Media Ethics - Week 6

 Media Ethics

Week 6, Video Task


In the first video I watched, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OseOb_wBsi4) “The Medium is the Message”, Dan Olsen gave us a better understanding of what the phrase “the medium is the message” actually means. 


Dan firstly starts off by referencing McLuhan’s own words “This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves…”. Initially to me, this meant that we don’t actually look at the real meaning of a medium, we use a projectile of ourselves to form a message for the medium. Dan explains that the mediums have a far greater impact on the fundamental shape and nature of society than any message that is delivered through that medium. Dan then gives us plenty of examples and I can see understand what he means. For example, Dan states that trains, cars, and airplanes build and structure our ideas of what cities should look like. This makes a lot of sense since it has been years and years of only knowing this idea, we are so used to it.


In the second video, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q91nvbJSmS4) we look at “What is the Cambridge Analytica scandal?”. I have never heard of this scandal before today but after watching that video, I unfortunately am not surprised. The scandal seemed to occur in 2018 which was a couple years ago and a couple year ago, society and the internet was very different. I think that over the years, we have all learnt the privacy of the internet which is very small to none.  


Although I am not surprised, I definitely think it should have been dealt better and I also think that society should now at least be aware of themselves on the internet. 


The third video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxkrdLI6e6M) was quite interesting to me. The video talked about “How Dark Patterns Trick You Online”. By just reading the title, I didn’t fully understand what it meant. 


The definition of dark patterns is “features of interface design crafted to trick users into doing things they might not want to do, but which benefit the business in question.” This was quite interesting and new to learn about considering how much time we spend on the internet but probably don’t realise how we are basically being manipulated someway. I can definitely relate to the examples used in the video like trying to unsubscribe to an email but the font size and colour is almost identical to the main text.


The fourth and final video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj_UWbifM2U) was very insightful. I find it extremely fascinating that a single person could make such a large difference without directly saying anything. 


His campaign for more women to start smoking may have bad intentions but his entire process and planning was very smart.

This image was taken from an article by Baloch Khan
https://bolanvoice.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/universal-media-ethics-and-modern-media/


Comments

  1. From reading this post, I felt it was really well researched and thought out. The paragraphs were well structured and the language in the text was very easy to understand and leaves the audience with no confusion. The information in the post has definitely given me a better understanding for the topic especially for those who haven't heard about it.

    However, there were a few minor things i felt you could have improves on to make the post better. As I was reading this post I felt that I didn't get enough information about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, I needed more facts and actual information about what the scandal was about as audience want to come to the post to learn about this topic but there was no information about it. I also felt you needed to give more facts and information about the fourth video you watched as I felt it wasn't enough and it leaves the audience confused about what you are talking about.

    Overall, I feel this was a very well written blog.

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