Blog #10 EOTO 2 Classmate Prez

 EOTO #2 - What I Learned 

After my presentation of agenda setting, I got to listen to fellow classmates inform the class about terms and theories we may or may have not known prior. Either way, I gained something from each term’s description. The two terms I found most intriguing was the Overton Window, and Citizen Journalism. 

What is the Overton Window?

The Overton Window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time, also known as the window of discourse. My classmate talked about how politicians are able to move the Overton window by suggesting a radical idea, and then posing a less radical idea afterwards. The two ideas in comparison makes their second idea seem very reasonable. One great example of this is mask mandates and how our views on it being acceptable have changed over time. As a class we talked about how a year ago, if you suggested that COVID was developed in a lab leak, you were an insane conspiracy theorist. Now it is common knowledge that it is in fact true, COVID started in a China lab. Over time the Overton window moved as knowledge and social acceptability changed. It’s truly amazing how apparent this window is today and how critically people will judge you if you aren’t in the popular or policy window. 

What is Citizen Journalism?

Citizen Journalism is based upon public citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information.” Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, and Instagram Live are all incredibly relevant forms of citizen journalism. Some personal reporters can even have a larger following than some mainstream networks. Gone is the day where citizen journalism is unreliable. Some citizen journalists are so largely followed and it is simple to see why. The average population has a computer in their pocket and a camera to capture events as they are happening. News crews simply cant keep up and be at every scene. This is why today it is so much more common and followed. I was aware of the people’s ability to report, but had not researched this term so it was cool to learn from a fellow classmate. 

Blog #9 EOTO 2 KEY POST

 Agenda Setting

The “ability to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda.”
The way the media attempts to influence viewers, and establish a hierarchy of news prevalence. 

Maxwell E. McCombs is an American journalism scholar known for his work on political communication. He is the Jesse H. Jones Centennial Chair in Communication Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin. He is particularly known for developing the agenda setting theory of mass media with Donald Lewis Shaw. Below is a great interview and description of the agenda setting theory from the very man who created it. 

(Skip to 2:33) 

How Agenda Setting Theory Effects Society as a Whole  

    Agenda setting fits in the Hierarchy of Effects theory, at the knowledge phase. To simplify this idea; any manipulation of media affects what we think, how we feel, and finally, what we do. When the media is able to filter our information in what we think, it eventually effects what we do with that information

Pay attention to the right side; where it says think, do, and feel. A great example of this effect, as it relates to agenda setting in the real world, is whether or not people should wear masks (or be mandated to wear masks). Depending on where you get your information, determined your reaction to the Coronavirus Pandemic. For example, if you watched CNN, or other left-leaning news sources, you probably wore a mask everywhere you went. Why? Because they mongered fear into the people about how deadly and contagious the illness is. Whereas if you watched Fox News, you lived your life as normal, having faith in your bodies’ ability to fight off disease and infection, and not living your life in fear.  

The Good and the Bad

    While it is hard to see the good in the filtering of our media, before we can even consume it, I will try to play devil’s advocate. The good in agenda setting could be that it may save us viewers some time in our media consumption. For the most part, we are given only what’s “important” and “relavent” for that day’s news. We get less silly information, like what baseball team won last night, and more pressing concerns that affect all of us. With that comes some bad though. Who is deciding what we need to know, and are they trustworthy people? Is what is important to them important to us? Do their views rub off into the way they present the information to the people? These are all questions to consider as we think about the pros and cons of agenda setting. Personally, I think it is mostly bad. I want my media raw, tue, unfiltered, and unbiased, so that I can decide for myself. I tend to question authority figures, and in that way I am a bit of a contrarian. With most media today, everything has been touched by someone. This isn’t fair in my eyes, because it allows people of power to influence the public and what they think to be true. 

Media Today Separates the People 

    Do you worries the people in power? The general public agreeing that they are corrupt and change should take place. 333 million people absolutely have the power to create change in government and the mainstream media knows that. How do they combat this? They break up that 300+ million into groups. Separating Americans between two+ groups of people that, for lack of better term, despise the other side(s). As a separated people, we won’t be able to come together to stop the corrupt people in power. This effects every segment of our diverse American population. The rich won’t be fond of the poor and vice versa. Same goes for the old/young, male/female, gay/straight, and the majority/minority. Continue to do your research on agenda setting, and try your best to match articles from multiple news sources, to see the lean each side possesses to influence your opinions.

Blog #8 PRIVACY TED talks

 Privacy 

Blog #7 Diffusion Theory

 Diffusion of Innovations

Blog #6 EOTO Classmate Prez

 What I learned 

    The first set of EOTO presentations was about communication technology through the years. My assignment was to research the history and role of emojis and emoticons in communication. I learned a ton from my classmates presentations on their assigned technologies. 

    I was able to pair up three technologies I heard about and relate them to each other.

Here’s what I gathered…

Telegraph -> Radio -> Bluetooth

      1800’s                1920’s               1999

    The first technology in history that eventually lead to Bluetooth that we use so much today was the telegraph. The telegraph worked using electro magnetic spectrum sound waves to transcribe a message from a long distance. The first long distance message was communicated from Baltimore to DC. 

    Following the Telegraph was the invention of radio which was invented in the 1920’s. This played off the telegraphs technology of sound waves but allowed much more widespread communication streamlining.  

    Leading up to the invention of Bluetooth, was the technology from Apple, called FireWire .

This technology was only compatible for connecting 2 Apple devices to each other. This was nice for Apple’s business, but not very practical in the greater sense of what Bluetooth would eventually accomplish.

    Finally the greatly awaited Bluetooth came around in 1999. This technology was named after a German king who actually had a blue tooth. This technology works off of radio frequencies, but allows the connection between any device compatible with Bluetooth (which is a lot). Some examples include phone to car connections that can transmit map directions, music streaming, phone calls and more. Garage door openers are another thing people may not realize use the technology of Bluetooth. The army has benefited greatly from this invention and it continues to get better each year. Originating from Bluetooth 1.0 and progressing to 5.0 (as of 2021) Bluetooth gets a faster connection on a longer geographical range nearly every couple of years. 

Blog #5 ANTIWAR.COM

 Dissent: 

The expression or holding of opinions at variance with those previously, commonly, or officially held.

Blog #4 EOTO KEY POST

 Emoticons And Emojis. 

Are they the same thing?

Short answer, no. While they look very similar, and are somewhat similar in what they achieve, they are not the same thing.

Vs. 

 The Difference

-An emoticon is a representation of a human emotion using keys on a keyboard. For example :) 

-An emoji is a small digital image used to express an idea or emotion. For example 😃

The History of the Emoticon 

    On September 19th, 1982 Scott Fahlman (AKA Father of the Smiley face) gave birth to the very first emoticon. At the time, Fahlman was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He had posted on the school’s computer bulletin board the silly idea to add :-) when students were making a joke and :-( when they were not joking. Little did he know at the time, he would make a huge impact on human expression online. While he may have not realized it, Scott did in fact solve a huge issue at the time. Prior to 1982, there had been no good way to indicate whether someone was being sarcastic via text or email communication. There was no great way to tell if someone was happy, sad, angry, etc. Unless they flat out said “(p.s. I am really mad at you).” In the English language, there is so many ways to interpret a message without the use of facial expression, tone of voice, or even body language. 

    The emoticon quickly caught on and was widely recognized within a couple years. Professor Fahlman had not only solved a need, but he had triggered people’s imagination everywhere. This lead to the creation of many many more human expressions being expressed via text. 

What was his big mistake?

    The professor didn’t have the slightest inkling that he was on to something. Had he recognized this or been told from a friend that this was a pretty cool thing to discover, he might’ve thought in a more entrepreneurial light. He failed to trademark, copy-write, or patent this idea and it’s got to be his biggest regret. Could you imagine the amount of money he’d have, had he been a little bit smarter? 

Does this just mean that he is a nice guy with no hidden agenda?

Maybe. 

Could this also mean he is an idiot? 

Maybe. 

I get second hand pissed off for him, almost 40 years later. This poor chap really missed out on what could’ve been the easiest money he could ever earn. I guess you live and you learn. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The History of the Emoji    

    The emoji was first seen used in 1997. People probably assume the word “emoji” comes from the word emotion, but that is entirely not the case. It is actually just a coincidence. The word comes from the Japanese word for picture. DoCoMo was a Japanese mobile phone company that originally had the idea to add a heart picture “♥️” on a new pager made for teens. People loved it. So much so, that when the company added a new pager for business professionals, the public was mad there wasn’t the famous heart icon on the products software. This in turn sent people to another brand that had already adopted the heart from DoCoMo, and included some other new features. This mistake of failing to add the heart was a sign for every other company at the time to start creating more and more icons that can be added to text. The trouble, early on, was that if you wanted to use these emojis your friends had to have the same device as you. As popularity continued to grow, the problem needed a solution. In 2007 a Silicon Valley nonprofit standardized the software so that the pictures appeared the same or very similar and different devices. Today, on Facebook Messenger alone, nearly 5 billion emojis are sent a day. Quite the progression from a heart on a messily pager.   

The Pros and Cons 

    I feel like almost everyone would agree the emoticon and emoji creations have only been good for our society. They address the issue of emotion and feelings on an unemotional platform. They can stand in for verbal tone and clarify the tone of a message in fewer characters.

    Some negative Nancy’s disagree however, and rightly so. These opposers say that emojis erode the ability to communicate clearly. They also see it as a lazy and unprofessional way of interacting. 

Emoji Scandal

     This last piece is just a funny meme I remember from a while back. There was this whole segment on a news channel that warned parents of the dangers of emojis. People thought it was hilarious and clowned on the news channel, making memes about it. The news’s message was shared in a way like “kids we know your secret.” They “decoded” emojis and their dirty undertones. They also warned for combinations of certain emojis that meant your kid was up to no good. It’s a pretty funny article and I linked it above.