Coronavirus Conspiracy Theorists and Government Censorship

The coronavirus pandemic has captivated the world, and simultaneously been insanely difficult to follow. With so many different daily takes on what to do, what the future will look like, and constantly putting blame on people for numerous reasons, it’s difficult to keep track on where exactly the state of the world is right now. Especially when this historic event has proven to be a landfill for conspiracy theories about the truth of coronavirus. With the golden age of social media and mass communication currently, plenty of people have been able to use the media to spread a wide range of theories about coronavirus. This includes 5G towers emitting radio waves that give us the virus and the coronavirus being a lab produced weapon of mass destruction. There’s even one claiming that Bill Gates (yes, billionaire Bill Gates) is using coronavirus as a way track people with a vaccine.

These theories are just plainly detrimental to our response to the coronavirus pandemic. It not only just further spreads a lot of false information into the minds of Americans, but it also stokes more fear in the overall unknown that is the coronavirus. It is damaging, and the foreign governments and social media brands have taken notice and action. When it comes to 5G conspiracy theorists, Facebook has been removing pages that support the theory and encourage the destruction of 5G towers, and YouTube has regulated content of 5G conspiracy theorists. Furthermore, government agencies such as US intelligence are debunking those conspiracy theorists claims of 5G towers and the virus being man made.

Now, this seems like the correct thing to do. These people are purposefully spreading misinformation and false narratives, which strikes up more fear and anxiety in the public’s mind, so allowing government and social media to censorship and remove their comments helps keep the public more well informed. What’s so wrong with that?

Well, there is an issue when it comes to this. Simply put, it gives governments and officials all over the world the excuse to censor those who criticize the actions and response that have been made during this crisis. Way back in February, when the virus was first becoming known around the world, people began hearing about the downplaying and censorship of the virus over in China. There was the Wuhan doctor who tried to alert the China about the virus, but was silenced after being told that he was just “spreading rumors”. After that, the discovery of the Chinese government controlling the news networks to silence and downplay the coronavirus deaths and illnesses, just as they have been doing for years. Personally, this sounds a lot like the government officials comparing the coronavirus to a conspiracy theory at the time.

As the pandemic has progressed and spread throughout the world, China has not been the only government silencing its critics. This ForeignPolicy.com article outlines how Cambodia has arrested more than 17 people on “fake news” charges, Thailand arresting a man criticizing an airport’s coronavirus protection system, along with similar actions being done in Turkey, Russia, Iran, and so many more. Even in the democratic country of Hungary, where the prime minister has been given the power to imprison those who spread “fake news” up to five years. Due to the lax definition of “fake news”, it seems as if he can define it as goes. All in all, censorship has become an issue for whistleblowers and journalists in countries where the freedom of speech isn’t as prevalent. It’s as if the government has used the censoring of conspiracy theorists as ways to silence those who pose a threat to their public reputation.

Now, I’m not trying to support the conspiracy theorists who put out wild claims about the coronavirus’ true nature. I am just trying to say how allowing the censorship of conspiracy theories can, and has led, to government’s justifying silencing the news media and anybody criticizing them for their coronavirus response. The spread of misinformation is certainly an important topic to keep an eye on during these times, but I don’t believe its worth censoring people who want to keep their government’s in check and ask the questions that need to be asked to eventually get out of this pandemic. Honestly, if governments keep on abusing their censorship power, it might be worth it to just let the conspiracy theorists theorize all they want in order to see a stronger resemblance of freedom the speech and freedom of the press around the world. I think governments have to be able to put more trust in the majority its people to not be gullible and trust the sources that are trying to correctly inform the public. Censoring these people won’t completely stop the spread of disinformation, and its worth it to maintain the freedom of speech amongst all the public.

 

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-censorship-pandemic-disinformation-fake-news-speech-freedom/

https://nypost.com/2020/04/24/the-top-5-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories-bill-gates-5g-more/

https://kfor.com/news/us-intelligence-agencies-debunk-conspiracy-theory-that-coronavirus-was-manmade/

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/24/21231085/coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-theory-covid-facebook-youtube

The Implications Of Online Echo Chambers

In the nature of politics today, bipartisanship seems to be rare, and far and few between nowadays. More and more people are starting to lean purely towards actions and ideology that match their parties’ beliefs and are reluctant to occasionally side with the “enemy” party. This is essentially the idea of people living inside their own cozy echo chambers, which ultimately results in more heated disagreement and hatred of opposing viewpoints amongst politicians and party supporters alike.

An echo chamber is one’s reinforcement of their previously held beliefs and agreed upon ideas and the restriction of any information or ideas that conflict with their ideology through selectively filtering their consumption of media. To put it simply, an echo chamber is how to describe blocking out specific information and news to continue to go out of their way to hear the same voices, opinions, and ideas that match your own. A person with an echo chamber adamantly disagrees with information or another side’s point of view to the point where they don’t take them in at all. It’s similar to a “filter bubble”, where people are cut off from varying outside information (like living in a bubble), but it differs in the sense that echo chambers refuse to trust any information outside of the content within their bubble. This is especially apparent and applicable at the political news level, where a democratic supporter will only listen, read, and watch news that corresponds and agrees with a democratic ideology. The same goes for Republicans or any other ideology.

Echo Chambers are especially apparent on social media forums. In the modern age of social media, there are always heated arguments and debates ravaging on through sites such as Twitter, Instagram, reddit, etc., which means that there are plenty of diverse opinions being spread around. Despite these varying focal points, social media has made it easy to shut yourself off from these views that don’t correlate or reinforce your own. For example, you can block individual accounts from reading your posts as well as reading theirs, content on a timeline is based on algorithms designed to show content matching your ideology, and you can even block keywords from appearing on your timeline. When you pick a certain news channel to watch or follow on social media, you’ll then be subjected to posts and videos that strongly align with the content of that news channel. With this filtered content, you’re communicating and interacting with the same people over and over again often because your views match. Overtime, that trust slowly builds up until you only trust the people inside your chamber, and nobody else outside of it. So, it’s easy to selectively filter content on social media to see only what you want to see, and that, in turn, creates these echo chambers where people become so untrustworthy and intolerable to interacting with opposing views.

As a result of these echo chambers and bubbles, there are a lot of negative implications that are seen in the spread of public information and discourse. For one, misinformation is easier to plant inside the minds of those locked in echo chambers. By being stuck in an echo chamber, people don’t stumble across information that differs from their previously held beliefs, and if they do, they often discredit them right away for being so different. Lack of information can obviously lead to misinformed decisions on who they should vote for, what policies they agree with, and it limits their perspective overall. Furthermore, polarization and animosity towards those we disagree with enhances throughout society in these echo chambers and filter bubbles. The idea is that the information we engage in grows to despising those who would even think to disagree with our perspective. The information constantly paints the other side as purely negative and suggests that there is no room for common ground. So, when they do encounter someone with a differing opinion (whether in-person or on social media), it turns hateful and personal rather than becoming peaceful dialogue about the current state of affairs. One study posted in PsychologyToday even found a pattern that polarization tends to be a consistent way that information is spread amongst Twitter users. As a longtime twitter user, I know I’ve seen my fair share of twitter arguments about a wide variety of topics turn nasty and personal. I’m sure a lot of these arguments and online polarization have grown because people have developed a less open mind and distrust of differing ideologies due to echo chambers that rotate the same beliefs over and over again.

I also personally believe echo chambers tend to group people together based on their social status and identities. I believe people are much less open to reading and willingly be subjected to opinions that differ from their social status. So, the rich will only partake in media and news outlets that discuss and monitor topics of the rich, thereby spreading information and opinions that fit the riches’ motivations. The same goes for the poor because they subsequently indulge in differing media news that pertains to their state of affairs. Therefore, the rich and the poor are pitted against each other because society sort of forms these echo chambers based on class, which means they can’t read about perspectives that pertain to the other side. This same goes for old and young generations, and debates about race and so on.

All in all, it’s important to be wary of locking oneself into an echo chamber. The perspectives we hold can make us fiery and passionate, which makes it important for us to make sure our stances don’t polarize or divide us. Although it is an often-overused phrase, it is important to put yourself in others’ shoes to create a dialogue and keep out of the dangerous depths of echo chambers.

To learn more about echo chambers, watch this TedTalk by Adam Greenwood, who discusses the present dangers of echo chambers if they were applied in the real world, how we often perpetuate the implications of online echo chambers ourselves, and how to prevent ourselves from building our own echo chambers.

https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_greenwood_challenge_the_echo_chamber_jan_2019/up-next

https://www.idareact.org/what-is-an-echo-chamber-and-how-does-it-affect-people-in-social-media/

https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/digital-media-literacy/what-is-an-echo-chamber/1/

https://theconversation.com/the-problem-of-living-inside-echo-chambers-110486

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/digital-world-real-world/201903/are-echo-chambers-threat-intellectual-freedom

https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_greenwood_challenge_the_echo_chamber_jan_2019/up-next

Just How Secure Is Our Online Privacy?

The idea that you are being watched by an unknown figure or entity is always a scary thought and or feeling. I mean, there are some nights where I am walking out of my living room to go upstairs to get ready bed, and as I do so, I walk past the windows located throughout the house that are seemingly covered with the blackness of nighttime. I know that the chances of somebody watching me from there are slim, but I’ve seen enough horror films to know that it’s technically a possibility, and I often can’t help but think to myself, “someone could be staring right at me, watching me ever move”. It always seems to cause me to put a little extra effort and speed into my legs as I head up the stairs. What’s interesting about this is that even though the chances someone is actually watching me from the windows are slim, I still get that feeling more often than when I browse the internet, or search something on google, where there is probably a higher chance of someone virtually spying on my online data.

We all put some our most personal and imitate information online. Some of it we put on their because we have to for our jobs or to buy needed products. Others we put on the internet willingly and happily because technology has made making personal connections and spreading your personal identity easy and fun. No matter the reason, the privacy that we have is always going to be subject to being compromised by an outside figure. The online black market has plenty of scammers and hackers working hard to gather, buy, and sell people’s personal identities. It’s becoming more and more frequent to the point where it seems that our personal info and data is so accessible to outsiders that our online identities are becoming devalued. In Maria Dubovitskaya’s TedTalk, she explains how one’s phone number, name, date of birth, email address and more had diminished in value over the past ten years on the black market, from being worth 150$ combined to less than 1$ online. And she explains how this is often because we’ve all gotten so comfortable with sharing personal information over the internet. I think we all can relate to this in some way. We’ve all been pushed towards using the internet to get things done from home that we used to have to go out and do in person that we’ve just learned to accept that putting our information out online is a necessity to enable the benefits that technology offers. What’s so scary is that we could get so comfortable that we eventually don’t care about our privacy online at all.

However, the black market isn’t the only thing to be worried about with online privacy, as the government has a lot of interest and investment into on and offline spying. Systems and corporations linked with the government focus on keeping track of precise locations and movements, and these TedTalks discuss this. What’s interesting about the government invading your privacy online and offline is that the argument is that they are doing it for the widespread benefit and protection of the public. The idea that setting up these systems where the government can track your every move by identifying license plates via webcams helps them track the bad guys who would commit crimes. The government seems to have the right intentions, but what’s scary is that they aren’t completely secure just because they are the government. Like the Tedtalks said, we all use the same computers and smartphones with similar security measurements. Governments may have more well-equipped security measures, but are certainly susceptible to online hacks, such as in the 2016 election. All in all, it seems like privacy is a hard thing to be 100% assured of.

Obviously with all that I’ve previously mentioned, privacy online is certainly a hot-button issue, especially as we are currently all stuck inside in the midst of a global pandemic. I was interested in what we can do exactly to enhance our privacy strength. Derek Banta’s TedTalk provided some insight on this, saying that rather than putting out more personal info to more online sources, we put all our info into a backed-up, trusted third party resource, which would create more anonymity. Instead of going directly to the source, the third party would do it for you, giving an anonymous avatar. This is such an interesting idea. It takes a lot of the value of our individual purposes from the eyes of someone on the Black Market. Banta shows that although there is a lot stacked against us in terms of complete privacy, we still can create the measures necessary to ensure more safety online, which I believe is going to continue to grow into a more pressing issue.

https://www.ted.com/talks/maria_dubovitskaya_take_back_control_of_your_personal_data#t-179284

https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_banta_what_if_our_data_could_be_protected_online#t-186767

https://www.ted.com/talks/catherine_crump_the_small_and_surprisingly_dangerous_detail_the_police_track_about_you

https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_soghoian_how_to_avoid_surveillance_with_the_phone_in_your_pocket

A Look At My Prescense Online

An online social media presence is, in my eyes, seemingly inescapable to anybody living in the modern world. One can’t just make the personal and professional, formal and informal, connections through face to face communication alone anymore. As social media giants have boomed over the last couple decades, everybody has created some sort of online identity. It’s not just something we do recreationally; it’s become something we need for human connection, whether it be to find information on Google and Twitter, update our friends and family on Instagram and Facebook, or reach out to employers on LinkedIn or Indeed. So, although it has been said over and over again, it is important to be introspective with your online presence to see what others could learn from it. So, I will be examining my own online presence in this blog post.

Personally, I don’t tend to put out a large amount of personal information or content on my social media. The social media sites I use are predominately Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Twitter is where I am predominately when I am using social media, as I use Twitter an average of 5-6 hours more often per week than my second highest used social media. While Twitter is where I use social media the most, I don’t really post anything personal or provide any private information on there. Most of my time is spent scrolling through my timeline, checking the news, retweeting things I find interesting or noteworthy, and privately communicating with friends. The same goes for my usage of snapchat and Instagram. I’d have to say I’m a fairly unique Instagram user, as I haven’t posted my face in any of my previous posts. I also rarely post to begin with, as it’s been nearly 2 years since I’ve last posted. I mostly have it just to keep track of how my friends from high school are doing. The same goes for Snap Chat, which I mostly use just to communicate with friends. Like Instagram, I rarely post publicly, and when I do, I never show my face or give my location. So, if someone were to glean at any of my social media pages, they’d really only find that I post a lot about the current world of sports, and that I’m interested in pop culture news surrounding movies and television series.

One of the largest social media brands that I don’t use is Facebook. I technically have an account, but I’ve only ever really used it for some certain classes I’ve taken. I’ve never personalized my account or posted anything of real substance on it before. Originally, I didn’t “get-in” to Facebook because it seemed like the social media brand for adults and parents who want to check in to see how their old classmates from high school are doing. I also felt like I had enough social media presence as is. With Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, I can really connect with anyone I’ve already met. No need for another one. Then, when I discovered the news of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica Data scandal, where the Cambridge Analytica firm provided the personal information data of millions of Facebook accounts to politicians in exchange for a quick buck and saw all the bad publicity Facebook received for misusing and crossing lines with their customer’s personal data, it sort of cemented the idea in my head that Facebook just wasn’t worth it.

With that said, it does make me think about my usage with other accounts like Twitter and Instagram. I mean, just because Facebook got so publicly caught with their blatant data usage doesn’t mean they are the only ones who do so. Just a quick google search can show that other social media’s have their own fair share of privacy issues, like Twitter’s leak of Ip addresses containing users’ phone numbers back in 2018. Same goes for Instagram just last year. For some reason, I thought just because I didn’t use Facebook, I wouldn’t have to worry about my privacy. However, all social media brands seem to have this common issue, so I’m not completely safe just because I don’t use Facebook that much. I mean, I have my full name, and email, and my phone number attached to my Twitter. What’s stopping some hacker or leak from exposing my personal data there? It makes me think that if I really wanted true privacy ad security, I’d have to go out of my way to remove myself from all social media accounts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/308930/

https://threatpost.com/twitter-data-privacy-bugs/140007/

https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/instagram-just-acknowledged-it-has-a-much-bigger-privacy-problem-than-we-thought.html

Diffusion of Innovations - Twitter's Growth

When Twitter was invented in by Jack Dorsey along with Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass in March of 2006, they probably had high hopes about what Twitter’s potential could become. However, they most likely didn’t imagine the state of twitter today, where over 330 million active monthly users and 1.3 billion accounts flock to the social networking site, helping grow twitter into a hundred-million-dollar company. So, now that twitter has become one of the mainstay social media platforms, how exactly did it catch on with the public and grow?

When looking through the lens of the Diffusion of Innovations theory, there are several key reasons as to how twitter was able to catch on and spread like wildfire. For starters, its main premise was very enticing. It was the first of its kind to utilize and tap into the idea of real-time information spreading, and twitter branded itself as such. While online blogs and early social media sites like Facebook and Myspace had been around for years, they weren’t originally built to spread live information. They were more personal and weren’t instant or immediately accessible. By creating a product that could be between and include both the blogging and instant messaging platforms of its day, twitter was able to be quite the innovation. Furthermore, its communication channels were extremely accessible, with a variety of usage options such as laptop and computer with internet connection and mobile smartphones.

When looking at the twitter’s historical timeline, it took a little bit to catch on and spread. The creation and implementation of the hashtag in 2007, where people could use keywords, phrases, or events to help people find content they wished to read, was certainly a game changer for social media and added to the real-time news concept. However, twitter really began to take off around 2009-2010. Not only was this around the time where people were starting to buy into the idea of real time spreading of information, but this was also when brands and celebrities became early adopters and began to see the appeal Twitter offered. Celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and brands such as CNN were some of the earliest famous adaptors to Twitter. In their eyes, Twitter was an easy way to keep their fans and customers updated on their latest information, while also expanding out and gaining more exposure. When fans and customers began to hear about some of their favorite brands providing current and up-to-date information on Twitter, they’d create a twitter account just to see what they were posting and doing. This is highlighted in 2009, when Ashton Kutcher and CNN began a “twitter battle” to see which account would be the first to reach 1 million followers. Shortly after, twitter saw a record rate of new sign-ups, further highlighting how the early adapters wanted to be caught up with up to date information, and saw twitter as the easiest way to do so.

Finally, the idea of followers was also another innovation that was groundbreaking and paved the way for platforms like Instagram, vine, and snapchat. The idea being rather than having “friends” where one gets notifications from people they know in reality, one “follows” the account of random people who post content that they so happen to enjoy and want to see more of. It’s much less of a personal system and it plays into the idea of Twitter being widespread, where anybody can encounter anybody else on the platform. It helps spread information to a widespread audience in a short amount of time as long as somebody has followers. One major example is when an airplane crashed into the Hudson River in January of 2009, where twitter was able to break and spread around the news before broadcast news was able to.

Although Twitter did provide many positives because of its innovations, there are still negative consequences that arise from its usage. One of the widespread issues is its innovative follower concept, where some celebrities and brands have gathered such a large following that they can spread the idea that follower counts matter. Many people still judge others based on the amount of twitter followers they have, which is nonconsequential when considering the original idea behind twitter. Furthermore, Twitter has also become a place filled with passionate and hate-filled arguments over a wide range of subjects. From politics, to sports, to current events, twitter can be a hub for hateful messaging that can spread to a wide audience.

https://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/29/why-twitter-is-so-popular-with-the-rich-and-famous/

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/history-of-twitter-facts-what-s-happening-in-2019-14995056

https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/twitter-stats-and-statistics/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/02/08/why-twitter-is-now-profitable-for-the-first-time-ever/

https://buffer.com/resources/how-twitter-evolved-from-2006-to-2011
https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/meet.14504701295