Media Law & Literacy

Confirmation Bias is the tendency of giving more weight to things that align with your own views. Even when your views are challenged and the side going against you has more evidence and you only find a small amount of evidence to support your side, you would still go with the side that aligns with your own views. So let's consider what a debate over gun control would be like with confirmation bias. One person, Amy supports gun control and only researches articles that go along with her beliefs of their being limitations on gun ownership. Another person, Adam opposes gun control and he finds sources that support his beliefs. When they both see shooting on the news they interpret it to go along with their beliefs even if they are looking at the same exact articles and watching the same news. Click here  to find out more about Conformation Bias.

Mainstream media is media outlets such as newspapers, news stations, and other news sources that most people know of and believe to be "reliable". Mainstream media are the most popular news stations and outlets that normally adults rely on getting their news from. Although, mainstream media has become very distrustful recently as these companies have political views that align with a side, even though they are meant to be unbiased. "Sixty-nine percent of U.S. adults in the current survey say their trust in the news media has decreased in the past decade. Just 4 percent say their trust has increased, while 26 percent indicate their trust has not changed." Recently, on June 22, 2017, CNN got in trouble for reporting fake news, it is unknown if the reporters just didn't have their facts straight or if they were purposefully releasing fake news. Although, CNN retracted the story and forced the three reports who published it to leave the network.  Read more abou...

I have been apart of social media for a long time, even though I have a lot of social media I rarely ever post on any of them. When I first started on social media I posted photos all the time, since then I have rebranded and deleted all of the photos I previously had. None of them were bad but I was young and did not know that a bunch of filters over a photo of my face didn't look good. I think that not really posting can be both good and bad. It is good because I can't risk anything bad being released because I am upset or sad because I do not post normally anyway so social media is not a coping mechanism. Although I end up not using important sites such as Linkedin as much as I should so I am not networking as much as the average person on social media does. When I googled myself the first thing to pop up was my LinkedIn but unfortunately since I do not post a lot all that was on my LinkedIn is my resume. Following that is an old Pinterest page I used maybe 3 times and ...

Snapchat became a very huge social media outlet for teens and young adults as it was a way to communicate with images and messages that would disappear. Unlike Instagram or Facebook that also appeared during this age of technology, parents would not be able to track what their kids were doing except with snapchat stories. Snapchat was created by students that went to Stanford, it had a slow start, but after rebranding it became a huge hit will school kids. People were able to send photos and texts and they would go away once they were opened. It also tells you if someone takes a screenshot of your messages or snaps. So a lot of people really early on after the rebrand used Snapchat because it was so different to everything else out there. Because it became so huge with kids I feel that it strays away from the curve that we learned about. As many adults do not use snapchat, really only teens and young adults use it. So I am sure in the realm of teenagers and young adults it follo...

Recently Apple removed HKmap.live an app that aided Hong Kong protestors be able to track where the police where, off of the App Store. Apple did this because they don't want to lose their ties to China, in China instead of them taking on the values of companies they expect those companies to take on their values. Apple hasn't had an issue with this, and this isn't the first time that they have removed something that China wouldn't like. In 2018 as exclusive Apple TV+ content was being created, the company told creators that their shows needed to refrain from portraying China in a negative way.  Unfortunately this is a common theme with technology companies and the textile industry. As they want a cheap way to create their clothing and if they lost China then they would have to move their whole company and increase prices. China has become more aggressive with what their citizens are able to view. I don't believe this will get any easier especially as companie...

Amazon's Choice are items that are labeled as top rated items that are well priced. Although some of these listings have ratings that most likely weren't what the person really thought about them because the customers were given gift cards or free products. This once happened to me, I received string lights from an Amazon's choice, in the box was a card that said if you leave a 5 star review we will send you a gift card for $20 and of course I gave a good review which I would have done anyway.  Although not all of the items end up being good such as the lights were that I received, so the customers are unhappy but they want the gift card so they post positive reviews and then believe that the gift card is repayment for a crappy product. Although this really misleads other customers who are in need of something and when they receive it, its not what they thought it would be from the reviews. It doesn't seem like Amazon is planning on changing this policy or lookin...