Final Blog Post!

The role of media is significant in my life. I use technology on a daily basis, much like everyone else, however, I use it as a part of my online job. My digital footprint is pretty big compared to most. This is a direct result of my role as a social media influencer. 

I never planned on being an online influencer. My previous role on social media was similar to most
teenage girls, I would post silly videos and cute pictures with my friends. I never took it seriously until one day in 2020 when one of my videos blew up. 

The 30-second video that tracked thousands of views a minute began my career as an influencer. I knew from this moment, it was part of my job to keep and maintain this new role. That's when I discovered my passion for creating content and posting online. 

Now, I want to continue to use the knowledge I have gained in this role in my future career. I chose to major in social media and digital communications because of the influence social media has had on my life. I am a pretty active influencer that could maintain the role of a social media marketer for a company. 

A social media marketer does a similar role to that of an influencer. Both create content based on trends, post consistently, and generate more views and followers to build their pages. This is why I think I can handle this future career. 

I think that my relationship with social media is both healthy and unhealthy. While I use it to help build a name for myself and it opens a lot of doors for me, it also slightly damages my mental health. After using social media for so long and being used to gaining followers and views, once I post a video or picture that doesn't do as well as others, it takes a toll on me. It makes me overthink the post and I start to wonder if it's me that the viewers don't like. 

The second video attached to the final post prompt about the dark side of technology is more accurate in today's world. While it may be sad, more people are disconnected from the real world than we realize. People have stopped caring about each other's feelings and started caring more about the number of views they get. This has started to take a toll on people's mental health and relationships. 

Technology and social media are still amazing and offer a lot of opportunities. But when they are used too often or misused, they can quickly become very draining and damaging. From my experience, I know that if I do not take breaks from social media throughout my day, I will become exhausted from reading or viewing others' opinions online. 

My role as an influencer may seem to contradict this since I know how damaging it can be to your mental health yet I still continue to use it. This is because I know that sometimes we have to take risks for the outcomes to outweigh the negatives. I feel that I have learned how to use social media responsibly. It does not rule over me, I know that I control it and the role it plays in my life. 

Overall, the role of social media and technology in my life is huge. Without it, I do not know where I would be or what I plan on doing in the future. Social media is an up-and-coming thing that we have only just begun to discover. The possibilities are endless when it comes to media and technology. We just have to make sure that it does not start to run us as we run it. This is when it becomes more damaging and causes harm rather than good. 

EOTO Reaction - Online Influencers

Online influencers have built a reputation for their knowledge on a specific topic. They create consistent posts about this topic to generate a large following. Most influencers will build their accounts based on what their viewers respond to. 

Influencers often try to relate to their audience to gain their trust. This is how they are able to sell products
to their viewers. 60% of people say they have bought something through an influencer's recommendation. 90% of respondents said they would trust an influencer over a celebrity. These statistics show how the world we live in is changing. 

Prior to online influencers, most people would watch commercials with their favorite celebrities and buy the product they were promoting. Now, we have developed a new sense of trust issues with celebrities after realizing they do not rely on views and genuine products to keep their careers alive.  

Most influencers will promote real products that they think will benefit their followers while also keeping them related to their niche. This is the key to influencing. Influencers must find out what kind of content their viewers want and continue to post videos or pictures related to this.

If you are an influencer trying to venture out from your typical content, most of the time, you will notice these posts do not do as well. This is because your followers have become comfortable with you and your niche. Straying away from your regular content will always result in lower views, fewer likes, and a lack in the increase of followers. 

There are pros and cons to being an influencer and working with others. Some pros include expanding your audience, building confidence, and bringing in sales. These pros help promote the life of an influencer and make it look like it is an easy, glamorous career. However, the cons to being an influencer are losing control of your brand, not being able to measure results, and even working with the wrong people. 

I personally can relate to this topic. I have been an active influencer on social media since 2020. While influencing may appear easy, it is actually a full-time job. Every day I must come up with new content related to my page to post to keep my followers engaged. With each post I make, I learn something new. I get to learn about what is trending, and what isn't. I discover how my followers feel about the content based on views, shares, likes, and follows. I also get the ability to learn what to do differently the next time I post.

Overall, influencing has a huge impact on social media today. Online influencers have the power to persuade people's opinions and control their interests. While they cannot make you do anything, they can highly promote different things to the point that you have now gained an interest in them. Social media influencers help run social media the way we see it today. Without these influencers, social media would lose its ability to sell products, collaborate with popular creators, and appeal to a bigger audience. 

Privacy Online and Off

 Privacy is crucial in the everyday life of a human being. It is important that people can feel like they have somewhere to go where they are not being watched and can act fully like themselves. Without privacy, people can lose their minds trying to find somewhere to go where their information can be kept confidential. 

In the TED Talk videos, our privacy is discussed. We leave a digital footprint wherever we go. Most of our everyday lives are tracked and we are unaware of it. Different forms of communication are being documented for resources for the government. This all sounds very scary and alarming, and it is. 

I feel that my privacy has been invaded and it affects me directly. Before watching the TED Talk with Christopher Soghoian, I did not consider how my phone calls were being tracked. This feels like I have never had a conversation between just me and the individual I called. Instead, someone somewhere was listening in on my conversation, tracking me. 

My friends and family cannot feel like they are alone. Even when we avoid being tracked by not using phones, the technology that surrounds us in the everyday world still exists. By owning a car, you are putting yourself at risk of being tracked. There are cameras everywhere that take pictures of you without your consent. They are there for our "safety" or to help out the government track certain vehicles. I think this is still an invasion of privacy. 

The government should stop trying to be as involved in our daily lives. There are some things that should be kept private and not shared with others. We should not be worried about our phone calls being tracked when we just want to call a friend and discuss a private topic. Or if we want to search for something online, we should not have to worry about it being tracked and stored. 

There is not much that we can do to avoid this invasion of privacy. We can try to use fake information when a website asks for our email or name and date of birth to avoid tracing. Clearing the cookies on your computer can help to erase the tracking software. However, the only way to talk privately online again is if everyone collectively agrees there is a privacy problem. We can use software that uses encryption to prevent outsiders from depicting a message. This is described in the TED Talk by Andy Yen. 

Overall the idea of our privacy being this invaded is terrifying. It feels as though we cannot go anywhere or do anything without leaving a trace behind us. We should not scare away by this, instead, we should fight for more privacy. The government is only allowed to get involved in our private life if we allow it. Standing up in this case can help change the cyber world. 

EOTO The Five Eyes

 The Five Eyes Alliance (FVEY) is a cooperative intelligence network that monitors the electronic communications of citizens and foreign governments. This network of countries includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. FVEY is the result of the UKUSA Agreement of 1946 and is the world's oldest intelligence partnership. 

FVEY monitors the private communications of billions of people worldwide. They use communication methods such as signals intelligence (SIGINT) to monitor the citizens of other FVEY member countries. FVEY collects information by intercepting private communications like phone calls, faxes, emails, and text messages from infrastructure such as satellites, telephone networks, and fiber optic cables. Larger technology companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, YouTube, AOL, Skype, and Apple all send records of user data to the FVEY. 

There are pros and cons of the FVEY. Some benefits include avoiding war with other countries in the alliance because we have the technology to know if there is a real threat to worry about or stop a bomb threat because we can read other people's communication. While both of these situations are not ideal, being able to avoid them is why the FVEY do what they do. 

Some cons that relate to the FVEY include an invasion of privacy. No one is able to do anything on their phones or computers without the FVEY tracking their every move. There is no privacy when the FVEY is able to track what you are doing on every app on your phone. There are no secrets that you can keep from the FVEY. 

As a whole, society is greatly impacted by the FVEY. As long as people are aware that they are being tracked and watched, it makes it difficult to be at ease and relaxed. We must act on our best behavior because others are watching our every move. This does not allow us to act like ourselves. Now, sure no one should be searching about inappropriate things such as how to start a war. But if someone wanted to research what leads to war and how to avoid it, this could be misunderstood. 

Misunderstandings happen all the time and in multiple situations. In this case, the FVEY could make a mistake. This could greatly impact certain people if they were being watched. Imagine if you were a true crime junky casually searching for serial killers and how they killed their victims. From an outsider's point of view, this could be alarming. If someone were watching your search history and found this information, they may be a little startled and make assumptions that are not true. The FVEY might flag you and be suspicious when in reality, there is actually no real threat. 

The FVEY has the right intentions to help people by tracking them online, however, it can be difficult to
fully understand how this is beneficial. Most people do not want the government involved in their personal life through social media and phone calls. But the FVEY gets involved only when necessary. If you are making a call to your friend about your new puppy, the government has no interest in this conversation. However, if you are on the phone talking about starting a riot, the government may have to take note of this to prevent any damage from happening. 

I think the FVEY is a necessary aspect of the government. We need someone who is willing to track others on their devices to prevent future harm. Without the FVEY, there could be seriously damaging events that take place every day. I do not agree with being tracked and having my conversations recorded, but if that is what it takes to be safe in today's world then that is fine by me. 

Diffusion of Innovations

 Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread.  Everett Rogers popularized this idea through his book and proposed five main elements that influence the spread of a new idea. These five elements are the innovation itself, adopters, communication channels, time and a social system.  All of these make up the diffusion of innovations theory. 

An innovation that I will be looking at through the diffusion theory is social media, more specifically,
Facebook. Facebook was an app originally created at Harvard for students to judge the attractiveness of other fellow students. This was shut down after two days due to the violation of university policy. Despite this shut down, 450 people continued to go to Facesmash, which is what is was called at this time. This encouraged Zuckerberg to register the new URL for Facebook that we recognize today.  

So looking at this creation of Facebook, we can see how the diffusion theory is used. The innovation itself was created by a group of Harvard students and the early adopters were other Harvard students. The students used Facebook or Facesmash which sparked  Zuckerberg's interest in the app. At the time, social media was not around or used as frequently so this app introduced a new way of communicating. 

Due to popularity, the app started to be used by students at other schools such as Yale and Stanford. This
spread among universities is what Facebook needed to gain traction to become a popular social media app.   The rate at which the app was gaining popularity increased and by the end of 2004, over a million users were on Facebook. 

Facebook continued to introduce new parts to its social media such as "tagging" others in different posts and creating a "wall" that your friends can comment on or leave posts. These new features continue to push the app to appeal to a bigger audience. 

Overall Facebook has played a big role in social media history. It was not a super popular app at first, however, it gained the popularity it needed through diffusion. Now it is one of the most used social media apps in todays world. 

Living in the Age of AI

 "In the Age of AI" was an eye-opening video. Watching the artificial intelligence learn how to play the game was impressive in the first part of the video. I did not expect the AI to lose a game but it lost one. Usually, AI can pick up on almost every possible move or play in a game and predict it before it happens. This AI made a play at the end of the game that was unexpected and won the game. 

AI is slowly taking over jobs that used to be available to people. The people creating the technology are
trying to focus on efficiency and the best possible way to get tasks done. However, focusing on the benefits of technology is not always a good thing. This technology is taking jobs away from regular people. 

In the video, multiple people discuss the scariness of AI and how it is taking their jobs. While the rich continue to get richer, the poor will get poorer. This idea was mentioned to show how split the public is and how dangerous it is to take away the people's jobs. 

The computers that are taking these jobs are adapting and learning. They obviously work for free which saves the employer money but it does not help those that worked this jobs previously. The more technology advances, the less we need human beings filling available positions. 

Surveillance capitalism is mentioned as a safety precaution for those that use social media and technology. While we may think that we're the ones "using" social media, it is actual "using" us. Certain search engines like Google track our behavior to use this data to predict our interests. This data is used to create advertisement for each user that matches their interests. 

Google's way of predicting peoples search habits was adopted by other social media companies. Facebook started to buy data and use it to advertise certain things to its users. Behavioral prediction takes away the uncertainty of life. Technology can now predict appropriately what your interests are and how to advertise that to you. 

Facebook started to adjust peoples feed, especially during the 2010 election to influence people. They
came out with an "I Voted" icon that would help push you and your friends to vote. This little icon made an impact on over 300 people. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg has gotten into some trouble with how much data they are collecting on people. He said now that they will be developing a safety system that will protect the data of people rather than sharing it. 

AI now is visible in different technologies like Amazon's Alexa and Google's version too. They listen to everything that we say to help collect data to advertise your interests to you. Simply asking every morning "what's the weather like" is training this technology. This privacy violation is scary and unnerving. 

I think that privacy is a huge human right that everyone is allowed. When it is being taken from us or we face challenges against privacy, we should fight back. Technology is advancing faster than we can keep up, however, we can determine how much information we give out. I know that I will start to make up fake information when an application on my phone asks me about something personal. 

Antiwar

 War is defined as a violent conflict between different nations or states. People generally go to war for a variety of reasons. It has been argued that a nation will go to war if the benefits of war are deemed to outweigh the disadvantages and if there is a sense that there is not another mutually agreeable solution. More specifically, some have argued that wars are fought primarily for economic, religious, and political reasons. 

War has been a problem as long as we the people have existed. The furthest dated war goes back to 2700BCE in Mesopotamia. It was fought between Summer and Elam to keep the Elamites from invading and taking control of the Sumerians land. The Sumerians won and later constructed a great wall to keep the Elamites at bay. However, warfare pictographs of armies are dated back to 3500 BCE on walls. This means war was around before this first documented war. 

Things like war are often hidden from the public eye to prevent chaos and panic. Most of the time, war is inevitable because the government wants us to believe it must happen in order to resolve our issues with others. While we can keep our fingers crossed in hopes that war won't happen, it has a higher chance of becoming a reality than peace. 

Antiwar is defined as an opposition to war in general or to the conduct of a specific war. Websites like Antiwar.com and The American Conservative are hard to find because the government favors war. These websites contain information the government tries to silence and prevent the public from hearing. As a society, we're not supposed to speak out on war but instead, go along with what the government says is right for us. 

I think that the government tries to silence antiwar civilians because there are benefits from war. For example, war can strengthen the economy. It can provide jobs and help manufacturers to thrive that produce war materials. Next, there is a huge technological advancement by the end of each war. After World War II, we had fully functional planes that did not fully exist by 1900. Lastly, it creates a part of history that shapes the world. All of these factors are what influence the government to love war.

It is odd that the government goes to a great extinct to silence antiwar voices. Usually, when one tries to silence another, it's because one is guilty of doing whatever the other is trying to say. This may be the case with the government and antiwar civilians. 

In conclusion, the government silences the antiwar voices because they genuinely enjoy wartime. With war comes many benefits for the government. The more war that exsists, the more money the government is making behind our backs. As long as we have antiwar civilians, we as a community have someone that is willing to stand up for us. I fully support the antiwar voices and think they should continue to do their job and play their part in society.