Write from the 1st person perspective. However, this is not a journal or diary so be careful to not make it about you. Always maintain a critical and analytic perspective.
Your assignments must contain: an argument; short introduction, body, and conclusion; logical progression of ideas; proper grammar and spelling. Always try to develop a personal writing style.
A Harvard Style quick reference guide is posted in URCourses. Please use it for your citations.
Try to be engaged, creative, and experimental.
Privacy is changing today. Our IRL (In Real Life) lives are virtualizing. Take a simple test: how many hours a day are you on your phone or some other computing device versus how much time do you spend talking to someone directly (without mediation)? Covid has only heightened this mode; it did not produce it! Life is becoming virtual in possibly irreversible ways. What is gained by life being moved online? What is lost?
This assignment asks you to reflect on your own online activities and life. As we move life online what happens? Privacy is transforming. We now volunteer huge amounts of information to corporations, government, security agencies, and the public. Today, the CIA gets more information from Facebook than any other source. You give it to them! And you might say: “I don’t have anything to hide and so I am not concerned that people are watching and storing my data.” But, for this assignment I would like to expand your thoughts on this idea. What are you comfortable sharing? Is your information as innocuous as you think? What happens when your data is misread and used? What happens when your activities are seen differently by different groups? Good examples are Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning. Are they heroes or villains? It depends on where you stand? And I would suggest that you live digitally closer to them than you may be willing to believe. In addition, your belief that you don’t do anything wrong and so do not need to worry presumes that corporations, government, security agencies always act in good faith. But do they? Ask people at the CDC about how they were pressured to not provide accurate information to citizens regarding Covid-19. Government did not want citizens to know the truth. And how many people are dead? Or was it all a hoax after all? You get the point…Your life as data is something to take very seriously.
For your assignment you will do a deep dive on your own activities and approaches to online life and data. Is privacy an issue for you? How do you think about privacy in your own data-life? When you visit, post, participate in, view, follow, subscribe, etc to online activities, what concerns do you have about privacy? Here are a few questions to test your comfort level. How do these questions affect your own thoughts on privacy?:
1. when someone knows your name or age? 2. when someone knows your phone number or home address? 3. when someone knows your favourite snack or tv show? 4. when someone looks into your room (zoom has really changed this!)? 5. when someone overhears a private conversation? 6. when someone reads your mail? 7. and how would you feel if a person followed you around all day? These examples are good because they bring into relief the differences between what we accept IRL and online. Think about it. We make this information public online all the time. But, if someone on the street asked you this info, how would you respond? And yet…
We are entering the final phase of the class where we will look at what contemporary media is doing to us. It is amazing. But there is a very dark side to this public life, too. Ideas can take hold that would not IRL. We test our ideas in public in new ways now. Isn’t it great? Then, why do people who are ‘highly active’ on social media experiencing exponentially higher rates of depression and suicide? If social media connects us, how could this be the an outcome? What is happening? This point was recently confirmed through a study of Instagram about younger girls, which found devastating effects on their sense of self, well-being, health, and confidence as engagement with Instagram increased. It is time to seriously consider your online habits and their impacts on your own well-being.
Your assignment is open-ended. You are simply required to reflect on your data-life. The class materials will help you frame your thoughts. Tell us what you think.
use links
Anonymous report from the New Yorker – http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/08/masked-avengers
Guy Fawkes – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes
I Fell for Fake News – https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/10/18/i-fell-facebook-fake-news-heres-why-millions-you-did-too/
Disinformation Graphics – https://medium.com/swlh/watch-six-decade-long-disinformation-operations-unfold-in-six-minutes-5f69a7e75fb3
Whatsapp Disinfo in Brazil – https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/technology/whatsapp-brazil-presidential-election.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
The Big Lie: Sidney Powell, Rudy Guiliani, and Trump Knew – https://sg.news.yahoo.com/rudy-giuliani-sidney-powell-fox-news-sued-by-dominion-smartmatic-102628439.html
National Security Agency Wiki – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
wikileaks – https://wikileaks.org/
Edward Snowden TED Talk – https://www.ted.com/talks/edward_snowden_here_s_how_we_take_back_the_internet?language=en
Open Source website – https://opensource.com/
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