# Reading Responses (Set 2) ## Reading Responses 5 out of 5 ## October 24th - Shaped A couple years ago, a phone case with the text “social media seriously harms your mental health” went viral. While many praised the phone case company for creating awareness about the ongoing issues of body image on social media, the trend took a turn. Suddenly, celebrities and influencers began to post pictures with the phone case which caused them to receive much backlash as it was believed that they were the ones who had started the “fakeness” of social media. While opinions on this matter differ, it is no shock that social media decreases self-esteem and mindfulness. With many social cues being hindered due to screens protecting individuals, a lot of people do not think before they post. In addition, with individuals being able to always control their self-presentation, the concept of front-stage and back-stage presentation comes into place. While in a normal conversation one can begin to disclose their back-stage self, social media allows you to only present the front-stage. In my opinion, this is what social media has now become. What used to be a fun, casual place to share family photos, is now filled with “perfect lives” for individuals to compare themselves to. As stated in the text, this promotes upward social comparison and self-esteem can decrease (Reagle 5). Therefore, self-esteem is severely affected due to this new way of being able to control what is presented on your profiles, being able to compare yourself to others constantly, and being exposed to thousands of lives all at once. Narcissism has also been impacted with the growth of digital communication. Like described in the text, the website “Klout '' quantified one’s relevance on social media and people became obsessed with trying to increase their number (Reagle 18). While this website may not be that popular anymore, different types of quantification still occur today. For example, many high school and college students may try to have the highest number of followers to look “cool” or “popular.” While the number of followers you have really has no true impact on who you are, people are obsessed with the higher numbers. It is therefore critical that users of social media become aware that most of what is posted is not always accurate. This will ensure a healthier relationship with digital communication and help improve one’s self-esteem. ## November 1 - Finding Someone & Living Alone “Don’t talk to strangers” is not a value of online dating platforms. As Derek Thompson describes in his article, digital communication has changed the relational landscape in the sense that most individuals now don’t depend on others to find their partner (2019). This has both its pros and cons. On one hand, users of dating apps are able to be fully themselves without feeling judged by people who know them. An example of this might be someone who wants to explore their sexuality without their peers knowing. However, digital dating can be much more overwhelming than finding a partner in real life as dating apps feature thousands and thousands of potential partners every hour. While this may be a good option for many people, the overload of choices (and the pressure that some people may put on themselves to find the perfect partner) can cause a lot of anxiety in individuals (Thompson, 2019). Overall, digital communication has expanded the relational landscape, impacting how users meet their future partners. As a college student, I find that I am always surrounded by individuals who use dating apps. Two of my roommates use these apps, and one of my best friends is in a strong 4-year relationship with someone who she met on Bumble. In truth, while I think these dating apps are great ways to find new people you may never encounter in real life, especially during isolation period the pandemic, many aspects of dating apps sit wrong me. As mentioned in “The Big Lies People Tell on Online Dating,” a lot of people mis-represent themselves. And while lying about your height isn’t the most dangerous thing in the world, a lot of scary people may try to take advantage of users on these dating apps. This is another way that digital communication has changed the relational landscape: while your friends could warn you about someone they know, you never know who someone really is on Tinder until you finally meet them. It’s therefore crucial that users of these online dating platforms remain critical thinkers when talking to strangers online. ## November 17 - Algorithmic Discrimination There’s no way an algorithm can be racist, unless… As Fiona Rutherford states, while a computer algorithm can’t necessarily be racist, it can reflect the systemic biases our society upholds (2016). Using the example Rutherford brings up in her article, a lot can be said about Google and other large companies’ algorithms. To begin, algorithms can show biases through their scale, transparency, and damage (O’Neil 2016). One issue with these algorithms is that they are not fully transparent , therefore users are unsure of what truly makes up the models that lead to only white hands being shown. In addition, the scale of these algorithms are incredibly large. Almost every country in the world has access to Google which allows the algorithm to be inundated with data that may not alway be accurate. Lastly, the damage of this model is quite dangerous. If Google’s algorithms are created with inaccurate assumptions of people, issues may arise such as if you search up the word beautiful and only one type of face shape shows up. It’s in these ways that algorithms can exhibit bias as they can represent even the most unconscious biases their makers have. Applying Cathy O’Neil’s example of the impact of the US New Rankings, I couldn’t help but think about how Northeastern, just like TCU, has also increased their rankings incredibly quickly in the last couple of years. And while I’m sure many efforts are done ethically, a lot of students wonder about how the university may be gaming the system to try to score higher in the US News ranking model. For example, Northeastern presents a very high SAT score average to the US Ranking, however it is not mentioned that the entire NU.IN student body is not part of this average. In addition, Northeastern does not require a supplemental essay on the Common Application which motivates potential students to easily apply. With the increase in applications and Northeastern taking the same amount of students every year, the acceptance rate obviously goes down. In these ways, as Cathy O’Niel states, the model’s large scale is most likely made from proxies, allowing for users to game it (2016). It is therefore crucial for models to be built with increased thoughtfulness when the scale is so high. ## November 25 - Collapsed Context To be authentic on one platform is to be inauthentic on another. Taking the example of BeReal, the social media platform meant to contrast the fakeness of Instagram, users now compete to make sure they are showing the best part of their lives and try to avoid the normal, boring aspects of every-day life (Duffy and Gerrard, 2022). Here, users are consciously “speaking” to an audience which can be perceived as inauthentic (Marwick & boyd 2010). The way that users become more or less authentic online also depends on how the user imagines their audience. On Twitter, for example, a user may be more themselves if they believe the audience is made up of their close friends who reflect similar interests as the user. This would be considered the ideal audience. However, on Facebook, the same user could self-present in a different way as they know their family members are watching their posts. It’s in these ways that being authentic online depends on who we believe our audience is. It is therefore very possible to have more than one persona online. Using a personal example, I’ve grown to be a big fan of TikTok. During the pandemic, I decided to create a page dedicated to sharing my love for fashion and the page ended up gaining over 3,000 followers with around 155k likes. While I loved this page, I also had a separate account that was private and a lot less “fake.” This page showcased more of my real personality, while my fashion page resembled the micro-celebrity practice. I ended up stopping the page due to feeling uncomfortable with how inauthentic I was being and how I felt like I had self-censored myself too much. This exemplifies how context collapse made me believe that sensitive members were watching: the brands I worked with and just my followers (Marwick & boyd 2010). Therefore, users can have multiple personas online as self-presentation can differentiate depending on the account you own, not just the social media platform. ## December 2nd - Authenticity, Work & Influence It is so easy to attack someone when you are hidden behind a screen. Like Cait Munro argued, it does make sense to place high expectations on celebrities and important social media influencers (Duffy et al., 2022). After all, influencers can use their power to push and educate their audience on events happening in the world. However, with all this power comes walking the fine line of being attacked when you speak too little or too much. Online communities such as gossip blogs and GOMI push calling out culture, a practice that leads to little efficiency and promotes the concept of cancel culture (Duffy et al., 2022). And while I believe it’s important to “call out” influencers when they misspeak, it’s important to realize that, at the end of the day, that influencer is a human who may have just made a mistake. It’s therefore important for users of these online forums to rather focus their dialogue on debates and open-conversation rather than attackative statements. This would also weaken polarizing stereotypes pushed and emphasized on minority groups online. While it is unproductive to attack influencers online, it is important to hold them accountable in an educating, positive way. For example, while I find it great that influencers began to feature more of the events going on in the world during the pandemic and important protests, performative activism has only increased (Lerman, 2020). It’s here that influencers should be taught correctly how to improve these actions to stop the cycle. It is also here where influencers should have open conversations with companies when it comes to posting fake sponsorships (Lorenz, 2018). It is quite unethical to form your posts in a way that manipulates users and without the consent of the company creating said content for. Overall, open communication and holding influencers accountable in a respectable manner are the best ways to push better dialogue between them and users.
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Required assignments Wiki tutorial Web Search and Evaluation Filtering and Fake News Online Ads & Blockers Privacy Footprint Reading response sets

11/21/2022
Online Ads & Blockers

Knowing what we know about online advertising, should users be able to easily block ads? If so, who then pays for the free content and services we consume? Therefore, users should be able to easily block ads on the internet to protect themselves against malware and to protect their privacy. While there are many companies who value ethical intake of users’ data, there are many more who are not transparent with how data is collected and how it is used. As mentioned in Sven Taylor’s article about the issues on the Acceptable Ads Program, advertising networks may install trackers to analyze a person’s online activity and sell that information to other networks (2020). After reading this article, I found myself realizing that my ad-blocker, uBlocker, takes part in this program and will be looking to see if I can opt out, or if I need to look for an entirely new ad-blocker. In addition, Don Marti brings up the interesting topic of target advertising and its issues as to how users’ privacy is invaded due to advertisement tracking (2020). All in all, users should be easily able to block ads that they feel are too targeted to them to allow for their privacy to be respected and reduce the chance of spreading malware. The issue that comes with ad-blockers is how will services on the internet continue to function and get monetized? In my opinion, I believe that online advertising companies will still pay for these services, however they should change their practices to be more ethical. As Don Marti states, there are plenty of ethical ways for online advertisers to make money without being able to track users. At the end of his article, Marti discusses legislation that aims to stop track from online advertisers, which would push digital marketing in a more ethical, innovative direction (2017). And, as content sites do better when their users aren’t as targeted, these free sites and services will see improvement in content and ad engagement. Overall, online advertisers will continue to pay for the free content and services on the internet, but the way that they approach how to do so should include open conversations with online partners, and how to reduce the amount of targeted content that is spread on their websites. For this ad-blocker exercise, I took an example from one of my favorite sites to browse, Pinterest. I’ve had uBlocker installed for a long time and I’ve always noticed how different the home feed looks like with/without ads. The first picture shows what my Pinterest feed looks like without the ads. With the white blocks where the ads are meant to be, the feed looks a lot less appealing. On the other hand, the second picture shows my feed with ads. Interestingly, disabling my ad blocker is something I often do on Pinterest, as I enjoy the experience of scrolling through Pinterest seamlessly. However, I wonder if this is simply some type of glitch within my ad blocker, or if Pinterest purposely makes it look like that to get users to disable their ad-blockers for more capital gain. Pinterest Feed without Ads

11/14/2022
Reading Responses (Set 1)

Reading Responses 5 out of 5 September 20th - How the Web Works When looking at the web through the use of analogies, the complex concept of websites and online protection are simplified. Using the illustrative example of walking to the shop comprehensively describes the relationship between clients and servers, and how information travels through DNS, HTTP, and TCP. Hartley Brody deepens the readers’ understanding of the behind the scene action by explaining the concept of cryptography and how our information is secured either through Public Key Encryption or Symmetric Key Encryption. Quite importantly, certificates allow our information to remain private by requiring a verification system and signatures. This, therefore allows for our information to remain as secure as possible when traveling through networks. While going through the readings, I found myself interested in learning more about data packets and how information is split into small chunks to avoid corruption. Is there a certain sequence to how packets are sent out? Do the packers get smaller and smaller depending on if developers are expecting more people to land on their website? The answer to these questions is important to know for website creators to make sure their content is accessible to as many people as possible. One concept that I struggled a bit to understand, however, was about the different Key Encryptions. While I understand the importance of the public and private key, as well as how it works together for better online protection, I still can’t fully visualize and comprehend the full process in my mind. I hope to learn more about this topic to further my understanding in cryptography. September 27 - Learning Students of all ages have heard their educators tell them to “reread your notes and highlight the textbook” right before an important exam. In “Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning” the authors explain how these strategies are ineffective, and how to replace them to positively impact your learning. One major concept that stood out was about deepening your learning and how when it's harder, it’s much stronger. This all can be done through strategies such creating mental models, thinking about information in a larger context, and practicing elaboration (6). Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel, continue to explain how the issue stems from the idea that memorizing through re-reading is what will lead to strong learning. This, however, can be refuted through research that has been done throughout the years that present no strong memory building due to mass practice (13). The takeaway sections then proceed to reiterate the importance of retrieval practice for strong learning. To strengthen learning, one can’t simply just reread or cram. Putting effort, writing textbook information in your own words, and applying concepts to your own life, are much better study strategies that will overall lead to stronger learning in the long run. My favorite part of this reading was being called out about how I study. Many of the positive learning strategies mentioned in the text I’ve tried yet stopped since that I believed they were “too-time consuming.” However, this reading has made me realize that what I mainly do when studying (re-reading, cramming, and highlighting) is ten times more consuming than if I were to implement more effiecient techniques. A concept that resonated the most with me was when the authors mentioned how learning was more meaningful when it is effortful. This made me think about all the classes that I loved, where I often put more time and effort, and therefore my learning was much stronger. I now ask myself how can I implement more quizzing, spacing and retrieval practice to allow for better learning? One thing that’s for sure is I’ll be coming back to this reading to keep learning more about effective learning strategies.

10/20/2022
Filtering and Fake News

Had everyone in the country learned and used "crap dection" skills, would we be so affected by "fake news" and media manipulation, or would we end up in filtered bubbles? The new technological age our world is entering brings in a new issue: to what extent do we filter our news? First Draft brings up an excellent point about how the term “fake news” is no longer truly accurate because the content is real, just simply weaponized. And especially with the rise of social media platforms, misinformation can spread to millions of people. One thing that’s especially important currently is being able to have strong media literacy when being on the internet. Is this post on Facebook potentially manipulated content? Does this article come from a reliable source? Is it possible that Instagram put this ad in my feed specifically towards me? Being able to answer these types of questions enables us to think before sharing any potential type of disinformation. If everyone learned “crap detection” skills, our society would not end up in filter bubbles as we would be more knowledgeable about how social media algorithms put out our content. As stated in Farnam Street’s article, we can opt out of filter bubbles in many ways such as ad-blockers and reading a diverse amount of news. The issue that would arise, however, is that harmful information would just keep becoming harder to identify. Can we fully eradicate media manipulation even if everyone had strong media literacy skills? This may be the question future generations will have to answer. Filtering Exercise For this exercise, I followed the exact instructions to create the NU News folder. When it came time to make my own rule, I decided to categorize all of the news I’ve been receiving about my dorm building (West Village A South). I find that a lot of the emails I receive from my RAs often get mixed up in the rest of my inbox so I frequently miss them. Therefore, creating this specific rule would allow me to be much more organized. Tying into the reading, filter has some benefits in the sense that harmful information or scams will not be able to fall into these folders.

9/29/2022
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