Media Law & Literacy

In October of this year a women named Swati Runi Goyal boarded an American Airlines Flight and not long after boarding a crew member told Goyal to get her things and follow him to the front of the plane. Goyal was told by the crew member that she need to either change her shirt or she would get kicked off of the plan. The shirt that she was wearing said "Hail Satan", Goyal is not a Satan Worshipper and the shirt is meant to be an ironic shirt to advocate for separation of church and state and for religious freedom. The crew member of the American Airlines flight told Goyal that "Our crew has found your shirt to be offensive". American Airlines websites states that passengers are required to "dress appropriately" and avoid "offensive clothing", although it does not state what items are offensive, so it leaves it up to the crew to decide. The crew members would not let Goyal keep her shirt displayed, they delayed takeoff and brought a customer se...

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...

For my technology to present to the class I decided to do cassettes I thought this would be really interesting as they weren’t around very long. They also have started to make a rise again which is sort of weird to me as they aren’t very easy to carry around and there are other methods such as our phones to listen to music.  Cassettes were released in 1962 by the Phillips Company but did not come out in the US until November of the next year. Cassettes became huge because before they were created people had to listen and record music on records. Cassettes were much easier and with the invention of the Stereo people were able to listen to music on the go a little bit easier.  Although when the Walkman came out in 1979 they really boomed as Cassettes were so much easier to carry around and listen to music during the time you weren’t at home. Although they didn’t live up to the hype very long as in the early 80’s CD’s came out and as they were even easier to carry aro...

Our society has become so insensitive. From the video of the Mad World Remix of Moby Video , it shows how society has become, we aren’t currently this bad, but I could see how we could come to a spiraling downfall. One of the biggest subjects on the video is how consumed everyone is with technology and I believe that this was the reason for a lot of the things that happen now and that happened in the video. This video reminds me of an episode of Black Mirror because of how much it touches on the use of technology, in the episode of Black Mirror everyone was so consumed with their status and how popular they were they didn’t even realize the real issues in the world.  The video also touches on subjects like plastic surgery which has only become a huge thing because everyone is so consumed on what people all the way across the country think about the way that they look, but getting plastic surgery and looking “perfect” doesn’t make them any happier about themselves. The vi...

Georgia Southern University as a required reading for some of their first-year experience classes decided to have a required reading of “Make Your Home Among Strangers” a book by a Latina author Jennine Capo Crucet. When the author came to speak to the first-year class many spoke that they thought her book made generalizations about white privilege. The students didn’t understand why they were reading a book that was not promoting diversity on campus. Students also said that the author attached white people during her lecture and assumed that the whole audience was privileged as most of the students were white. After the lecture and as these students were filled with rage for being told that they have white privilege they got together and burned her book taking a video and posting it on Facebook.              I understand how students may be upset about this; it was an interesting choice for a university to use for ...

48 states in addition to Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico have launched an anti trust probe against Google. This probe is to determine if Google's stance in the search engine market is yet too dominant, and monopolized. In the view of the government, Google controls such a large piece of the internet functionality. They control a large chunk of the advertising market, having holds in the auction, buyer, and seller departments.    Alphabet, Googles parent company, has a market value of more than $820 billion. Last year reported revenue of $137 billion and income of $31 billion. Google controls so many aspects of the internet that it's hard to imagine using the int ernet and not eventually using a Google service. "If advertising costs are higher, advertisers pay more, and ultimately that's  passed on to consumers." (Paxton) A recent investigation shows that roughly ninety percent of all searches are conducted through a google owned service....

The Supreme Court was created in 1789 with the creation of Article 3 in the US Constitution. Article 3 not only created the Supreme Court but also gave Congress the power to create federal courts. Congress decided the organization of the Supreme Court as well as created the Judiciary Act of 1789. The Judiciary Act explained that the Supreme Court would be made up of six justices and they would serve until they died or retired, although over time the number has been altered until they set on the current number in 1869 of nine seats. All of the Justices that serve are nominated by the president and then sent to the US Senate for approval. History.com  goes more into detail about the supreme court. The Supreme Court started as being on the same level as the other parts of the government and then they began their rise to the top. They are still of the elite and the highest court in America. They get to pick and choose which cases that they hear, which is important so that they are n...

Nine years ago, the Food and Drug Administration proposed for warnings to be added to the side of cigarette packages. Nine years ago, it was passed, and now they are back at trying to put labels even bigger labels on cigarettes. But is this a violation of the First Amendment as it is limiting what the cigarette companies are allowed to advertise on their packets.               The FDA proposed 13 new warnings that are pictured above, each has a different picture that goes along with a different warning. The FDA wants manufactures to use these warnings to cover the top half of the cigarette packages.  Mitchell Zeller who runs the FDA’s tobacco division stated, “When you look at the current warnings on the side of the cigarette packs, they are virtually invisible. The diseases embedded in these images will improve public understanding of the negative consequences of smoking.” (The New York Times, ...