Media Ethics
This week I watched five videos that were about Media Ethics.
In some of these videos, they talk about how people and companies trick other
people or ow they take your data to try and find adverts that you would like to
see. Some companies even make it difficult to do something that would harm
them.
One of the videos that I have watched, “Medium is the
Message,” talked about how mediums have a great impact on the fundamental
shaping nature of society. In the video the man that made it asked “What had a
greater impact on the way we interact with the world? Conversations or mobile
phones?” He also mentioned that the amount of power that something has depends
on its capacity to deliver and that the medium can “change the fundamental
scale of interactions.” I personally think that he has a point as anything
that we use is an extension of ourselves. The camera is the extension of our eyes,
and a photograph is an extension of our memory.
The next video spoke about “What is the Cambridge Analytica Scandal.”
It said that the company “uses data to change audience behaviour.” An old
worker of the company exposed how it not only used Facebook to collect someone’s
personal data but also their friend’s data too. They even used their private
messages to collect the data they needed in order to see how many times they
need to touch you to change how you think about something.
The scariest thing about this is the fact that nobody knew
about this. In 2018 Alexander Nix, owner of Cambridge Analytica faced a
parliamentary inquiry on fake news. Also, Aleksander Kogan said that everything
that hey did was legal and that he had a “close working relationship” with
Facebook, which granted him permission for his apps. Cambridge Analytica was
set up in 2014, which for me makes it scarier because that’s around the time
when I got my Facebook account, and the pure thought of someone using my data without
my knowledge is both terrifying and unacceptable.
The fourth video was about “How Dark Patterns Trick You Online.” This was a very interesting video to watch mainly because I have never heard of the term “dark patterns” before and I also didn’t know that businesses use them to benefit them but to make things harder for us. As Harry Brignull calls them, Roach Motel – “design that makes it easy to get into a situation but hard to get out.”
The best defence for dark patterns is to be aware of them
and to shame the companies that utilises them.
The last video was about how Edward Bernays manipulated all
of America by using four points.
- Create symbols – if you understand the emotion of the consumer then you can market better.
- Influencer marketing – using influential figures to spread the message.
- Altering group norms – force them to buy something by putting pressure on them.
- Being everywhere – get into their mental space by advertising everywhere, the radio, newspapers, television ads, ect.
In today’s world all
of these are techniques are still used today and just like back in the day we
get pressured to buy those things when they look great in ads and how a famous
person is saying in the ad that they use it too. Honestly, I was even caught in
the trap whenever I look at something on the TV or just ads on YouTube and
other places that I see.
Ethics | Ethics Defined
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vWXpzlL7Mo
Minisode – The Medium is the message
What is the Cambridge Analytica Scandal?
How Dark Patterns Trick You Online
How One Man Manipulated All of America
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