MEDIA literates

In the age of terror, public discourse on privacy versus security is essential to freedom in America. The Oliver Stone film “Snowden” uncovers the extent of the National Security Agency’s widespread surveillance system used to track and collect digital information of millions of people abroad, and the average U.S. citizens. Edward Snowden’s choice to reveal classified information on the government program to the press informed Americans and sparked the discussion whether privacy from our own government or national security is of higher value.

The story of ‘whistleblower’, Edward Snowden, leaking classified documents on the NSA’s questionable program demonstrates the significance of freedom of press in a democratic society. The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (Campbell, 537). Whether the NSA’s program is ethical or unethical should be left to the public to decide because it involves both privacy and security of American citizens. The First Amendment’s freedom of expression and press permits journalism to be a fourth estate to the government, functioning to enlighten the public on government actions.

The film expresses the dangerous yet necessary role of journalism to mediate information into the public domain in order nourish democratic discussion. Snowden’s decision to throw a red flag on the American government was very dangerous, but crucial for the public to maintain agency over information and the basic human right of privacy. The argument can be made that “I don’t have to worry because I don’t have anything to hide”. Snowden declares in an interview by The Guardian, “People who say they don’t care about privacy because they have got nothing to hide have not really thought too deeply about these issues because what they are really saying is I do not care about this right. When you say I don’t care about the right to privacy because I have nothing to hide, that is no different than saying I don’t care about freedom of speech because I have nothing to say or freedom of the press because I have nothing to write.” (Snowden, Edward). Using our voices to exercise our agency over information and truth is the only way to ensure freedom and allow democracy to thrive. If our rights are not valued, we cannot be free.

Works Cited:

Campbell, Richard. “Media and Culture: Mass Communication in a Digital Age”.

Stone, Oliver. Snowden. Open Road Films. 2016. Movie.

What comes to mind when you think of the name Snowden? Do you boil with American rage, and passion for your country, thinking of how he betrayed his country? Or do you quietly, and warily look at your computers, your phones, and various screens thinking about if there is someone else watching you through them? Do you ponder what truly happened? And question the fact that you’re questioning your government? Did you begin to question your government after he released top secret information? Or do you still have questions about what happened at all? Why is his name important?

Truthfully, I remembered Snowden’s discoveries taking place during a time when I was too young to care about the real importance and meaning behind them. My generation was raised with the assumption that anything on the internet was forever, we already had no privacy, and this became the norm for us. I already struggled to keep my phone conversations with my secret middle school boyfriend from my mother, and all she had to do was lift up the other landline to hear them. She was the only person I really thought I had secrets to keep from. But the monumental significance of Snowden’s research and intel was not lost upon me the second time I encountered them in this class. As we began to understand more about the internet, the laws written intending to protect us, and the role that the government has assumed in the name of public safety and security became much clearer. And at the end of it all, I finally understood that the concepts of safety and security were relative in who they pertained to. The CIA, President, and other intelligence officials were placed in their roles of power to protect us as citizens, especially from terror threats. As they continue to rise today, it is clear that we must reimagine ways to beat terrorists at their own game.

 Backtracking to Snowden however, I was able to recognize what he had after viewing the film: the boundary for which we determined who deserved privacy had been crossed, and worse - in the name of fighting terrorism. The people who time after time, had thrown the constitution (read: freedom of speech) in our faces so many times in defense of hundreds of people, were actually violating terms they had set. In class, we spent hours, LITERALLY HOURS, covering the nitty gritty details of the rights we had when utilizing the internet, and watched many videos covering the protections were intended to be granted. The audacity of the government to take a program that respected these rights and throw it out, only to replace it with one that not only violated the privacy of all Americans and members of other country (WHERE WE HAVE NO BUSINESS MONITORING) and then lie about it angered me to no end. And again, it was not the notion that I felt I was being spied on, because I truly could not care less if Michael Hayden was looking into the all too sweet and sugary texts I send my lover(s), but I cared it was being done in the name of fighting terrorism. I find myself outraged now even though wiretapping is supposedly no longer something that is happening.

I find myself casting suspicious, second glances at the camera above my laptop. I will never not be wondering who is watching my keystrokes. I feel as though my eyes have been opened in a new manner, and they will never be able to unsee or unlearn all of this information, and similarly my paranoia will refuse to subside. The movie further encouraged me to continue questioning everything I am fed, and gave me a renewed passion to pursue journalism doggedly, annoyingly even, if that’s what it takes to get to the truth.

 These two films have many things that were very similar besides the obvious. But they have many things that contrast to each other. First off in Snowden it was very dramatized and Citizenfour had its drama, but it wasn’t the Hollywood drama. In Citizenfour the drama was really things happening throughout that seem like things could go wrong. Like phones ringing and fire alarms going off. Snowden had that obvious Hollywood drama that is there to make it interesting. Things put into place to make the plot go faster, things that documentary really don’t do to, because they are trying to tell a real story not a dramatized real story.

Overall, I think that both of these films have a certain impact. But the I think that Citizenfour has more impact to me, because it really tells every single detail of the story. And yes, it tells in a way that is not always easy to understand. But that was something that I liked about it. I think I learned more about the story through Citizenfour than that of Snowden. But don’t get me wrong I like both of the films. And if you are one that doesn’t like all the nitty gritty detail of a documentary then you might find that Snowden would have more impact on you.

I think the issues that Snowden really did well of portraying is the details about the documents that Edward Snowden gave to the Journalists. It did this in a way that the common person could understand what was in the documents, but also what the impact of those documents could have. It also did a great job of showing what Edward Snowden was going through in his life and in his jobs. Even though it was heavily dramatized. What Citizenfour did really well was really show the behind the scenes of the story. Meaning that you got to see pretty much every detail that journalists got to see. And how they were going to reveal the info they were getting from Edward Snowden to the people. Also, it allowed us to see the behind the scenes of the legal process of the case.

The film didn’t really give much surprise, but it informed a lot of ways. It informed me in that we really have some antiquated laws in this country that probably should get looked at and reformed. I think that is the main way it informed me. I have known about this stuff for a while now. And I have known ways to protect my privacy before, because my father has been working in to network security business for a longtime now. And everything he has learned that isn’t under lock and key, he has taught me.

First off, I would like to say that this has been one of my favorite classes I have ever taken at the University. One of my favorite things about this class was the screening of the film United States of Secrets, because it was very interesting to me and I had not seen it before. But what was interesting to me was that this was sort of the route I wanted to go in terms of my career. I want to work in the federal law enforcement/intelligence field. So, it gave me a new perspective, but it didn’t really change my mind. The other section that was my favorite was the digital gaming section. The main reason that this was my favorite is, because I really like video games.  

References:

Snowden, Oliver Stone, Open Road Films, 2016. Movie

Ever since Americans were made aware of the extent in which the government was surveying their online activity back in 2013, there has been a spirited debate regarding the spectrum of internet security and internet privacy. At the core of this debate, is the portrayal of the government as the egregious villains in the situation. Yes, the government didn’t do themselves any favors by remaining silent throughout the expansion of their surveillance program, even to a majority of their own employees. At the same time, as an American society we need to take a step back and understand the nature of the government’s role over 200 plus year history of our nation. It has consistently operated under a hierarchical system that has implemented security clearances for various types of classified information. In order to ease the American public’s mind regarding any form of surveillance, we need to be reminded of this role the government plays in order to keep our nation secure, while also allowing for more members of the government to serve as checks and balances for any type of surveillance programs.

It has been a widely circulated phrase, but no other entity has applied “knowledge is power” more frequently to their work than the government. By containing the amount of people privileged to certain types of information, the government has been able to prevent nations abroad from gaining insight into certain aspects of their diplomatic intentions, while also preventing mass hysteria from overtaking our domestic population; at least until Edward Snowden lit the match that set off the internet security vs. privacy debate. Even when looking at this hysteria, in my opinion it was more a product of the complete 180 degree shift from feeling like your online activities are completely private in the grand scheme of things, to feeling like the everything we do online is being observed. In the 2016 dramatization of Snowden’s actions we watched in class, CIA recruiter and officer Corbin O’Brian describe to Edward Snowden how the landscape of the battlefield is shifting from the deserts and oceans to the internet and stock market. This point resonated with me for two reasons, one being the increase in intelligent hackers that have been become more readily available to foreign nations. The second being the uncertain nature that the affect these hackers can have on our nation. We got a little taste of this in our latest Presidential election, with the uncertainty in which Russia hacked our election. If we are susceptible to being hacked within our most democratic practice, there’s no reason to belief they couldn’t hack more influential aspects of our nation. If the government’s response to this threat aligns with “knowledge is power” narrative, then so be it.

At the same time, however, the government can also become to saturated within their power, which is why we need to establish a form of checks and balances within government employees. There were multiple instances within the Snowden film in which government employees were taken aback when first hearing of the surveillance program. Even when looking at the employees that were aware of the extent of surveillance, none of them brought up the issue of the Director of the NSA lying to Congress. If we include more government individuals familiar with the practices of our surveillance program, it will increase the likelihood that whistleblowers will step forward, helping to maintain its constitutional integrity. I don’t believe the answer is complete transparency to the general public due to who “knowledge is power” discussion earlier, but there needs to be more ears and voices heard within the conversations being had in Washington.

Then the question arises, will this solution of a more checks and balances system within surveillance programs solve the debate between privacy and security? Well, there is no solution out there that will appeal to those that identify with the extreme ends of the spectrum. However, if our class is an accurate representation of the greater American society, then it bothers people more that the government would lie to us than the fact that someone might be examining your internet activity. Especially with our generation, we have been raised to understand that whatever we put out on the internet has the possibility to be permanently be linked back to you. Due to this conclusion, and the shifting dynamics of the battlefield, I think there would be a relative acceptance of the surveillance program. Even if you are still uneasy about the possibility of being surveyed through webcams or other cameras, no one is stopping you from avoiding cameras or putting tape over your webcam. But the necessity of some form of a surveillance program is evident, which is why my proposal of a checks and balances system should serve as a happy medium.

Blog Post #4 Prompt #1

One point from the movie The Internet’s Own Boy that is important is the concept of open access. Aaron believed that public government documents should be available to the public free of charge to ensure equal access, which I strongly agree with. His act of downloading the documents during the free trial and distributing them showed his dedication to ensuring that the public had the access they deserved to government documents. From an activist perspective, it was also a statement to the government in that the public will exercise its right to access public government information. Aaron was even investigated by the FBI, perhaps as a scare tactic, but he continued his mission.

A large focus of the film was Aaron’s efforts to halt the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). SOPA was intended to protect intellectual property, however the act would also threaten the way internet users could communicate and innovate. SOPA was more in favor of big corporations that wanted to maximize their profits. When big corporations mix in with the government, the voice of the public is often silenced. Despite the power of corporate money and politics, Aaron helped mobilize the community to successfully protest against the bill. This ordeal showed how powerful the public can be when it unites and also how important it is to do so when the government threatens the rights of its citizens.

Aaron Swartz wanted to make the internet more accessible and fair. Combined with the government’s fear of the informed public, he was prosecuted and took his own life. The film did a wonderful job showing his impact as well as his passion. Overall I feel the message of the film is that it is up to society to fight for its rights, as the government does not always have the public’s best interest. The film showed the power of activism, especially when combined with corporations (i.e. Google and Wikipedia participating in the internet blackout). I think the one thing the government fears the most is an informed public, which is why they put so much effort into guarding public information and also why they, along with big corporations, have polluted the media with mindless entertainment instead of ensuring it gets used to its full potential as a communication/education tool for the public. Today it seems the media does more dividing than uniting.

The film relates to “freedom of speech” from Chapter 16 in a few ways including the activism shown, however I think it most strongly relates to Aaron’s overarching goal. Freedom of speech does not only refer to the right to send messages/information; it also refers to the right to receive them. As far as Aaron was concerned, the government was inhibiting this. Their paywall was essentially unconstitutional, as it was a barrier to access for public documents that prevented people from exercising their constitutional right to the information. In a way, I believe it could even be categorized as wealth discrimination, where people with money are given access over those who do not.

My favorite part of the course was the section on video games. Not many people realize that videogames are a form of communication so I was happy we were able to discuss it as such. I grew up playing video games and I develop video games in my spare time. People tend to attribute video games as something to entertain you, which is true, however there is much more to them. As mentioned in the lecture, they are used for advertising and storytelling, however in addition to those, I study something called “gamification” which is the application of video game mechanics to real life. It has been proven through numerous studies that gamification increases motivation, engagement, and enjoyment while completing otherwise mundane tasks - which leads to increased productivity and a better sense of accomplishment. I am a strong advocate for gamification usage in classrooms to help facilitate learning and development, as these are spaces that are often deprived of these essential qualities (motivation, engagement, and enjoyment) that gamification adds.

“It was this background that prompted Edward Snowden, several years later, to choose me as his first contact person for revealing NSA damage doing on an even more massive scale” --(Greenwald, G, 2014).

After watching movies “Snowden” and “Citizen Four,” I think internet security and privacy are the controversial issues in the United States.  In the movie “Snowden” the protagonist is Edward Snowden, who find illegal surveillance programs of the United States; he was a sinner for the government when he reports this privacy to journalists. I think Snowden is the guy who wants to protect the citizen’s right. On the other hand, the movie “Citizen Four” is similar content as “Snowden” but different genre; it mainly discussed Edward Snowden and NSA spying scandal. I want to talk about what I learned about security and privacy by watching these two films.

note: this picture was cited from Google http://fokus.dn.se/edward-snowden-english/

I was astonished about the U.S. government when I noticed that they are so easy to control people’s information from all over the world. Although I understand the government might want to keep safe for American, they have no permission to monitor everyone’s activity. Moreover, the internet is free for most of the people at current, we have right to know and judge anything.

These two movies reflect the similar story, but different feeling to me. I think the movie “Snowden” did an excellent job of highlighting and explaining; it was not only describing the war between privacy and security but also record Snowden’s character which enlightens me a lot. For instance, he didn’t care about money, status and marriage, only he wants to do is protect the righteousness; also he still insisted his proposition when he became criminal for leaking information to media. I appreciate this movie because it taught me that justice is always a winner. However, the film “Citizen Four” was a little bit annoying; it just expressed that people can do anything when they are in dangerous which gives me tension and fear.

I am very pleasure to take media and culture class in this summer because it told me lots of information about the U.S national social that I never heard before. On the other hand, I realize that Government cannot command the media to dominate people’s thinking; we are qualified to know the truth. In the future, I will continue to write blogs on the internet because I want to communicate my thought to people around me. In the end, I appreciate to this class again for telling me that truth is not luxury forever.

I’d like to preface this with an aside about my favorite moment in class this year. Specifically, I’d like to emphasize the lecture on video games. While what I was expecting was a bland presentation full of broad-strokes information that I was already aware of, the short videos that were selected provided an excellent insight into the areas of gaming that I care most about: in-game storytelling and out-of-game harassment. I felt like I was easily able to follow the material being taught, and the interactivity helped keep me engaged throughout. The interactivity, both in that specific lecture and throughout the rest of the class, were what made this class worthwhile, and was the most prominent reason why I enjoyed the class.

When I watch a fictional movie, I’m usually there for the experience. Sure, I mentally critique it on its message and theme, but I try not to critique the likelihood of it. When I’m watching a documentary, like Citizenfour, I usually pay attention to the events and information, trying to learn and analyze what I can. Where I run into issues, however, is when a movie either claims to be based on a true story or a “dramatization”. For me, these movies always come with a sense of frustration, as they often try to sound as though everything contained within them is real, but embellish and fabricate for theatric effect. The result is a product where it is impossible without extensive research to discover which scenes come from reality and which don’t, leaving the viewer unable to effectively process the information.

Snowden suffers greatly from this problem. While the main story in the hotel follow roughly the events in Citizenfour, I found the movie frustrating in how it covered vast portions of Snowden’s personal life. I was always doubting the story, questioning small details and by extension the larger narrative. If I hadn’t known about what had occurred prior to watching, I would have been questioning details like the Rubik’s cube, the blanket, and the “Guinness is good” code phrase. As it is, I still wonder about whether his friends and his teachers were at all as they were shown, and why the filmmakers didn’t include some of the more frightening aspects from the real footage as shown in Citizenfour, such as the fire alarm test and journalist calls. All of this detracted from Snowden’s overall experience, leaving Citizenfour as the better movie to obtain information from.

Having said that, I can honestly say that Snowden was the first film in a very long time to significantly change my stance on an issue. While before watching the film, I didn’t care if some analyst somewhere could access my private photos and browsing, the film presented several excellent examples of severe concerns with governmental overreach. More importantly, I realized that I should care about privacy not for my sake, necessarily, but for that of others. Of dissidents, minorities, and those willing to take a stand when necessary. Because they are our strongest weapons in the fight for human rights, and without them, we never would have gotten to where we are.

The debate over internet security and internet privacy is not going to be solved overnight. For me, even though I am someone who generally falls on the side of internet privacy, it’s easy to see both sides of the argument. How do you decide between the possible good it can do for the country by stopping an attack, and unwarranted invasion of privacy? It’s a hard and complex question to debate.

Like I said, I am on the side of internet privacy. I do believe that Apple did the right thing by not hacking the phone for the FBI and refusing them when the FBI started asking for them to create a “back door” that allowed federal agencies to have the ability to hack into phones that came into their possession. Although the events of San Bernardino were tragic and horrific, Apple has the right to protect their customers’ privacy. And if Apple were to create this “back door,” what would stop the FBI or the NSA from using this as a tool for further surveillance? Our cellphones hold other personal information that can’t be found through internet surveillance, so our personal privacy would only be invaded further by government agencies claiming national security. “If you give a moose a muffin, he’ll want some jam to go with it.”

I think that we should move forward on this debate in favor of protecting internet privacy. I can’t offer an exact solution, but I do believe that internet surveillance is a violation of our Fourth Amendment rights to unwarranted searches and seizures, even in the name of national security. As shown in the film “Snowden,” when Gabe is showing Edward how XKeyscore worked, an extremely personal message popped up while they were searching for people who had threatened the president. How would you feel if someone who you didn’t know somehow intercepted the sext you sent to your significant other? Everyone thinks that there are so many people in this country and in the world that there is no possible way that they are being watched. They have nothing to hide. It changes a person’s view on the issue if you think about it happening to you. You would feel like your rights had been violated. 

Having spent most of my time in college studying media, this class gave me new perspectives on topics and areas that I have covered three times over. It was interesting to hear perspectives about the different aspects of my field (professional journalism), especially about the future of journalism. I am sitting here and reflecting on the classes that I have taken that have contributed to my time in college that have developed me the most as a journalist. I knew that today journalists at news organizations were having to do so much extra stuff to keep up with the demand for information, but I didn’t quite grasp how much. A year ago, when I was taking my first class in news reporting and writing, I didn’t realize how well my professor was making our classroom imitate the real world. We were blogging, writing stories in short deadlines, and learning how to add multimedia content to our stories. Because of what we talked about in this class, I was able to see that I really am being trained for the real world in my classes, and it made me see my future profession in a different way. That’s pretty neat. 

My favorite section of the class, however, was our last lesson on privacy and the debate around internet surveillance and privacy. This was by far my favorite unit in the class because it was something that I have never really thought of before. In a media law class that I took this past spring, we touched on it so briefly that the topic didn’t really scare me or make me as aware of what has really been going on as far as internet surveillance and the scale of it. 

A quick warning: As the title may suggest, this post is a little dramatic for effect; I wouldn’t get the tin hats out yet. Also, any coarse language and political beliefs expressed below belong only to the writer and are not representative of the Media Literates blog.

Did you watch The Handmaid’s Tale on Wednesday? That show makes me nervous every week. It’s fascinating and nerve-racking to see a world that’s so different from our own and yet so similar. But the thing that makes me most uneasy is that it could happen. And soon.

In class, we watched Snowden and for comparison, I watched Citizenfour. Both good movies. Both hammered home the problems with mass surveillance. Both left you with the sinking feeling that you’re living in a dystopian society. Snowden  goes for the shock factor, showing us how our most intimate moments may be surveilled. adverse affects it has on free speech. Citizenfour elicits even more affecting shock when you realize that this is real life, and when you see what surveillance can do to free speech. Since we learned that our government has been spying on its citizens for a decade, many of us - myself included- have carried on with the mindset that we have nothing to hide, so have at it”. Glenn Greenwald makes the case against this mindset in his TED Talk. He explains this mindset and pervasive surveillance as a means of societal control, saying, “Mass surveillance creates a prison in the mind.” When we are under the impression that we might be watched, we behave “better”; we make it so we “have nothing to hide”. As this pertains to free speech, we may curtail our criticism of those in power.

That hasn’t seemed to be an issue yet. I doubted that Obama was going to arrest me for disagreeing with the use of drone strikes. But this is starting to hit home for me. We find dystopian fiction compelling because it is conceived in a world just close enough to our own to make us uneasy. Many people have made the comparison to 1984 when discussing mass surveillance, but I prefer to think of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. As it’s been a decade since I read the book, I may instead refer more specifically to the television program, which I think is faithful where it counts.

The Handmaid’s Tale, written originally in 1985, was a dystopian novel set in what used to be the US. The time in which the story is set appears to be the near future, and women have lost the ability to have children. This biological hardship led to the rapid descent of society into a fundamentalist, Abrahamic totalitarian state run by wealthy (white) men. In turn, they force the women who can have children into sexual slavery and downgrade other women into a status of second-class citizenship.

This alone is scary for women today, as we continue to be underrepresented in positions of power and we’ve just seen a President elected who has been outspoken in his disrespect for us. The kicker is, though, the way the men in the book know which women are fertile: at some point before this governmental shift, all the women went to be tested and tagged for fertility, ostensibly for medical and scientific reasons (if everyone around you became barren, you’d want to know what’s going on down there, too). They allowed themselves to be tagged. Like livestock. Red: “Viable for breeding”. Then when the time came, all anyone needed to do was round up the women with the red tags.

We have all been quietly and willingly allowing ourselves to be tagged over the last two decades. We’re searchable. We can be categorized by any number of traits and watched. Electronic surveillance is not limited to the federal government, either; local police departments like the San Jose PD use it to monitor “South Asian, Muslim and Sikh protestors” (according to the ACLU). It’s not hard to connect a handle to a person, and finally, to a location. Meanwhile, my doctor’s clinic has started putting my medical records online so that I can access them from home, ensuring that a curious person with the right tools can get to know me inside and out.

Which brings me back to my panic. We’re tagged, we’re profiled, We’re just waiting for them to round us up.

Movies “Snowden” and “Citizenfour” are based on the story of Edward Snowden, who uncovers illegal surveillance programs of the United States. These two films are good examples of the confrontation between Internet privacy and security. Emphasizes the controversy between Internet surveillance to protect the security of citizens, the state against threats or the protection of privacy, the basic right of citizens.

These two movies filmed the same content, but into a different genre. For me, “Snowden” was able to watch much easily because it was a scripted movie with romantic participation to sell tickets. However, “Citizen 4” was a bit boring to me because the movie is a documentary that made by editing the actual facts that happened. In addition, the movie, “Snowden,” is cast performances actors such as Joseph Gordon and Nicholas Cage and focused Snowden’s life with an interesting script with romantic into it, so I could easily put me in it. On the other hand, “Citizen 4” make me able to feel the exposure, the situation, and the tension at that time.

I learned a new thing about the US government's surveillance program through these two films. I was shocked that the US government can monitor not only US citizens but people from all over the world with one keyword. More, surprised that the United States deployed a bug that caused the system to go down to allies. I always thought our privacy can invade for our safety and protection. However, this Invasion of privacy is only permissible for a small portion, ensuring certain safety and protection, and only in certain situations and spaces such as airports security checkpoints. I believe what Edward Snowden did was a right thing to do. He aware the government’s surveillance over the citizens and let people decide which one to support.

I have been taking a part in the US Media class for three weeks this summer. The class gave me a lot of information for such a short period and it was the time that learned many things that I didn’t know. Among the many lessons, I am most interested in the path of new communication and the way of communication, the blogging. The blog is a way to express myself completely and I was interested in being able to easily tell people what I think of the world. The class is over, but I will keep running the tumbler personally. As we live, we continue to communicate our thoughts to people and find out what people think about them. I am glad to learn one of this method, blogging.

 References :

Snowden, Oliver Stone, Open Road Films, 2016. Movie

The film, “Snowden”, along with this class, opened my eyes to internet security and privacy.  One of the things that was most surprising to me was how easy it is for the government to access our information, connections, and even glimpsing into our lives. My initial thought was yeah, I know they could probably access some of our things but it may take a few hoops and ladders to jump through, boy, was I wrong.  Imagine this, you’re bored sitting at home and you feel like doing a little background checking on some of your friends.  You essentially open a search engine that allows this and boom, all your friend’s information, their friends, family, accounts, everything, is in the palm of your hand.  That is the type of access our government must our online lives through the internet.

This type of access our government has is extremely unnerving.  I cannot speak for others but I know I have only just begun to learn about internet security or lack thereof security that we possess.  I believe that this film, along with our class, has opened my eyes to being more cautious about my internet security.  I am not overly paranoid by any means, but any small precautions I can take to prevent something catastrophic happening to my information is easier on my mind.  There are certain things you can do like opt-out of data mining policies, use search engines that do not mine information, and use a VPN.

I compare the internet to walking home late at night. You may not see what is out there or what could harm you but it is there.  Taking certain precautions to stay safe is always necessary.  Obviously, when you’re on the internet or walking home, something terrible does not always happen but sometimes it can.  It is preventing the catastrophic event is what is important for all of us.  Like I said before, I cannot speak for others, but based on my limited knowledge regarding internet security, I think there is a clear majority of people who think the internet is completely safe.

When looking at the evolution of storytelling, it is hard not to notice just how far the mediums in which we publish our tales have come. What used to be shared in an exclusively oral way, was then able to be produced through writing, and now finds itself being able to be constructed and distributed through various digital means. With each new development the impact of storytelling was enhanced, but one aspect remained consistent throughout time, the linear nature that drove the telling of each tale. However, that is no longer the case, as I am of the opinion that the most beneficial advancement digital storytelling provides the storyteller with the ability to effectively convey two different stories simultaneously. This is marginally different than the form of storytelling that is present in movies and even documentaries, as in those mediums the stories and visual elements are required to play off of one another in order to further the plot. In the digital stories that I viewed on the We Are the Resilience Project website, there were times in which the audio and visual elements of the story didn’t directly relate, rather creating two different stories that eventually seamlessly merged together by the conclusion.

The story that I found exemplified this ability to produce two simultaneous tales the best, was My One Good Finger. This story was compiled in dedication to former volunteer presidential task force member Jeff Bradshaw, who tragically was injured in the line of duty and forced into a wheelchair during the early 1990s. Due to the story being published after Bradshaw’s death in 2015 at the age of 69, the story is absent of his physical voice, yet they were still able to create a first-person account through the abilities of digital storytelling. The audio element of the digital story featured Jeff Bradshaw’s ideas and thoughts through the oration by another of his numerous newsletters and journal entries chronicling his experiences advocating for rights and improvements for the disabled. As expected, Bradshaw’s words included a mixture of triumphs and hardships in the fight for equality, but it was hard to ignore statements like “as a disabled low income person, it makes me feel that the upper income are robbing me of pleasures,” (1:35). As the audience is exposed to the story of his advocacy efforts, they are simultaneously presented with photos that span the entirety of Bradshaw’s life. Although there were plenty of times in which the visuals matched the audio of the project, but even in those cases, there was still a completely different story being told. By being exposed to pictures of Bradshaw experiencing genuine happiness, even in his disabled state, added another element to the story of his fight for equality by emphasizing that it was not in vein. His efforts were appreciated and will be remembered long after his death.

In the other two digital stories that I viewed, Finding My Inner and Outer Strength and Choose the Change, the storytelling was very similar to the linear nature featured in movies and documentaries. Although these elements didn’t go to the extreme that My One Good Finger did in terms of creating two separate tales within the same digital story, there was still other prominent elements of digital storyline that enhanced the interpretation of the main story. For example, the use of music was a prominent feature that both videos used to convey emotion. Especially in the Inner and Outer Strength project, which used the slow build up of a song to draw the audience’s attention in before transitioning to talking about her inner strength. Another element that digital storytelling enables, is the ability to create a sense of “liveness” within the project, even though the events were not actually recorded in near time. In the Choose the Change project, the video starts out with a first hand video account of finding the main character with a broken fibula from being tossed from her horse. The shaky and frantic nature of the camera running towards the fall really engaged the audience and almost tricked me into believing this event was happening live. This is something we didn’t see in previous forms of storytelling, as one always knew that they were being exposed to a story and not real time events.

So what does this all mean for the future of storytelling? Well, besides speculating when the ability to incorporate three dimension holograms into our stories, I believe digital storytelling will continue to allow us to immerse our audiences within our stories. By being able to escape from the linear plot lines of traditional stories, will allow for the ability to include more details, in turn filling in gaps of understanding that would have otherwise been present. The more we practice and utilize the method of digital storytelling, the stronger our stories will resonate with our audiences, and the more likely we will be able to achieve the ultimate goal of storytelling; conveying true meaning while still finding ways to entertain.

Works Cited

https://www.wearetheresilienceproject.org/

Stories: My One Good Finger – Rebecka

I remember receiving my first gaming console back when I was about seven years old, it was the original PlayStation. Since that day, my passion for gaming has grown and evolved immensely in cohesion with gaming itself.  Gone are the days of sitting with one other friend and in come the nights spent with numerous systems connected through a LAN (Local Area Network) connection while playing with several of your friends. The internet has revolutionized the way we play games.  We can play with people across the world, our neighbors, and people who use other languages just by turning on our computer or gaming system.  Gaming has even stuck its foot into the door of public television. Video games are during a culture shift because of the internet and Mark Meekers’ finding sin her internet trends study prove that.

Gaming has already begun its major cultural influence with the emergence of a streaming platform called Twitch.  Twitch allows gamers to stream their gameplay to anyone who would like to watch.  All you need is a gaming console and you are set to begin your stream.  This can range from a person like me streaming to a few of my friends to users who stream to thousands of viewers who then donate to their channel, creating a full-time job for some steamers.  The emergence of e-sports has also led to a major rise in streaming.  Major games like League of Legends and Counterstrike can pull in viewers by the tens of thousands through streaming which is obviously the right step in the direction of turning professional gaming main stream.

To follow up with e-sports, is it possible professional gaming could compete with some of the major professional sports of today’s time?  Some believe it could happen.  League of Legends has already begun to sell out arenas overseas and it is making its way to America as we speak.  Some major tournaments have seen upwards of three million dollars in prize money which is a staggering amount when you compare that to professional gaming ten years ago.  If your team wins the championship and each of you split up that prize money, that’s six figures for each player.  Yes, I said six figures for being the best at a video game.  If you add up all your prize money throughout the year, that could add up to a better salary than some MLB, NHL, and NFL players which puts into perspective how massive gaming is becoming.

I went to college in St. Louis, Missouri. It’s a lovely place with lovely people. College is a singular time in a person’s life, especially in the US. At 18, we are shuttled off to a new home, surrounded by strangers. The unique thing about this experience is not that we move in with or near strangers. That happens all the time. The unique thing is that we are dumped into a sea of our peers; your neighbors are in the same place both physically and metaphorically as you are. In that sea, I found a group of neighbors that remained four years later. At our young age, we were focused on living our stories rather than telling them.

Moving back to Minnesota, I’m in the real world where you don’t do orientation activities with your neighbors, unless you count sharing the washing machine. This is the case for young adults around the country as they begin the rest of their lives, or even as older adults try to continue theirs.

Kriste York and Rebecka Weinsteinger looked around the Hotel Julian and saw something else in the people around them; they saw stories. When I left the community that I had cultivated in St. Louis, I left with stories. Some are funny anecdotes, others are cautionary tales. But now I lack a community with which to share them and I miss hearing others’ stories and learning from them or relating to them. That is where digital storytelling fits into community building.

With each story we collect, we become distinct people, but we also grow closer through universal experiences like love and heartbreak, failure, or loss. These universal experiences are the emotional undercurrent of any story, and of any community. They are the struggles through which we guide each other as we build relationships. They are the folk art that has been created around the globe and throughout human history. The digital stories at the Hotel Julian vary in narrative style, content, personality, but they all provide a chance for the residents of the Hotel to get to know each other and bond through those universal experiences and create an oral, digital history of their community. This is the promise of digital storytelling.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the imperfections in this medium, however. Just as with traditional media, the impact of digital storytelling on a community or on the public in general is a function of who is telling the stories. If an outsider observed me with my friends in college and relayed our stories to you, the story would be drastically different than if I had told you myself. The internet has given people a medium through which they may present their own perspective, but it is important for us to make sure that our oral history is not being truncated by lack of access, understanding, or agency. These are three things in relative short supply in a community like the Hotel Julian who are largely elderly or disabled. Just as with many other marginalized groups, these folks get their collective experiences edited or truncated by the culturally normative sectors of society. Digital storytelling has allowed them to combat that. Anthony Vitale of the Corvallis Advocate points out that digital storytelling is powerful because it reflects the subject’s own experience as they see it, not as a documentarian or interviewer might perceive it.

“You know journalism is a dying profession right?”

“Newspapers are on their way out, you’re better off trying to be something more stable.”

These were the responses I received when I told many of the adult at my graduation party I wanted to be a journalist. Of course, they were older and wiser, so I didn’t offer much back other than a chuckle. But I was not dissuaded from my path to write the news someday. Since the time that I moved into my house, just off of Lake Street in South Minneapolis, I had been receiving the Southside Pride newspaper. It was my first interaction with local journalism, and told me stories of crime, success, and local government decisions. I was fascinated by all the things happening in just our small section of this state, because clearly people cared! They were genuinely interested in the happenings of our neighborhoods. My parents have lived here for ten plus years, and we are still receiving this paper.

So when I hear that the New York Times think their newspapers are going to disappear sometime soon, I don’t sweat it. But looking at recent reports on the statistics of decline amongst local newspaper readership, it seems these are underappreciated (CJR, Washington Post, Poynter). I can’t help but personally recognize that local papers are reporting stories that though are not always of national importance, speak largely to the status of this country. It is impossible to be aware of everything happening all over the country at one time, let alone across one state, but the news being recorded still matters. If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Of course, that is a constant. Similarly, even if the news was not reported nationally, the local news is still occurring, and it is still relevant. The above mentioned sources also sought to explain the importance that these stories have to the communities they are being reported to.

In order for the news to continue as the industry that it is, we must support local journalism. It is this through this type of reporting that we shape the identity of citizens across the nation. From each scholarship announcement, to the take down of pedophilia in high schools, we are informed of human nature, life; we would be living in ignorance without the local news. Further, we see political identities within these different geographies. What the local news chooses to focus on and raise awareness about says a lot about how the communities place their values. For example, the Phillips neighborhood in South Minneapolis is located next to an old foundry that still releases toxic air and ash. This neighborhood is considered one of the most diverse in the nation, yet it is surrounded by the foundry, an asphalt plant, and a hot tar storage facility. It is not by coincidence that an area that is typically a housing place for refugees, members of the Native American community, and low-income members of society and is home to such toxic air. The local newspaper organized itself, and reported on this story when the government attempted to repurpose the land for a roof shingling project instead of a farmers market. This is a classic example of local journalism coordinating efforts to lift up a community that needs it.

The year is 2017, Donald Trump is the President of the United States, and it is impossible to weed out truth in contemporary journalism. The documentary film titled “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism” dissects Fox News’ intention with the information they relay to the American public. News is defined as “the process of gathering information and making narrative reports that offer selected frames of reference; within those frames, news helps the public make sense of important events, political issues, cultural trends, prominent people, and unusual happenings in everyday life” (Campbell, 480). News critic states, “Fox news has eliminated journalism from their agenda” meaning that they have used the image of journalism to push certain opinions on the public (Outfoxed). The film proclaims, “Democracy is founded on knowing some good and solid information so the public can make an informed decision” (Outfoxed). If information is contaminated by opinion, the public does not have a choice over their perspective, and thus cannot function as a government “For the people, by the people”. In today’s popular news, “We The People” has dissolved into “We the Powerful”. Fox News has used many different clever tricks to convince their viewers they uphold an objective position on the information they report including slogans like “We Report, You Decide” and “Fair and Balanced”. This rhetoric is neither ethical nor true; in fact it is “Faux News”. PhD. Wayne Booth, a rhetoric wizard, would call Fox News rulers in “Rhetrickery”, which is using all forms of communication to trick listeners rather than to obtain truth and understanding of reality (Booth). This film is particularly vital in these current days of the conservative Trump administration because the president himself has deemed Fox News’ rival CNN “Fake News” on the basis of contradictory political stances. Though CNN may take their own political stance on issues, attacking news sources specifically because they are not in alignment with your administration’s opinion as a major political figure is dangerous public manipulation. When information is used to manipulate the people into forming a specific opinion rather than using information to bring truth into light by a collective public discussion, democracy fades into fascism. The fourth estate of the United States, keeping politicians in check, journalists have a obligation to take information and present it in an objective fashion to allow the people to maintain agency over truth. Credibility of news sources should be judged on the basis of factual information that can be proven, not on the ability to agree and reaffirm previous political opinions. Faux News taints the publics’ capability of understanding what is real.