- Dec 2019
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www.theverge.com www.theverge.com
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We should be thinking more seriously about the ethics of live-tweeting: when is it appropriate? When it is, what should and shouldn’t you do? In Blair’s case, she seemed to think that lightly obscuring the faces of the two people she surveilled was enough to be ethical. (One face, that of a small child looking over her seat two rows ahead, was not obscured at all.)
In the CYG podcast, "Internet Outrage: Part One," Aminatou Sow suggests that a good rule of thumb is to wait until a situation is over to tweet about it. For example, in this case, the woman could have waited until she was off of the plane and back home to tweet about what happened on the plane. I think that's a pretty good rule, although I think it's best to just avoid posting about strangers at all. When in doubt, don't post it.
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We are all watching each other, mining each other’s lives for “content” that we give for free to large corporations who then monetize it. “Plane Bae” didn’t just benefit Twitter, a company badly in need of good PR, but also T-Mobile, whose savvy CEO swooped in to offer Blair a reimbursement on the Wi-Fi she purchased to write her thread.
This is a part of the story that I hadn't heard before. I remember when the whole #PlaneBae story happened, and the subsequent backlash, but I don't remember there being corporations involved. This is interesting in the context of what we've been reading about consent (and sort of about copyright)- the woman posting the Twitter thread, and the man involved in the "plane couple" both stood to gain financially from the situation, at the cost of the other woman's privacy and consent. If the image of the other woman was used for corporate purposes/financial gain, could she sue the companies for using her image without consent?
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www.oif.ala.org www.oif.ala.org
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Meme creators and posters have been sued for using people’s images without permission, especially those who were not already public figures.
The importance of consent, especially on the Internet and in memes, cannot be overstated. #PlaneBae is one example, and I have read countless other stories by the people whose images are featured in memes, with varying responses. Some think it's funny and enjoy the exposure, while others (like #PlaneBae) have experienced serious harassment and dangerous levels of unwanted attention. One aspect that hasn't been touched on in our reading so far is the consent of children whose images are used in memes- such as Success Kid or Disaster Girl. What's complicated for adults to navigate may be equally or more complicated for children.
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Merriam-Webster defines “meme” (pronounced “meem”) as “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture,” originating in the same root as “imitation.” Richard Dawkins is credited as having coined the term in The Selfish Gene (1976). Memes are the units that transmit ideas, behaviors, styles and usage within a culture through a variety of media, like nursery rhymes passed down from parent to child. Says Dawkins,
Whoa- I had no idea that the definition of meme dates so far back. I thought that the term meme and its meaning were more recent products of the Internet, and I didn't know that the term meme has a broader meaning outside of what we commonly refer to as memes today.
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- Nov 2019
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www.theroot.com www.theroot.com
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“Devoting 80 percent of field agents to stopping international terrorism including Islamic extremism and only 20 percent to stopping domestic terrorism including far right and white supremacist extremism.”
I found this statistic surprising. The article by the Daily Beast, cited in the preceding paragraph, goes into more detail about this aspect of the FBI and the changes made in the Department of Homeland Security. I would be interested in researching how the changes that have been implemented have played out in terms of preventing domestic terrorism. The head of the Intelligence and Analysis Office of the DHS claims that the Office has increased its engagement in preventing domestic terrorism and become more effective than before, but other DHS sources cited in the article disagree.
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hapgood.us hapgood.us
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One of the things I’ve been trying to convince people for the past year and a half is that the only viable literacy solution to web misinformation involves always checking any information in your stream that you find interesting, emotion-producing, or shareable. It’s not enough to check the stuff that is suspicious: if you apply your investigations selectively, you’ve already lost the battle.
This is a good reminder. I think it's easy to just assume that sources are reliable and then, as a result, accidentally use a bad source. I think it's especially helpful that Caulfield uses the phrase "emotion-producing" here, because that's probably a very frequent reason that people use bad sources- emotions can cloud people's judgment and distract people from checking the source before sharing something.
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