Media Law and Literacy

  The discussion about privacy on the Internet and regarding technological innovation is a complex one. Ethics come into question frequently, as oftentimes users willingly give up their personal information and the corporations that use the info are usually within their rights. They can use our information, but should they? Is it ethical?  In a lot of specific examples of this lack of privacy, it can be extremely difficult to choose a side. The one I have in mind is of local law enforcement using license plate readers to capture photos, dates, times, and locations of vehicles and drivers. It is uncomfortable and undeniably a suspicious breach of the privacy of Americans. However, I can think of a few different scenarios in which this database may be helpful. For example, in a missing persons case these photos could be used to determine locations and timestamps of someone missing or kidnapped, enabling law enforcement and search and rescue to close in and save the person. The...

  There are a lot of important facets to think about when considering how A.I. is already an aspect occupying most, if not all, of our daily lives. From RING doorbells to Amazon Alexa and other relatively new innovations, A.I. is becoming more and more common in our homes and workplaces. The most important take-away for me that I had already been previously thinking about in a way is that it’s becoming imperative to consider the pros and cons of implementing these new innovations into one’s life on an individual basis. People must weigh the benefits and negative consequences when it comes to their own safety and the safety of their families.  Obviously technologies like Alexa and RING come with a lot of positives in terms of security and an overall interconnected home network, but there are also negative consequences to consider. Is it worth completely throwing privacy out the window in order to maintain safety and security? These decisions cannot be made for you, and one must...

  Gatekeeping is a term that has been around for years, and the theory itself was described all the way back in the early 1920’s. On a smaller scale, the theory can refer to the reluctance of people on the ‘in’ in regards to a specific hobby, for example, to allow new people to learn more information. The example that always comes to mind for me is when you see fans of a smaller music artist hesitant to share a song name and gatekeeping in fear that their small artist may get too popular for it to be ‘cool’ to listen to. On a larger scale, however, gatekeeping is an entirely different issue. Similar to censorship in the sense that it involves the filtering and restricting of certain information by the media to the public, but while censorship removes ideas and information once they have been posted or said, gatekeeping doesn’t allow the information to be distributed in the first place. As private companies, news and media corporations have the inherent ability to filter out and ‘ga...

  One very unique example of a recent innovation that I think is especially interesting when viewed through the lens of the Diffusion Theory is TikTok. The app has been around for around 5 years at this point, but has only grabbed ahold of society in the way that it has in the past year or so. Why is that? When TikTok first came out, it was a rebrand of the Musical.ly app. The majority of society saw this app, and subsequently TikTok, as a place where cringeworthy content is created, and were hesitant to be a part of that. Over time, however, it became more and more popular for typical consumers. The graph below shows a portion of that growth, and it’s apparent that it took off out of nowhere. Growth was initially pretty steady until around early 2018. As the content created on TikTok became more “normal”, more and more people started to accept it. I know I personally downloaded it in early 2020 pretty reluctantly, after being nagged by my friends. I still have friends who don’t us...

  There are a few different reasons why anti-war voices are kept out of the mainstream media and silenced in general. The biggest one that comes to mind is that the mainstream media simply doesn’t exist to bring fair, unbiased news anymore. They don’t want to provide facts, diverse opinions, and open-mindedness, because these things are not what is going to make them money. They want the biggest, most exciting story there is. Even if it’s not in the best interest of the general public and society as a whole, if it's going to make them money, these media companies are going to distribute and broadcast it. Unfortunately, war is good for making money. It makes people tune in, whereas an anti-war opinion piece may not. Upon doing further research on the topic, I discovered that it goes even deeper than that. A lot of the mainstream media companies and corporations have significant financial interests in war. For example, “in the build-up to the Iraq War, MSNBC was owned by General...

  Paramount+ is a “new” streaming service that we’ve likely all become familiar with over the past couple months, and it may seem as if it came out of the blue. The first time I became aware of it was during the Super Bowl in February, as there was an ad for it during almost every single commercial break. I also noticed that most, if not all, of the entities being advertised belonged to CBS, which is no coincidence, because the Super Bowl was televised nationally by CBS. Upon further research, I discovered that Paramount+ isn’t really new at all. It is a rebrand of the CBS All Access streaming service, which has been around since 2014 but never really got a lot of traction, probably due to the fact that it could only be used exclusively for streaming CBS TV shows and movies. The rebrand of the streaming site, along with the expansion of its selection, is undoubtedly an attempt by CBS and Paramount to compete with larger streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+. While not ...

All aspects of the First Amendment are equally important when it comes to personal expression and the ability to communicate ideas and opinions, but the one that comes to mind first for most people is freedom of speech. This aspect is especially relevant in our society today, with discussions over censorship often at the center of elections and other important decisions. With Donald Trump having been recently banned from the most popular social media platforms for two years, the debate has only intensified. One important thing to note about freedom of speech, however, is the complexity of its protection under certain federal and state laws, as well as smaller policies put in place by private businesses and organizations. For example, while freedom of speech is protected on an individual basis by the First Amendment, private businesses can still regulate what they want to. This means that Facebook, being a private company independent of the government, is not acting unconstitutionally w...

  All eight values of freedom of speech and expression are equally important reasons why freedom of speech must always be protected, especially in our current political and social climate. There are many examples of restrictions of free speech in the news recently, and these eight values provide reason why we, as a society, should be cautious of such restrictions. The one that I found most relevant is the first one, marketplace of ideas. The main idea of this point is that while it may often seem that silencing and restricting false ideas and opinions is the best option, if they are allowed to be stated, truth will ultimately win anyway, and the truth will come out stronger having defeated the opposing viewpoints. In the modern day of “fake news”, this philosophy rings true more than ever. Countless social media pages and news sources are shadow-banned, deactivated, or censored in order to “protect” those who see them and may form ideas and misinformed opinions based upon them. The...

  I knew close to nothing about the founding and creation of the Supreme Court before reading this article, and it’s interesting to me that it was founded so early on in our country’s history. It makes sense, in that a higher, unbiased authority was necessary to settle disputes that could’ve gotten out of hand. The Supreme Court has made monumental decisions over the years, and has had a huge impact on society. The most important thing I took away was something that I already had an idea on, but was further emphasized by what I read. The Supreme Court has the ability to not only change policies, but to change public opinion on certain issues. For example, the legalization of same sex marriage in 2015 was a major turning point and the beginning of a good bit of progress made over the following years in terms of public perception and social acceptance of the topic. It’s also important to note that the manner and process of selecting justices for the Supreme Court ensures that it is u...

My name is Lucas Roberto and I’m from West Hartford, Connecticut. I’m a Media Production and Entrepreneurship major, but I’m not sure what aspect of media production I want to focus on after school. There are a lot of different things that I'm interested in and passionate about that I do both in and outside of class that could potentially become a career with the right mindset. I take photos, I film and edit videos, and I write and produce music as well. I'm also interested in nature and wildlife conservation, as well as tech and entertainment, and I'd love to learn graphic design or art skills. Given all of these interests and hobbies, it can be difficult to pinpoint one area to focus on. My main passion is music. I could spend a whole day listening to and/or making music with my friends, but the barriers to entry for a career in the music industry are high and I'm not sure that that's what I want to do for the rest of my life, but audio engineering and audio produ...

 1. My top news source is probably Instagram. Definitely not a reliable source by any means, but a good jumping off point to doing more research. While I don't actively search for the latest news on a daily basis, I do scroll through Instagram every day. This makes it a good place to catch wind of current events and other things going on that the people I follow care about. If it's something that interests me or something I want to know more about, from there I can use another source to find more accurate, unbiased information. https://www.instagram.com 2. The second place I usually get news from is Twitter. Also not a great place to look for unbiased opinions and facts, but it's similar to Instagram in that it shows me stories and info that I care about. Often there will be links to external sources or information within a tweet, which can provide more accurate information than the tweet itself. Aside from that, it's easy to just scroll through the trending page on Twi...