NUMBERS ON FACEBOOK
I mostly agreed with this reading but I think the author overestimates in parts the influence of the numbers on certain user behaviors on Facebook. I'd like to think for example that sending and accepting friend requests is still more influenced by human discretion than it is by our obsession with numbers. There's a host of reasons why, to each individual person logging on to the social media platform with histories and experiences and prejudices, etc, a "+1" shouldn't just be a "+1." But what do I know? The author does state that many view their friend counts as status markers and I do have have a friend who once said he had to start an additional Facebook account long ago because apparently they'd reached the limit on the number of friends they were allowed to keep on Facebook.
THE PROMISE OF BIG DATA
On the subject of human discretion (maybe there's a better term for this), I read this article and one of the things that jumped out at me was the part about how the people who volunteered through crowdflower to help analyze Sarah Fortune's "movies" had no scientific expertise. Generally, I tend to come at crowdsourcing from a cynical standpoint because as someone who works in the creative field, I've seen enough companies use crowdsourcing as a way to take advantage of people eager to prove their creative worth. The end results almost always end up sacrificing nuance that comes with applying expertise to the problem in favor of something that is cheap and crowd pleasing. I'm not sure how this translates in the field of scientific research but I suspect having a large group of non-scientists analyze scientific data comes with its own problems.
SOCIAL BIAS
This article had me asking the question: can sensitivity, perspective or awareness be programmed into software? I suspect the answer is yes but I take the many unfortunate examples provided in the article of software displaying bias as just another negative effect of a deeply rooted culture in the tech industry where heterosexual white males see a lot more representation than any other group.
HYPOCRISY
I have little to add after reading this article because I honestly don't fear website trackers like most others do. I'm especially indifferent to fears about google analytics being embedded inside web pages. Maybe it's just my experience with google analytics. It doesn't strike me as some nefarious thing that companies pay big bucks for (it is readily available to anyone with a google account) and I suspect the same for some other trackers. I've used google analytics code on many websites I've designed and I can say that the end goal there for the clients have always been to help make the user experience better by seeing how people were engaging the content. I'm not saying this is the same for all analytics software and all trackers but I just find it mildly amusing when something I use and check often gets lumped in with big, scary tracking softwares.
Showing posts with label Olu Eseyin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Olu Eseyin. Show all posts
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Week 14 Reading Response
This week's readings on information overload and overabundance put me in a time machine and transported me all the way back to 2012 when I was actively concerned with a issues of awareness and commitment online and the ways in which hyperbole helps promote the former over the latter. I even wrote a paper about it for Kim Knight's Viral Media class. Here's a link to it.
It's been interesting the past couple of weeks for me to notice just how much my views on social media interaction has changed over the years and how much they've stayed the same. Way, way back in the fall of 2010, I entered the EMAC program with views that very much mirrored the views espoused by Sherry Turkle - that social media was fine and all but it did very poorly in replicating physical human interaction. Gradually I began to form a more nuanced take on what made computer-mediated communication unique and different from offline communication. Soon, I identified one characteristic that I felt allowed certain types of information to gain traction in the flood of content we are inundated with daily. Hyperbole.
As highlighted in the "Faking Cultural Literacy" article, it has become very easy to pretend to know things thanks to the network of "friends" and "follows" we keep on social media. This is also because surface-level awareness of things like plot developments in an episode of Game of Thrones can now very easily be passed off as commitment to watching an entire season of the show. My argument was and still is that because complex and nuanced engagement of all the information we are constantly bombarded with takes a lot of time and energy, information that is presented in a hyperbolic manner that rewards surface-level engagement (clickbaity headlines, trending hashtags, etc) has become more pervasive and now more reliable in helping us pretend to know things we actually don't know. For example, if we wanted to, we can now all feign deep knowledge of the 1994 crime bill and that is very much thanks to the hyperbolic ways thoughts and think pieces about it have populated our twitter timelines and Facebook feeds.
Something else I appreciated from the "Faking Cultural Literacy" article is the idea put forth that we have become obsessed with keeping up the appearance that we've read every important thing written each week and formed opinions accordingly. I've always been okay with simply saying "I don't know" in conversation whenever I find that I don't know things. Here's an article that elaborates on the virtues of saying "I don't know" more often. So much of the confusion and the glut of (mis)information we are flooded with daily will be curtailed if a lot of people would be able to admit to themselves that they simply don't know a thing about what it is they're writing about.
I like that the second article we had to read this week was an article on medium, which has a reputation of enabling people to write their heads off about things they don't know enough about. Articles on Medium are often accompanied by hyperbolic headlines like "what this random thing thought me about this totally unrelated thing" and even "7 things you need to stop doing to be more productive." Reading through the article wasn't very pleasant, to be quite honest because I got the sense from the extensive quotes included that I was reading the author read something else to me and not contributing much of their own thoughts to it - at least nothing that wasn't common knowledge already about habits of productive people (work smarter, not harder, delegate, etc). As an alternative, one of my favorite things I've ever read on medium was a parody of articles like that titled "These 12 Habits are Absolutely Slaugtering Your Productivity." Here's a link to the article.
It's been interesting the past couple of weeks for me to notice just how much my views on social media interaction has changed over the years and how much they've stayed the same. Way, way back in the fall of 2010, I entered the EMAC program with views that very much mirrored the views espoused by Sherry Turkle - that social media was fine and all but it did very poorly in replicating physical human interaction. Gradually I began to form a more nuanced take on what made computer-mediated communication unique and different from offline communication. Soon, I identified one characteristic that I felt allowed certain types of information to gain traction in the flood of content we are inundated with daily. Hyperbole.
As highlighted in the "Faking Cultural Literacy" article, it has become very easy to pretend to know things thanks to the network of "friends" and "follows" we keep on social media. This is also because surface-level awareness of things like plot developments in an episode of Game of Thrones can now very easily be passed off as commitment to watching an entire season of the show. My argument was and still is that because complex and nuanced engagement of all the information we are constantly bombarded with takes a lot of time and energy, information that is presented in a hyperbolic manner that rewards surface-level engagement (clickbaity headlines, trending hashtags, etc) has become more pervasive and now more reliable in helping us pretend to know things we actually don't know. For example, if we wanted to, we can now all feign deep knowledge of the 1994 crime bill and that is very much thanks to the hyperbolic ways thoughts and think pieces about it have populated our twitter timelines and Facebook feeds.
Something else I appreciated from the "Faking Cultural Literacy" article is the idea put forth that we have become obsessed with keeping up the appearance that we've read every important thing written each week and formed opinions accordingly. I've always been okay with simply saying "I don't know" in conversation whenever I find that I don't know things. Here's an article that elaborates on the virtues of saying "I don't know" more often. So much of the confusion and the glut of (mis)information we are flooded with daily will be curtailed if a lot of people would be able to admit to themselves that they simply don't know a thing about what it is they're writing about.
I like that the second article we had to read this week was an article on medium, which has a reputation of enabling people to write their heads off about things they don't know enough about. Articles on Medium are often accompanied by hyperbolic headlines like "what this random thing thought me about this totally unrelated thing" and even "7 things you need to stop doing to be more productive." Reading through the article wasn't very pleasant, to be quite honest because I got the sense from the extensive quotes included that I was reading the author read something else to me and not contributing much of their own thoughts to it - at least nothing that wasn't common knowledge already about habits of productive people (work smarter, not harder, delegate, etc). As an alternative, one of my favorite things I've ever read on medium was a parody of articles like that titled "These 12 Habits are Absolutely Slaugtering Your Productivity." Here's a link to the article.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Week 12 Reading Response
This week's reading touched on privacy from a few different perspectives. I'll be honest. I've always taken the view on privacy that Max Schrems has - which is that personally, I'm "interested in privacy more in principle than it practice." I'd even take it a step further and say that I generally get bored hearing or reading about privacy.
Privacy should be a basic human right but even if it were, it would still get complicated whenever we decide to invite companies like Facebook and Google into our personal lives. Whether they admit to it or not, Facebook and Google have gotten a lot of mileage out of treating users' privacy as a courtesy they extend rather than a basic right. The people who tend to react the most to articles like the one on electronic snoops in email eventually end up getting off Facebook for good once they realize this. Every complication I've ever seen written as stemming from privacy in the digital age can be traced to this harsh reality - to users, privacy is a right, to companies, it is a courtesy.
These complications are nothing new, which is maybe why I get so bored seeing myriad think-pieces written about them that try to present each new complication as something urgent. Facebook is always going to collect information on you. It's how it keeps the lights on. A dozen Max Schrems aren't suddenly going to make the company re-evaluate and change course.
The article on Schrems did get me thinking about what the clear difference is between public vs. private online. The guy is reported to have been shocked to see information he thought he'd deleted still being stored by Facebook. While I sympathize, I think Facebook's explanation that it was a conversation between two friends, one of which had not deleted their copy of the exchange might actually be fair. It got me thinking that something shared between two people could be understood between both people as private but the levels of privacy involved in sharing that thing could differ depending on who you ask. Schrems obviously thought it was something worth deleting but his friend did not. Who does Facebook defer to when deciding just how private the information is? This is an issue that clearly went beyond merely tweaking a privacy setting and I'd be interested to see more cases like this and how they turned out.
The pew survey on data collection isn't really that revelatory. The findings on "do not disturb" zones did get me thinking about what constitutes as "do not disturb" zones online. In the reading, they use the word "home." In our increasingly connected world, where exactly does outside end and home begin?
Privacy should be a basic human right but even if it were, it would still get complicated whenever we decide to invite companies like Facebook and Google into our personal lives. Whether they admit to it or not, Facebook and Google have gotten a lot of mileage out of treating users' privacy as a courtesy they extend rather than a basic right. The people who tend to react the most to articles like the one on electronic snoops in email eventually end up getting off Facebook for good once they realize this. Every complication I've ever seen written as stemming from privacy in the digital age can be traced to this harsh reality - to users, privacy is a right, to companies, it is a courtesy.
These complications are nothing new, which is maybe why I get so bored seeing myriad think-pieces written about them that try to present each new complication as something urgent. Facebook is always going to collect information on you. It's how it keeps the lights on. A dozen Max Schrems aren't suddenly going to make the company re-evaluate and change course.
The article on Schrems did get me thinking about what the clear difference is between public vs. private online. The guy is reported to have been shocked to see information he thought he'd deleted still being stored by Facebook. While I sympathize, I think Facebook's explanation that it was a conversation between two friends, one of which had not deleted their copy of the exchange might actually be fair. It got me thinking that something shared between two people could be understood between both people as private but the levels of privacy involved in sharing that thing could differ depending on who you ask. Schrems obviously thought it was something worth deleting but his friend did not. Who does Facebook defer to when deciding just how private the information is? This is an issue that clearly went beyond merely tweaking a privacy setting and I'd be interested to see more cases like this and how they turned out.
The pew survey on data collection isn't really that revelatory. The findings on "do not disturb" zones did get me thinking about what constitutes as "do not disturb" zones online. In the reading, they use the word "home." In our increasingly connected world, where exactly does outside end and home begin?
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Week 8 Reading Response
Reading some of the articles this week, I was reminded of one of my contributions last Tuesday concerning the reason I finally caved and got ad-block. I enjoyed the reading on paying for news content with privacy most because it highlighted some of the reasons I finally decided I was done being lenient with online advertising. It's the intrusiveness and the toll it takes on my browsing experience over time.
While the FCC works on regulations to curtail deceptiveness, I feel like there's a lot to be done to hone in on and regulate the actual code that makes online advertising so pervasive and annoying to consumers. For example, there should be regulation the limits the size of code that contains advertising - set by the FCC as opposed the the individual publisher. There should be code that regulates the size of code that contains tracking algorithms as well.
On principle as a visual communications major and as one of those people who actually watches the superbowl for the commercials (I know, I'm part of the problem), I generally don't mind advertising because in the middle of all the noise it generates, every once in a while, I will be accosted with something that actually stops me in my tracks with how well done it is.
However, due to the speed with which the internet is revolutionizing communication, I think advertisers - just like publishers - have been left to play catch-up and the general result has been what we see today - advertising that can no longer afford to depend only on creativity to reach its target audience but must now turn to the tactless science of user-tracking.
As the article on paying for content with privacy so eloquently puts it, user-tracking comes at you like a clown car packed with tracking code that slows down your browsing experience just to offer you ads that, in my personal opinion, don't really inspire you to purchase things you weren't already considering and as a result just end up creeping you out. It might be more effective than just taking shots in the dark but advertisers are clearly not thinking long-term. I suspect more consumers like me will be able to stomach it until the day they suddenly can't any longer.
While the FCC works on regulations to curtail deceptiveness, I feel like there's a lot to be done to hone in on and regulate the actual code that makes online advertising so pervasive and annoying to consumers. For example, there should be regulation the limits the size of code that contains advertising - set by the FCC as opposed the the individual publisher. There should be code that regulates the size of code that contains tracking algorithms as well.
On principle as a visual communications major and as one of those people who actually watches the superbowl for the commercials (I know, I'm part of the problem), I generally don't mind advertising because in the middle of all the noise it generates, every once in a while, I will be accosted with something that actually stops me in my tracks with how well done it is.
However, due to the speed with which the internet is revolutionizing communication, I think advertisers - just like publishers - have been left to play catch-up and the general result has been what we see today - advertising that can no longer afford to depend only on creativity to reach its target audience but must now turn to the tactless science of user-tracking.
As the article on paying for content with privacy so eloquently puts it, user-tracking comes at you like a clown car packed with tracking code that slows down your browsing experience just to offer you ads that, in my personal opinion, don't really inspire you to purchase things you weren't already considering and as a result just end up creeping you out. It might be more effective than just taking shots in the dark but advertisers are clearly not thinking long-term. I suspect more consumers like me will be able to stomach it until the day they suddenly can't any longer.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
8 Responses to Week 7's Readings (Number 7 will shock you!)
- RAMEN NOODLES - I can't see myself springing for a print subscription even if I suddenly became well-to-do. The ramen-noodle theory doesn't really hold up for me because I've never once, while reading the online version of a publication, wished for the print version. I think it's just a result of the time during which I became an avid newsreader. Ramen noodles will do just fine when you never really craved food in a time during which ramen noodles weren't readily available. To live in that time and not be able to afford steak would've been a real tragedy.
- RAMEN NOODLES - "Martin Langeveld in 2009 and 2010 estimated that about 97% of time spent with newspaper content was in print -- only 3% was online. Academic research revealed similar findings. Based on 2011 data provided by 12 U.K. newspapers, Neil Thurman figured that at least 96.7% of the time spent with these newspapers by their domestic readers was in print."
I'd like to see how these studies were conducted. The article mentions nothing about whether or not any of the readers spending 97% of their time in print actually owned subscriptions. Print, in my estimation, is still physically available in enough places that anyone constantly finding themselves in the waiting room of a doctor's office for example or just digging through the neighbor's garbage can (heh) say truthfully that they get most of their news in print. Online news still requires access to the internet. Internet access is still not as readily available to everyone as access to waiting rooms and garbage cans. - SERIOUS READING - This article had me thinking about the rise of listicles and click-bait headlines in our current news climate.
- SERIOUS READING - I find it really fascinating that the brain, as stated in the article, was not designed for reading but has adapted due to developments in human history as recent as the Gutenberg press. That got me thinking that the rules of punctuation, spelling, grammar, etc - in the context of our history as a civilization - aren't really the sacred cows that many linguists make them out to be every time a new wacky word is accepted into Webster's or Oxford's for example.
- SERIOUS READING - This article also reminded me of a study I read about a few months ago that found that among a lot of millennials, ending your texts with a period actually signals that you are not being sincere about what you text. It's an interesting article that touches on how punctuation is being repurposed in the digital age by millennials who increasingly value efficiency over proper grammar when communicating with each other. I also got to learn from digging deeper that punctuation is not the same thing as grammar. Here's the article:
Study confirms that ending your texts with a period is terrible - MILLENNIALS SAY KEEPING UP WITH NEWS IS IMPORTANT - This article leads with the headline "... good luck getting them to pay for it." Then it goes about contradicting that with the findings cited toward the end of the article. The headline is a bit misleading and click-baity.
- RAMEN NOODLES is an anagram for REDONE SALMON!
- WHY DIGITAL NATIVES PREFER READING IN PRINT - This article makes a lot of sense to me but mostly when kept in the context of college campuses and collegiate reading. It even supports the ramen noodle theory:
"If price weren't a factor, Baron's research shows that students overwhelmingly prefer print. Other studies show similar results."
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Conversion via Twitter
Conversion via Twitter
This is the New Yorker article on Megan Phelps-Roper - one of the daughters of the former leader of the highly controversial Westboro Baptist Church. It's a very long read so tl:dr - she ran the church's twitter accounts for years and through the platform, she met and began a relationship with a man who gradually persuaded her to challenge her beliefs until she eventually defected from the church. I think it is possibly the rare example of a social network successfully bringing two people with deeply polarizing views together, although it becomes clear that Megan moved more to the middle than the man she met online and eventually she crossed over to his side of the divide entirely. Really, it's just an amazing true story of what we as humans are capable of when we make the effort to engage views different from our own.
This is the New Yorker article on Megan Phelps-Roper - one of the daughters of the former leader of the highly controversial Westboro Baptist Church. It's a very long read so tl:dr - she ran the church's twitter accounts for years and through the platform, she met and began a relationship with a man who gradually persuaded her to challenge her beliefs until she eventually defected from the church. I think it is possibly the rare example of a social network successfully bringing two people with deeply polarizing views together, although it becomes clear that Megan moved more to the middle than the man she met online and eventually she crossed over to his side of the divide entirely. Really, it's just an amazing true story of what we as humans are capable of when we make the effort to engage views different from our own.
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Week 5 Reading Response
If you spend a lot of time on twitter, you would recently have been made aware of news that twitter is moving to introduce an algorithm that would change up the way tweets are presented in each user's timeline. News of this caused quite a stir among active users of the platform and led to the trending topic "RIP Twitter."
It's pretty easy to dismiss outrage on social media these days as the usual hyperbole and overreaction that feeds the internet but this week's reading might actually give voice to people already eulogizing twitter. With a lot of these new changes to the platform, there's also been a trend of twitter seeming to place less value in its long time users in order to gain new ones but that's probably another story for another day.
THE EVOLVING ROLE OF NEWS ON TWITTER AND FACEBOOK
The first reading references a year-old article on a twitter feature that was at the time being tested and was titled "Project Lightning." That project ended up being Twitter Moments. I delved into that article a bit and found out a couple of things about "Project Lightning" - now Twitter Moments that may be relevant:
It's pretty easy to dismiss outrage on social media these days as the usual hyperbole and overreaction that feeds the internet but this week's reading might actually give voice to people already eulogizing twitter. With a lot of these new changes to the platform, there's also been a trend of twitter seeming to place less value in its long time users in order to gain new ones but that's probably another story for another day.
THE EVOLVING ROLE OF NEWS ON TWITTER AND FACEBOOK
The first reading references a year-old article on a twitter feature that was at the time being tested and was titled "Project Lightning." That project ended up being Twitter Moments. I delved into that article a bit and found out a couple of things about "Project Lightning" - now Twitter Moments that may be relevant:
- It may be the first feature to be readily available to people without requiring a log in or an account
- Katie Jacob Stanton, who is mentioned in the article as having spearheaded the project, is one of about four execs to have left twitter all at once very recently amidst Twitter's ongoing identity crisis.
- Editors under Stanton get to decide what are “best and most relevant tweets” around an event. Basically, what is newsworthy.
- No algorithm here, curated by humans
IF YOU USE FACEBOOK TO GET YOUR NEWS
This article highlights for me one of the main reason I opted to shutter my facebook account in the first place. It is also very timely considering again the buzz around news that twitter hq might be considering using algorithms as well on its users' timelines.
I'm sure filter bubbles already exist on twitter even before the introduction of an algorithm but I feel like the difference between the filter bubbles on twitter and the ones on facebook is the appearance of transparency and autonomy for the users in choosing how they continue to craft their individual filter bubbles.
On twitter, it's always been as easy as following the people and organizations with views that interest you and unfollowing the ones that don't. It's still a filter bubble but it is one that you are at least a little self-aware about. With an algorithm deciding for you what you want to see and what you don't want to see, you may never know just how deep into your bubble you've sunk.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Week 4 Reading Response
SOCIAL MEDIA AND SPEED-DRIVEN JOURNALISM
I'm going to attempt to make an excuse for journalists - perhaps not a very good one but still...
What would effective audience engagement even look like for individual journalists?
In an ideal working environment, should audience engagement even be an individual journalist's responsibility?
Organizations hire social media people to full-time positions because of the work it entails - wading through mentions, following fans of the organization, tweeting individual replies, etc. This is audience engagement and it’s become more than just another responsibility that can be tacked on to a list for someone who already has a full-time job reporting news and all that it entails.
I like that further into this reading, you observe that
I think you hit the nail on the head.
For individual journalists, audience engagement might not even begin until they commit to constantly wading through their mentions on each tweet and following most of their prominent non-journo repliers. I imagine this enterprise would be very difficult for each individual journalist (especially the ones on a national level) to keep up.
A few more questions I had, reading through this study:
How is the DM function of twitter normalized and how does it factor into organizational expectations? Does the private nature of the tool make it hard to normalize or set expectations for?
In addition, I pose the same questions for follows, polls, opening up DMs publicly, retweets, faves, quoted tweets and the “retweets and faves not endorsements” trend for public figures on twitter.
When the reading states that few organizations have successfully gained substantial amount of readers willing to pay for content and lists the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, I immediately wanted to know the average economic status of these publications' reading audiences and how it might affect paying intent.
Twitter has a newly proposed feature that could make tweets editable after they've been posted. How would journalists make use of this feature if it were to eventually be adopted?
THIS IS NOT AN INTERVIEW WITH BANKSY
I checked twitter this morning and the number one trending topic was "El Chapo." I clicked on the topic and I was unsurprised to find that many had fallen yet again for another abcnews.com.co ruse and been led to a story about how El Chapo had escaped yet again from captivity.
As reported in this article, abcnews.com.co has in the past been responsible for many hoax news stories. At some point, you have to wonder if the fault lies with the audience rather than the publishers of said hoax stories.
I frequently visit the AV Club - a sister site of The Onion so I'm pretty partial to The Onion as the reigning champion of news satire but still, I can't fault outfits like abcnews.com.co or The National Report for wanting to capitalize on people's inabilities to see past their biases, even if a lot of the "news stories" that result from it can't truly be categorized as satire.
Many times, I've caught myself laughing at the embarrassment that ensues when reputable news organizations fall for these so-called news sites and I've had to recalibrate because the percentage of my enjoyment of The Onion that relies on checking to see how often people fall for it is very little. In my view, true satire should be funny on its own without people mistaking it as real news. With sites like the National Report, almost all the humor for me stems from how much it manages to constantly embarrass audiences and news organizations that fall for it. I'm not saying it isn't funny but at the same time, I'm not saying it isn't wrong.
EASE OF ALTERCATION CREATES WOES FOR PICTURE EDITORS
As someone with a background in graphic design whose daily work duties involve firing up photoshop every now and then, I have to play just the tiniest violin for all the photojournalists mentioned in this reading to have lost their jobs over becoming too overzealous with their prowess in photoshop.
I'm not a journalist and I know very little about the industry but even I know when you cross the line from enhancing an image for the sake of clarity to out and out deception.
Something I did find interesting in the reading was the passage where it is alluded to that some directors of photography require that their photojournalists inform them on all the alterations they make to the image and why. Working in photoshop for years now, I know fairly well about the "History" panel that lists in order every step you take when working on a file. I'm not advocating for this to be implemented globally but Adobe (the software company that licenses Photoshop) could build a feature off the "History" panel that informs a designated person within an organization whenever certain actions are exerted on an image. They could make the feature available only in editions licensed to news organizations. That designated person would be the director of photography.
I'm going to attempt to make an excuse for journalists - perhaps not a very good one but still...
What would effective audience engagement even look like for individual journalists?
In an ideal working environment, should audience engagement even be an individual journalist's responsibility?
Organizations hire social media people to full-time positions because of the work it entails - wading through mentions, following fans of the organization, tweeting individual replies, etc. This is audience engagement and it’s become more than just another responsibility that can be tacked on to a list for someone who already has a full-time job reporting news and all that it entails.
I like that further into this reading, you observe that
"...social media activities take time to produce and nurture, but none of the newspapers interviewed seemed to offer journalists compensation for taking the time or making the effort to carry out these activities."
I think you hit the nail on the head.
For individual journalists, audience engagement might not even begin until they commit to constantly wading through their mentions on each tweet and following most of their prominent non-journo repliers. I imagine this enterprise would be very difficult for each individual journalist (especially the ones on a national level) to keep up.
A few more questions I had, reading through this study:
How is the DM function of twitter normalized and how does it factor into organizational expectations? Does the private nature of the tool make it hard to normalize or set expectations for?
In addition, I pose the same questions for follows, polls, opening up DMs publicly, retweets, faves, quoted tweets and the “retweets and faves not endorsements” trend for public figures on twitter.
When the reading states that few organizations have successfully gained substantial amount of readers willing to pay for content and lists the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, I immediately wanted to know the average economic status of these publications' reading audiences and how it might affect paying intent.
Lastly, there's an often paraphrased quote that a lie travels around the world before the truth gets a chance to even put its shoes on. I bring this up to ask about what standards, if any, exist for making editorial corrections on twitter.
The publish first, correct later philosophy makes me wonder about what “correct” really means on twitter. What are the rules? In newspapers, from what I know, corrections are acknowledged in footnotes if it’s an online-only article and on the next issue of the publication if it’s a printed piece. What does a “correction” look like on twitter: does it involve deleting an erroneous tweet? Is simply tweeting a correction and an acknowledgement that a previous tweet was made in error enough if the erroneous tweet is still up? Which is the most ethical course of action? Twitter has a newly proposed feature that could make tweets editable after they've been posted. How would journalists make use of this feature if it were to eventually be adopted?
THIS IS NOT AN INTERVIEW WITH BANKSY
I checked twitter this morning and the number one trending topic was "El Chapo." I clicked on the topic and I was unsurprised to find that many had fallen yet again for another abcnews.com.co ruse and been led to a story about how El Chapo had escaped yet again from captivity.
As reported in this article, abcnews.com.co has in the past been responsible for many hoax news stories. At some point, you have to wonder if the fault lies with the audience rather than the publishers of said hoax stories.
I frequently visit the AV Club - a sister site of The Onion so I'm pretty partial to The Onion as the reigning champion of news satire but still, I can't fault outfits like abcnews.com.co or The National Report for wanting to capitalize on people's inabilities to see past their biases, even if a lot of the "news stories" that result from it can't truly be categorized as satire.
Many times, I've caught myself laughing at the embarrassment that ensues when reputable news organizations fall for these so-called news sites and I've had to recalibrate because the percentage of my enjoyment of The Onion that relies on checking to see how often people fall for it is very little. In my view, true satire should be funny on its own without people mistaking it as real news. With sites like the National Report, almost all the humor for me stems from how much it manages to constantly embarrass audiences and news organizations that fall for it. I'm not saying it isn't funny but at the same time, I'm not saying it isn't wrong.
EASE OF ALTERCATION CREATES WOES FOR PICTURE EDITORS
As someone with a background in graphic design whose daily work duties involve firing up photoshop every now and then, I have to play just the tiniest violin for all the photojournalists mentioned in this reading to have lost their jobs over becoming too overzealous with their prowess in photoshop.
I'm not a journalist and I know very little about the industry but even I know when you cross the line from enhancing an image for the sake of clarity to out and out deception.
Something I did find interesting in the reading was the passage where it is alluded to that some directors of photography require that their photojournalists inform them on all the alterations they make to the image and why. Working in photoshop for years now, I know fairly well about the "History" panel that lists in order every step you take when working on a file. I'm not advocating for this to be implemented globally but Adobe (the software company that licenses Photoshop) could build a feature off the "History" panel that informs a designated person within an organization whenever certain actions are exerted on an image. They could make the feature available only in editions licensed to news organizations. That designated person would be the director of photography.
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Week 3 Reading Response
CAN MORAL DISPUTES BE RESOLVED?
In this reading, the author poses the question: “So, which is it: right because God choose it, or chosen by God because right? Most people think it’s the latter.” The question led me to another question that I think complements it well: Did the moral and religious person gravitate toward religion because of their already established morality or did religion make the person moral? Having grown up in a religious background, I've seen my fair share of converts who gravitated toward religion initially because they felt like they'd reached a low point where they felt a complete breakdown in their ability to be moral and wanted to remedy it through religion. Like an army recruit during basic training, this type of convert is often characterized as a moral blank slate that is then instructed anew on morality through religious teachings. If morality is fluid and permits different - sometimes opposing - views depending on one's culture or religious affiliation, it's easy to see this type of convert align him/herself with the "right because [their] God chose it" camp. This type of convert can often be found in the "preconvention" phase of moral evolution. Another type of convert however is the type that picks up a few religious practices here and there out of admiration for its practitioners and gradually gravitates toward the active practice of said religion. This type of convert most likely would align his/herself with the "chosen by [their] God because right," camp, I think. This is typically the type of convert who 1) found validation in religious teachings for things they were already practicing on their own or as part of a non-religious subculture or 2) converted from a previous religion that they'd perhaps been born into and had effectively been nurtured by. They'd fall into the convention or post-convention phase of moral evolution.
Breezing through the comments below the reading, it is interesting that a few commenters bring up the golden rule (do unto others...) as a solution for resolving cross-cultural moral disputes like honor killings. I found this to be pretty naive on their part. Someone even goes so far as to call it the "most universal moral/ethical principle," which I find false because even here in the Western world, we have many situations where it would be unwise to visit upon others the types of things we as unique individuals - with our separate tastes and tics and desires and quirks - wish to be done to us. Some people like being mistreated. Some people like being talked down to. Some like being objectified. Some like being mishandled. This is in no way a judgment on people for the things they like; just an illustration of how problematic that line of thinking can often be. The other thing about the golden rule is that it doesn't take into account the reasons people formulate in their heads for why they're really doing something to someone, why they feel like that something has to be done, and the "greater good" in their view that will ultimately result from the act.
WHY SELF-DRIVING CARS MUST BE PROGRAMMED TO KILL
I thought about similarities and differences between the trolley problem and the self-driving car having to choose between pedestrians in its path and its owner/passenger. It is interesting that in the few variations of the trolley problem I've read so far, the passengers inside the trolley are never in danger themselves of being killed or even mentioned at all. If such a variation exists and I just haven't read it yet, I stand corrected but back to my point. I'm making the comparison to bring up the issue of trust between man and machine and also to ask whether it would ever be ethical or even feasible to allow the human passenger of a self-driving car to be included in the decision-making process of choosing between mowing down a bunch of unsuspecting pedestrians or careening into the nearest wall. Unlike the AI aboard the self-driving car, the trolley operator's decision can easily be influenced by the passenger(s) through civil conversation or through mixed martial arts. I haven't read anything on the self-driving car's equivalent of a roundhouse kick to the trolley operator's face. Perhaps a manual override option in the self-driving car's settings could be included. People board a trolley expecting its operator to be 1) well-trained and 2) accountable for his decisions behind the wheel. However, in moments like the ones mentioned in the trolley problem, I also think people expect the trolley operator to 3) think and act a lot like his passengers would, were they in his shoes and 4) take his passengers' considerations into account. This is what builds trust between the operator and his/her passengers. I think one of the easiest ways designers of self-driving cars could get people to trust their products is to allow the passengers knowledge that they'd be able to influence the car's decision if ever faced with such a scenario. In the trolley, there's give and take to the amount of autonomy the trolley operator enjoys vs. the autonomy the passengers have. In the self-driving car, it seems to be all autonomy for the car, no autonomy for its passenger(s).
On a darker and more fear-mongering note, imagine a group of people bent of killing a single person and deciding the best way to do it would be to all at once run out in front of the person's self-driving car while he's inside it.
THE ROBOT'S DILEMMA
This was the most enjoyable read for me this week. I enjoyed the separation between the "machine-learning" approach and the "rule-based" approach to programming robots to make moral decisions and I definitely favor the "rule-based" approach. However, the reading got me thinking about one of my favorite sci-fi films in recent years - "Moon." In the film, the main character has a robot companion named GERTY who is very reminiscent of the AI HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey". In "Moon," GERTY has moral directives that have been programmed into it in service of its owner's nefarious plans. However, the main character essentially programs his own morality into GERTY simply through interactions with it over time and manipulation in a manner that is almost uniquely human. For an even better movie example of this method of overriding a robot's morality, see another movie titled "Robot and Frank."
In this reading, the author poses the question: “So, which is it: right because God choose it, or chosen by God because right? Most people think it’s the latter.” The question led me to another question that I think complements it well: Did the moral and religious person gravitate toward religion because of their already established morality or did religion make the person moral? Having grown up in a religious background, I've seen my fair share of converts who gravitated toward religion initially because they felt like they'd reached a low point where they felt a complete breakdown in their ability to be moral and wanted to remedy it through religion. Like an army recruit during basic training, this type of convert is often characterized as a moral blank slate that is then instructed anew on morality through religious teachings. If morality is fluid and permits different - sometimes opposing - views depending on one's culture or religious affiliation, it's easy to see this type of convert align him/herself with the "right because [their] God chose it" camp. This type of convert can often be found in the "preconvention" phase of moral evolution. Another type of convert however is the type that picks up a few religious practices here and there out of admiration for its practitioners and gradually gravitates toward the active practice of said religion. This type of convert most likely would align his/herself with the "chosen by [their] God because right," camp, I think. This is typically the type of convert who 1) found validation in religious teachings for things they were already practicing on their own or as part of a non-religious subculture or 2) converted from a previous religion that they'd perhaps been born into and had effectively been nurtured by. They'd fall into the convention or post-convention phase of moral evolution.
Breezing through the comments below the reading, it is interesting that a few commenters bring up the golden rule (do unto others...) as a solution for resolving cross-cultural moral disputes like honor killings. I found this to be pretty naive on their part. Someone even goes so far as to call it the "most universal moral/ethical principle," which I find false because even here in the Western world, we have many situations where it would be unwise to visit upon others the types of things we as unique individuals - with our separate tastes and tics and desires and quirks - wish to be done to us. Some people like being mistreated. Some people like being talked down to. Some like being objectified. Some like being mishandled. This is in no way a judgment on people for the things they like; just an illustration of how problematic that line of thinking can often be. The other thing about the golden rule is that it doesn't take into account the reasons people formulate in their heads for why they're really doing something to someone, why they feel like that something has to be done, and the "greater good" in their view that will ultimately result from the act.
WHY SELF-DRIVING CARS MUST BE PROGRAMMED TO KILL
I thought about similarities and differences between the trolley problem and the self-driving car having to choose between pedestrians in its path and its owner/passenger. It is interesting that in the few variations of the trolley problem I've read so far, the passengers inside the trolley are never in danger themselves of being killed or even mentioned at all. If such a variation exists and I just haven't read it yet, I stand corrected but back to my point. I'm making the comparison to bring up the issue of trust between man and machine and also to ask whether it would ever be ethical or even feasible to allow the human passenger of a self-driving car to be included in the decision-making process of choosing between mowing down a bunch of unsuspecting pedestrians or careening into the nearest wall. Unlike the AI aboard the self-driving car, the trolley operator's decision can easily be influenced by the passenger(s) through civil conversation or through mixed martial arts. I haven't read anything on the self-driving car's equivalent of a roundhouse kick to the trolley operator's face. Perhaps a manual override option in the self-driving car's settings could be included. People board a trolley expecting its operator to be 1) well-trained and 2) accountable for his decisions behind the wheel. However, in moments like the ones mentioned in the trolley problem, I also think people expect the trolley operator to 3) think and act a lot like his passengers would, were they in his shoes and 4) take his passengers' considerations into account. This is what builds trust between the operator and his/her passengers. I think one of the easiest ways designers of self-driving cars could get people to trust their products is to allow the passengers knowledge that they'd be able to influence the car's decision if ever faced with such a scenario. In the trolley, there's give and take to the amount of autonomy the trolley operator enjoys vs. the autonomy the passengers have. In the self-driving car, it seems to be all autonomy for the car, no autonomy for its passenger(s).
On a darker and more fear-mongering note, imagine a group of people bent of killing a single person and deciding the best way to do it would be to all at once run out in front of the person's self-driving car while he's inside it.
THE ROBOT'S DILEMMA
This was the most enjoyable read for me this week. I enjoyed the separation between the "machine-learning" approach and the "rule-based" approach to programming robots to make moral decisions and I definitely favor the "rule-based" approach. However, the reading got me thinking about one of my favorite sci-fi films in recent years - "Moon." In the film, the main character has a robot companion named GERTY who is very reminiscent of the AI HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey". In "Moon," GERTY has moral directives that have been programmed into it in service of its owner's nefarious plans. However, the main character essentially programs his own morality into GERTY simply through interactions with it over time and manipulation in a manner that is almost uniquely human. For an even better movie example of this method of overriding a robot's morality, see another movie titled "Robot and Frank."
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Week 1 Reading Response
Thoughts of Chapter 1 of "Moral Minds"
On the two scenarios presented to illustrate moral instincts:
The reading posits that the decision in second scenario is easier to arrive at partly because acting on it requires less time and effort and is more detached from the subjects of the act.
In scenario one, the doctor could possibly kill the donor as means to greater good. In scenario two, the train operator could kill the lone hiker as a consequence of greater good. The reading posits that a rawlsian creature would find the decision in scenario two permissible for this reason.
While I agree, I can't help but suspect that in addition to that, the moral-ness and non-moral-ness (or lack of information on the moral nature) of what brings the donor to the hospital and what brings the lone hiker to the detour track also carries some weight in helping along the conscious reasoning phase of the process.
Scenario one has the potential receiver of the doctor's action taking a morally permissible action to donate blood. This is what brings him to the hospital. We aren't provided with moral context, if any, that led to the other five ending up in critical condition in the hospital but knowing that the donor is at the hospital to perform a morally permissible act has to have triggered moral emotions of gratitude and perhaps even compassion in the doctor in helping rationalize his decision not the sacrifice the donor in favor of the five in critical condition.
That and the fact that it's probably super-illegal to harvest the donor's organs without his knowledge or permission. Ha!
Scenario two has all hikers on both tracks partaking in action that, though not containing a clear moral element, flies in the face of common sense. I think this might, on an unconscious level, be part of what makes the decision much easier to sacrifice the lone hiker on the detour track in favor of the others in this scenario.
While I'm not saying that the decision to take darwin's law into one's own hands is ever a just decision, in a scenario like this (as posited in the reading) exceptions or variations will often be made. Faced with a moral dilemma brought about by people doing something that, while not morally wrong, is universally considered to be unwise, I think, for most people, coming to a utilitarian decision is much easier.
As it stands, the train operator isn't given a reason why any of the hikers are on the tracks. The doctor at least gets a reason for the donor's visit and it likely colors his view of the donor favorably even if in the time he's given to arrive at a decision, he doesn't realize it. In the hypothetical world where he doesn't ever have to worry about losing his doctoring license, he could, as a Kantian creature, reach a quick decision to sacrifice the donor but as a Humean creature, knowledge of the nature of the donor's visit will likely slow the process by triggering his emotions. According to Kant, emotions are icky.
There could be a host of reasons why the lone hikers and the groups of hikers are on the train tracks but the train operator is never given this information. What would happen if in this increasingly hypothetical world, each scenario was altered by 1) having the donor actually not be a donor but a deadly fugitive who ends up at the hospital after leading marshals on a nationwide chase during which he kills five civilians and 2) having the train operator recognize the lone hiker as nobel prize winner Gregory House, MD and soon-to-be inventor of a cure for cancer just as soon as his findings get published? (the train operator in this scenario is an avid fan of the scientific community).
On a more serious note, these two scenarios got me thinking about less hypothetical, real-world proxies that I experience or hear about everyday. The first example I can think of is what I believe to be legitimately unjust police violence exercised on people of color in recent months. I've both witnessed and gotten into a few arguments with people who hold the belief that a mixture of darwin's law and reasoning similar to Kant's are the reasons why the deaths of so many like Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray were inevitable and even justified.
The Tamir Rice killing in particular, bears a few similarities to the second scenario. The officer, like the train operator, had little information on RIce beyond what he saw on the scene (which, from my viewing of the video, wasn't reason enough for the officer to shoot within two seconds) because the dispatcher withheld important details from him like the fact that the caller stated that the gun was probably a toy gun and he probably wasn't an adult. People argue that the officer - Timothy Loehmann, established already by a previous employer as unfit and mentally unstable for police work - was concerned about the well-being of the other people in the park and had to make a decision.
Here's where I think the reading comes in. Elsewhere in the reading, it is evident that every hypothesis and every finding and every scenario stated is contingent on universal moral principles that can be only modified by different cultures through variations and exceptions - principles like the one of child murder being unacceptable. Taking from what I read, I come to the sad conclusion that many adhere to a culture that 1) Blindly defends law enforcement officers in all things, even the ones already declared unfit and mentally unstable for police work and 2) view children of color as adults. In a culture such as this, it is genuinely scary to me what we can justify as morally permissible.
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