.

¡Juntos podemos cambiar el sistema!

1. Apague las notificaciones

El color rojo llama más la atención porque es el color más destacado. Por eso, controle su tiempo apagando las notificaciones.

Recupere el control

Vaya a Configuración > Notificaciones > Apagado

Las toxinas nos lastiman físicamente. Las aplicaciones tóxicas dañan nuestro estado mental.

2. Elimine aplicaciones tóxicas

Elimine aplicaciones que se lucran a través de la adicción, la distracción, las divisiones y la información falsa para atraer a los usuarios.

Recupere el control

• Elimine Facebook → Puede enviar mensajes a sus amigos con Signal
• Elimine TikTok → Envíe mensajes de video directamente o usa MarcoPolo
• Elimine Snapchat → Sea creativo en sus mensajes de texto
• Elimine Instagram → Retoque sus fotos usando VSCO

3. Descargue herramientas que realmente lo ayudarán

No podemos solucionar los problemas causados por la tecnología con más tecnología. Pero, hay herramientas que pueden minimizar el problema.

Recupere el control

• Elimine la luz azul y duerma mejor → Flux
• Controle el tiempo de pantalla y cultive buenos hábitos → iOS Android
• Reduzca distracciones → News Feed Eradactor
• Ayudese a concentrarse en sus metas → Flipd
• Bloquee distracciones → Freedom
• Reduzca el estrés y la ansiedad → Insight Timer

Así como no se relacionaría físicamente con alguien que solo quiere pelear, ¿por qué exponerse a ello en línea?

4. Elimine contenido que le provoca ira

Al hacer clic, dio su voto. No apoye a sitios que solo contaminan nuestro entorno digital con "clickbaits" que provocan enojo.

Recupere el control

• Deje de seguir a los usuarios que buscan resolver problemas con violencia → Use iUnfollow para limpiar su lista de seguidos. Empiece de nuevo y, esta vez, escuche las opiniones a las que desea exponerse intencionalmente.
• Deje de seguir los grupos de Facebook donde reina la ira → Revise sus Grupos > Ajustes > Siguiendo
• Evite los canales de noticias conocidos por crear divisiones tal como MSNBC y FOXNews

5. Esté dispuesto a escuchar diferentes opiniones

Las redes sociales se utilizan generalmente para conectar a personas que comparten la misma perspectiva, lo que limita la posibilidad de interactuar con alguien que piensa diferente. Exponerse a diferentes puntos de vista.

Recupere el control

Lea sitios de noticias que tienen un enfoque muy diferente al suyo→ Allsides cubre sucesos mundiales de una manera imparcial y sigue el modelo híbrido de ingresos para evitar prejuicios

6. Sea amable

La ira y el enojo generan muchas ganancias en las redes sociales porque generan más participación entre los usuarios. ¿Por qué no vencer el mal con la bondad?

Recupere el control

• Deténgase y piense por un momento. Recuerde que detrás de cada pantalla hay una persona con sentimientos, así que no se apresure a insultar públicamente a un usuario que opine muy diferente a usted.
• Sea compasivo. Con un sincero interés, puede enviarle un mensaje en privado preguntándole por qué se siente así y esforzarse por entenderlo.

7. Póngase límites

Use una alarma normal para evitar dormir y despertar con el celular

Desde que no nos levantamos por la mañana hasta que nos vamos a dormir, siempre tenemos nuestro celular con nosotros, incluso lo llevamos al baño.

Recupere el control

• Desconéctese por un rato en la mañana y tarde. Propongase un tiempo en concreto en pasarla sin tecnología
• Coma sin distracciones. En familia, pueden jugar al "primero que agarra su teléfono, lava los trastes."

• Establezca una estación para cargar los celulares. Antes de dormir, todos pueden dejar sus celulares en la estación, asegúrese de que esté lejos de las habitaciones.
• Compre una alarma. Empiece su día sin tener los ojos pegados a la pantalla.

8. Desconéctese un día a la semana

Desconectarse en línea le dará más tiempo para conectarse consigo mismo y con sus seres queridos. Esta acción resultará en que usted reducirá su tiempo en las redes en un 15%. Puede que la compañía pierda alguna ganancia, pero usted saldrá ganado y se sentirá mucho mejor.

Recupere el control

Escoja un día y avísele a su familia y amigos de sus planes. Incluso puede invitarlos a que lo acompañen.

9. Concéntrese en lo positivo

¿Por qué nos mortificamos por un comentario negativo cuando tenemos 99 comentarios positivos? Por supervivencia, nuestro cerebro usualmente se enfoca en lo negativo, incluso cuando estamos desconectados digitalmente.

Recupere el control

Tome una foto de los mensajes positivos que ha recibido y guárdelo en una carpeta en su celular. Lo demás se puede borrar. La tecnología ha distorsionado nuestro cerebro para ver la corrección como algo negativo, pero podemos luchar contra esos pensamientos negativos si nos centramos en lo positivo.

10. Apoye a sus periodistas locales

No deje que su periodista local se sienta obligado a jugar con el "clickbait" como lo hacen las redes sociales. Apóyelos directamente al pagar una membresía. Así, usted seguirá siendo el cliente en vez del producto. La democracia y la publicidad de buena calidad van de la mano.

Recupere el control

• Busque su periódico local y apóyelos → USPNL Directory
• Sea miembro de plataformas que proveen información de buena calidad.
  

Caught in the Web: Exploring How Social Media Persuasive Strategies Can Lead to Addiction

Social media platforms drive surges of dopamine to the brain to keep consumers coming back over and over again. The shares, likes and comments on these platforms trigger the brain’s reward center, resulting in a high similar to the one people feel when gambling or using drugs. -DR. NANCY DEANGELIS, CRNP, Director of Behavioral Health

The world of social media is constantly evolving, particularly when it comes to teenagers who are often at the forefront of these changes. There is no denying that it has been very valuable and useful in terms of communication, entertainment and sharing of information. However, just like the moon, it also has its dark side. In 2022, Pew Research Center conducted a survey among teenagers about how much time they spend on social media:

a majority of U.S. teens (55%) say they spend about the right amount of time on these apps and sites, while about a third of teens (36%) say they spend too much time on social media. Just 8% of teens think they spend too little time on these platforms. Asked about the idea of giving up social media, 54% of teens say it would be at least somewhat hard to give it up, while 46% say it would be at least somewhat easy. Teen girls are more likely than teen boys to express it would be difficult to give up social media (58% vs. 49%). Conversely, a quarter of teen boys say giving up social media would be very easy, while 15% of teen girls say the same. Older teens also say they would have difficulty giving up social media. About six-in-ten teens ages 15 to 17 (58%) say giving up social media would be at least somewhat difficult to do. A smaller share of 13- to 14-year-olds (48%) think this would be difficult.  

As you can see from this data, 54% of teenagers said that it will be difficult for them to give up social media. One of the reasons why is how engaging social media has become. It was purposely designed to get the most time from its users, their manipulative tactics were constructed to persuade the users to stay connected online.  

Addictive Design

Let's identify some of the common tactics or tricks social media has been doing. The first is the “like” button, a simple feature that can make its users feel socially validated by different users and urges them to post more content to get the most likes from their friends. It creates this illusion of rewards that can make them come back to get more. And the second is the “pull to refresh,” which mimics the addictive nature of slot machines. This trick will give its users endless content on on their social media news feed. Every time it reaches the end of their news feed, it will suggest to its users to pull down, to create fresh content that is based on the things they view online. Video platforms like YouTube and Netflix follow the same idea; they automatically play the next movie or episode for their users.

In addition to these common techniques, algorithms can create social media bubbles. As Wendy Rose Gould states in her article “Are you in a social media bubble? Here's how to tell” there are two types of social media bubbles. The first is the self-perpetuated bubble, which is created by the user itself, filtering or choosing only contents that what the user think is right. A neuroscientist, Don Vaughn from the University of California-Los Angeles explains that humans tend to surround themselves with like-minded individuals, creating their own “bubble” of beliefs and opinions.  The second type is filter bubbles; this term was coined by Eli Pariser who is an author and internet activist. On a 2011 TedTalk presentation, he explained that filter bubbles depend on the things that you do. This algorithm will then decide what contents to show in your social media feed. To simply explain, what filter bubble means, it is a computer algorithm that gathers all your personal information, including things you like, watch, and buy online. Using these data, it will create this personalized world based on the information that it collected. It chooses contents for you, without knowing what gets filtered out.

Furthermore, from the data and information social media companies have gathered comes another persuasive tactic, which is called targeted ads. This may seem a small thing, but it does contribute to social media addiction. Targeted ads are digital advertisements that are designed based on our likings and interests. Advertisers can collect your data through your web history, recent location from Google maps, even from Android phones. Another way they gather its users data is from “cookies.” Every time that you click “accept” cookies on different webpages, these websites will instantly store your information and data. In addition, social media companies collect our data without our knowledge to provide the most interesting content that will keep us scrolling to their apps. This tactic is a win-win situation for them and the advertisers, but not for its users.

Strategies for breaking free from social media addiction

Without a doubt, these persuasive techniques have led its users to social and digital addiction, affecting their mental and psychological health. Bernard Marr, a well-known author from Forbes suggests 7 ways to help curb social media addiction:

• Reset your brain’s pathways and gain perspective on your relationship with your screens by doing a digital detox of 12-24 hours
• Set aside a certain amount of time each day to just be still with your thoughts
• Put your phone in automatic “bedtime” mode, which will turn off all notifications at a certain time of night
• Set time limits for apps or websites using tools like Freedom or Space
• Consider turning off all notifications on your phone
• Delete your most distracting or time-consuming apps from your phone
• Set up a “one screen” rule in your house, which means you can’t use more than one screen at a time (i.e. no watching TV while scrolling through your social media feeds!)

In addition to that, disabling or deleting the apps that consume vast amounts of your time can be another way too. By doing this they can now focus and dedicate their time exploring new activities and hobbies. Taking responsibility and being held accountable you can help them break free from social media addiction. These are just a few steps on how to break free from social media, just remember that it starts with you. By doing this it can help not only you but also the people around you.   

Conclusion

Social media addiction is something that has been affecting the lives of teenagers. According to the data presented, more than 54% of teenagers said that they will have a hard time giving up using social media. These persuasive tactics that social media companies have designed, were not just to improve their platform but to get the time and attention of its users, specifically teenagers, because all of them have access to social media. This paper aims to give you a better understanding of what these tactics were. By taking responsibility and actively seeking alternative activities, you can help them regain control of their relationship with you and find a healthier balance in their lives. Breaking free from social media addiction starts with you, and the benefits extend not only to yourself but also to the people around you.

Further Reading

Sarah Miller, "The Addictiveness of Social Media: How Teens Get Hooked", Jeffersonhealth.org. This article provides the psychological effect of social media addiction to teenagers.

Erwin Lima, "How to End Social Media Addiction and Protect Your Mental Health in 2023", www.globalowls.com. A great article that lays out broad information about why and how social media is addicting, and provides steps to break free from social media addiction.

The Beauty Algorithm

Technology is taking us to places where we don't want to go.

-Sherry Turkle, founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self

We are living through the technology era; everything is being or has already been changed by technology. Now technological evolution is attempting to tell us how we should look. Beauty algorithms such as the ones created by the technology company Megvii and the "facial aesthetics consultancy" Qoves have already begun to judge our looks based on parameters such as "symmetry, facial blemishes, wrinkles, estimated age and age appearance, and comparisons to actors and models." Meanwhile, to get more likes and followers on social media platforms, we have to use filters to “better” the way we look.

The problem with filters

That constant use of filters is especially unfavorable because it makes people addicted to filtering, and consequently, they don’t feel beautiful when they don’t use them. As Dr. Amy Stater, deputy director at the University of West England’s Center for Appearance Research, explains, “[t]he concern is that consistent exposure to a perfect image will leave people feeling like they don’t measure up.” In reality, filtering one’s pictures every day or seeing perfect images of others makes people insecure and makes them feel less comfortable and beautiful naturally. People always feel the constant need to retouch their pictures or videos and at some point will want to feel permanently “beautiful,”  which in some cases has led to unnecessary cosmetic surgeries that sometimes lead to death. Take the case of Solange Magnano, a former Miss Argentine who died in 2009 after a “complication arising from plastic surgery,” as reported by CNN's Marc Tutton.

The problem with beauty algorithms

The use of beauty algorithms by every social media site is intentional. Beauty algorithms were made to make us insecure about ourselves so that we will need assistance to “perfect” ourselves. As Joshi Naveen explains in “What AI is doing in the beauty and cosmetic industry," beauty algorithms help companies to increase their sales and profits. Beauty algorithms happen to be an “illusion of perfection,” which hides what digital director, writer, and creative consultant Brooke McCord calls a “disturbing truth.” She explains how the beauty algorithm is trying to convince us that it can better our looks and life, but the reality is that it is just being used to brainwash people to manipulate them. Facebook and other social media platforms are already doing this by selling us the entertainment dream to be able to spy on us, get all the information they need. At the same time,  we are connected to their platforms, and after selling our data to third parties without our acknowledgement and making money on our backs. That is exactly what Jeff Orlowski explained in his 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma.

Beauty algorithms are affecting us physically, emotionally and mentally. We are now more stressed about how we look and are desperately trying to look like the “perfect” faces and sharpened bodies we constantly have been shown by social media. In the podcast interview “The AI of Beholder” by Jennifer Strong, she explained that Computers are ranking the way people look—and the results are influencing the things we do, the posts we see, and the way we think. Ideas about what constitutes “beauty” are complex, subjective, and by no means limited to physical appearances. Elusive though it is, everyone wants more of it. That means big business and increasingly, people harnessing algorithms to create their ideal selves in the digital and, sometimes, physical worlds. During the report, Strong and everyone she interviews agrees on the same fact that beauty is a vast industry that is ready to make profits off consumers at any cost.

Behind the design

Beauty algorithms and technological inventions in general are designed by a small group of people mostly white and or asian who don’t know much about other societies' cultures. They innocently acknowledge or rely only on their own culture.And, their judgments and point of view always show up in their inventions. That clearly explains whyThe assistant Professor of Information system at Robert H. Smith School of business in college Park, Lauren Rhue,Ph.D , Found out that facial recognition programs exhibit “Two distinct types of bias”, the stereotype and racist. In fact, she demonstrated how the facial recognition software  failed to give real and objective results for each of the 400 NBA player photos from the 2016 to 2017 season she used for the experiment. Rhue believes The emotions reading Tech reflects stereotypes and prejudices since it scored black faces angrier than white faces even when they both had the same smile. She also attested that facial recognition programs as well as beauty algorithms are coded in favor of one group (whites), excluding others, especially blacks.

Why would a program designed to be used by everyone focus only on one group of people and ignore other people’s reality during the coding process? Well, the best way to destabilize and dominate a group of people is to make them doubtful about who they really are. By using beauty algorithms , racism is being implanted into our everyday lives. We are so confused about ourselves that now what we used to call “beautiful” is progressively becoming “ugly” to us. I remember, growing up in West Africa, plus size women were the most “beautiful” in the eyes of most people. To them, being plus size showed how well-fed and healthy people are. Yes, it was not always a good fact for skinnier people, but that is how it was. Years later, when TV started to broadcast more European movies, promoting skinny as sexy, the ideal of beauty started to change.

Men started to prefer skinnier women and the plus size beauties became “unwanted.” I also remember in my younger years, I used to hear people say “Wow! This person is so dark! She is so black, her skin is so beautiful!”As the years went on and the cosmetic industry promoted skin bleaching products, being black became a shame; it now shows that you don’t have good body hygiene. For example in the Pears’ soap advertisement based on the “washing the blackamoor white” it was said that black skin is dirty and needs to be washed off to become clean, white. From this, we can say imperialism has never really stopped, the heir to imperialism just made imperialism subtle.  Like old Africans like to say, “The dog will never change the way he  sits.” The saddest part is that the younger generation are now thinking that it’s not normal to be natural. Most of them don't know about imperialism, racism, and or slavery so it make it easier for imperialismst hidding behind technologies and progress to manipulate them. I have a sad memory of a young lady in my high school that boys used to bully by calling her “midnight” just because she was very black.  

The positive side

We all know that when opening up to the world, a person is opening up to diversity, and I believe diversity is the most beautiful and essential part of human history; it’s not always easy to be fair or accept everyone’s values and or ways to live, but as a globalized society we must take each other’s differences in a way to make the world a better place to live in. Beauty algorithms, filters, and cosmetic surgeries are indeed having a very negative impact on our modern society by causing self-consciousness, worry, and pessimistic views of our bodies. However, they have some agreable aspects in our everyday lives. Filters make our interactions on social media more interesting and relaxing, contributing to our well-being. In fact, filters Like Sun Baby, Shrek, Disney Pixar Face, and Moth Everywhere were first introduced to us for fun purposes and they are still being used for that purpose on platforms like Instagram,TikTok and Snapchat. These filters are so funny and entertaining that Lauren Webber, popularly known as LaurenzSide, an American online gamer, commentator, YouTuber, TikToker and social media star, decided to try them during videos for her followers.

In her video called “Trying the WEIRDEST Instagram filters ever made,” she tried some filters on herself. She was happy and relaxed during the process and honestly I was also enjoying it while watching the videos. We have too many severe topics like Coronavirus, cancer, mass shootings, climate change, and all the disasters that come with it, so we need amusing things like emojis and filters to relax us. Also, beauty algorithms and plastic surgery could be used to give back smiles to people after accidents or disasters where a person has lost one or several body parts. Many women in the world have been victims of acid attacks that completely destroyed the look of their faces and bodies. Plastic surgeries and beauty algorithms may be the only options they may  have to get a better look and make them happy again. I agree that we “are beautiful just the way we are” and “we don’t have to change a thing, the world should change its heart,” like Alesia Cara says in her song “Scars to Your Beautiful,” but if you think you need to change a thing to be happy, you should be given the chance to do so because the only real reason for living is happiness.

To conclude, it can be said that overall, technology has helped us have a better life. However, our new way to live is not always what we plan it to be. We are being dragged by “monsters” hiding behind technology to make profit from us. We should now know that everything “new is not always good” and be careful with what we believe in.

New GenAI Misinformation in The U.S Political Landscape

Introduction

A deep fake image of President-Elect Donald Trump being arrested.

In recent years, politics within the United States has grown more divisive among not just the two major political parties, but among the voters as well. Conspiracy theories and misinformation and disinformation are changing the world views and beliefs of some voters in what feels like no time at all. But, while misinformation is nothing new to politics and elections, the way that such information is created and distributed has changed drastically over time. As technology continues to grow at an incredible rate, so do ways of spreading discord, particularly with Generative AI . The rise of GenAI has given birth to more sophisticated and convincing forms of misinformation, surpassing the traditional tactics of mischaracterizing an opponent's comments and actions. It can take images, voices, and video clips and mold them into something completely new, and completely false. These mind-tricking pieces of a false reality are called “Deep Fakes” and they can be found all over the internet, especially on social media. While some deep fakes can be categorized as fun and unserious memes, there are many that are also more sinister and trouble-making in intent. It can range from something as simple as false images of Taylor Swift endorsing Donald Trump to something far more chaotic like a Robocall using the President of the  United States’ voice trying to convince people against voting in their parties primaries.

Demonstration of AI Voice Cloning

With technology capable of creating such content now widely accessible both at home and globally, a critical consideration for our election cycle is: What are deep fakes, what risks do they pose to U.S. voters, and how can we mitigate these potential threats? According to an April 2024 poll conducted by Elon University, more than 3 in 4 Americans believed that deep fakes would be used to affect the 2024 election (ABC News). This seems to be a feeling shared between both major political parties unevenly, as about 36% of Republicans think that AI systems are biased against Republicans with only 15% of  Democrats sharing this sentiment, while 23% of Republicans think AI systems are biased against Democrats with only 14% of Democrats agreeing (Elon University). This poll among many others highlights the doubts and fear the American people have towards AI and its effects on the U.S. political system.

Examples, Statistics and Calls for Regulation

AI image depicting Donald Trump running while carrying with two cats, being chased by two Haitians who intend to kill and eat them.

In October, CNN Journalist and host of “The Lead” Jake Tapper aired a segment in which a highly convincing deep fake of himself introduced the topic of deep fake AI videos. In this same segment, he also introduced examples of deep fakes already being implicated in the U.S’s 2024 election cycle. A year ago, noted Tapper, “the RNC ran an ad depicting San Francisco getting shut down and other dystopian, completely fake images of this future where Biden is re-elected. CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan showed this to voters, and they could not tell it was fake.” Then there’s also the deep fake images of Donald Trump  hugging Dr. Anthony Fauci that were spread online by Florida Governor Ron Desantis when he ran for president, in an attempt to smear Trump’s reputation with his base. These acts alone show that some American politicians  have used deep fakes against their opponents as a means to mislead voters away from voting for that person.

But, it is not just political campaigns that have gotten in on these actions, some supporters of these campaigns have as well, creating AI images of Trump surrounded by groups of people he is known to severely lack support with

The image shows unusually consensual public opinions about the need for corporate accountability and global governance on AI.

such as African-Americans (CNN). With situations like this becoming more common, major social media companies have often been called on to do better when it comes to detecting and removing these deep fakes, only to find such actions to be difficult or the attempts to be rather lackluster. And the longer these images, audios, and videos remain up, the greater the chance for the general public to consume them. Tragically, there is little faith among the people for such actions to take place. While 77% of U.S. adults say big tech companies have a responsibility to prevent the misuse of their platforms to influence the 2024 elections, only 20% of Americans say they are very or somewhat confident in tech companies like Facebook, X, TikTok and Google to prevent the misuse of their platforms to influence the 2024 presidential election, according a poll conducted by Pew Research Center.

Those who are unaware of what AI deep fakes are, run the risk of falling for one or many of these pieces of content. A survey of about 5,100 adults conducted by Pew Research Center in 2023 showed that 50% of adults in the United States do not know what deep fakes are, while 60% of Americans under 30 years old do know. Some, like Mina Momeni, an assistant professor in Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo in Canada, believe that it would benefit the American people if they were educated on the matter of AI and deep fakes as it takes root in our society: “[i]t is…necessary to increase public awareness of different types of digital manipulations and forgeries, and how they are used to influence society.”

The worry from voters about deep fakes being used to influence voters is not unfounded, as there has already been a case of AI being used to misinform voters in Slovakia’s elections for parliament last year. The pro-NATO political faction lost its election to their Pro-Moscow opponents after deep fake audio emerged of the candidate claiming plans to “rig” the election and raise beer taxes. The probability for situations like this to occur here has raised concerns about the call to regulate GenAI.  But more than that, the concern for the safety of the lives of election workers play a factor in this as well. Voter intimidation towards election workers has increased in recent years, putting many innocent people and their families at risk, even accumulating into tragic situations such as the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, by people wishing to overturn the 2020 election. In October of this year, ABC News reported that “[i]n a bulletin to state election officials, the Department of Homeland Security warns that AI voice and video tools could be used to create fake election records; impersonate election staff to gain access to sensitive information; generate fake voter calls to overwhelm call centers; and more convincingly spread false information online.” The idea of someone dying or  losing a loved one because of something that was not true is not only horrific, but also unfounded in and of itself. Of course, some states like California have passed and continue to pass their own individual laws that create some protections against AI, but on a federal level there would still be much to discuss, such as what parts and types of GenAI to regulate, how to regulate it, and who should be the ones to regulate it as well.

Alternative uses for AI

President Joe Biden holds a bipartisan meeting on Artificial Intelligence (AI) with Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Martin Heinrich (D-MN), Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Todd Young (R-IN), Tuesday, October 31, 2023, in the Oval Office

But perhaps there is a bright side to the madness. In the right hands, these same methods that are used for discourse and chaos can be used in a more positive, educational, and productive manner. According to Capitol University, a private university specializing in STEM in Laurel, Maryland, “AI can be used to educate voters by providing relevant and reliable information about candidates, their platforms, and the voting process” (“The Good, The Bad”). Instead of creating videos about why “x” candidate is bad, the GenAI created video could simply be used to lay out agendas that each candidate has supported or fought against in the past or present that voters may not know about yet, or it could be used as a “how-to” guide for people who are new to voting, or videos that help distinguish fact from fiction for the public about the voting process.

Conclusion

As United States politics grows more divisive, and the methods of misinformation towards the public grows, there is much to take into account when looking into how it influences the people and their decisions. It is important to educate the people on matters of truth and fiction, especially when it comes to the decisions that shape this country. Education is a key aspect in combating deep fakes and the false information they spread. It is just a matter of how we go about it that defines success or failure.

The Futility of Personal Data Security

Cybercrime Abstract Concept

The advent of the World Wide Web and the subsequent technology that built off of its eventual widespread availability in the twenty-first century, served to connect people from one end of the world to the next. And while no one can disparage the tremendous benefits the internet has brought, the other side of that gleaming technological coin should also be carefully considered. As limitless as the internet seems, the issues it brings to rise are as well. One of the most insidious issues that has come to rise alongside the progression of the internet is the sheer amount of information that people willingly, and often obligatorily provide about themselves.

Since the scandal of Facebook’s involvement with Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 election, companies selling personal information to third party apps and data harvesters have come into the awareness of the general public. However, the increased awareness of data tracking does not mean that the average person, specifically the average American, understands the extent of their data being tracked, and where this data may be going. Moreover, 2017 studies from the Pew Research Center have shown that a large percentage of Americans are unsure or misinformed about many topics on proper cybersecurity. Oftentimes, lack of awareness also comes from assumptions that basic security practices will prevent sites from collecting an individual’s data, or that a site only has the data that people have consciously entered, such as an individual’s username, password, date of birth, etc. that is often the basic sign-up procedure for most sites on the internet.

However, this is barely the tip of what sites, especially the larger social media sites such as Facebook and its affiliates Instagram and WhatsApp collect, and this is often revealed by bad-faith data breaches and the information those behind the breaches gain from site’s databases. Observing some of the largest data breaches, such as the Yahoo and Cambridge Analytica breaches lays out how often these breaches are out of the hands of the individual. Adding to the fact that Statista has reported an increase in the number of data breaches yearly, reform at a national level on what individual data can be collected in the U.S., like the General Data Protection Regulation (or GDPR) in the European Union, becomes a clear necessity.

Instances of data breaches have been occurring for as long as data has been collected, but the advent of the internet and subsequent movement of most data into digital storage has only served to increase the number of data breaches per year, while the number of people impacted per data breach has exponentially risen. While data breaches from stolen files and leaked information from employees was not unheard of in the past, data collected and stored online is uniquely vulnerable to anyone with malicious intent and the knowledge of getting past security systems. Granted, it is not the easiest thing in the world to get past robust security systems in place to protect people’s information, but security has not stopped–or even slowed successful breaches, regardless of any security advent. As shown in data collected by Statista since 2005, the number of data compromises has increased tenfold, from 157 instances in 2005 impacting 66.9 million records, to peaking in 2021 at 1,862 compromises and 298.08 million records impacted. This erosion of privacy was inevitable in a landscape where personal information has become a commodity to sell to the highest bidder, often to gain insight into user bases to manipulate individual choices.

Facebook's estimates on users affected by Cambridge Analytica

The most spotlighted instance of personal information being used to manipulate user opinions was the data breach by whistleblower Christopher Wylie, revealing Cambridge Analytica’s data harvesting methods of Facebook users and subsequent targeted posts to sway voters during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As explained by Wylie in an interview regarding the purpose of Cambridge Analytica, “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on."

This was a breakdown of privacy at an unprecedented level, and the bigger issue was how Facebook handled the data breach following the reveal of Cambridge Analytica’s harvesting of millions of users’ data. Facebook was exceedingly slow in ensuring the security of its user’s data following the breach, only issuing a letter ordering the harvested data to be deleted months after the fact, and doing little to nothing to ensure that the data was out of third-party hands. As data protection specialist and forefront investigator into Facebook’s involvement Paul-Olivier Dehaye explains, despite the evidence that Facebook was not doing its due diligence following the breach, “Facebook has denied and denied and denied this. It has misled MPs and congressional investigators…. It has a legal obligation to inform regulators and individuals about this data breach, and it hasn’t." Unfortunately, Facebook’s refusal to acknowledge the data breach for what it was, and subsequent lack of transparency regarding what happened to that data afterwards, is a common practice for companies to downplay their involvement and severity of a breach.

Currently, there is no federal standard of what is required of companies to disclose to the impacted persons of a data breach, and while most states have passed laws regarding transparency surrounding breaches, the requirements and charges for failure in compliance often vary. Troy Hunt, a cybersecurity expert, provided overviews of companies’ responses to data breaches while outlining what the best practices are when responding to a data breach, and where a companies’ moral responsibilities lie. From his comparisons, it becomes evident that while a few companies will respond promptly with transparency upon a data breach, it’s much more likely for a company to attempt to evade the issue until it has no choice but to address it.

In addition, companies will often attempt to obfuscate the importance of the data that was exposed, such as making statements assuring customers that no credit card or payment information tied to an account has been stolen, just e-mail addresses and similar, seemingly non-consequential information in comparison. However, the unencrypted information found through a data breach, especially a user’s personal information, is always connected to other aspects of a user’s online presence, and creates vulnerabilities in more than just the original breached site. In the experience of Megan Clifford, a victim of T-Mobile’s 2017 data breach,  hackers getting access to her phone number lead to their ability to access almost all of her accounts, as Alix Langone reported, “Now that someone had her phone number, they could get into her bank account and gain access the common apps she had on her phone, including Venmo and iTunes.” Aside from porting scams like the one Clifford faced, access to email lists often spawn targeted phishing scams, or can be sold to another party for further exploitation.

Without standardization on consequences of breaches, compensation and responsibility is often determined on a case-to-case basis, and the impacted users will rarely have legal recourse regarding stolen data, as the lower courts have struggled to define harm when it comes to data breaches. As Solove and Citron summarized in a thesis published in The Texas Law Review:

In the past two decades, plaintiffs in hundreds of cases have sought redress for data breaches caused by inadequate data security. In most instances, there is evidence that the defendants failed to use reasonable care in securing plaintiffs’ data. The majority of the cases, however, have not turned on whether the defendants were at fault. Instead, the cases have been bogged down with the issue of harm. No matter how derelict defendants might be with regard to security, no matter how much warning defendants have about prior hacks and breaches, if plaintiffs cannot show harm, they cannot succeed in their lawsuits (739).

The thesis further provides examples of cases in which plaintiffs have failed in their lawsuits, even with clear evidence of potential harm from the data disseminated by the breach, because the courts could not define the harm in a concrete manner (779). With the sheer amount of information that is being collected through usage of the internet on the individual, and the modern-day inaccessibility to existing without an online footprint in some way, the responsibility of bearing the burden of data breaches should not be left on the individual being affected. However, without regulation surrounding the data being collected and how this data is meant to be treated in the first place, the onus in the U.S. lands on the individual to handle.

Regulations in personal data privacy clearly need to be passed and fortunately, a functioning example to structure federal regulations already exists in the form of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a European Union regulation approved by the European Union in May of 2018. The goal of the GDPR is to put the power of personal data back into the hands of users to minimize the risk and more forward with transparency in the event a data breach was to occur. The GDPR has proven to be complex for companies to fall under compliance but essentially, it aims to allow users to request information on what data a site is collecting, and permanent erasure of data records if desired. The GDPR also has fines that may be levied to companies that fail to report data breaches within a timely and in a transparent manner, with delays incurring heavier fines the more time that passes since the initial notice of a breach.

Security expert Saryu Nayyar writes for the implementation of something akin to the GDPR in her Forbes article, “For simplicity’s sake, businesses want one unified and standard set of regulatory requirements to meet. This is precisely what the GDPR did, replacing numerous disparate regulations instituted by various EU member states.” As she points out in the article, states have begun to pass laws surrounding data breaches, but the lack of standardization creates a difficult environment for companies to be compliant, and loopholes for ones that are not looking to be. Users in the U.S. have seen the effects of the GDPR from companies that have had to change their privacy policies to comply with the GDPR, and federal regulations regarding data privacy exist for specific sets of data already, like the FTC’s regulations for breaches in medical records. With these systems already in place and functioning, unified regulation is less unimaginable.

Like any market, data collection needs to be regulated and have enforced rules in place to protect the consumers from bad business practices, whether intentionally malicious or otherwise. And while the necessity is becoming more of a forefront issue, there has yet to be any significant change on a federal level regarding data collection and response to data breaches. Until change is demanded enough, it is ultimately up to the individual in the U.S. to protect their own data and information accessible on the internet. Cybersecurity experts recommend using unique and strong passwords for every account created with two factor authentication enabled, and to manage those under a password manager. In addition, investing in a VPN to obscure internet activity and IP addresses from providers and affiliated companies is good practice, as is using internet browsers that do not profit from collecting user data. However, this is ultimately a band-aid on a larger issue of unnecessary and excessive data collection, which only something akin to the GDPR passing could even begin to address.

Evolving Walls of Ones and Zeroes

Only eleven years after the electromechanical computer was created, the world's first design for a computer virus was born. John Von Neumann, a mathematician and engineer, gave a series of lectures at the University of Illinois about the theory of self-replicating computer programs. However, it would not be until the early 1970’s that the first functional computer virus would be created. This virus, named “Creeper,” was the first computer program to spread and self-replicate, and was deleted by “Reaper,” the world's first anti-virus software. This cycle of a computer virus being created, and an anti-virus being written to combat it has been going on for over fifty years.

However, with recent developments in machine learning, the classification and removal of malware may end up being entirely automated. A majority of new malware is built upon existing malware, and classifying the type is often the first step towards eradicating it. Deep learning programs have shown exceptional performance in dentification tasks, and, at the 9th New Technologies, Mobility and Security conference, an artificial neural network used to analyze imagery was shown to have “better than...state of the art performance” when it came to identifying malware.

What ways do today's antivirus programs identify malware, and what are their flaws?

Anti-virus programs usually go about detection using a few methods, such as sandboxing, heuristic detection, and real-time detection. Sandboxing runs programs in a virtual environment and records what the program does. If the program is deemed non-malicious, the antivirus software then runs it on your actual computer. While this technique is effective, it is slow and resource heavy, and therefore is not used in many user-side antivirus programs. Heuristic detection, or “genetic detection” is the process of identifying viruses by checking for similarities with already existing viruses. This method is effective but relies entirely on the limited databases used by the antivirus software. Real-time detection is the process of scanning a file when it is being downloaded or opened. This is the method that most anti-malware programs use. The biggest issue with this is that if the virus is not previously known, the antivirus will not flag it.

What are some deep learning antivirus programs, and how do they work?

Shallow machine learning programs predict the relationship between two variables and are used in many cybersecurity programs. However, new advances in deep learning technologies have led to neural networks outperforming even the best shallow learning algorithms. At the 9th New Technologies, Mobility and Security conference, an artificial neural network used to analyze imagery was shown to have outdone the winners of the Microsoft Malware Classification Challenge. This system converts files into binary, and then turns the binary into a grayscale image, at which point the neural network scans it for similarities with other malware. This system had a 99.97% success rate on a dataset of over 10,000 malware samples. The neural network model used in this method is a convolutional neural network, which is based on the visual cortex of animals.

A model of a neural network, showing the input, hidden, and output layers

Another neural network program, the FO-SAIR (Factional-Order Susceptible-Antidote-Infected-Removed) framework, has shown great success in removing viruses. This program is modeled after organic disease treatments, and is a modified version of the SIR (Susceptible-Infected-Removed) framework. FO-SAIR is examined through stochastic optimization, a method that generates random variables to simulate an actual system. This program is one of the most cost-efficient antivirus methods, as it creates “antidotes” at a rate dependent on how much the virus has spread, and deletes these antidotes after they have no more use. As powerful as these programs are, they are limited by hefty storage requirements, and by the time it takes to train them. While effective, this makes them not a reasonable option for an everyday consumer.

Won't hackers have access to deep learning too?

As technology becomes more accessible, both the quantity and quality of malware have skyrocketed. Former general manager of Australia's Computer Emergency Response Team Graham Ingram stated that “We are getting code of a quality that is probably worthy of software engineers[,]” in reference to the skill of newer malware authors. However, there are several key factors that make deep learning more suited for antiviruses than malware. The need for both substantial computing power and a very large dataset make deep learning inaccessible to many people. This is especially true for malware authors, as large datasets of antivirus software is much harder to find than large datasets of viruses, meaning it would be harder to train a virus on antiviruses than it would be to train an antivirus on viruses. In addition, according to MathWorks, deep learning is used to “perform classification tasks directly from images, text, or sound[,]” which is useful for identifying, but not hiding, malware. While both malware authors and antivirus authors will have access to deep learning, by its nature it is more suited for antiviruses than malware.

Conclusion

Machine learning has advanced rapidly over the years and has impacted many fields; both those directly connected to technology and those that are not. As this technology continues to be improved upon, it will be used more and more frequently. This will especially be the case in the field of cybersecurity, as the deep learning programs are showing very high levels of success, especially compared to most modern antivirus programs. As machine learning grows more advanced, it will become the leading approach to cybersecurity due to its speed and accuracy in malware classification.

Discussion questions

1. Do you think deep learning programs will fully replace traditional antivirus software in the future? Why or why not? What challenges still exist?
2. How might advances in deep learning impact the "arms race" between malware creators and cybersecurity specialists? Will one side gain an upper hand?
3. Should machine learning algorithms used for cybersecurity purposes be open source? What are the ethical implications around transparency and scrutiny in this case?
4. What other applications of deep learning show promise for improving cybersecurity beyond analyzing malware? For example, could it detect intrusions or compromised accounts?
5. Do you believe enough is being done legally and politically to prepare for emerging technologies like AI-powered cyberattacks or cyberwarfare? What policies or regulations could help address these threats?

The Great Awakening

Very few people know how to protect themselves from the corrosive influences that surround them.

Fortunate is the person that during their adolescence years doesn't give up on education.

- Orison Swett Marden.

One of the most controversial and influential conspiracy theories of 21st Century America is QAnon. At its core is the belief that a worldwide shadow government of the elite secretly runs the world; its members have been variously accused of following Satan, of cannibalism, of running a child sex trafficking ring, and, more recently, of creating and deploying the coronavirus. This "deep state" cabal manipulates the public, democratically-elected state with the help of the mainstream media and Hollywood. Because the majority of those who believe in QAnon conspiracy theory may be categorized as politically far-right, they see the election of President Donald J. Trump as marking the beginning of a behind-the-scenes battle against this secret cabal, which, in turn, plotted to remove him from office and is now blocking his return. QAnon followers are kept in the know about this battle through cryptic coded postings on the Web by a supposed government agent who signs the messages with "Q-Clearance Patriot," which is meant to indicate the poster has Q security clearance, that is, top-level security clearance in the U.S. Department of Energy. Q's revelations will lead to a "Great Awakening" and to the ultimate event of this battle between the forces of good and evil, "the Storm," when the cabal will be defeated and the truth revealed to all.

As a Q follower reveals to filmmakers Bayam Nooman and Mary Clements during an interview for their documentary QAnon 101: The Search for Q, Q's communications have all the characteristics of a psychological operation (psy-op), that is, "a military-led strategy to influence a population’s emotions, motives, and objective reasoning." By using a "gamified model" that requires readers (known as Anons) to follow clues and conduct research to decode their meaning, Q's postings engrosses its audience. The Anons' hard work is then rewarded by the top-security insider information supposedly obtained, which further encourages their buy in. Since the goal of a psy-op is to undermine an adversary's ability to command and control its military operations, the process of decoding Q's messages is seen by QAnons as a means of liberation from the lies and propaganda by a corrupt establishment.

"Q Shaman" January 6, 2021

The Consequences of QAnon: Division and Chaos

On January 6, 2021, the United States suffered an attack on the Capitol, where members of Congress were meeting to confirm the victory of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Some of the attackers were QAnon followers who believed in President Trump's affirmation that the election had been stolen from him. That day many QAnon supporters were expecting to get more instructions from Trump to finally bring the secret shadow government to justice and allow him to rule for the next four years as he deserved. Inflamed by the president’s rhetoric, they forced their way into the capitol to “stop the steal,” threatening our democracy and causing the death of five people.

This was not the first time that individuals who believed in the reality of a “deep state” cabal had taken matters into their own hands. In 2016, Edgar Welch, a man from North Carolina armed himself and went to self-investigate conspiracy theory allegations that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of Comet Pong, a pizza restaurant located in Washington D.C. After finding that no children were being held in the pizza place, he surrendered to the police. A second example happened in in 2019, when Anthony Comello, a Staten Island man, fatally shot the Mafia boss Frank Cali because he believed he was a member of the deep state. That was when the FBI classified QAnon as a domestic terror threat.

Even after President's Joe Biden victory was confirmed, the QAnon movement did not stop its spread of false assertions, the latest of which concerns the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines. Believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory refuse to get vaccinated because they think that the government’s “elite” wants to control humanity and that the COVID-19 virus was developed to reduce the population. The fact that some of those vaccinated have suffered complications has given more credibility to these false assertions, creating fear between American communities, preventing people from getting the vaccine, and slowing the process to end to the pandemic.

How Do Conspiracy Theories Interfere With Our Commonsense Reasoning?

Conspiracy theories have always been with us. However, in recent years we have seen a dramatic rise in their influence on politics thanks to social media. While in its most basic form social media helps us express freely, instantly, and globally, the repetition of ideas via "likes" and "re-posts" gives power to irrational and harmful beliefs that only end up destroying commonsense reasoning and may end up creating an unstable and dangerous society.

"Conspiracy theories arise in the context of fear, anxiety, mistrust, uncertainty, and feeling of powerless," explains John Ehrenreich when reporting on the phenomenon for Slate magazine. People who present anxiety, stress, and a need for control over the environment are more susceptible to believing in conspiracies because they are frequently suspicious and distrustful, easily believing that others are plotting against them. They find relief in theories that explain their feelings and concerns, which offers them a safe environment. Conspiracy theories also fill psychological and ideological needs as individuals are more likely to pay attention to and believe information that validates their existing beliefs. This is referred to as “confirmation bias” by psychologists. Here, again, is where technology tips the scales: because the algorithms on which social media platforms are built tend to give us more of what we have indicated that we like, we may get our biases confirmed as “facts” when we interact with others who share our opinions through social media.

Americans and News Consumption

Americans rely on their news from social platforms

The frightful way Americans are consuming their news nowadays is one of the main reasons they are often falling for the misinformation shared on the Web, as shown on a survey analysis by the Pew Research Center. About 18% of adults confirmed getting their political and election news from social platforms, and about 25% from news websites and apps. According to the survey, only 8% of these adults followed the 2020 election “very closely.” The lack of attention leads to insufficient knowledge for which users who rely on social media to get their news are less likely to get the facts and more likely to hear unproven claims.

Based on the Pew Research Center Survey

Source	Percentage %	Source	Percentage %	Source	Percentage %
News Websites/ Apps	25%	Cable Tv	16%	Print	3%
Social Media	18%	Network	13%	No Answer	1%
Local Tv	16%	Radio	8%

Conclusion

Americans should become more cautious about how they consume their news. The Internet and Web can be great tools for unscrupulous people attempting to manipulate information, which ends up threatening our daily lives, national security, and democracy.

Conspiracy Theories Trivia Game

The goal of this trivia game is to create awareness of how easily we may believe in conspiracy theories. You have one minute and thirty seconds to answer as many questions as you can!

Trivia Game: Are you a conspiracy theory believer?

If you like the game and want to learn more about each topic presented, go to this link click on the ? as you play the game.

Further Learning

• Eli Pariser, Beware online "filter bubbles" TED. March, 2011. In this TED conference the activist and entrepreneur Eli Pariser explains how algorithms used by social media shape our political views.
• Myles Bess. "Why Do Our Brains Love Fake News?" Above the Noise. An explanation of how confirmation bias works so that we end up believing what we want to believe. A lesson from National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
• Claire Wardle, "Can you outsmart a troll (by thinking like one)?" TED-Ed. October, 2020. This video illustrates how quick and easy it is to spread false information with the purpose of manipulating people's beliefs.
• United States Department of Homeland Security, Analytic Exchange Program. "Combatting Targeted Disinformation Campaigns: A Whole-Of-Society Issue." Homeland Security Digital Library. October, 2019. In this article a team of researchers explain how disinformation campaigns became popular, how they work, and what we can do to combat this threat.

Discussion Questions

1. List the common elements of conspiracy theories. Discuss what these common elements can tell us about those who believe them, about the historical moment we are living in, and about our society.
2. Where do you usually get your information? How do you know these sources are credible?
3. Look at the types of information that the Web algorithms are suggesting that you check. What trends, biases, or possibly filter bubbles do you see? How could you train the algorithms to give you more diverse information?
4. "The best way to fight ... fake news discourse is not to give counterarguments, but to try to check the validity of the other person's argument." --Journalist Thomas Huchon, "A Conspiracy Video Teaches Kids A Lesson About Fake News." Do you agree with Huchon? Is it better to fact-check the sources of a person's story than to counteract the story's fake information with facts? Which method, in your view, might change the mind of a conspiracy theory believer? Why?

The Fake News Effect

Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.

― Paulo Coelho

To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.  

― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Background

Transmission and life-cycle of SARS-CoV-2-causing COVID-19

In 2019, a great number of people were infected by pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Experts investigated, finding its cause was a new betacoronavirus and called it COVID-19. This virus spreads out swiftly via droplets so humans get infected at a high rate and there is no specific medication accessible in hospitals to treat it. There are countries that have thousands of people who have died. The number of patients at the hospital has reached an all-time high, and ambulances have been running around the clock every day. Because it is a horrifying virus that dramatically alters people’s lives, governments around the world have ordered citizens to wear masks and stay home for over a year. Many people have lost their jobs and some young people who do not have savings have had a hard time getting through this period. In the United States, for example, the unemployment rate climbed steadily from the end of 2019 through mid 2020:

In April 2020, the unemployment rate reached 14.8%—the highest rate observed since data collection began in 1948. In April 2021, unemployment remained higher (6.1%) than it had been in February 2020 (3.5%). The labor force participation rate declined to 60.2% in April 2020—a level not seen since the early 1970s—then began a partial recovery in May 2020. The labor force participation rate was 61.7% in April 2021, 1.7 percentage points below the level in January 2020, before the pandemic and the economic recession.

Many are irritated, bewildered, and concerned about what causes the virus. In response to the uncertainty brought by the epidemic, a bizarre conspiracy hypothesis has emerged on social media about Fifth Generation (5G) technology aiding in the spread of the coronavirus, which has been shared widely by Internet users.

How have some people reacted to the theory that COVID-19 is caused by 5G?

Some individuals have bought into this fake theory and even committed atrocities to oppose 5G. In the United Kingdom, the conspiracy was peddled by conspiracy theorists and celebrities on social media, so there were many supporters of the hypothesis who set telephone poles on fire and attacked telecommunication engineers constructing fiber-optic connections. In addition, many demonstrators marched in Australia, even preventing telecommuting workers from finishing their jobs.  Why is this so? Because some people have been swayed by bad faith actors with ulterior objectives into thinking that a group of world leaders have orchestrated the pandemic to take control of the global economy. This conspiracy theory is called "The Great Reset", and it presents COVID-19 as a biological weapon that is being distributed in part via 5G cell towers as part of the depopulation plan.

Why do people believe in this conspiracy?

There are three reasons: 1) people who reject 5G also reject 4G, 3G, and other wireless technologies, 2) the rise in the number of unemployed people has resulted in an increase in the number of people doing nothing, and 3) the dissemination of unverified information on social media. There have been conspiracy theories about the supposed harm of 5G wireless waves since the technology began gaining public attention. The basic idea is that 5G wireless signals use “additional higher frequency electromagnetic waves in addition to low and medium band frequencies used in previous cellular networks," such as 4G or 3G, and they are therefore dangerous to humans and animals. The origin story for this theory was presented in March 2020 in a YouTube video lecture by Dr. Thomas Cowan, who is an American doctor who is at present on disciplinary probation. In the video, Dr. Thomas proposes that all viruses in human history are caused by electromagnetic waves, specifically mentioning that the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic coincided with the introduction of radio at a global scale. Dr. Thomas believes the coronavirus is a type of cellular poisoning caused by the lowering of the body’s immunity by electromagnetic fields. People who live near a 5G base station are immune compromised by waves emitted by the base station, making them more vulnerable to the virus. As evidence, he cites the lack of outbreaks in Africa because there is no 5G in that continent yet. However, in the article “Does 5G Cause or Spread the Coronavirus? Here’s What Experts Say,” the author points out that the lower bands, encompassing everything from AM radio to cell phones to microwave ovens, are categorized as nonionizing radiation, and do not harm DNA directly. They have long been considered harmless except for potentially heating cells at close range. Moreover, leading national authorities like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) maintain that there is little to no health risk from using mobile phones given the safety limits already in place.

There is no relationship between COVID-19 and 5G

FACT: 5G mobile networks DO NOT spread COVID-19

A statement by the worldwide radiation watchdog the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), which issued revised recommendations for 5G frequency deployment, confirmed that the frequencies at which 5G would be implemented are safe:

ICNIRP has just released new guidelines for exposure to radio frequency electromagnetic fields, and we considered all possible adverse health effects. The only proven effect is that of heating of (parts of) the body, and the guidelines are set to such a low level that this will not occur if they are observed. Adverse health effects resulting from effects on the immune system have not been found and thus also cannot form a basis for exposure guidelines.

Moreover, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC), we must come into physical contact with the coronavirus to become sick because it is transmitted from human to human by tiny respiratory droplets which travel through the air through talking, breathing, and coughing. Because it is an electromagnetic wave, 5G cannot bring you into touch with the virus. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of the United States also replied to the theory with “5G technology does not cause Coronavirus". According to medical and scientific experts, like some other recent outbreaks, the novel coronavirus is most likely transmitted to humans by animals.

Advantages of 5G

The pandemic has actually encouraged the adoption of 5G. In the article “COVID-19 showed the importance of 5G for the economy and the environment,” Börje Ekholm points out that during the pandemic, 5G has an important role for the economy and the environment. The data shows that:

In its first 5G Outlook Series report, the World Economic Forum highlighted several activities behind that increased usage: in healthcare, a 490% increase in telemedicine urgent care visits; in socialization a 75% increase in online gaming; and in retail, online transactions were up 74% globally. In the world of work, Ericsson’s Mobility Report showed 60% of white-collar workers increased their usage of video calls.

Despite the sudden and unprecedented changes in traffic patterns and demand, the networks performed well, with operators generally providing enough network performance. This strong performance was reflected in users’ perceptions, with 83% claiming ICT helped them a lot, in one way or another, to cope with lockdowns.

Without the investments made in 4G and 5G, none of the uses including telemedicine, video calls and gaming could have been delivered to the extent seen through the pandemic.

In addition, All of the applications place demands on today's networks that would quickly push them to their limits. The development of 5G has increased network use and facilitated companies' significant science and technology development. Therefore, the development of 5G technology has brought us advantages and convenience. The most important thing is that 5G has also enabled more new positions in society, and local groups have more job opportunities.

Conclusion

In conclusion, all evidence shows that COVID-19 is not caused by 5G.  Rather, the pandemic has promoted the demand and created a larger market for 5G, accelerating its application and providing opportunities for its global implementation. As 5G consumers, people will benefit from this new technology, which includes connection speeds as fast as fiber, more stable connections, smoother streaming, and video calling with fewer buffering. When deciding whether or not to adopt something new, we should not rely on public opinion to determine if it is good or bad. This should be a lesson as to why we must stick to the scientific method of separating facts from fiction.

Comprehension questions

• How is 5G technology different from 4G and 3G? How did its difference cause some people to believe 5G was creating the pandemic?
• Who and what was harmed by this conspiracy theory?
• What real impact has 5G played in the epidemic?

Discussion questions

• What could be the reasons why people began to spread this conspiracy theory about COVID-19 and 5G? What could be the reasons other people support this theory and share it?
• Describe a conspiracy theory that you would never share with your social network and explain why you would not share it.

Further reading

• Kaitlyn Tiffany, “Something in the Air.” The Atlantic. This article examines in depth why the 5G fear is nothing new, and why the fears are unfounded.
• James Meese, Jordan Frith, and Rowan Wilken, “COVID-19, 5G conspiracies and infrastructural futures.” Media International Australia. August 27, 2020. This article also gives background information on the fears of 5G but argues that we must “look beyond conspiracy theories to a larger set of [geopolitical and economic] concerns.”

More Than a Number

Introduction

In the episode “Nosedive” of the dystopian science fiction television series Black Mirror, Lacie, a woman obsessed with climbing up the social ladder but unable to secure the apartment of her dreams because of her low social media score, follows the advice of a social media consultant by attempting to impress “High Fours,” people whose score is closest to her society’s standard of social achievement, the five-star rating. Conceived by Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker as “a satire of acceptance and the image we like to portray”, “Nosedive” speaks to present social media anxieties and our excessive adoration of social media influencers. But to actually lose one’s job because of a low social rating, as the episode portrays, is far-fetched, right? Not exactly. In fact, this is exactly what may be happening in China today due to its social crediting system.

By the Numbers

China has the strongest presence on the Internet in the world, with nearly one billion users. China also has some of the strictest media censorship, and most of the websites and Web 2.0 services used in the Western world are blocked completely and subsequently replaced by “copycats” of their own: while the Western world is used to Google, the Chinese have Baidu. Instead of Twitter, the Chinese have Weibo. In place of Facebook, the Chinese have created Renren. Instead of viewing videos on YouTube, Chinese people view them on Youku and Tudou.

By keeping Chinese people on their own websites that usually record and store all their personal data within buildings in the country’s capital, Beijing, the government can constantly monitor what is done online and by whom. And now that China is implementing a national social crediting system, this government surveillance coupled with the Chinese people’s embrace of their censored Internet could lead to a disastrous result. History has shown that people in power -- especially those with access to innovative technology -- tend to favor the wealthy and elite.

Social Credit

So, what is the new Chinese social credit system and how does it work? Formally introduced in 2011 by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, the social credit system is the Chinese government’s project to create a unified record system to track and evaluate its citizens, businesses, and regional administrations for trustworthiness. Some regional administrations rate trustworthiness using a numerical value, while the central government uses mostly blacklisting and whitelisting. It was officially set to begin in 2020, but the deadline was pushed back because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some aspects of it are similar to the credit checks that banks run--using credit rating companies such as Experian in the United States--before providing someone with a loan. It also resembles the way that social media value is measured in the West, which usually depends on an Internet user’s follower count or the amount of likes they receive on online posts. The Chinese system, however, will apply these ratings to all aspects of Chinese life. A citizen or business can be given a high ranking for donating to charity, or have value deducted for grievances such as playing music loudly. 

Once the national system is fully implemented, Chinese citizens, businesses, and local governments will be assigned a number based on the data gathered from Chinese “big tech,” that is, the innovative technology across the country that collects personal information as well as other data gathered from websites that people and small businesses may access.

One such technology key to information gathering is Artificial Intelligence (AI) that uses facial recognition technology to monitor citizens and their movements. Since the transgressions that the Chinese government will look for can range from jaywalking and unsound business practices to evidence of sharing anti-government rhetoric, once the system is in place, AI and the cameras will be able to do most of the work in tracking the citizens and alerting the government of violations.

The negative impact of a bad score for businesses and people will also varies. As mentioned, the central government already has a running blacklist of businesses and people who they feel have acted poorly. By being blacklisted, the government publicly shames the transgressors while banning some personal rights and potentially limiting their ability to continue to do business. Some local governments have offered positive incentives for having a good score to try to increase trust in the system, such as prioritized healthcare and deposit-free housing.

China and the Internet

As stated earlier, the Chinese government blocks Western social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, replacing them with their own. By allowing only these websites to exist and monitoring the content their citizens are allowed to post, the Chinese government can control the narrative and opinions around the country.

Say something about a censorship law or something damning about your official? One can be expected to be taken offline, prosecuted, and even in some cases permanently blacklisted from basic human rights such as access to healthcare and transportation. Say something good or release a story about an official the government may already want ousted? Expect to gain some notoriety when the government allows your opinion to be circulated for days before they finally take it down. This type of selective censorship may raise alarms to a Chinese citizen who now faces the threat of the government applying scores that influence opinion on who is worthy of access to basic human liberties.

With China being the most populated country in the world, holding about 20% of the world’s population according to their last census, the public’s desire for a watchful eye in the form of social crediting is expected, but may also be skewed because China is an authoritarian regime:  

Overall, [the Chinese] report a high degree of approval of SCSs [social crediting systems], with 80% of [participants] either approving or strongly approving SCSs. Only 19% of [participants] perceive the SCS in value neutral terms (neither disapprove nor approve) while just 1% reported either strong or somewhat disapproval. To some extent, the high degree of approval of SCSs and the almost non-existent disapproval we found might reflect the nature of conducting a survey in an authoritarian setting—while were clearly informed that that the data were anonymized and to be used for research purposes only, some more cautious [participants] may have falsified their preferences to a degree due to concerns about expressions of disapproval resulting in reprisals from the state. 

This same ideology may contribute to the public’s general acceptance of their censored Internet. As Chinese people do not get the option to speak out against the government, one must hope that the new implementation of technology will cause more good than harm, especially now that the Chinese government is pushing the surveillance of children, as illustrated in the Wall Street Journal’s special report “How China Is Using Artificial Intelligence in Classrooms." At one point, the report focuses on an electroencephalography (EEG) headband that young students must wear to gauge their attention during lessons, whose output is monitored by the teacher and shared with all the students' parents. When the reporters show the footage to neuroscientist Theodore Santo of the University of California, San Francisco, he is surprised, noting that the technology is susceptible to false readings, so he is not sure how useful it would be for measuring attention. The Chinese teachers, however, explain that the use of the headbands themselves have "forced to make students more disciplined." In other words, the technology is molding the behavior of students at a very early age.

Xinjiang

Xinjiang in China. Xinjiang means "new borderland" and borders the countries of Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.

Furthermore, China has long used technology to monitor and suppress their ethnic minority populations. In Xinjang, a region on the border of China and home to the country’s largest Muslim population, adherence is instilled in the forms of virtual checkpoints and the swiping of ID cards. The Chinese government has completely digitized policing and is creating a state of constant surveillance to keep the population in line. Some people are allowed to bypass these checkpoints and are not subject to digitized policing. Chris Buckley and Paul Mozur of the New York Times report that “at many checkpoints, privileged groups — Han Chinese, Uighur officials with passes, and foreign visitors — are waved through “green channels.” Although the Chinese may seek more trust and policing, this is an obvious form of targeted surveillance that can have the possibility of trickling into more minority groups.

Conclusion

With China already implementing its social crediting system and the fear of being blacklisted at the forefront, I understand that resisting the government is a daunting task. I also understand that this is a great moral issue in which an increased number of Chinese people will be stripped of their basic human rights. Technological innovation is growing at a faster pace than anyone can keep up with and blindly following the government’s application of said technology will prove disastrous for all parties, but as history has shown, the minority will always be left with the biggest burden.

I implore the Chinese people to resist the use of such a credit system. The first step would be choosing not to opt-in to the private aggregators of data. Before the mass implementation of the social crediting system, private companies have begun to gather information on an opt-in basis, I implore you to resist. The government wins every time one of their allotted big corporations is favored. Small businesses and anyone with hiring power should also disregard consideration of the crediting scores when making hiring decisions. By doing this, the people could nullify the crediting system and leave it to the government to use it solely. Though Chinese citizens might think that the benefits of a surveillance state (including safety and security) outweigh the harms outlined in this paper, I ask you to reconsider. Further, I argue that the risk of loss of human rights and liberty for minor transgressions such as jaywalking should outweigh any benefits.

At the end of “Nosedive,” Lacie is finally overwhelmed by her lifelong desire to secure a high score. She realizes that her desire to fit into the pastel-perfect life of her disingenuous friend is made up of a societal standard that will never allow her to truly live a fulfilling life. Within a day, she was heaved to the bottom of the social ladder, along with the very people she ignored and chastised her entire life. By drinking out of a red flask of whiskey that finally released her from her flawed perception,* she was able to finally live again and see the people for who they really are, past their assigned scores. I ask Chinese citizens to do the same: take the red flask and see past whatever social crediting system may be implemented among them. Your children, your neighbor, and yourself will thank you in the long run. We are more than a number.

Notes

*This is reference to a scene from the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix, where the protagonist is given the choice between learning the hard truth by taking a red pill or living in a comfortable illusion by taking a blue pill.

Further learning

Antonia Hmaidi. "The" Social Credit System in China. 35C3.

• Antonia Hmaidi. "'The' Social Credit System in China." (Video). 35C3. 27 December 2018. A lecture for the 2018 Chaos Computer Club Congress that seeks to provide a more nuanced view on the Chinese Social Credit System than what the Western media offers.
• Victoria Adelmant. "Social Credit in China: Looking Beyond the 'Black Mirror' Nightmare." Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, New York University School of Law. April 20, 2021. A discussion of the human rights implications of the Chinese Social Credit system. With many additional resources and explanations of the organizations involved.
• Eunsun Cho. "The Social Credit System: Not Just Another Chinese Idiosyncrasy." Journal of Public and International Affairs. 1 May 2020.

Discussion questions

• What are forms of financial, work performance, and social credit scoring in the United States? How are they similar to the Chinese system? How are they different? In your opinion, could the institutions that run our financial and our social credit scores be turned into a loosely unified system similar to that of China?
• What kind of citizen is the Chinese government attempting to obtain through its system of credit rewards and punishments? What could be the reasons for making every citizens' score public, accessible, and displayable? What could be the reasons for deploying monitoring technologies in school?
• What could be some unintended consequences of manipulating a population's social behaviors?

 

"Stuffed with Garbage"

Propaganda is a monologue that is not looking for an answer, but an echo.

— W. H. Auden

The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

— Carl Bernstein.

My definition of fake news is a content-like object that is a story, an article, a video, a tweet that has been fabricated, completely invented out of thin air, intentionally for the purpose of misleading.

— Vivian Schiller

I suppose, in the end, we journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: "We didn't know - no one told us."

— Robert Fisk

While we claim to live in an information age, disinformation has become the order of the day.

— Farid A. Malik

Stuffed with Garbage: How Fake News, Misinformation, and Disinformation Impact the Journalists' Code of Ethics in Digital News Media 

Misleading or false information presented in the form of news is commonly referred to as fake news or hoax news. The primary objective of fake news is to defame a person, group, or entity or to generate advertising revenue.

Journalists and media practitioners face several complex ethical challenges due to the rise of digital technologies. The impact of fake news, misinformation, and disinformation on the code of ethics followed by media in digital journalism is significant. With the advent of multimedia, it has become effortless for such user-generated content to propagate quickly and extensively, posing a challenge for digital news media to ensure the integrity of their content. Collectively, misleading news has led to a growing concern about the impact of these phenomena on journalism ethics and standards in digital media. By shedding light on how false information can affect ethical journalism, this exploratory article can help digital news and social media publishers protect their audience from fallacious news and promote the open exchange of ideas based on truthful reporting.  

THERE ARE SEVERAL NAMES AND TYPES OF FALSE INFORMATION
Fake News	False or misleading information is presented as news.
Disinformation	It was deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group, organization, or country.
Misinformation	False—but not created or shared to cause harm.

The Effects of Fake News, Misinformation, and Disinformation in Digital News Media  

"The War of the Worlds" was a Halloween episode of the radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air directed and narrated by Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds that was performed and broadcast live at 8 pm ET on October 30, 1938 over the CBS Radio Network.

In 1938, the CBS Radio Network aired a radio drama, "The War of the Worlds,” which depicted Martians' fictional invasion of Earth. The drama is famous for causing mass panic, as many listeners mistook it for an actual news broadcast. When the episode was broadcast, it was dramatic theater for some and revealed as orchestrated misinformation for others.

It is increasingly difficult to differentiate between real and fake news stories. The Internet is filled with numerous examples of blatantly false news:  examples of blatantly false news:

• The U.S. Capitol police gave the protesters an "okay" to enter the Capitol. A video clip was widely shared on social media and posted by a group of Trump supporters. The video showed the group attacking the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, after U.S. President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. The group claimed that a police officer had told them that they could enter the building. However, upon reviewing the video, no evidence supports this claim. The Gateway Pundit, a fake news website, also reported this claim on their Facebook and Instagram pages. Additionally, a radio show in Texas called "Walton & Johnson" ran a similar headline.
  • The FBI has released ample evidence to the public, which demonstrates that Trump supporters violently attacked officers at the Capitol. Additionally, other footage shows them breaking through a metal barrier outside the Capitol and breaking windows of the building to enter. It can be concluded that the U.S. Capitol police did not allow protestors to enter the Capitol.

• High doses of vitamin C can cure COVID-19. In 2020, numerous websites and social media posts propagated that high vitamin C could cure or effectively treat COVID-19.
  • There was a lot of hype around unproven claims for vitamin C as a cure for COVID-19, spread through fake news, personal websites, and social media influencers. However, there is no scientific evidence to support these claims.
• Chickens are not laying eggs because RNA is being added to commercial chicken feed. The source of the claim was an article titled "Messenger RNA sequencing and pathway analysis provide novel insights into the biological basis of chickens' feed efficiency." The study aimed to understand the differences between chickens with low and high feed efficiency and used RNA sequencing to analyze the levels of RNA produced by the chickens' cells. However, the article did not mention adding RNA to chicken feed. The goal of the study is to improve the selection process for feed efficiency.
  • Several experts have confirmed that the claim regarding commercial feed manufacturers adding RNA to chicken feed misinterprets the data. The FDA has also stated that RNA is not considered a feed additive. The articles cited in the original TikTok video do not provide evidence to support the argument made in the video. Moreover, the FDA has advised seeking advice from a licensed veterinarian to examine the chicken and gather a detailed medical and diet history, as there are several reasons why a chicken's egg-laying behavior and production may change.
  • The first thing that should be questioned is the reference to RNA in the post. RNA, scientifically known as ribonucleic acid, is a nucleic acid found in all living cells. Therefore, the argument of adding synthetic Arnie into commercial feed does not seem logical. Additionally, research confirms that factors such as management practices, improper nutrition, parasite infection, disease, lighting, and stress commonly affect chicken egg production. Hence, the conclusion can be drawn that RNA is not added to commercial chicken feed.

During the 2016 election, President Donald Trump began expressing concerns about the possibility of election rigging. He spoke about it repeatedly, claiming that the election was rigged and that something was going wrong on the part of Hillary Clinton. Trump's attempt to destabilize the election created a sense among his supporters that the election was being manipulated. Hence, a fake news content creator from Maryland saw an opportunity to capitalize on this sentiment and decided to create false evidence to support the idea that the election was rigged. He started with a headline claiming that thousands of fraudulent Clinton ballots were found in an Ohio warehouse. 

But, in his 2017 New York Times article, "From Headline to Photograph: A Fake News Masterpiece," Scott Shane uncovered the truth behind this questionable story that would be a headliner for “a dubious art just coming into its prime”—fake news. He dives into how the 23-year-old fake news creator intentionally designed a website and Facebook pages to generate revenue from the distrust of Clinton among “six million” Trump supporters. Although the bogus story was verifiably false, Shane points out that the damage had been done. The blatantly, intentionally disseminated information sparked outrage from people who believed Clinton would cheat Trump, underscoring the effect of false information in digital news media. 

Journalism, “Fake News” and Disinformation—a handbook designed to address the issue of disinformation that confronts societies in general, and journalism in particular—avoids legitimizing that the term “fake news” has a straightforward or commonly understood meaning because “news” implies verifiable information in the public's interest. If the information does not meet these standards, it does not deserve the “news” label. Therefore, “fake news” is an oxymoron that undermines the credibility of information that meets the threshold of verifiability and public interest—real news. In this handbook, the term "disinformation" is commonly used to describe the act of intentionally deceiving or manipulating people using false information. The term often involves a range of tactics, including disseminating misleading or dishonest information and hacking or compromising individuals. All the same, "misinformation" typically refers to unintentionally misleading information. While both are problematic, disinformation is considered more dangerous as it is often well-planned, well-funded, and supported by automated technology.

Those who spread false information target people vulnerable to their messages or can amplify them for their purposes. They use the public’s tendency to share information to persuade their audience to become the carriers of their messages. The danger lies in the fact that such "fake news" is usually free and accessible to everyone, making it particularly risky for those who cannot afford quality journalism or do not have access to unbiased news media. With the help of technology and social media, fake news stories can appear in legitimate electronic news publications. Political organizations and groups may use ads that resemble news to deceive some target audience. Additionally, hackers may use bots, which are small pieces of software, to create numerous social media accounts and spread false information. This subversion of reality and twisting of facts can make a fabricated story appear genuine, as many people have shared it.

Fake news is a growing problem, made worse by the ease of access and sharing on social media. Technology like generative AI and deepfakes make it challenging to differentiate between real and fake news. This can lead to misinformation and confirmation bias¹⁷, as people are likelier to believe news confirming their beliefs. Echo chambers¹⁸ further exacerbate this problem by promoting biased opinions as fact.

False information is a problem in our society and can come from dissimilar sources. Some people create it to make money, while others use it to harm their competitors. Unfortunately, these articles can cause many problems, such as confusion and bad decisions. They can also make people lose trust in journalism. Gossip is another issue where people spread rumors without verifying whether they are true. Propaganda is a message that tries to convince people to support a particular political or ideological agenda. It often has misleading information, making it hard for people to make good choices. Nowadays, anyone can publish opinions without checking the facts. This manipulative use of news has led to a decrease in ethical norms in journalism, according to Forbes magazine.  

The Importance of Ethical Journalism in Digital News Media  [edit | edit source]

According to the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics, journalists assume four primary responsibilities, including: to seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent.

Media ethicist Stephen J.A. Ward believes that “[we] are moving towards a mixed news media—a news media citizen and professional journalism across many media platforms.” This alternative media has become increasingly prevalent as the mass communication landscape evolves. Ward explains that with this shift comes the need to establish fresh hybrid media ethics that can guide amateur and professional individuals, regardless of their platform—bloggers, broadcasters, Twitterers, or traditional journalism writers. These guidelines should be comprehensive and inclusive, considering each medium's unique challenges and opportunities. They should also prioritize accuracy, fairness, and transparency while respecting the privacy and dignity of all individuals involved in the news-making process. These ethics should ensure that the public can trust the information they receive from all news media sources.

Traditional journalism is losing its grip on public trust in digital news media. The cornerstone of journalism ethics is balance and fairness, striving for accuracy and conveying all sides of a story. However, there is a debate about how far media people should go to represent all perspectives. Although journalists should take their time to present all sides of a story, especially during urgent situations, they should avoid "false balance" or giving equal weight to both sides of a story when one side is false. Even if a reporter has a point of view, they must still aim for balance and fairness. Sometimes, it is impossible to achieve complete balance and fairness, as news coverage often caters to those at the extremes. David Robert Grimes, who contributes to several media outlets on questions of society, thinks that "when the evidence is clear-cut, the assumption that good journalism requires mutually opposed views to be treated as equally valid simply doesn’t hold." It is essential to recognize that not all perspectives are equally valid, primarily when one side is based on false information.

In this ever-evolving digital media environment, adhering to ethical norms is a proactive measure that benefits columnists and their readership. Trust is paramount in creating an informed and responsible society. New ethical guidelines must be established and upheld with citizen journalism, blogging, and social media disrupting traditional journalism. Yet, the current measures must be revised to guide journalists in this new era that combines professionals and amateurs. Therefore, new ethical ideologies must be tailored to this new media landscape to ensure reliable information. Upholding ethical guiding principles combats misinformation, safeguards against false information, and promotes accurate reporting. Codes of ethics in media establish credibility, preserve the reputation of digital news sources, and serve the public interest. The digital age has transformed journalism, making ethics more crucial than ever.

Maintaining transparency as an online reporter is necessary. This requires a demonstration of openness and accountability. To achieve this, the Ethics of Online Journalists emphasizes: “If [a journalist] make[s] a correction to an article that is already published, note the correction on the updated version. When [an online reporter is] connected personally to a story, share that information in the interest of full disclosure.” Moreover, maintaining open communication with the audience is essential. Credibility is of utmost importance for online writers, who are constantly under scrutiny. To earn credibility, it is necessary to check facts and use supporting documentation, avoid inserting subjective opinions, and provide supporting links to reliable sources. By adhering to the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, which includes being honest, fair, and courageous in gathering, reporting, and interpreting information, online reporters can uphold exacting standards of excellent journalism and enhance their professional reputation.  

Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the precursor to justice and the cornerstone of democracy. Ethical journalism guarantees the unfettered exchange of precise, impartial, and comprehensive information. An honest journalist always upholds integrity. The Society identifies these four principles as the bedrock of ethical journalism and encourages their implementation by all individuals in all forms of media.

SPJ Code of Ethics
Seek Truth and Report It	Journalism demands accuracy, fairness, and honesty.   Journalists should verify their sources, provide context, and update and correct information throughout the life of a story.   They should identify sources clearly and allow subjects to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.   Journalists should avoid undercover methods of gathering information and hold those in power accountable.   They should seek diverse voices, avoid stereotyping, and label advocacy and commentary.   Finally, journalists should never distort facts or context and attribute sources appropriately.
Minimize Harm	Ethical journalism treats everyone with respect and follows the following guidelines: Balance the public’s need for information with potential harm. Show compassion for those who may be affected by news coverage. Access to information is not an ethical justification to publish or broadcast it. Private individuals have greater control over information about themselves. Avoid sensationalizing news. Balance a suspect's right to a fair trial with the public's right to know. Consider the long-term implications of the publication's reach and permanence.   Ethical journalism exists to serve the public.
Act Independently	Journalists must avoid conflicts of interest, refuse gifts and favors, and avoid activities that could compromise credibility.   They should not pay for news or provide special treatment to advertisers or donors. Sponsored content must be clearly labeled to distinguish it from news.
Be Accountable and Transparent	Ethical journalism demands that journalists take responsibility for their work and remain accountable to the public for their decisions.   This includes the obligation of journalists to clarify their ethical choices and processes to their audiences and engage in a respectful dialogue with them about journalistic practices, coverage, and news content.   They should also respond promptly to any queries regarding the accuracy, clarity, and impartiality of their reporting. Moreover, journalists should adhere to the same exacting standards of journalism that they expect from others.   They must also expose any unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations.

How to Protect the Public from Fallacious Information in Digital News Media  [edit | edit source]

PolitiFact is a fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others on its Truth-O-Meter. Latest Pants on Fire! Fact-checks

Ask FactCheck! Have a question for FactCheck? Ask us. If you have a question about a social media post, we may have already answered it on our Debunking False Stories page. Or see the most popular questions on our Viral Spiral page. FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on the social media network. We provide several resources for readers: a guide on how to flag suspicious stories on Facebook and a list of websites that have carried false or satirical articles, as well as a video and story on how to spot false stories

Digital news media must expose fake news and disinformation while avoiding giving them undue credibility. They can achieve this by relying on their internal experts and reputable fact-checkers. To educate the public about misleading news sites, well-regarded websites such as PolitiFact, Factcheck.org, and Snopes evaluate the accuracy of claims made by elected officials and publish stories that detail the truth or falsehood of specific developments. These fact-checking sources have become visible in election campaigns and candidate evaluations in the United States and elsewhere. Darrell M. West’s article, “How to Combat Fake News and Disinformation,” reports—according to research by Dartmouth College Professor Brendan Nyhan—that labeling a Facebook post as "disputed" can reduce the percentage of readers who believe the false news by ten percentage points. Additionally, West—a nonpartisan analyst for the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit organization dedicated to independent research and policy solutions—discloses that communication and media professor Melissa Zimdars of Merrimack College has compiled a list of 140 websites that use "distorted headlines and decontextualized or dubious information," which helps people find promoters of false news. In times of significant turmoil and confusion, the world requires a robust and effective news media that informs citizens about current events and long-term trends.  

The Radio Television Digital News Association—the world's largest professional organization dedicated to broadcast and digital journalism—emphasizes that disseminating false information has become a significant menace to the public. Addressing this problem is vital and requires the active involvement of news professionals and newsroom managers. Journalists are the first line of defense against inaccurate and deceptive content across all mediums. Newspeople should refrain from repeating false claims, reposting manipulated images, or restating incorrect quotes to avoid generating false or misleading deceptions. Instead, they should always state the truth and accuracy before correcting erroneous information. While correcting falsehoods, it is decisive to ensure that the content is not being amplified—and has not been viewed or shared by many people. A trumped-up story should be corrected when the alternative fact reaches a critical mass and appears to be spreading.

Submitting material or information to a news organization is pivotal in disseminating news. Nonetheless, it is equally essential to ensure that the authenticity of the material is verified before it is published. This verification process involves a thorough investigation to confirm the source, date, and ownership of any videos, photos, or audio recordings. Journalists should contact anyone identified in the material to ensure its accuracy and context. When confusion, diversion, and distraction are ramped up, they become a pollutant of public debate. Newspeople must get the sources to verify how the material was obtained and to seek additional evidence to support any claims. Graphics should be scrutinized for accuracy, and their sources should be disclosed to ensure transparency. In addition, news organizations should carefully examine all material for signs of manipulation, including unnatural movements and lighting. A review process involving more than one reporter should be implemented to ensure that all material is thoroughly vetted before publication.  

Snopes, formerly known as the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is the definitive Internet reference source for researching urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation. What's New? The latest fact checks and original reporting from Snopes' editorial team. Test your fact checking skills with the new Snopes True or False game!

By taking these steps, news organizations can maintain their credibility and ensure that the information they publish is accurate and reliable. It is important for news organizations to continuously educate and train journalists on how to identify and combat misinformation, using free resources such as those provided by First Draft News—a nonprofit coalition providing practical and ethical guidance on how to find, verify, and publish content sourced from the social web. Reporters are responsible for informing the public about the methods used to spread false information and how to spot it. Anyone who writes for news websites or prepares news to be broadcast can build trust with their audience by sharing their reviews and verification processes. Additionally, having a second person proofread news content across all platforms can help ensure accuracy.

How to Promote an Open Exchange of Ideas in Digital News Media  [edit | edit source]

What will journalism look like in the next century? While change is inevitable, as stated in “The Rise of Digital Journalism: Past, Present, and Future”—a Maryville University blog—"[it is] clear that the Internet and digital age are here to stay, and humanity will continue to find new ways to connect and interact as the 21st century goes on.” Irrespective of the outcome, journalists and media practitioners in the digital era must adapt. With innovative technologies, platforms, and tools emerging, the best reporters must find ways to incorporate them into their skills or explore new areas in the field. As per the Poynter Institute, journalists in the next 10 to 20 years will require the same level of inquisitiveness, writing proficiency, and fact-checking abilities as today's writers, but they will also need to rely more on digital film, photo, and editing skills, as well as their capacity to "build their brand."

Journalism has undergone significant changes, from its origins before the Industrial Revolution to the present era of citizen journalism and media conglomerates. To be successful in this field in the 21st century, news writers and journalism students must be adaptable to new platforms and technologies and stay attuned to the public's opinions and interests. Despite the uncertain future of journalism, there will always be opportunities for entrepreneurial individuals with a grasp of technology and human nature to tell engaging stories. Regardless of what they call themselves, that is the essence of journalism.  

With the media landscape changing swiftly, today's scenario demands continuous adaptation and evolution. By introducing participatory journalism—where the audience can actively gather, report, examine, and share information—professionals and amateurs can foster a more inclusive conversation around the news by treating their audience as collaborators, advisors, advocates, partners, and contributors. Digital news media can promote access to reliable information and diverse viewpoints by encouraging open discussions, providing diverse perspectives, and offering engaging video-based content. Personalized content based on data and analytics can enhance audience engagement and encourage user-generated content, leading to an open exchange of ideas and a sense of community. With advanced technology, digital news media can create a more immersive and interactive experience for their readers, leading to a more informed and connected society.  

The Fourth Estate, or the press, is influential in informing the public about current events and issues and holding those in power accountable. On the other hand, the rise of fake news, misinformation, and disinformation makes delivering accurate and reliable information increasingly difficult. Digital news media outlets must prioritize truthful reporting and fact-checking to ensure the public is well-informed and can engage in meaningful discussions. While there is a debate about how far reporters should go to represent all perspectives, promoting balanced and fair reporting is a prerequisite.  

Responsible journalism involves several noteworthy components, such as fact-checking principles, source verification, transparency, diversity, and adherence to ethical guidelines. By adhering to these standards, digital news media outlets can ensure that their reporting is fair, accurate, and unbiased. By investing in the professional development of their journalists, digital news media outlets can promote responsible journalism practices and improve the quality of their reporting.  

How Technological Advancements Will Shape the Future of Journalism—a blog associated with Maryville University—acknowledges that the world of journalism is undergoing a rapid transformation. Traditional desktops have been replaced by more portable and versatile laptops and notebooks. With the Internet, vast content resources are now available worldwide. Several news organizations, such as the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times, have started utilizing artificial intelligence to generate automated content, tag digital text, and reformat articles. Regardless of these technological advancements, qualified and experienced news writers are still indispensable in covering a wide range of events like breaking news, local happenings, and forums on public policy, board of education meetings, and elections.

Conclusion  [edit | edit source]

There is a need to be vigilant against fake news as scammers often manipulate the stories to align with the perceptions of their targets, making it easier to deceive them. Therefore, it is important to join the fight against fake news by reporting such instances.

Promoting responsible journalism is foremost when ensuring accurate and credible news and information. By implementing constructive measures to encourage audience engagement, inclusivity, and critical thinking and prioritizing truthful reporting and fact-checking, journalists can overcome the challenges posed by digital media and promote a trustworthy, unbiased, and fair culture of responsible journalism.

Wikipedia Sources[edit | edit source]

• Alternative Media
• Blog
• CBS Radio Network
• Citizen Journalism
• Codes of Ethics in Media
• David Robert Grimes
• Deepfake
• Digital Age (Information Age)
• Digital Journalism
• Digital Media
• Disinformation
• Facebook
• Fake News
• Fact-checking
• False Balance
• First Draft News
• Fourth Estate
• Generative AI (Artificial Intelligence)
• Hacker
• Instagram
• Journalist
• Journalism Ethics and Standards
• Mass Communication
• Misinformation
• Multimedia
• Scott Shane
• Social Media
• Society of Professional Journalists
• The War of The Worlds (1938 Radio Drama)
• Twitter
• User-generated Content

Glossary of Terms[edit | edit source]

Alternative Media. Sources of media that are distinct from conventional or dominant forms of media, such as mainstream or mass media, in their content, production, or distribution.

Blogger. Someone who regularly writes for a website, usually run by an individual or small group, and uses an informal, conversational writing style.

Broadcaster. A person employed to talk on radio or television shows.

Citizen Journalism. Also referred to as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism, or street journalism, involves public members actively participating in collecting, reporting, analyzing, and distributing news and information.

Code Of Ethics in Media. In 1947, the Hutchins Commission recommended the creation of a code of ethics in the media. The commission believed journalists, newspapers, and broadcasters were responsible for ensuring accurate and reliable journalism and should be held accountable for it.

Confirmation Bias. When people process information that confirms their existing beliefs and ignore information that contradicts them.  

Deepfakes. A type of synthetic media created by digitally manipulating one person's likeness with another.  

Digital Age. Also referred to as the Computer Age, Information Age, Silicon Age, New Media Age, or Media Age, it began in the mid-20th century and is characterized by a rapid shift toward an economy centered on information technology.  

Digital Journalism. A modern form of journalism that delivers editorial content through the internet rather than print or broadcast.

Digital Media. Digital media is any communication media that operates with encoded machine-readable data formats. It includes text, audio, video, and graphics transmitted over the Internet for viewing or listening.

Digital Technologies. Electronic tools, systems, and devices can generate, store, or process data. Examples include social media, multimedia, and mobile phones.  

Diverse Viewpoint. It is understanding that all people have unique experiences and see things differently.

Echo Chambers. As seen in news and social media, an echo chamber is a closed system where individuals are exposed to beliefs that amplify or reinforce their existing beliefs through repetition and communication while insulating from opposing viewpoints.

Electronic News Publication. Commonly referred to as an online newspaper, it can either exist as a standalone publication or as the digital version of a printed periodical.

Ethical Norms. Standardized conduct and behavior refer to universally accepted guidelines that individuals in a society or organization follow.  

Fact-checking. Fact-checking verifies the accuracy of information presented in a written work, news article, speech, or other communication piece.

Fake News Websites. Fake news websites publish hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation as real news. They use social media to drive web traffic and amplify their effect.

False Balance. Also known as bothsidesism, it is a type of bias in media where journalists tend to present an issue as being equally balanced between opposing viewpoints, even when the evidence does not support it.

Fourth Estate. It pertains to the press and news media, which possess the explicit capability of advocacy and the implicit ability to shape political discourse.

Generative AI. Refers to the ability of AI to create text, images, and other media using generative models. These models learn from input training data and produce new data with similar characteristics.

Gossip. Casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details not confirmed as valid.

Hacker. Someone who uses technical skills to solve problems can also refer to someone who illegally accesses systems for criminal purposes.

Ideological Agenda. A set of beliefs and values that form the basis of political action in a country or political system.

Journalistic Ethics and Standards. Journalistic ethics are the principles of ethics and good practice applicable to journalists. It is also known as journalism's professional "code of ethics" and the "canons of journalism."

Mass Communication. Refers to the transmission and exchange of information to vast segments of the population through mass media. Technological advancements have made conveying information through various media platforms more efficient. The primary examples of these platforms include journalism and advertising.

Media Conglomerate. A company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises. Six major companies, including Comcast, Fox, The Walt Disney Company, Viacom, AT&T, and CBS control the US media. These companies are part of a media conglomerate and serve as significant news sources.

Media. The means of communication, such as radio and television, newspapers, magazines, and the internet, that reach or influence people widely.

Media Practitioners. Individuals involved in producing, editing, or disseminating news and information to the public. This can include broadcasters, journalists, publishers, editors, and managers or owners of broadcasting stations or publications.

Multimedia. Multimedia combines various content forms, like writing, audio, images, animations, or video, into an interactive presentation.

News media. The news media comprises newspapers, TV journalism, and other forms of communication that provide current events and analysis.

Participatory Journalism. Also known as citizen journalism is a modern form of journalism in which ordinary citizens who are not professional journalists participate in the news-gathering process. It expands the traditional path of journalism, created by journalists and distributed to an audience, to allow more active and potential roles for the public. This includes their involvement in gathering, analyzing, reporting, and sharing information.

Political Agenda. A list of current government and public concerns.  

Political Groups. Political groups such as political parties and trade unions are created to promote a shared ideology and achieve objectives in the public sphere.

Political Organizations. Political parties, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and advocacy groups engaged in activities like lobbying, organizing, and advertising to achieve political goals for their members. Parties are political organizations focusing on winning elections and controlling the government.

Propaganda. Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, is used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

Social Media. A type of online technology that allows people to create and share content with others in virtual communities. It involves interactive participation and is a new form of media.

Traditional Journalism. Also known as legacy or mainstream media, it comprises television, radio, newspapers, news magazines, and online versions. These forms of media are regulated by media law and press ethics—and were once considered the most trustworthy sources for news. Before the internet, they were the only means of information dissemination.

Twitterer. Someone who posts short messages or information on the social media platform formerly Twitter.  

Wikiquotes[edit | edit source]

Wikiquote is a free online compendium of sourced quotations from notable people and creative works in every language, translations of non-English quotes, and links to Wikipedia for further information.

Propaganda is a monologue that is not looking for an answer, but an echo.

— W. H. Auden

The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

— Carl Bernstein.

My definition of fake news is a content-like object that is a story, an article, a video, a tweet that has been fabricated, completely invented out of thin air, intentionally for the purpose of misleading.

— Vivian Schiller

I suppose, in the end, we journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses of history. If we have any reason for our existence, the least must be our ability to report history as it happens so that no one can say: "We didn't know - no one told us."

— Robert Fisk

While we claim to live in an information age, disinformation has become the order of the day.

— Farid A. Malik

Further Reading[edit | edit source]

• Allyn, Bobby. “Deepfake Video of Zelenskyy Could Be ‘Tip of the Iceberg’ in Info War, Experts Warn.” NPR, NPR, 16 Mar. 2022. Hackers circulated a fake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on social media and a news website before being debunked and removed. Accessed 13 December 2023.
• Arguedas, Amy Ross, et al. “Echo Chambers, Filter Bubbles, and Polarization: A Literature Review.” Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 19 Jan. 2022. The authors review social science work on online echo chambers, their causes, effects, and how they shape public understanding of science. Accessed 13 December 2023.
• Bartlett, Bruce R. The Truth Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Separating Facts from Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks. 1st ed., Ten Speed Press, 2017. Bartlett offers tips on critical reading, fact-checking, avoiding bias, and identifying trustworthy sources.
• Hill, Alison. “Citizen Journalism vs. Traditional Journalism - Writer’s Digest.” Writer’s Digest, writersdigest.com, 27 Feb. 2022. Alison Hill explores the relationship between citizen journalism and traditional journalism, highlighting their potential to complement each other.
• Pavlik, John V. “Concept: Media Ethics in the Digital Age.” Media Ethics, 2012. Media ethics guide responsible journalism through principles such as seeking truth, working independently, being accountable, and minimizing harm, with a code that may need updating for innovative technologies and ethical dilemmas, as suggested by Pavlik. Accessed 13 December 2023.
• Rosenstiel, Tom, et al. "Journalism Ethics and Values: Challenges in the Digital Age." Vimeo, uploaded by Knight Center, 29 April 2014. At a journalism symposium in 2013, experts discussed the challenges posed by digital news and how ethics can be applied in real-world situations. Accessed 13 December 2023.
• “Reliable Sources/Perennial Sources.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Dec. 2023. This page lists sources discussed for their reliability and use on Wikipedia. Accessed 13 December 2023.

• Wemakor, Joseph. “The Role of Media Practitioners, Citizen Journalists in Promotion of Peace and Security in an Era of Fake News.” The Role of Media Practitioners, Citizen Journalists in Promotion of Peace and Security in an Era of Fake News | SDG Philanthropy Platform, sdgphilanthropy.org, 13 Mar. 2022. The blog examines the role of media practitioners and citizen journalists in promoting peace and security. Accessed 13 December 2023.
• Zimdars, Melissa. “False, Misleading, Clickbait-Y, and Satirical ‘News’ Sources.” Google Docs, Google, 2017. This is a reliable resource for assessing a website's credibility and evaluating online media sources. Accessed 13 December 2023.
• Zimdars, Melissa, and Kembrew McLeod, editors. Fake News: Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age. The MIT Press, 2020. This book explores the issue of fake news, covering its multiple forms and contexts.

Discussion Questions[edit | edit source]

• What would you say to someone who argues that identifying fake news should lie solely with the reader?  
• What would you say to someone who argues that ethical guidelines may stifle free speech and limit the diversity of opinions expressed in citizen journalism?  
• What would you say to someone who argues that labeling a Facebook post as "disputed" may increase the percentage of readers who believe the false news due to the backfire effect?  
• What about those who argue that citizen journalism can lead to a lack of accountability and professionalism in reporting?  
• What would you say to someone who argues that readers should be responsible for verifying the accuracy of the news they read instead of relying on media outlets to fact-check?  
• What about those who argue that fake news, misinformation, and disinformation have always existed and are not a new phenomenon in digital news media?  
• What would you say to someone who argues that fake news is not a significant issue because it only affects unsuspecting people who are easily fooled?  
• What would you say to someone who argues that people should be responsible for fact-checking news stories rather than relying on media outlets to differentiate between real and fake news?  
• What would you say to someone who argues that people who consume fake news are responsible for their misinformation and should be more critical of the sources they trust?

Expensive Textbooks Stressing You Out?

Introduction

In current times in our economy, inflation has skyrocketed and affected almost every American, and unfortunately education is not excluded. I have experienced some hardships with part of my income contributing to my education, as it is a new expense I have not experienced before. I’ve been living in New York City my whole life and with it being the most expensive city in the world I’ve struggled a bit financially. For the spring semester I received the Federal Pell Grant and only had to pay $500 for tuition but for the following semester the grant was cut significantly and now I must pay most of my tuition. Alongside an expensive city,  there is also expensive rent and being a student with a part time job, it can become stressful living. Although there has been some adjusting, all my classes use free academic resources so there isn’t an additional expense that I need to worry about. Providing open access to academic journals and articles can benefit society by making knowledge accessible to students who lack resources.

History/ background

If we are going back to the beginning of why there is a discussion surrounding OER’s, it starts with copyright laws. The most recent copyright law was passed in 1976 and in later years Congress has made accommodating acts to accompany it. Copyright allows people to reserve and obtain all rights to their work. Only they are allowed to distribute their creations and no one else without their approval or permission. While some may perceive copyright as a modern concept, it stems back to the mid 1400’s[XG3]  with the European development of movable type. The printing press allowed for spreading thoughts and opinions--the most popular being the Bible--faster than ever. Before the printing press, any form of tangible literature was done by hand, which was a slow and tedious process. The printing press raised conversation about ownership and the credibility of authors, who had been struggling to get paid, especially because there was no protection of their work. This conversation culminated in the Statute of Anne named after the queen of that time. This law is the first modern copyright statute that granted British authors copyright instead of the publisher. This laid the foundation for future copyright laws in the UK and U.S.

There have been different modified versions of copyright laws in the U.S. As previously mentioned, the most recent copyright law was passed in 1976. Although the law itself has not been amended, there have been other acts to get more “with the times”: one prime example is the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), which  was passed in 1995 to keep up with the European nations’ own copyright law that allowed people to control their work for seventy years after their death, while the U.S allowed for fifty. The passing of CTEA, now allows for Americans to have rights to their work for seventy years after death. A similar extension act was the Sonny Bono CTEA which was later passed in 1998 to mostly cater to big corporations such as Disney, which extends the rights to ninety-five years after publication. Although this only applies if the creation was published before 1978, anything published after 1977 would continue to be seventy years after death. While these acts are to ensure creators are credited and paid, it wasn’t written with the thought of the Internet or the World Wide Web (web for short) which would soon rise in popularity around the world.

The Birth of Open Access

Aaron Swartz at Boston Wikipedia Meetup, 2009-08-18

Once Tim Berners-Lee made his invention of the Web available for all the world to use, the topic of copyright came back into question in America again. From these discussions, the free culture movement emerged. The movement’s members believe that the web’s contents should be made easily accessible and not be so restricted to the public. Aaron Swartz was one of many free culture movement members who criticized the restrictions that copyright had on many works, especially with respect to educational materials. Swartz was a programmer and political activist who engaged in a case correlating with copyright, around the time of his untimely death.

Swartz and others realized that universities had many academic journals and scholarly articles available to students and faculty, but that paywalls were restricting the access to those same articles to others outside of American colleges.  When Swartz realized this,  he declared it to be unfair to other students who didn’t have the same privilege and decided to voice his opinion in a public document called the "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto." This manifesto was written by Swartz and others to express the disapproval of the paywall that sites have on scholarly articles. Throughout the document, they try to convince university students to see the disparity of knowledge of other students who are without these scholarly materials and to share them to close that gap:

you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends… as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

In 2011 the government decided to propose the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). This act was proposed as a “solution” to make sure websites followed copyright laws and if they didn’t make sure their site avoided any mistake, it would be restricted or completely shut down. This means if someone uploaded a song to a site and forgot to credit the source, the entire site would be shut down for everyone and wouldn’t be accessible. Many, including Swartz, believed the act to be ludicrous and protested it. SOPA never made it to law due to the overwhelming opposition to it.

During the protesting of SOPA, Swartz was facing criminal charges for illegally downloading millions of academic journals and articles from JSTOR by having access to MIT’s database. JSTOR is a site where they have accumulated many academic journals and resources only free if one is a U.S university student or else you must pay to have access to an article. While downloading some articles is okay, downloading in bulk is considered a federal offence. Many more charges were brought because of Swartz’ openness of OERs and the possibility that he was going to publish the articles for everyone to see. Many of Swartz’ family, friends, and fans protested the charges saying the initial act was proven but not the publishing of the pages. After two years with the government still wanting to put him in prison and his deteriorating mental health, Swartz ended his life.

The advocating of Swartz and others has left a legacy behind. Starting the conversation of open education and OERs for all students so there isn’t a continuation of inaccessibility for those who want to learn. A beneficiary of the open access movement is Jack Andraka. Andraka was fourteen when he decided to invent a device to detect pancreatic cancer early on. When someone is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer it is usually too late to do anything about it. Andraka conducted his research on academic resources that were free and easily accessible to the public. In 2013, he successfully managed to make the first prototypes to be shipped out for others to use and credits Swartz on his accessibility to accomplish it.  

Open Access and Education

 Swartz and others continued to rally behind open access for educational materials or Open Education Resources (OERs). OERs are essentially textbooks and resources that are free, and anyone can access them. OERs can be revised and edited by others because of being in the public domain or the author had laxed some of their rights. OERs are essential because of the cost of college tuition rising, the separate cost of textbooks and resources deprives students who won’t be able to afford them.

City Tech is one CUNY college implementing the use of OERs and it conducted research on student performance and retention rates in their Undergraduate Engineering Departments. Having easy accessibility allows for students to gain the knowledge they need for their classes and not have the extra cost of textbooks holding them back. The study showed that the implementation of OER’s helped engineering students save money and continue staying in school. Although the study shows that failing and D-grades haven’t changed, Zhao and his team make it a point that it didn’t decrease student performances.

There is also the case of students around the world not having access to American OERs because of the high prices. and because OERs authors and researchers must waive some rights for people to access them.  Professor Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University. John McMurry did just that. McMurry wrote a chemistry textbook that many students have used around the world. When he felt the need to move on from his publisher, he decided to make Organic Chemistry a digital OER so students can have access to the textbook without the $100 price tag. Organic Chemistry has been translated into multiple languages and used many countries outside of the U.S, finally giving accessibility to students not just in the U.S, but in countries like India and Japan to reap the benefits of the knowledge that is out there.

Although there are many that see the benefit of open access materials, such as the cost saving aspect, there are others who aren’t much on board or question the positive outcomes of it. The University of Buffalo (UB) conducted research on OERs, and the views of its financial values compared to more traditional textbooks and journals. The authors of the UB research noticed that even students who appreciated and found value of OERs comparable to those of traditional resources, wouldn’t pay the same amount for them. Even with many students favoring OERs, there were students who didn’t find them comparable and even believed they had less educational value because of them being accessible and free. Many seemed to see that something with no financial value equates to no beneficial or educational value. But even so, the researchers admit that the likely positives of OERs outweigh the negatives of it.

Conclusion

Many people have the want and need to learn and unfortunately there are ways for them to be blocked from an education. If we’re blocking people from learning and seeking out solutions to humanity, what does that say about us? We need to allow academic resources to be available for those who may not be able to spend over $500 on textbooks. Thankfully there are states starting to acknowledge the need for OERs such as California. Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law that a budget of $115 million will be used to lower the cost of textbooks at the college level so it won’t continue to be a financial burden for students. Members of the pro OERs have said not only will it benefit college students but high school students as well. Giving them this new opportunity will allow for them to research advanced topics and careers. Allowing this accessibility won’t just help our wallets but will help us as a society. If we continue to rally for OERs we can soon see them being implemented across the country or even better, the world.

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Digital Cult

If you want to be happy, learn to be alone without being lonely. Learn that being alone does not mean being unhappy. The world is full of plenty of interesting and enjoyable things to do and people who can enrich your life.

-Michael Josephson

Dating is about finding out who you are and who others are. If you show up in a masquerade outfit, neither is going to happen.

-Henry Cloud

Can digital love replace physical love?

In 1993, Gary Kremen saw the future in online dating; he knew the need for love was ubiquitous, so in 1995 he launched the first online dating site, Match.com, an online community where singles could connect; the rest was history. Today, tens of millions invest in dating sites every year; it seems everyone is looking for love online. According to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey, three in ten U.S. adults say they have used an online dating site or app. And while technology has made it easier to find a potential partner, it has also reduced singles from three-dimensional people to two-dimensional displays of information. Dating apps have also resulted in cognitive overload. It is almost like a video game in which we do not select people; we are selecting options. As singles continue to sign up, the corporations flourish while their customers become more socially or romantically awkward.

In the online dating world, the chances of people getting married are few. Roughly only 12 percent of online dating sites users reported marriage or long term commitment. In some instances, the relationship leads to friendship, but many end up in heartbreak. Part of the problem is that while it is comfortable to sit behind the computer and converse, it can potentially lead people to be socially awkward if all they do is communicate via online chat. People who use online dating sites should make it a habit to get to a level where they can share via telephone and eventually plan an in-person date. The notion of only communicating via messages and having no personal interaction can ultimately lead to not speaking in person.

In her 2012 TEDTalk “Connected, but Alone?,” Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, discusses how our excessive reliance on online communication is making us less capable of deep interpersonal connections. Turkle is concerned that people do not know how to be alone anymore. We rely on technology to find attention whenever we need it, which leads to a false sense of security. And the more we dive into technology to feel secure, the more we lose our sense of reality. Hiding from real life has become easy; texting, email, and social media has allowed us to create the version of ourselves that we want to be. People have become accustomed to one-word text and short emails so much that we sacrifice deep conversations and getting to know people. Thereby the paradox: online dating can be successful for a person who already knows how to communicate in real life.

Match Algorithms

Online dating has been a catalyst for matchmaking for over twenty years, yet people are still dissatisfied with their relationships’ stature. There may be a commercial reason for that. Violet Lim has been in the dating industry for over fourteen years. The online matchmaking she founded with her husband has matched over 100,000 singles. In her August 2018 TEDxntu talk, Lim spoke of how dating algorithms’ created by companies like Match Group, the primary purpose is not to match you with your “perfect mate.” “swipe left” “ swipe right” every year, billions are swiping. Algorithms are set up to keep you in an endless cycle of matches to keep singles logged in longer. But with more matches comes more rejection - which can lead to being more disconnected or lonely. Lim points out that we may be so caught up in superficial criteria that we lose focus on significant criteria such as kindness, reliability, and trustworthiness. Thus many different dating websites can be a trap for everyone looking for rush rewards and gratification, especially now that it has become the “it thing” to date online. Even Facebook added an online dating option in 2016. So while Facebook originally was a way to connect with families and friends worldwide, it is now trending to make love connections.

Swiping Risk

While searching for love, online singles can put themselves at risk, at risk of identity theft, online harassment, and scammers. The instabilities and cruelty of society far too often have the dating scene appearing distorted. Lim explains that not everything on dating apps is accurate and that it is difficult to get an exact representation of a person from possibly altered photos. The MTV reality-TV documentary Catfish which examines the truths and lies of online relationships is a perfect example of this. This show has shown people falling in love, only for the person on the other side of the computer to refuse to meet on FaceTime and, in some cases, talk on the phone. All these are major red flags that should not be ignored, but far too often, singles get caught up in wanting to find love, and when they have exhausted all other options, and ignore the red flags. Red flags are not always apparent: scammers will request personal information such as your address, pretending to send you romantic gifts. Still, in all actuality, they want to steal your personal information. According to the FBI annual 2019 Internet Crime Report, 19,473 people were victims of romance scams. A romance scam is usually a fake profile that scammers create to gain their victim’s trust and scam them out of money.

The Bots

Additionally, before stepping into the online dating world, you need to know yourself, what you are looking for, and, most importantly, why you choose online dating versus the option of organically meeting someone the traditional way. Lim agrees that dating apps are meant to connect people, but all the generic profiles and faulty algorithms make it harder. The companies who run OkCupid, Tinder, Plenty of Fish, and Match.com are all interested in the same thing: click for profit. Lim gives an example of a single man signing up for a dating app; he receives a message from what seems an attractive young lady, but then he must pay when he tries to reply. And while many singles do so thinking they are responding to genuine messages, it’s an automated message sent by a bot. Some dating apps even create bots to lure users into paying.

Online dating comes with many issues. Let us take Josh Rivera, the editor for USA Today, who dives right into bots and online dating scams in his article "You may be matching with a bot." Users Carlos Zavala from Washington DC and Frankie Heart in Tokyo said they had seen bots on dating apps, even more now during the coronavirus pandemic. Like all chatbots, dating-app bots are coded software that simulates a "chat" with users by utilizing natural language processing. These bots can be so advanced that many people fall for these tactics. Ruby Gonzalez, head of communications at NordVPN Virtual security, warns users that "Despite Tinder being one of the smoothest and easiest-to-use dating apps, it's full of fake accounts and bots that can ruin the whole user experience."

The Illusion

While dating apps are a platform for finding love, it may all be an illusion; some singles are going online looking to feel desirable. In 2010, John C. Bridges, a professor, writer, and speaker, wrote The Illusion of Intimacy, covering the online dating process, intimacy issues, and how illusion and fantasy distort reality and shared online dating problems. Describing online dating as the “new form of hope,” Bridges claims that in the online world, people are likely to engage in behaviors they usually would not in the real world because they are behind a veil. In chapter four of his book, Bridges explains that “[his] interviewees tell stories of people who have deliberately posted old photos of themselves that are not accurate representations of how they appear today or have posted photos that are simply the most flattering." The online dating world is all about perfection, searching for the “perfect relationship,” where in reality, there is no such a thing as a “perfect relationship.” According to the Pew Research Center, about seven in ten online daters claim it is common for those who use online platforms to lie to appear more desirable. There are many fake profiles on dating sites, even some planted by dating sites to lure users. That kind of deception and false hope can affect users. About 45 percent of Americans who used dating apps say they were left feeling disappointed.

Love Lockdown

Since there are so many online dating problems, one must ask whether online dating is worth it in the long run? It is essential to understand why we feel the need to turn to these platforms. For example, we were hit by the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year, which has changed how people socialize because they must quarantine, socially isolate themselves, and find other ways to spend their time. The use of dating apps has grown because of being forced to stay at home. Tinder, one of the most common dating apps, has seen a significant increase in user engagement. Tinder claims that since being told to quarantine due to coronavirus in March 2020, users have sent an average of 52 percent more messages. In the article “College students are still finding romance in a pandemic, through Zoom crushes and actual dates,” author Annabelle Williams discusses the shift in campus dating due to the coronavirus. Some schools prohibit close contact with anyone outside of roommates; other schools like the University of Georgia recommend students wear masks while hooking up--then withdrew their statements when met with ridicule. Williams explains that traditional dating that allows you to present yourself during an actual interaction has ceased to exist. She claims dorm hookups, once a staple of college, has mostly become a thing of the past. She refers to “masked first dates being the new norm. She explains that the shift in campus life makes it harder to find romantic partners, social circles, lab partners, and gym partners, and all have been virtually replaced by Zoom and dating apps. And while some students are coping, some are getting bored. Scout Turkle, a senior at the University of California, Berkeley, says the pandemic has made what she calls “convenient intimacies less available. Turkle has been hooking up with her housemates because she says, "it does feel like a huge deal to lose [her] only clear opportunity for physical intimacy during a time it does not feel available to [her]." Williams explains that this desire for intimacy is why dating apps on campus are increasing in popularity. For students, the pandemic is a cause for concern when dating because in-person contact can pose a health risk, and dorm restrictions do not make it any easier.

Graph based on data by Mary Meisenzahl in "Match Group subscribers increase since Feb/29/2020." Business Insider. Aug 5, 2020.

Research before the pandemic had already shown a connection between loneliness and compulsive app use among students. According to a new study conducted by Kathryn Caduto, a doctoral student in communication at The Ohio State University, single people who use dating apps on their phones suffer from loneliness and social anxiety. The user experience was recorded in the article "What compulsive dating-app users have in common," written by Jeff Grabmeier, senior director of Research Communications at Ohio State University. A total of 269 undergraduate students participated in the study. The participants were asked a series of questions to gauge their isolation and anxiety using dating apps. Those who already showed signs of stress agreed more to statements like "I am more confident socializing on dating apps than offline." The results did not surprise Caduto; she says, "[i]t's a problem [she] has seen firsthand. The lonelier users are, the more likely they are to go on dating apps." People with higher levels of social anxiety chose to meet people on dating apps rather than in person. They also preferred socializing with their app matches without meeting face-to-face. Researchers found that users who are depressed are more likely to turn to dating apps for affirmation, which leads to more negative outcomes. Participants also reported missing work and class because of their frequent monitoring of dating apps.

Conclusion

Dating apps offer limitless possible matches at your fingertips, turning an intimate experience into something more like a video game. Online dating can be overwhelming, even daunting. You have no idea what the person you are e-mailing looks like or what they are like personally. Since internet dating starts online, some people share photographs from several years ago, while others do not have such exciting pictures; photos do not always represent reality. I think it's fair to assume, though, online dating has its pros: it's easy, universal, and discreet, but it also has its drawbacks, such as dishonest people or cybercrime. Is one outweighing the other? I think it depends on what you are searching for and what you are looking for. More so, what has been your past dating history? Things move at a different pace in digital reality. Knowing someone online for two weeks may feel like a lifetime, and you may feel ready for a romantic relationship too soon. While the ability to choose how much your future partner goes out, what kind of food they eat, and what type of work they do can sound appealing, you should be more concerned with forming a real relationship. As the industry continues to expand, some experts question whether dating app companies are genuinely interested in making love connections. Or do they want to keep people in an endless, endless loop of searching and matching?

Glossary

Algorithm: A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer.

• The algorithms that match various users have become much quicker and more convenient than ever before to find a possible date.

Gratification: Pleasure, especially when gained from the satisfaction of a desire.

• Do you wonder we expect immediate and instant gratification that comes with online dating? It's because we have websites that date for us.

Interpersonal: Relating to relationships or communication between people.

• Online dating has altered the way interpersonal relationships are formed.

Pandemic: (Of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world.

• COVID-19 Pandemic has  many singles on mobile dating apps as a way to explore their choices while social distancing.

Reliance: Dependence on or trust in someone or something.

• Singles are spending more time keeping up with all these applications, earnestly searching for love and unsure where else to look for it. However, users must be made aware of the potential reliance on dating apps.

Representations: The description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way or as being of a certain nature.

• The way singles represent themselves in person does not always correlate with how others interpret there Dating profiles.

Simulates : Produce a computer model of.

Ubiquitous: Present, appearing, or found everywhere.

• The most accessible way to meet individuals is through dating apps. However, as dating apps become more ubiquitous, Singles must decide they are getting genuine matches.  

Further Reading

On the effectiveness of online dating

• Ferdman, Roberto A. "How well online dating works, according to someone who has been studying it for years." Washington Post, Mar. 23, 2016. According to Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld, who is conducting the study How Couples Meet and Stay Together, "online dating has proved even more useful — both to individuals and society — than the traditional avenues it has replaced."
• Meltzer, J. "Online Dating: Match Me If You Can." Consumer Reports Online. December 2016. A Consumer Reports survey finds that online dating is efficient but exhausting.
• Park, William. "How dating app algorithms predict romantic desire". BBC.com. Scientists recreate the algorithms behind sites like Tinder to figure out how they sort out the best romantic matches.

On romance scams

•  Phan, Anh, Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar, and Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo. “Threaten Me Softly: A Review of Potential Dating App Risks.” Computers in Human Behavior Reports 3 (2021). An assessment of the cybersecurity risks of dating apps and examination of mitigation strategies.

• Rege, Aunshul. “What’s Love Got to Do with It? Exploring Online Dating Scams and Identity Fraud.” International Journal of Cyber Criminology, vol. 3, no. 2, July 2009, pp. 494–512. An overview of romance scams and identity fraud at dating sites, with a typology of romance scammers.
• Rochadiat, Annisa M. P., et al. “The Outsourcing of Online Dating: Investigating the Lived Experiences of Online Dating Assistants Working in the Contemporary Gig Economy.” Social Media + Society, July 2020. How online daters are outsourcing the tasks of their online dating to online dating assistants.
• Whitty, Monica T. and Tom Buchanan. "The online dating romance scam: The psychological impact on victims - both financial and non-financial." Criminology & Criminal Justice, vol. 16, no. 2, 2016, pp. 176-194.

On the effect of online dating during a pandemic

• MacKenzie, Sigalos. “Why the coronavirus might change dating forever.” CNBC.com May 25, 2020. Distanced courtship is not just helping solve coronavirus but the problem of loneliness.
• Vinopal, Courtney. "Coronavirus has changed online dating. Here’s why some say that’s a good thing." PBS NewsHour. Mwy 15, 2020. The pandemic has slowed things down, encouraging couples to get to know each other and engage in deep conversation.

Discussion Questions

• Is algorithmic matchmaking useful or is it a smokescreen to make users feel that their matches are based on fact and logic? Considering that the algorithms of many social media seem to include variable-ratio schedules of reinforcement to addict us to use their services, how do we know that dating algorithms work to fulfill the best interest of customers?
• How does swiping through hundreds of eligible profiles affect our experience of romance? Is this shopping approach to love exciting or chilling?
• Is it ethical or even desirable to hire a dating assistant to manage one's online dating experience?
• Are the intentions of dating online pure? It can be an exciting and enjoyable way to meet potential partners by exploring the world of Internet dating. You may quickly discover, however, profiles are not as they seem. When dating online, singles have to be aware of potential red flags and scammers.
• When it comes to modern-day romance, the 21st century is now hitting its height. The handwritten love letters will no longer exist, and going out into the real world to look for love is gone. With the current coronavirus pandemic, how will it impact online dating?

Stop Scrolling and Listen to Me

Stop Scrolling and Listen to Me: The Psychology Behind Social Media

Introduction

Since the release of Facebook in 2004, the use of social media has increased enormously, and so has the threat to the emotional and social well-being of teenagers. As sociologist and psychologist, Dr. Sherry Turkle discusses in her TED Talk, “Connected but alone,” there are ways in which young people's reliance on technology is changing their relationships with each other. She argues that each of them is becoming increasingly disconnected from each other, both physically and emotionally, as they spend more time interacting with their devices; at one point she says that "No one is listening” anymore and “everyone is lonely but are afraid of intimacy." These statements highlight the serious impact that social media can have on young people's relationships with others. How so? Teenagers, for example, do not listen to each other anymore, either due to a lack of attention or because they do not care about each other, and so, they are encouraged to create a personal bubble or a safe space where they can be whoever they want without fear of judgment as they don’t trust others. With this in mind, to what extent can the overuse of social media affect teenagers' cognition and social relations? This paper argues that its frequent usage changes how their brain functions and modifies their social behavior so that they cannot live without the permanent interruption of social media. As a result, teenagers may experience several noticeable changes, such as a sense of loneliness despite being physically present with others, anxiety about others’ perceptions of them and a constant need for acceptance or fear of rejection, and sleep disorders, as they spend so much time scrolling through their social media feeds late into the night.

The Negative Effects of Social Media Overuse on Mental Health

Although social platforms can be a positive resource to connect with others, there are exceptions where they disconnect people by stealing their attention and making them irresponsive. In fact, a team from the Department of Life Science and the Zlotowski Centre for Neuroscience at Ben-Gurion University conducted a study that examined the relationship between cellphone usage and its potential negative effects on human and social cognition. They found that constant engagement with social media, text messages, and other platforms can lead to changes in how people think, remember, and interact with others.  Some of the changes they refer to imply a decrease in mental health, wellbeing, and appearance of patterns from other disorders. Also, they cite other authors who explained the repercussions in mental health due to this relation such as experiencing low emotional stability and self-esteem, chronic stress, depression, and disruptions in sleep patterns. Teenagers are increasingly exposed to a variety of content, including bad news. For example, they may see news stories about mass shootings in schools. This exposure to bad news can lead to feelings of depression, anxiety and increased stress levels, as teenagers may start to worry that something similar could happen to them or their loved ones. The spread of bad news, or even fake news, can trigger these negative and overwhelming emotions.

Social Distress

When they misuse social media, they can create significant negative effects on everyone in their surroundings, as they can amplify their insecurities and pressure them to conform or to fit in. As science writer for the American Psychological Association, Summer Allen analyzes in his article “Social media’s growing impact on our lives,” there are gradual changes of early exposure that social media is making to distinct aspects of a young mind, such as: cognitive development, face-to-face interaction, creating own identity and establishing relations. At one point he reveals:

[A] Common Sense Media survey found that 13 percent of teens reported being cyberbullied at least once. And social media can be a conduit for accessing inappropriate content like violent images or pornography. Nearly two-thirds of teens who use social media said they “'often' or ‘sometimes' come across racist, sexist, homophobic, or religious-based hate content in social media.

We can interpret Allen’s findings by saying that teenagers are more vulnerable to harmful content without proper education, supervision, and communication. This can lead to them developing negative behaviors, such as racism, in order to fit in with their peers. As they are still developing their identity and sense of belonging, teens need to learn to identify harmful content and communicate with others about their online activity.

Social isolation

Social media communities are known to encourage mental health problems and eating disorders by creating a lack of self-presentation/identity creation and body image disturbance. According to what scientific writers Pixie G. Turner and Carmen E. Lefevre analyze in their study “Eating and weight disorders,” there is a relation between the use of Instagram and the creation of Orthorexia Nervosa, an eating disorder that consists of eating obsessedly healthy which can lead to a restricted diet, nutritional deficiencies, or malnutrition. As they explain: “Social media use is ever increasing among young adults and has previously been shown to have negative effects on body image, depression, social comparison, and disordered eating". Therefore, social media platforms like Instagram can trigger social comparison, which can lead to negative body image and self-esteem. Turner and Lefevre found out factual evidence of the prevalence of Instagram as a beginning source for adolescents to experience loneliness, deception or frustration when they  do not look alike the people they follow, a diminished body image, altered diet by trying to eat like their influencers to achieve some desired image and the dangerous advisements they can  get about food-related content from people without the proper education to do so. Therefore, teens' perception of body image, nutrition, self-esteem, and identity are being disturbed by what is on trend and the content they are exposed to by the people they follow.

Upon the rise of more social media platforms, young people expect to socialize more with others, but the truth is they get lonelier and consequently, they isolate from society and limit their face-to-face interaction, all because the comfort it brings to be someone else. On the other hand, teenagers are so terrified to show their “imperfections” to the world that they hide behind a screen or a filter. As Dr. Turkle discusses in her TED Talk, they are being threatened by a loss in the capacity of choosing what they want and where they want to go. Also, diminished personal introspection is affected because they are afraid to look inside themselves, so they set a wall, a filter that can be changed based on what they want to show. As a result, they are unable to create real connections, do not trust themselves or others, and isolation and loneliness show up. When someone is alone, they choose to be alone to give themselves some time, so it is good emotionally; on the other hand, feeling lonely means they do not have company but also, they are empty, insecure, and misunderstood.

All the above can be expressed in researcher and professor Danah Boyd’s question, “does social media displace teens of socializing or we are displacing them when we restrict them to socialize with others?” (Allen). It would seem that they unintentionally isolate themselves from society due to fears, overprotection and other factors. At the same time, they are alone together when they decide to stop caring about their surroundings and get immersed in a personal virtual world while being physically with others.

Strategies for Regulating Social Media Usage

We have seen many negative consequences of social media overuse, but they vary depending on the person. For example, if teens check social media first thing in the morning and see something that upsets them, it can set their mood for the rest of the day. They may become angry, irritable or even depressed. This is because social media can be a breeding ground for negative emotions. Another example of this is feeling tired after scrolling through social media newsfeed all night. Therefore, it is truly important that everyone start to self-reflect about how their time management is and ask themselves why they are doing things and what keeps them motivated. By doing this, teenagers can recognize bad habits so later on they can reset goals and create a purpose (one that matters) for the things they do and use to make changes that guide them towards keeping that good workflow.

For these reasons, when young adults become conscious and recognize these red flags in their relationship with their phone and social media and also are aware of the many losses it creates, they can, therefore, develop strategies to overcome them. The Center for Humane Technology, a non-profit organization whose focus is on exposing the negative effects of social media and other attractive technologies that steal young adults' behavior and thoughts -among others-but also pursues a change in society and provides helpful resources have put together some ideas that can help teens reclaim control over themselves:

Family playing a board

Turning off notifications

So, they will not be interrupted at important moments.

Remove, manage, or log out of toxic apps

They promote misinformation, hate content and addiction (if they did not notice it). Experiencing a few days without media can be very healthy.

More critical less outrageous

Selectiveness with the content they choose to follow, more educational, inspiring, less outrage and polarization. Taking a break before arguing or criticizing someone, because whatever they do or say can be used against them and others.

• Establishing limits

Taking control of the moments when they use their phone. Creating strategies that keep them the farthest from technology, exchange phone use with other activities.

And finally, reading, reading a lot: journals, magazines, books, comic books, whatever but read.  

(“Take control of your social media use;” “Tips to take control of your tech use”)

In conclusion, overuse of social media can have a negative impact on teenagers' mental health and social behavior. It can diminish cognitive development, limit the ability for face-to-face interaction, and disturb their identity formation and self-esteem. It is important for them to be aware of the harmful effects of social media and to take steps to protect themselves and others from its negative effects. They can do this by identifying harmful content, educating themselves and their peers about its dangers, and using the strategies mentioned above to reduce its impact.

Time to reflect

It is important for young adults to reflect upon their daily activities and motivations in order for them to enhance their learning system and behavior.Therefore these questions are made for that purpose, to reflect about the power social media has over young adults life.

Pictofigo - Idea

• How many time do you spent daily on social media? if you know so, have you checked the screen time app in your phone?
• How much do you know about social media usage and its effects?
• How do you feel while being in social media vs doing other activities?
• To what extent do you feel social media influence negatively your life and biased your decisions?
• When was the last time you had a real conversation?

Further learning

If you are interested in this topic and would like to know more about it here are some recommendations on the topic:

Watch

• Sherry,Turkle “Connected, But Alone?”, https://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_connected_but_alone.. In this TED TALK, American sociologist Sherry Turkle Examines our current relationship with technology and how it is affecting the deepness of our face to face interaction and how it is killing empathy.
• The social dilemma https://vimeo.com/462049229 This documentary explores the impact that social platforms have over our lives, such as, how we think and what we choose to see. Also, it exposes the harmful content they have: Misinformation, polarization and mental health issues among others.

Listen

• Speaking of psychology: How social media affects teens’ mental health, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArMcYYZHZTM&list=PLxf85IzktYWK9aVxz9DhebQ5Y8hCIV27y&index=11 Psychologist Jacqueline Nesi from Brown University discusses the negative impact of social media among teenagers, if it should be banned for them and the political restrictions that are being developed to get social media out of their hands.
• Center For Humane Technology: Are the Kids Alright? https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/26-are-the-kids-alright Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his coworker psychologist Jean Twenge reveal alarming statistics regarding self-harm and suicides rate among teens involving and increased social media use and a comparison between Generation Z and Millenials.

Read

• Youth Toolkit https://www.humanetech.com/youth This guide created by Humantech proposes a safer way to navigate through social media and reduce its impact with self-awareness exercises that can be used by anyone who seeks to learn more.
• Infographic: The Dark side of social Media https://www.humanetech.com/infographic-dark-side-social-media This infographic created by humantech exposes the harms of navigating through social media, how to identify its source and shows strategies to overcome this situation.

Contributors

• Julisa McLaurin
• Ssjun
• Labrat21
• TRainez
• JAYACEEE
• Spongebob is cute

• Pebbles
• ELLANDREJTEAH
• Dinaagudelo
• Dr. X