Final Blog Post

My Relationship with Technology 

    While it is sad to say, Generation Z is probably the last generation to know what life was like before technology. When I was little, I would go play outside with my friends, I would talk to my parents, play house, read, and actually get along with my little brother. We didn't have Ipads or phones yet for us to spend hours on end buried in, we got to actually talk to the people around us and if we wanted to talk to someone, we would have to meet up with them in person instead of just Face timing or texting them. Social media didn't start to become a big part of our lives until middle school when Instagram was the new technology craze. After that it was all phones all the time and how many followers or likes you had on your latest post. Technology has become the center of our lives and in that way it is unhealthy. 

    My relationship with technology, I would say, definitely has its ups and downs. On the up side it has given me ways to stay in touch and involved in my family and friends lives even if we aren't with each other all of the time. I am able to keep up with what is happening in their lives and they can see the same for my life. On the downside though it has taken up a majority of my life since I joined all of the recent social medias including, Snapchat, Instagram, an TikTok. I spend hours on end on these different apps throughout my day and not only is it rather brain numbing, it can distract me from my work and the world around me. 

    The one thing about social media that has changed the vast majority of the world's youth is what social media projects about body image and what is "pretty" or "trendy" and what isn't. Social media influencers and big public figures are setting unrealistic standards that not everyone is capable of reaching and it can create large amounts of negativity around that topic. Most people don't have large amounts of money to spend on the perfect outfit or have that perfect body and it can create negative thoughts about one's own body image. There are also recent developments of Fear of Missing Out, where we see all of these people going on luxury trips and experiencing so many different things and it makes our own lives seem boring. While social media can be a good thing that you are able to share fun parts of your life with others, it can also lead to major depression and anxiety that stems from it. 

    I believe that within my family, social media has more of a positive impact rather than a negative one. Since all of my family is only on social media for the sharing of content between family and friends, they are corrupted by the major negatives of social media. They are all comfortable in their lives and use social media to stay connected to each other and reconnect with other people from when they were in school. They aren't necessarily affected by the fear of missing out, or body shaming, or cyberbullying as much as a teenager would be affected by it. To most of my family, social media and the technological advances throughout the past couple of years have been evolutionary and they embrace the new form of communication with each other especially because they had nothing like this when they were younger. 

    

    If you were to look up my name on Google right now it would take you to my LinkedIn where it shows how I am a High Point University student and an aspiring event planner. I would like to think that I have a good online presence. ever since I joined social media, my parents have told me to be careful because anything can come back to you and you never know who will be looking. To a future employer going through my social media pages, I believe that I have respectable pictures where nothing is inappropriate and I have never posted anything negative or commented any negative things towards someone else on my social media. I have tried my best to keep a clean social media knowing that employers would be seeing it later in life. It is a great way to get your name out into the world but you want it to be positive not negative.  Social media will always be a big part of my life and it will always be evolving and I just have to remember that people are watching and to put my best self forward on all of my social medias. In this day in age we have to take social media and use it in positive ways and embrace the good things so that we can use it as a tool and not a device to tear others down. 

Blog Post #12

 Spiral of Silence 

    I thought that the spiral of silence was a very interesting theory to me, presented in class by Carly Zimmerman, because this theory was created by the public without the actual intent of making a theory. The spiral of silence is people’s willingness to express their opinions on controversial public issues is affected by their largely unconscious perception of those opinions as being either popular or unpopular. It was developed by a woman by the name of Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann in the 1960s-70s. The whole body of this theory is controlled by public opinion and is strictly a social psychology. Another part of this theory is that it doesn't matter who you are, or what your social class is because everyone has an opinion and everyone has biases towards specific topics, which is what makes them popular.

    This is a theory that represents people in society as sheep because we heard in groups and we tend to lean our opinions based off of others because we have a fear of being left out or isolated based off of our own opinions. It makes people refrain from sharing their own ideas and so the bigger influences basically control the public opinion. It also shows how people that feel that they are supported by the public and the people surrounding them then they are more likely to share their opinion. This theory has no government laws attached to it and the fact that the public alone made this unheard theory was very interesting to me.

Blog Post #11

Privacy 

    Privacy is supposed to be the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people but the government these days has a very different definition for it. For example all of the pop-up ads on social media and on the internet. Every time we click on one of those ads or look something up online, the government has document of it. They want to know where we live, how old we are, what we look like, what we like, and what we dislike. They take all of this information and then use it to get us to share more later on, for example if you go online shopping for new shoes and then you see shoe ads pop up on your computer everywhere for a couple days after. 

    The government will go to great lengths to get their hands on your personal information because they want total control even though we are a "free country". Having control is so important to the government that they can go to crazy lengths to get them, for example they put some devices in children's toys like talking dolls in order to listen into your house hold and record information that is happening in the house. They then have a bigger control over people then they might initially think. It is a scary concept of the fact that due to the advancement in technology, they are using this to sneak their ways into our lives and control us from behind the technology. This lesson made me really think about all of the things that we do on our computers and phones and makes me want to be more cautious about what I am doing online and what websites and/or people that I give my information to. 

Blog Post #10

 Agenda Setting 

    Agenda setting is the “ability to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public. It is the manipulation of public awareness and concern of salient issues by the news media.” First introduced in 1972 by college professors, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, they found in surveying North Carolina voters during the 1968 U.S. presidential election that what people thought were the most important issues were what the mass media reported as the most critical. Thus, agenda-setting theory was born, built on the notion that the mass media sets the agenda for what people should care about.

News reports make it in a way that when a particular news report is given importance and attention than others, the audience will automatically perceive it as the most important news and information given to them. Agenda setting can be used in many different things including political ads, campaigns, business news, PR ( public relations), etc. There are three different kinds of agenda setting, the first one being public agenda setting which is when the public determines the agenda for which stories are considered important. The second kind is media agenda setting which is when the media determines the agenda for which stories are considered important. The third type is policy agenda setting which is when both the public and the media agendas influence the decisions of public policy makers. These different types make up all of the different types of news that we get as the audience.

    The conflicts that can come with agenda setting are that media users are not ideal- the people may not pay enough attention to the details, the effect is weakened for people who have already made up their minds about a topic, media cannot create problems, they can only alter the level of awareness, priorities, importance, etc, and it can be difficult to measure. Agenda setting can also effect society in many different ways that we wouldn't really think of. It has a powerful impact on what individuals think that other people are thinking, and hence tend to allocate more importance to issues that have been covered by mass media. Also, having your own opinion could be swayed without having much control over it from the societal values opposed to your own.

    The biggest concept that is related to agenda setting is gatekeeping. Gatekeeping is in charge of and has control of the selection of content discussed in the media. This is the process of when they choose the media that is shared with the public then the media that is shared is made to sway the opinions of the audience in the process of agenda setting. Editors are the main gatekeepers of the media itself and they decide what to share based off of its trustworthiness. It is is a powerful authority who ensure the right material is disseminated to mass. Because some issues are important to media but not to masses. Also they are much concern on not to distort peace and public stability. Agenda setting is the basis of how we get our information and news so it has become a big part in our society and most people don't know what it is. 

    

Blog Post #9

 Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations 

The Innovation of the Smart Phone 

    The spread of the smart phone caught on because of its ability to do the job of a phone and some computer functions all in one device. The spread caught on because of multiple different factors including style and function, ability to take pictures, more screen, 5G, and artificial intelligence including things like Siri. The fact that this new phone could be fit into someones pocket and still be able to do so many different things made it very popular and easily accessible. 

    The early adopters are the people in our younger generation today who jump on all of the news trends and technologies. People jump on this kind of technology for the convenience of having new features and shortcuts to do the things that use everyday. Having the chance to do something fast or more efficient is very appealing to the new generation. 

    

    People who adopted this technology later see that the times of the world are changing and technology is taking over in a sense that we need smart phones in order to do most of the work we are tasked with. Corporations and businesses are beginning to require these different devices, for example a company smart phone. They may not have thought that they needed one at first but now they are being shown different way to use the smart phone in their different lines of work. 

    Most of the people who are laggards about the smart phone are in the older generation who are mostly retired or don't need a smart phone to do work. They don't use the smart phones mostly because they grew up in a time where the simple flip phone for making calls and sending a quick message was enough. They could also have a spouse or someone they live with has a smart phone so they don't see the need for them to also have one. 

    Some of the negatives about having a smart phone could include creating bad sleeping habits, cause car accidents, create more anxiety and depression from the constant comparing yourself to others, very distracting, and they are constant expense. For some people in the late adopters and laggard categories these factors could make them want to put off or not get a smart phone at all because they don't seem worth it but they have so many other things to offer people as well. The positives include instant communication with people making it easier to stay in touch with family and friends and making some jobs easier. It also includes a camera that can hold thousands of pictures to keep different memories locked away, the ability to surf the web and look something up fairly quickly, they have GPS systems for directions, and so many apps to help make daily tasks easier to complete (for example depositing a check on your phone instead of having to go all the way to the bank). I believe that smart phones have been a huge step in our future and help us more than we know and the ways that the smart phone can help us far out weighs the negatives if you set screen time boundaries and try not allow the phone to control your life. 

Blog Post #8

 The Cassette Tape

    In all of the presentations I thought that all of the technology was very well explained and they all had some very interesting information attached to them, but the one that I found very interesting was the cassette tape. Carly Zimmerman explain the cassette tape to the class and had some fun facts along with the basic information. I've always been a big fan of music and video so this invention to lead up to what we have today was very important to me. 

    The cassette was invented in 1962 by the Phillips Company, released originally in Europe on a Berlin radio show. It was finally released in the United States in November of 1963. Videocassettes were available to the public in the 1970s and the cassettes specifically for film were a lot bigger in order to hold more data on them. The walkman boosted the success of the cassette tape in 1979 because it was the new and improved way to listen to music in a portable way. The life span of the tape on the inside of an audio tape could last any where from 10-30 years. They were able to create the first magazine on tape using cassette tapes which was another start to the audiobook. Sadly it peaked in the late 80s when it was surpassed by the CD in the 90s. You can still find them in today's society in court recordings and some recorded music but they are challenging to find. The cassette tape was an amazing invention that boosted the portable music and film industry, and along with many other inventions they will go down in history. 

Blog Post #7

 The Progressive Era: Antiwar Voices 

    I believe that these websites are hard to find these antiwar voices because they are speaking out against the government and what they are doing in terms of war and decisions that our government is making regarding relations with other countries and within our own country.  The fact that we have the first amendment and that the government can't necessarily silence the voices of these people, they try to hide these voices as much as possible making it hard to find websites that speak out against the war decisions of the leaders in our country. The people speak out against the war because war is putting the American people and our country in danger due to the fact that the rich people in power don't know how to solve conflicts in any other way other than violence. They are taking people from their families and friends to fight others for things that could be settled peacefully. The antiwar voices are being hidden and silenced in a way in order to show other countries that our country is a united front even though the people in charge only care about themselves.  These people were also against wars for the economic purposes and how the country was putting their money and resources into the wrong things, instead of helping better our country, they are putting more money into weapons. The country is in enough debt that more war is the lat thing that the US needs. The people in power know that these are all valid reasons to not have a war but they don't care so instead of listening to the American people they silence them and burry their feelings so that they can go on without protest and the spreading of these antiwar thoughts.