Filtering

# Filtering ## [“Understanding Information Disorder”](https://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/understanding-information-disorder/)/[“How Filter Bubbles Distort Reality: Everything You Need to Know”](https://fs.blog/filter-bubbles/)/[“Did Media Literacy Backfire?”](https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy-backfire-7418c084d88d#.d46kox6e1) ### Word Count: 772 ### Filtering my Email For the filtering assignment, the second rule I created was for Housing and Residential Support, specifically the housing email address, as that is one constant sender in my inbox, as well as one of the more important ones. This was a bit funny to me because I have a few different email accounts, two personal and one school affiliated one. The two personal ones were created for a few reasons, but one of them was to divide different aspects of my life, so that not every single interest, subscription, or friendly email I get is all in one inbox. I think this is so much easier and I wish it was discussed and shown more to kids growing up on the internet. ![image alt](https://i.imgur.com/WvPDSpv.png =850x440) ![image alt](https://i.imgur.com/RofS4XT.png =850x410) ### Thoughts on the Reading These three articles really resonated with me and articulated a lot of the ways I have felt about online news really well. The reading that really intrigued me was ["Did Media Literacy Backfire"](https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy-backfire-7418c084d88d#.d46kox6e1), especially the part in which Boyd discusses the internet and its failure at promoting stories of and from marginalized groups. > Many marginalized groups are justifiably angry about the ways in which their stories have been dismissed by mainstream media for decades. This is most acutely felt in communities of color...The issues and topics that they feel affect their lives are often ignored (Boyd, 2017, Experience Over Expertise section). As someone who is an English major, we've discussed this widely in our classes, especially in how the internet takes part in both erasing these histories, or providing an easier access to either publishing or accessing these histories online. A specific way many marginalized groups create spaces for themselves online are [digital archives,](https://www.enculturation.net/files/QueerRhetoric/queerarchive/intro.html) which typically shines a light on artifacts deemed unimportant by traditional archives and make these historical pieces open to everyone online. Veering a bit now to ["Understanding Information Disorder"](https://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/understanding-information-disorder/) and ["How Filter Bubbles Distort Reality: Everything You Need to Know,"](https://fs.blog/filter-bubbles/) I continued with this line of thinking about the connection between the internet and its portrayal of marginalized communities. In ["How Filter Bubbles Distort Reality: Everything You Need to Know,"](https://fs.blog/filter-bubbles/) the main discussion centers on how the internet selects specific results to show to whoever's device it is, and conforms to the person's biases. This is called **"the search engine manipulation effect."** The reason this intrigued me is because as someone who is constantly on social media and video sharing websites like Youtube, I am not new to this concept, and have felt aligned with it ever since I first realized it was happening to me. Although I think sites like Youtube and Tiktok try their hardest to make my "Recommended" or "For You" pages palatable to my interests, I wonder what happens if we notice these sites silencing others' content. This discussion is something I've primarily seen on Youtube, in which creators of color, specifically Black creators, have noticed that their videos get demonetized or taken down more frequently than white creators. A specific and newer video displaying this information is one by a creator of the name [CoryxKenshin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaHcnPDcUOE). Although this might not be an example pertaining to the silencing of online news itself, I think it is a good example of the internet not always being in the favor of marginalized communities, and silencing them just as people, rather than because of the content they produce. Wardle discusses seven types of mis- or disinformation in her article, but I wonder if there is an eighth type that is just silencing or erasing information online. Perhaps, it could be argued that this is just a subcategory of "misleading content" as well. Wardle says this type of misinformation displays itself in varied ways, and in my opinion, silencing one side of an argument simply creates an emphasis on the other side, thus making it seem like the only right side.