10/05/17 - Free software to reveal how Facebook election posts are targeted

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/03/free-software-reveal-facebook-election-posts-targeted-chrome-extension

The article talks about how a Google Chrome extension has been made which aims to show audiences, especially those intending to vote in the next General Election, the different narrative agendas in new articles or websites. This is done after the increase in fake news or social media sites being used by different campaigns to promote specific propaganda. It will allow voters to track how the main parties insert political messages into their Facebook feeds calibrated to appeal on the basis of personal information they have already made public online.

• A tool exposing how voters are targeted with tailored propaganda on Facebook has been launched in response to what is likely to be the most extensive social media campaign in general election history.
• The free software, called Who Targets Me?, can be added to a Google Chrome browser and will allow voters to track how the main parties insert political messages into their Facebook feeds calibrated to appeal on the basis of personal information they have already made public online.
• It aims to show who campaigns are targeting, how much the parties are spending and will shed light on whether targeted adverts are crossing the boundary into “fake news”. 
• The Conservatives have rehired Craig Elder and Tom Edmonds, the digital consultants who worked on the 2015 election battle, in which the party spent £1.2m spent on digital campaigning, against Labour’s £160,000. 
• This time, Labour is understood to be ready to spend around £1m.
• “For the good of our democracy, it’s time to throw some light on this dark and unregulated area of campaign spending,” said Sam Jeffers, who has helped to devise the software, which is available as a browser extension.

Personally, I think this is fantastic, it will essentially show how voters are being targetted by online news. This means that audiences will be able to see how they are being influenced in a way. With traditional platforms, editorial content allows influence and particular agendas a lot more obvious but due to the fact that digital media doesn't have this mediation, it makes a lot more easier for fake news to affect audiences. This method of allowing audiences to see how they are being targetted gives the power to the audiences but also making online news free from specific mediation of corporate powers.

10/05/17 - Facebook Live: Zuckerberg adds 3,000 moderators in wake of murders

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/03/facebook-live-zuckerberg-adds-3000-moderators-murders

The article talks about how Facebook has pledged to increase the amount of content reviewers it has by hiring more moderators. This is an action that comes after a lot of violent and inappropriate content has been shown using Facebook Live which has brought the social media site under a lot of heavy criticism over the past month or so. The social media site has received a lot of negative criticism after it was unable to respond with immediacy to take down offensive or violent content on its Facebook Live feature, with videos of killing staying up for more than 24 hours.

• Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to add 3,000 more content reviewers and invest in tools to help remove objectionable content more quickly
• Over the last few months, footage of shootings, murders, rapes and assaults has been streamed on Facebook.
• Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said: “Keeping people safe is our top priority. We won’t stop until we get it right.”
• Facebook has been criticised for its lack of expediency over the removing of objectionable content.
• Two videos of a Thai man killing his 11-month-old daughter in April were available for 24 hours before being removed, and were viewed over 370,000 times
• In March, a 15-year-old girl from Chicago was sexually assaulted by five or six men or boys, which was broadcast live to Facebook with at least 40 people watching.

Personally, I think it is a good first step towards greater content control of explicit content on Facebook. I believe that greater filtering and content control of explicit content will be good for the social media. Furthermore, an increase in staff members for moderation will mean a much more quicker response from Facebook staff when it comes to reporting. This will then in turn encourage people to report explicit content that breaks the site's rules or even laws, and therefore make a better and safer environment for users.

03/05/17 - Google and Facebook bring in one-fifth of global ad revenue

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/02/google-and-facebook-bring-in-one-fifth-of-global-ad-revenue

The article talks about how Google and Facebook attracted one-fifth of global advertising spending last year, nearly double the figure of five years ago. Combined with Alphabet and Facebook, other digital platforms such as Baidu, Microsoft, Yahoo, Verizon,Twitter generated $132.8bn of internet ad revenues in 2016, accounting for nearly three-quarters of all internet ad spend, and nearly one-quarter of total ad spending.

• Google and Facebook attracted one-fifth of global advertising spending last year, nearly double the figure of five years ago, research shows.
• Twitter is the fastest-growing media owner, increasing ad revenue by 734% between 2012 and 2016.
• Internet-only media companies are grabbing the biggest slices of the online advertising market, while traditional news publishers have fallen far behind and been forced to make cutbacks.
• Google, owned by parent company Alphabet, is by far the biggest media owner in the world and attracted $79.4bn (£61.5bn) in ad revenues in 2016, three times more than the second-largest, Facebook, which pulled in $26.9bn, according to Zenith. The previous year, Alphabet took $67.4bn of ad revenues and Facebook $17.1bn.
• Together, the two companies accounted for nearly 20% of global advertising spending last year, up from 16.3% in 2015 and 10.6% in 2012.

Personally, it is interesting to see Marxism's theory and Pareto's law in action with the top elites controlling the populace. I also think this is a crucial part of the media industry where we will finally see the end of traditional platforms such as television and print. It's been in decline for a long time but has never been finally stopped, so it would be interesting to see how society changes to accommodate the fact that we are so technologically reliant.

03/05/17 - Social media firms must face heavy fines over extremist content – MPs

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/may/01/social-media-firms-should-be-fined-for-extremist-content-say-mps-google-youtube-facebook

The article talks about the fact that social media firms will be forced to face heavy fines from governments after a report found that a lot of extremist content is not being removed. In Germany, the report points out that they are considering putting up fines of up to 50 million euros on social media companies that are slow to remove illegal content. Some of the material included antisemitic, hate-crime attacks on MPs that had been the subject of a previous committee report. Material encouraging child abuse and sexual images of children was also not removed, despite being reported on by journalists.

• An inquiry by the Commons home affairs committee condemns technology companies for failing to tackle hate speech
• Social media companies are putting profit before safety and should face fines of tens of millions of pounds for failing to remove extremist and hate crime material promptly from their websites
• The inquiry, launched last year following the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox by a far-right gunman, concludes that social media multinationals are more concerned with commercial risks than public protection.
• “One of the world’s largest companies has profited from hatred and has allowed itself to be a platform from which extremists have generated revenue.”
• During its investigation, the committee found instances of terror recruitment videos for banned jihadi and neo-Nazi groups remaining accessible online even after MPs had complained about them.

Personally, I think this is the right way to add a certain aspect of gatekeeping back to the internet. Although, I belive in the freedom of the internet, I do believe that there are some content that are down right immoral and unethical which should not be shared as it can be argued that some of that content is shared purely because of the freedom to be able to. However, I do not agree with extremely restrictive monitoring which would prevent the freedom of the internet, yet I do think some level of content monitoring which takes down outright unethical and extremist content. I also believe that charging companies with heavy heavy fines is exactly what will get their attentions.

26/04/17 - Facebook admits: governments exploited us to spread propaganda

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/facebook-report-government-propaganda

The article focuses on the fact that recently Facebook has admitted to the possibilities of governments using their platform and other social media in order to spread propaganda. The social media giant admitted that they had been exploited and using algorithms to track similar patterns used in the US election, they found over 30,000 French accounts before the French presidential election.

• Company will step up security to clamp down on ‘information operations’
• Facebook suspended 30,000 accounts in France before presidential election
• In a white paper authored by the company’s security team and published on Thursday, the company detailed well-funded and subtle techniques used by nations and other organizations to spread misleading information and falsehoods for geopolitical goals. 
• In its effort to clamp down on information operations, Facebook suspended 30,000 accounts in France before the presidential election.
• The company also explained how it monitored “several situations” that fit the pattern of information operations during the US presidential election.
• At the same time, a separate set of malicious actors created fake Facebook accounts to falsely amplify narratives and themes related to topics exposed in the stolen data.

Personally, this is a huge story. It singlehandedly affirms everyones suspicions that the social media platforms which have little to no editorial control had been used by governments as a way to push specific agendas or propagandas, especially those of the right wing ideologies. This essentially goes to prove the reasons why there had been a sudden surge in right wing propaganda being used over the internet with more and more right wing politicians being elected.

26/04/17 - FaceApp apologises for 'racist' filter that lightens users' skintone

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/25/faceapp-apologises-for-racist-filter-which-lightens-users-skintone

The article talks about a recent app called FaceApp which uses filters and face recognition software/algorithms to alter an image or camera feed of a person. The app allows users to apply different filters such as the gender swap or the old filter. However, there is one filter called the "hot" filter that when applied made the user's skin appear lighter than that of their natural tone. This sparked some controversy as it implied that the creators believe people with lighter skins to be more attractive than those of darker skin.

• The creator of an app which changes your selfies using artificial intelligence has apologised because its “hot” filter automatically lightened people’s skin.
• Yaroslav Goncharov, the creator and CEO of FaceApp, apologised for the feature, which he said was a side-effect of the “neural network”.
• This is by no means the first time an app which changes people’s faces have been criticised for racial insensitivity.

Personally, I think this is over-sensitization. It can easily be argued that such pre-defined filters would have different aspects of traits to them which could be misinterpreted, although it is perceived as racism, it is most likely just an honest mistake. I do not believe that the creator had any immoral intentions as he intended to make the app for entertainment purposes. I believe we live in a society where every small detail is seen as offensive and needs to be fixed, which could be a result of too much information.

Ignite presentation notes

Ladan

• Focus on Twitter
• US General election, politicians use Twitter
• News agenda, audience discussion
• Interconnected world
• Social media movements #BlackLivesMatter
• Citizen journalism, UGC

Abayomi

• Napster 1999
• Streaming, delivering music without download
• Majority of Spotify users are 18-29 year olds
• "Access rather than own"
• Use of social media marketing appeals to milenial audiences
• 50 million songs streamed in 2015

Amrit

• Instagram bought by Facebook
• 8% of 65+ mostly youth on Instagram
• Cyberbullying is possible
• Huge influence of user generated content
• Mass audience is encouraged to partake in consumerism
• Americanisation, consumerism
• Objectification of men and women

Callum

• New Activision, Vivendi 2007
• Activision - Blizzard, 2008
• User generated content not prominent
• Game market is expected to grow
• Black Ops 3 was advertised on Snapchat
• Marwick (2008) technopanic

Katie

• Traditional distribution has changed for documentaries
• Binge watching culture
• YouTube is damaging to the documentary genre
• Social media is used consistently, identification
• Docu-dramas appeal to a larger audience
• Added depth to documentaries which makes it relatable and sensationalises the topic

Harkiran

• Lionsgate was originally Cineplex
• Hunger Games was produced and distributed by Lionsgate
• Cinema audience is older generation
• Move to online, on demand services
• 2014 had a 5.1% decrease of cinema goers
• On demand offers a modern distribution model

Khadijah

• Audiences for Netflix are mostly mainstreamers
• It wasn't launched in the UK until later
• Very branded presence
• Creating original content
• Focusing on current issues and debates
• Promotion through social media

John

• Apple Music is available in more than 100 countries
• Unsigned artists can sell their work to iTunes
• Streaming has created a boost in the music industry after years of decline
• On demand music rose to 76%
• The global music industry has grown

19/04/17 - Gunman's video prompts Facebook rethink

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39625679

The article focuses on the recent case of Steven Stephens. Stephens was a 37 year old black male that posted different videos and Live streams of him going on a killing spree. The first video which showed Stephen's intent to murder was uploaded but not reported to Facebook. The second video was of Stephens shooting whilst the third was a Live stream of him confessing to his crimes. The live stream lasted 5 minutes and was flagged for Facebook staff but the other videos were not. This has led to Facebook to launch a review of how it deals with the content on its website.

• Facebook has launched a review of how it deals with violent content on its network.
• The announcement came after a video showing a killing was posted to Facebook on Sunday and remained there for more than two hours.
• “We know we need to do better,” a company executive said.
• Facebook has faced considerable criticism due to the length of time the violent video spent published on the network.
• "As a result of this terrible series of events, we are reviewing our reporting flows to be sure people can report videos and other material that violates our standards as easily and quickly as possible,” wrote Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s vice-president of global operations.

Personally, I think Facebook is under a lot of heavy fire recently. This is entirely due to the fact that the way they deal with certain aspects of the social media site is completely mismanaged or outdated. Therefore, I believe that although it is a huge company, Facebook will die out sooner or later. This is entirely due to the fact that the social media site has not been keeping up to date with the rapid changes of the world wide web.

19/04/17 - UK internet ad spend passes £10bn as Google faces YouTube row

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/apr/12/uk-internet-ad-google-youtube-mobile-video-tv

The article focuses on how the amount of money spent on internet advertising in the UK last year alone had been more than £10billion. The article also focuses on the fact that major online companies are doubling the amount that they spend on mobile video adverts. This is due to the fact that the growth of mobile users on the internet and therefore a lot of companies are choosing to target the platform or device that is best suited for their audience or even demographic. 

• Internet advertising spend surged above £10bn in the UK last year as companies more than doubled the amount they spent on mobile video ads.
• The year-on-year increase of 17% on 2015 comes as many advertisers have pulled campaigns from Google and YouTube after it emerged that some ads have been running around inappropriate content such as extremist videos. 
• However, the overall trend is for growth. Last year’s increase, the biggest since 2007, was fuelled by a boom in mobile ad spend, which rose by 51% to £3.9bn.
• “People are increasingly using their smartphones to watch more clips, programmes and films,” said James Chandler, the chief marketing officer at the Internet Advertising Bureau UK
• “Consequently, as companies have to follow what the industry calls ‘eyeballs’ to get their ads in front of people, they have to allocate more budget to mobile and online video as that’s where people are spending more time.”

Personally, I think it's interesting to see how companies are increasing their spending for internet advertising. It is especially obvious that these are where the users and target audiences are present and therefore it only makes sense that the companies go where the demand is. However, I believe that if spending is only going to be increased, over time the internet will be filled with adverts which are going to make people want to use Ad Blocking software.

12/04/17 - From nasty to nice: how adblockers are trying to pivot

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/apr/12/adblockers-trying-pivot-nasty-nice

The article focuses on the fact that Adblock Plus has been highly controversial amongst users, developers and publishers. The fact of the matter is that it is incredibly difficult to monetize the internet, and in the early days, the use of adverts on the internet were highly crucial to the generation of ad revenue by publishers and companies. The AdBock Plus software was highly used by people around the world, however there were many cases where the company chose to whitelist certain corporations if they were able to pay certain amounts. AdBlock Plus has also been known in the past to create and develop different aspects of advertising for companies that are considered less annoying than standard adverts.

• Adblocker developers argued that ad-supported media on the net was abusing its readers
• Publishers argued that blocking ads was tantamount to theft
• Britain’s IAB estimates 22% of visitors block ads, the same as this time last year
• Some sites have started appealing to the morality of visitors, pointing out that blocking adverts deprives publishers of revenue, and requesting adblocking readers whitelist their domains.

Personally, I think it's great that AdBlock Plus are coming up with different ways to improve the relationship and working between users, developers and publishers. A lot of the time users want to remove these adverts that they find annoying, however at the same time a publisher's bills need to be paid and the only way they can do so is by cashing in on ad revenue from the content that they create. Although I think its great that a sort of middle ground is appearing, however I think that its important to not to lose sight of the greater picture which is the internet being a place of freedom.

12/04/17 - Revealed: the more time that children chat on social media, the less happy they feel

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/09/social-networks--children-chat-feel-less-happy-facebook-instagram-whatsapp

The article focuses on how a study was done by economists at the University of Sheffield that talks about how young people that use social media are more likely to feel less happy in their everyday life. It also shows that almost 90% of young people use social media online and that there is a 14% probability that it will affect their happiness. The study also states that young people now spend more time online rather than watching television.

•  A study has revealed that the children who spend more time on online social networks feel less happy in almost all aspects of their lives.
• The research by a team of economists at the University of Sheffield, to be presented at this week’s Royal Economic Society annual conference in Bristol, shows that the more time children spend chatting on Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Instagram, the less happy they feel about their school work, the school they attend, their appearance, their family and their life overall. However, they do feel happier about their friendships.
• Economists found that spending just one hour a day on social networks reduces the probability of a child being completely happy with his or her life overall by around 14%.
• More than 90% of 16- to 24-year-olds use online social networks and while most sites stipulate a minimum user age of 13, few apply any checks. A BBC survey found that more than three-quarters of 10- to 12-year-olds have social media accounts
• Teenagers now spend nearly three and a half more hours a week online than they do watching television.

I personally think it is an interesting study. However, it is important to note that there is a positivity in this study due to the fact that the study has noted greater positivity in the young people's friendships. It is also important to note that the study was done by economists and not psychologists so the study must not be taken entirely seriously.

05/04/17 - Are we finally reacting to the disruptive supremacy of Facebook and Google?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/26/finally-reacting-disruptive-supermacy-of-facebook-and-google

The article focuses on the different aspects of how new digital media can be considered harmful to society. It also takes into account of the words of Sir Tim Berners-Lee who invented the world wide web and says that these are worrying times as same values of the internet are now being abused to further specific agendas of corporations and politicians. The article further takes into account of the fact that Germany has been challenging Facebook and Google has agreed to policing its adverts. These are events that are going to be shaping the internet for years to come.

• As Tim Berners-Lee, the web’s inventor, wrote in a salutary open letter to mark its birthday, these are worrying times.
• The combination of losing control of our personal data, the monumental growth of misinformation and fake news and evolution of abusive, targeted “programmatic” advertising, particularly political advertising, constitutes a mortal threat to our civilisation.
• Trump in the US and Brexit in Europe, events possibly influenced by the new disregard for fact and capacity to manipulate, are but storm warnings of where these trends are taking us.
• In the UK, the government has taken powers to survey and monitor our emails and texts. 
• In the private sector, Facebook and Google know more about our preferences, which can be shamelessly exploited by political and commercial advertisers. 
• Meanwhile, the German government, with the EU commission, is preparing to fine social networking sites up to $50m if they fail to take down fake news, hate speech and defamatory content within 24 hours of it being posted.

I personally think this is a very interesting argument. I think it is absolutely necessary for the internet to have some kind of gatekeeping in order to reduce the increasing amount of fake news. However, it is important to note that although gatekeeping for the internet can be good, it can easily be manipulated and twisted in a way that people in authority can set up rules and regulation that suit them and their agendas rather than the public interest of the society.

05/04/17 - Ofsted considers using social media to monitor schools

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/31/ofsted-considers-using-social-media-to-monitor-schools

The article talks about how Ofsted is considering using social media such as Facebook and Twitter in order to analyse the way schools are performing. This approach would include seeing how frequently a school has been posted about on social media which would determine whether or not the visit of an inspector needs to be moved to a sooner date.

• Ofsted has raised the prospect of using Facebook and Twitter posts to analyse how schools are performing.
• The organisation said the frequency and content of social media posts about a particular school could help it decide whether an inspector should visit sooner than planned.
• “People can put fake information about schools, they can make false accusations about schools,” Orchison said, citing the example of a disgruntled pupil or parent posting fake allegations about a teacher.
• A 2015 survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers found that more than one in five school staff have had a false allegation made against them by a pupil.

I personally think that this is not an effected method of modernising education. I also believe that using social media as "real time" data is not at all accurate and will not give a better picture of the school for inspectors. Furthermore I also believe that what the students choose to do online in their spare time should not be the responsibility or have to be dealt with by schools. There needs to be a limit to privacy and by using social media to determine schools will not be effective.

29/03/17 - Internet firms must do more to tackle online extremism, says No 10

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/24/internet-firms-must-do-more-to-tackle-online-extremism-no-10

The article focuses on how the Prime Minister's spokesperson has stated that social media or online firms such as Facebook and Google are not doing enough when it comes to removing harmful content from their websites. Due to the recent London Terror attack, this debate has been re sparked and 10 Downing Street has stated that the government has always in the past urged this companies that they could do more and work better when it comes to harmful content or even when society's concerns are raised. After a recent hearing with Google, Facebook and Twitter, Yvette Cooper, the committee’s chair, offered a assessment of their record tackling extremist material which showed that their commitment to removing such content was lacking.

• Downing Street has called for social media companies to do more to expunge extremist material from the internet.
• The prime minister’s spokesman said firms such as Facebook and Google “can and must do more” to remove inflammatory material from the web and that it was up to them to respond to public concern.
• The London terror attack has reignited concern about the easy availability of material promoting violent extremism online, although No 10 said on Friday it was making a general point and that it was not not necessarily saying online material was a factor in the radicalisation of Khalid Masood
• Yvette Cooper said YouTube’s enforcement of its community standards was “a joke” and that Twitter and Facebook were too slow to deal with hate-filled content

Personally, I believe that the government in some way or form is more than welcome to criticise the use of social media and large organisations but more specifically how they tackle harmful content. I definitely agree that companies such as Facebook and Google do not do enough when it comes to removing harmful content or taking care of content that is being reported. I think this is something that should be dealt by the companies specifically and not the government as a whole, as that can lead to issues of piracy and government censorship.

29/03/17 - Singapore teen blogger who criticised government wins asylum in US

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/25/singapore-teen-blogger-who-criticised-government-wins-asylum-in-us

This article is about how a teenage blogger from Singapore whose online posts criticising his government landed in him jail has been granted asylum to remain in the United States. Amos Yee, aged 18, left Singapore with the intention of seeking asylum in the US after being jailed for several weeks in 2015 and 2016. He was accused of attacking the views of Muslims and Christians; Yee is an atheist. However, many of his blog and social media posts have criticised Singapore’s leaders. He created controversy in 2015 as the city-state was mourning the death of its first prime minister and he posted an offensive video about prime minister Lee Kuan Yew just after his death. In addition, Yee said in a phone interview from jail this month that he feared returning to Singapore. But he said he would continue to speak out and had already planned a line of T-shirts and started writing a book about his experiences. “I have an infinite amount of ideas of what to do,” he said.

• Amos Yee, 18, had been detained by federal immigration authorities since December when he wase taken into custody at Chicago’s O’Hare International airport.
• He was accused of hurting the religious feelings of Muslims and Christians; Yee is an atheist. However, many of his blog and social media posts criticized Singapore’s leaders
• Such open criticism of political leaders is discouraged in Singapore. The case, which raised questions about free speech and censorship, has been closely watched abroad.
• Yee said in a phone interview from jail this month that he feared returning to Singapore. 
• “Singapore excels at creating a pressure cooker environment for dissidents and free thinkers who dare challenge the political, economic and social diktats from the ruling People’s Action Party. It’s clear the Singapore government saw Amos Yee as the proverbial nail sticking up that had to be hammered down.”

Personally, I think this is a great case of just how new digital media can be a worrying platform for a rise in either rightwing opinions or "shock" value content that is used purely for the purpose of creating anger/shock in order to gain hits or views to their website. I think this is also a great example of how unfiltered the internet is as these kinds of views can be extremely harmful to society as a whole due to a severe lack of gatekeeping on the internet.

MEST3 Independent case study: Research

Media magazine

MM 38

• Now with modern technology even people in rural communities have access to mobile phones and internet.
• Social networking can allow communication between disenfranchised people all across the world. It can be a vehicle for free dialogue and contribute towards positive changes in societies.
• Social media played its part in bringing about this revolution. This was what was so powerful in the Arab spring. Social media provided a vehicle to quickly amplify public sentiment.
• Recently we have seen evidence of this. The so-called Arab Spring owes some of its success to people’s innovative use of social media.
• In just over a few months and after years of silence people were voicing their total dissatisfaction with their governments. People used social media to unite and to demand change.
• Social media is being used to keep their dialogue moving. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter give such immediate communication. They are examples of powerful social media, dynamic media working in real-time, affording interaction around the world.
• One 17-year-old from Suffolk was banned from using social networking sites for 12 months and was ordered to observe a three month overnight curfew for using Facebook to encourage people to riot.

MM 45

• All media products are constructed with great care in terms of the way messages are communicated to the audience.
• The first stage in creating propaganda is usually to create a scapegoat – an identifiable enemy of some kind, often an individual or a sub-group within the culture.
• Once the enemy has been pinpointed, assertions can be made to create simplified representations of the group.
• The assertions should reinforce the enemy status of the person/group; and through careful selection of information, including facts that support the position and selectively omitting anything that may contradict it, a negative view can be communicated and reinforced by repetition.
• Name-calling, the use of false connections and bad logic can be made to create negative associations all of which can successfully demonise the chosen group – especially if, within all this, the audience’s fear and existing prejudices can be heightened.
• This is often achieved by appealing to emotions and making it appear that everyone agrees with the idea being communicated.
• Propaganda is defined as ‘information of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicise a particular political cause or point of view’.

MM59

• A filter bubble is a result of a personalised search in which a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see, based on information about the user (such as location, past click behaviour and search history).
• It was estimated that 78% of Trump’s statements were lies (Pomerantsev, 2016).
• Galtung and Ruge’s (1965) classic work on the ideology underpinning the selection of news stories showed how the production of news is influenced by news values, such as ‘ethnocentricity’, whereby ‘home’ news (either regional or national) takes priority over international stories.
• Since the early 1970s, newspaper circulation in the UK has been in decline as alternative sources of news have appeared – firstly 24-hour news channels, and latterly the internet.
• In Galtung and Ruge’s terms, Facebook is now acting as a ‘gatekeeper’ for news. So who edits Facebook news? Answer: nobody.
• Fake stories, whether propaganda or satire, can appear in the newsfeed amongst genuine stories.
• It is not social media alone that potentially guides us towards consuming fake news. Since 2009 Google has tailored our search enquiries based on our search histories. Its algorithm predicts which sources of information we’re most likely to be interested in, so we might miss out on material that challenges our existing worldview.
• We create our own filter bubbles on social media by choosing who to friend and follow. We are, in effect, placing ourselves in a silo where we might only have access to worldviews similar to our own.
• Fabricated Facebook news stories aren’t the only reason for Trump’s victory in the US election. For example, his campaign spent $90m on Facebook advertising, and the director of its digital strategy claims that this won the election.
• When lies are taken to be truth, we become victims of propaganda; and when opinion leaders then state that the fact their claims were false didn’t matter, it would appear that we are living in a ‘post-truth’ age.
• If the truth isn’t important then we cannot hold politicians to account and democracy is a complete sham.
• Did Trump become President because of lies? It might be comforting to believe so; and if we, as media experts, believe in the power of the media to influence, then it is reasonable to assume that lies promoted on social media platforms played some part in his electoral success.
• However did 60m Americans really vote for him because of what they read on the internet? Probably not. It is much more likely that many millions suffering economically did not so much vote for Trump, as vote against the ‘status quo’, represented by Clinton.

Factsheet

FACTSHEET 104

• In addition, digital media has allowed audiences to have a more proactive relationship with institutions and they can be seen to be much more active than in the past. Audiences can be seen to have more of an impact on production and can even be part of the production process themselves. Some see this as a positive move that reduces the amount of power held by institutions.
• Social networking has become increasingly important as a method of communication, in some cases overtaking media institutions in its ability to get stories out quickly to a large audience. Twitter increasingly is the story as well as the distribution method.
• Some critics argue that information can be lost in the ‘cacophony’ of the multiple voices now available. Lies can travel as quickly as the truth and sometimes it is not easy for audiences to know the difference. Recently, in the aftermath of the Jimmy Savile revelations, false information regarding the identity of another abuser was passed on via the internet with journalists and politician’s wives (amongst others) using Twitter to spread unsubstantiated gossip.
• More and more programmes feature the reading of texts and emails sent in by audience members and Twitter feeds are often integrated into programmes.
• Even though those that comment on-line or who take part in Twitter debates can be seen to be diluting the total power once held by institutions, it has been noted that not all members of the audience participate and power is collecting around certain special interest groups or communities (Mumsnet, 4Chan, Reddit etc.).
• In addition, on-line discussions often veer towards aggression and have often been identified as including sexism, racism and homophobia in the discourse of debate (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/06/ gender.blogging). This can be off-putting for many people and limit the debate rather than extend it.

Books

The Newspapers Handbook – Richard Keeble, 2001

Powerful information: Reporting national and local government, John Turner – Page 147

• “Politics is about power and information is power.”
• “Journalists are part of the information business and are crucial in a political process which involves the exercise of this potent force.”
• “People with power, whether they be Cabinet ministers, senior civil servants or chief executives of local councils, have a vested interest, not only in protecting their own power, but also in obscuring the extent of their authority in the first place.”
• “The journalist occupies a pivotal position between those who make and implement important decisions and those who are often forced to comply with such decisions.”
• “Any democratic system depends on people being well informed and educated about politics by a media which gives a full and accurate account of news, encompassing a wide and varied range of political opinions.”
• “The media in general have a large and growing significance on politics.”
• Page 148 – “Agenda-setting and primary definers: here the media are accused less of telling people what to believe, than in providing a more pervasive influence on what people think about and how they make judgements about different issues”
• “Reinforcement and hegemony: here the media are not so much creating attitudes but are involved in strengthening and reinforcing existing beliefs and prejudices. This can be linked to the notion of hegemony whereby consent is sought for those ways of making sense of the world which fit with the perspective of those in power.”
• “Independent effects: there is a growing view that the media have a more direct and independent effect on beliefs and behaviour. New media technologies have as much of an influence on attitudes and behaviour as the uses to which they are put.”
• “Newton (1986) has pointed to a paradox in the media’s impact on political awareness.”
• “Whereas political information is delivered faster to more people, nevertheless the mass tabloids contain only a little political content and what they report is personalised, trivialised, sensationalised and biased.”
• “Consequently, a large proportion of the public is provided with restricted news and knowledge of current affairs.”
• “This contradiction has been discussed by Seymour-Ure (1974) in his distinction of levels of readership between a mass public who mainly read gossip columns and sports pages and are therefore more readily influenced by biased news.”

Online - Up to minute

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/04/cambridge-analytica-democracy-digital-age

• Cambridge Analytica, its parent company SCL, and its relationship to the Leave campaign raise questions that cannot be ignored – questions that are vital to the integrity of our democracy and what it means to be a citizen in the digital age. Was the referendum free, fair and legally fought? Were voters covertly manipulated without their consent? And, crucially, what role exactly does Robert Mercer – Donald Trump’s biggest donor and close associate of Steve Bannon – have in all this?
• The Observer revealed that the billionaire hedge-fund owner, and a money man behind Donald Trump, was a key figure operating behind the scenes in Brexit. Andy Wigmore of Leave.EU told us that Mercer is a personal friend of Nigel Farage and that it was he who made the introduction between Leave.EU and Cambridge Analytica. He said: “They were happy to help. Because Nigel is a good friend of the Mercers. And Mercer introduced them to us.”
• Is it the case that our elections will increasingly be decided by the whims of billionaires, operating in the shadows, behind the scenes, using their fortunes to decide our fate?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/25/national-park-service-trump-twitter-campaign-spreads

• It started when the National Park Service’s Twitter account retweeted pictures comparing the crowds for Donald Trump’s inauguration and that of Barack Obama in 2009.
• This, and another retweet about policy changes on the White House website meant the National Park Service was promptly reprimanded and banned from tweeting
• Telling all bureaus to immediately cease use of government Twitter accounts until further notice is something of an overreaction

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/09/twitter-loses-advertising-revenue-rise-users-shares

• Investors take fright as company reveals $457m loss for 2016 and concedes its financial growth is lagging its popularity
• Shares in Twitter have slumped after the tech company suffered a decline in advertising income, despite a rise in user numbers as Donald Trump’s high-profile tweeting helped to advertise the platform’s influence.
• Jack Dorsey, chief executive and co-founder, hailed the growing “impact and influence” of Twitter, saying the US president had “boosted the power” of the service.
• The San Francisco-based company reported annual revenues up 14% on last year to $2.5bn (£2bn). Monthly active users climbed from 317 million to 319 million in the final quarter of last year.
• The tech company is still making sizeable losses, falling $457m into the red during 2016 despite cutting 9% of its workforce, or about 350 people. Its shares fell by more than 11% to $16.54 in early trading on Wall Street after the disappointing set of figures were revealed.
• Twitter has now racked up losses of almost $2.8bn since it floated on the stock market three years ago – at $26 a share – and the latest figures deal a blow to the company’s plan to turn a profit by the end of 2017.
• One figure that will give cause for concern among investors is a fall in advertising revenue in the fourth quarter, down to $638m from $641m in the same period of last year. This was largely because of a slump in revenues in the US, which wiped out gains in Twitter’s international markets.
• The company had reported an increase in advertising revenue in the first three quarters of the year, before the trend reversed in the final three months. This was largely down to a 5% slump in revenues in the US to $440m, a fall that wiped out a 12% rise to $277m in its international markets.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/feb/06/super-bowl-ad-prompts-trump-supporters-to-boycott-budweiser

• Advert depicting immigrants inventing the American beer brand leads to boycott calls – and mockery of them – on social media
• This year, during the first Super Bowl of Donald Trump’s presidency, the US brewery Anheuser-Busch used its slot to send a pro-immigration message to the nation.
• The advert, Born the Hard Way, portrays a fictionalised version of the journey of Adolphus Busch to the US, where he would go on to help create Budweiser beer with fellow immigrant Eberhard Anheuser.
• Trump supporters on social media were furious when the advert was launched before the game, vowing not to drink the beer again.
• Trump supporters have recently targeted Kelloggs with the #DumpKelloggs hashtag after the cereal company, along with around 800 other firms, pulled advertising from the Breitbart website.
• Budweiser was not alone in taking the opportunity to troll Trump during the Super Bowl, with Airbnb, Audi and Coca-Cola all airing adverts that promoted equality, diversity and tolerance.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/15/trump-post-factual-presidency-both-victor-and-victim

• The evidence from last week’s hostile press conference is clear: no traditional ‘facts’ can damage a world leader who embodies conspiracy theory
• When attacked – by anyone from Meryl Streep to the CIA – the commander-in-chief of democratic righteousness will kick right back. He’ll say that she’s a lousy actor and Hillary hack. He’ll snarl about intelligence “Nazis”. And he’ll carry on tweeting incessantly.
• So the strategy is clear enough already. Journalism’s twisted titans are supposedly out to get the Donald, out to distort and malign him as though the election had never been. 
• Random effusions via Twitter still get newsdesks shifting after midnight. Rationed access to Trump still gets maximum replay (because it remains a scarce commodity). And “dishonest big media” are still in a bind.
• One chunk of public opinion has already decided that “Giving Donald a chance, even though we didn’t vote for him” is today’s pragmatism. Another chunk is out on the streets. 
• Observe, too, the way in which, in digital times, one decision to post the whole thing on the net frees other papers to offer links to it. A single click of a decision covers all. There’s no need for everyone to publish: digitally, one is enough. Is that freedom to be righteous and practical, or a freedom to duck for cover? A very post-Leveson situation.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2017/jan/12/debate-double-can-we-trust-our-media-and-is-press-freedom-threatened

• London Press Club to stage panel discussions about the coverage of Donald Trump and Brexit plus the threat posed by section 40
• They will consider the media’s role in its coverage of both Donald Trump’s election campaign and in ther lead-up to the European referendum and its aftermath.
• They are bound to touch on all kinds of related subjects, such as mainstream media’s relationship with social media. Can the traditional press compete with, and possibly counter, Twitter? What can be done about fake news? Do newspapers create populism or respond to it?

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/10/buzzfeed-publishes-donald-trump-russia-documents-ethics-questions

• BuzzFeed’s decision to publish an intelligence report filled with salacious and unsubstantiated claims about Donald Trump’s purported behaviour in Russia has triggered a political storm and debate over media ethics.
• The news website posted the unredacted documents on Tuesday, just 10 days before Trump’s inauguration, with a warning that the contents contained errors and were “unverified and potentially unverifiable”.
• The documents, reportedly compiled by a British former intelligence agent, alleged that the Kremlin was “cultivating, supporting and assisting” Trump for at least five years.
• Other media outlets including the Guardian had obtained and reviewed the documents in recent weeks but declined to publish because there was no way to independently verify them.
• The stakes rose on Tuesday when CNN reported that America’s intelligence chiefs had given Trump and Barack Obama a two-page summary of the reports last week. CNN and the Guardian also reported that Senator John McCain had delivered a copy to the FBI director, James Comey, last month, but withheld the documents’ most eye-opening details, citing lack of corroboration.
•  “Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government,”
• Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief, followed up a few hours later with a statement that defended publication as an act of journalistic transparency in a hyper-partisan era.
• “Publishing this document was not an easy or simple call, and people of good will may disagree with our choice. But publishing this dossier reflects how we see the job of reporters in 2017.” Smith amplified the warning in BuzzFeed’s original story by saying there was “serious reason to doubt the allegations”.
• “Even Donald Trump deserves journalistic fairness,” tweeted David Corn, Mother Jones’s Washington bureau chief who reported in October on the existence – but not the contents – of memos from a “former western intelligence officer”.
• “Not how journalism works: Here’s a thing that might or might not be true, without supporting evidence; decide for yourself if it’s legit,” tweeted Brad Heath, an investigative reporter for USA Today.
• “The documents are unverified and yet this is a document which is being discussed across media circles and across security circles. If it is being briefed to the president-elect then it’s better to be able to see what he’s being briefed.”
• Roy Greenslade, who teaches journalistic ethics at City University’s school of journalism and writes a column for the Guardian, said the publication of the documents was an error.
• “I’m all for disclosure, but news outlets must act responsibly and should also beware of doing anything that undermines their credibility,” he said. “On both counts, Buzzfeed’s decision to publish the material was an error. It is disingenuous to publish the document on the grounds that ‘Americans can make up their own minds’. Adopting that criterion would allow for the publication of anything irrespective of its authenticity.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov/20/barack-obama-facebook-fake-news-problem

• “In an age where there’s so much active misinformation, and it’s packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television, where some overzealousness on the part of a US official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere, if everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect,” [Obama] told reporters in Berlin on Thursday. “If we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.”
• “Facebook would have to hire thousands of human beings who are trained to make editorial judgments and could step in and edit news feeds,”
• In the meantime, it’s as if Mark Zuckerberg is using some different version of Facebook unafflicted by hoax stories and misinformation. “The rest of us know too well the corrosive power of fake news.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/29/german-spy-chief-russian-hackers-could-disrupt-elections-bruno-kahl-cyber-attacks

• The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service has warned that next year’s general election could be targeted by Russian hackers intent on spreading misinformation and undermining the democratic process.
• Bruno Kahl, president of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, said Russia may have been behind attempts during the US presidential campaign to interfere with the vote.
• “We have evidence that cyber-attacks are taking place that have no purpose other than to elicit political uncertainty,” he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung in his first interview since he was appointed five months ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/05/can-donald-trump-save-twitter

• The president-elect’s musings are reported as news almost every day, but will the attention help make Twitter great again?
• “It’s like owning your own newspaper – without the losses.” That’s how Donald Trump described the San Francisco-headquartered social media tool in November 2012.
• His prolific and opinionated 140-character outpourings (“tremendous!”, “very unfair!”, “crooked”, “nice”) are amplified by traditional media, reporting on his ad hominem attacks and diplomatic gaffes.
• For Twitter, it’s been a marketer’s dream: barely a day goes by without TV channels, newspapers and websites name-checking the social media platform in stories about what @real Donald Trump is posting.
• Trump hasn’t held a traditional press conference since July 2016, opting instead for combining controlled settings of interviews with Twitter, which he views as a way of “fighting back” against stories he considers to be inaccurate or bad.
• “This is his way of controlling the news cycle. He’s brilliant at that,” said analyst Leigh Drogen, founder and CEO of Estimize.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jan/08/meryl-streep-golden-globes-speech-donald-trump

• Meryl Streep delivered an emotional speech at the Golden Globes in which she criticized Donald Trump for imitating a disabled reporter while campaigning to be president, saying it “gives permission” to others to do the same.
• The US president-elect drew widespread opprobrium in November when he derided the New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski – who had disputed Trumps’s claim he saw “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrate the 9/11 attacks – while flailing and twisting his arms. Kovaleski has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that affects joint movement.
• Trump responded to Streep’s speech by describing her as “a Hillary lover”, adding that he was not surprised that he had come under attack from “liberal movie people”. 
• He told the New York Times that he denied mocking Kovaleski. “I was never mocking anyone. I was calling into question a reporter who had gotten nervous because he had changed his story”, he said. “People keep saying I intended to mock the reporter’s disability, as if Meryl Streep and others could read my mind, and I did no such thing.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/31/politics-digital-technology-brexit-donald-trump

• Are digital technologies making politics impossible?
• It’s hard to live through the age of Brexit and Donald Trump, of Jeremy Corbyn and anti-Corbyn, without feeling that something has gone wrong with our democracy.
• We fixate on people and personalities, looking for someone to blame for our mutual incomprehension - “It’s her fault!” “It’s his fault!” – when this only makes the divisions worse. But what if it’s not the people that are the problem? What if it’s the machines through which we increasingly communicate that are causing things to fall apart?
• Digital technologies make it far easier than it has ever been to find out what people want – their likes and dislikes – without having to go through the cumbersome business of getting them to vote. You may find that a terrifying prospect. Or you may find it a liberating one.
• That’s another way in which this is an open question: making politics impossible sounds like something to regret, but if politics has become a barrier in the way of getting things done, could it be something to celebrate?
• A genuinely digital currency – on the blockchain model of Bitcoin – could entirely alter the power of the state. Full blown cyber-warfare – with algorithms not human beings fighting it out – might do the same.
• Perhaps instead of being left behind by the transformative power of the digital revolution, politics is about to catch up. In that case, all bets are off. Technologies that have the potential to spell the end of analogue politics do not spell the end of politics altogether. What seems impossible for the current generation of politicians may be a sign of what the next generation will have at its disposal.
•  There’s no doubt that digital technologies are changing human behaviour, and not always for the better. The hopes from the dawn of the digital age of a new era of democratic empowerment remain unfulfilled. Intolerance appears to be on the rise. Governments have proved more adept at using this technology to keep an eye on us than we have been at keeping an eye on them.

22/03/17 - YouTube changes restrictions on gay-themed content following outcry

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/mar/21/youtube-changes-restrictions-gay-lgbtq-themed-content-tegan-sarah

The article talks about the recent scandal with the services of YouTube when it comes to the restriction policies that they have set in terms of non-explicit videos featuring LGBTQ themes. Tegan and Sara who are Canadian LGBTQ musicians were among those who complained about the policy. YouTube restricted their videos just because they were openly gay even though their content of the videos was not at all explicit or sexual in anyway shape or form.

• YouTube had been criticised for having non-explicit videos featuring LGBTQ themes classed as restricted 
• The “restricted” designation lets parents, schools and libraries filter out content that isn’t appropriate for users under 18.dd 
• Turning on the restriction makes videos inaccessible. YouTube calls it “an optional feature used by a very small subset of users”.
• In general, though, it includes “sexually explicit language or excessive profanity”, and violent or disturbing content, according to YouTube’s policies.
• YouTube says it also uses “community flagging”, which means users can flag videos for possible restrictions or removal.

Personally, I think it is a bit of a dilemma. In a rapidly expanding society where new and digital media is constantly at a rise. YouTube is a service that receives thousands of videos on a daily basis, so it can be justifiable for them to make a small mistake of categorisation of some videos. At the end of the day, I think it is important that they own up to their mistakes and come up with solutions that will greatly affect their structure in the long term and also incite greater discussion. I also feel that it was definitely wrong of them, but we should not be so quick to judge and assume that the company had bad intentions in mind.