Disrupting Traditional Journalism

Being in the Professional Writing Program in University of Toronto Mississauga, the thought of going into journalism has always been in my mind. TIL the advancement in technology and the rise of social media changed the game so much that journalism was not as we remembered it to be. Reporters with notepads and extensive articles are replaced by iPads, tweets and story updates. In order to gain an edge in this ever-changing playing field, we should understand what the expectations and future is for journalism.

In our lecture, we learnt that it is easy to call yourself a journalist, but not easy to be one. Turner refers to journalism as an account of daily events that is processed and distributed by a series of professional industrial routines. Nowadays, it’s more automatic. There are even computers that can analyse and write a whole sports essay without the help of a human. There are no requirements, no certification and no license needed. All you have to do is pick up a pen and a piece of paper, publish something and call yourself a journalist. But if you want to get to the juicy stuff, you need a press pass. And to get a press pass, you need credentials. And to get credentials you need to be a good journalist.

Good journalism entails that we view every source as legitimate. It is important to view the world as a whole so collecting a wide range of opinions ensures that. Journalists also should separate lies from the truths. But these are just ideals. Mere heroic ideology of journalism. Most journalism we see now shape the world the way they want us to see. They shape the public discourse and create a simulated version of the world that differs from the real world. For example, US media reporting on the Afghan War or other wars tactfully removed reports on civilians killed and focused on “bad guys” killed.

However journalism isn’t all that bad. Sometimes, journalists act as watchdogs. They expose and monitor those with power and influence. For example, even if some US media covers up the war crimes during the wars, others work to expose the Iraq war. Julia Wong exposed labor abuses at Tesla’s Fremont, California. Others exposed the Downing Street Memo between the US and the UK and also secrets of the US government by the whistle blower Edward Snowden.

The news also acts as a propaganda. According to our professor, there’s usually a 6 step process and ends up with a cleansed filtered 5th edition. Media companies first filter out ownership issues, then advertisement issues then sources and strong criticism and finally anti communist ideology. Anything that reflects badly on major companies or parties involved with the government and media company is removed.

If we decide to be journalists right now, we most likely will be backpack journalists according to Stovall. What it means is that we write our own stories, take our own photos and provide the audios and videos. Being knowledgeable with cameras mean a lot in photos. According to another classmate of mine, wide shots, mid range shots and closeup shots provide different viewpoints. The difference of shots also cast a different light on the subject. That’s how we feel animosity to some subjects in photos while we feel pity towards others.

In our discussion, we talked about the possibility of working as a journalist. I feel like if I work as a journalist, I won’t be too bothered about asking strangers questions, including celebrities. Someone mentioned that the credibility of her company also mattered a lot. If she was backed by a reputable organization whe wouldn’t feel as embarrassed as an independent journalist. I had experience interviewing a celebrity before in high school. I didn’t feel nervous, it was interesting. Like what another classmate said, these people love to be heard. I don’t think it would be too hard if I asked the right questions. Definitely not personal questions as well, we all know how that will end up.

Online voices and personas

TIL how to start as a content creator and creating a strong persona on the Internet. I also learned the skills of rhetoric speaking and the importance it has on persuasiveness towards consumers of social media.

There are a lot of problems that come with being an influencer in this day and age. If we decided to start going on this path it is riddled with challenges and bumps. There is huge competition no matter what field you go to with established influencers roaming the field since day one. Fashion, sports, entertainment etc are all claimed by different giants which make it difficult for someone to start. For example, SNES Drunk from gaming, Anthony Fantano from music, THe Minority Report from politics etc. What’s worse is that the content you put out is only deemed”worthy” and “viral” by the consumers of social media. You can’t just make your content go viral.

However there is still hope for our generation. Unlike most influencers on the Internet right now, we were born as digital natives instead of digital immigrants like they were. We grew up and adapted to the ways of social media. It is a part of us. My professor included a funny parody of Batman’s Bane quote “Ah, you think [the Web] is your ally. [Boomers] merely adopted the [Web]. [Millennials were] born in it, molded by it.” It is easier for us to sound authentic and come of as relatable to other consumers of social media. We also adapt faster to memes, inside jokes, slang, gossip and other adapting aspects of the net. These all make us more persuasive to our audience.

Speaking of persuasiveness, rhetoric speaking is a great way to deliver a message in a powerful way. According to Aristotle a rhetor is a person who speaks well and includes three aspects in their speech – Logos, Ethos, Pathos. These three aspects work together to deliver powerful and influential messages. Logos mean logic like numbers and statistics. Ethos refer to the reputation of the speaker, the history of our actions and claims of expertise. Pathos are things that tug at your heartstrings. There are some other tips our professor also told us to keep in mind. First we need to remember that our audience shapes what we decide to say, we have to make sure we know who we want to attract and how to convince them.

Language is an important factor in being a good influencer. Using language artfully amplifies your content and attracts an audience to your content. It also improves your ethos. What we can do is to find the lingua franca of the audience you wish to communicate with. For example, in the FPs gaming community, DS means dropshotting – a tactic where people drop to the ground to win in a gun fight with another person.

In our discussions, we talked about using emojis and having niched groups in the online community. According Jing Ge, “Emojis allow for ideas and emotions to be conveyed vividly. It is also recognized that emojis possess inherent meaning and add semantic nuances to words.” I feel like emojis are a great way to bring text messaging and social media interactions closer to face-to-face interactions. It also makes a sentence more intimate. Imagine the sentence “Ok” and “Ok :)” the two brings the same message in a different tone. We imagine the person’s face being stoic in one and smiling in the other. I also find emojis to clear out a lot of confusions in text. I could think of a ton of instances when a misplaced or missing emoji brought out a different meaning.

When discussing about being in online communities, I thought of a few that i am currently in right now. I follow a couple of reddit threads that are related to games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto 5. In these groups there would be specific terms for each communities to refer specific things. Like the DS example, these terms make it easier for people in the community to understand each other. Overall, emojis and online groups really increase the intimacy people have for each other and brings people closer in a global sense. I could chat with a “friend” in a GTA5 thread all the way from Switzerland with emojis and it’ll feel like a normal interaction with a friend in real life.

Conspiracies in the Internet

TIL something interesting about the internet – the uprising of conspiracies. With the growth with the internet comes with the growth with conspiracies – a bunch of lies and tales with no basis that gained enormous amounts of support. What fuels it and how did it come to be?

In our lecture today we learnt how conspiracies usually come from internet trolls with political agenda or with other misguided ill intent in mind. For example, we are all familiar with the Obama birth certificate hoax. Everyone seemed to believe for a moment he couldn’t be President for not providing a birth certificate that he was born in the United States. According to Thompson, Bill Clinton was conspired of killing Vince Foster (an aide to the White House). There are a lot more conspiracies surrounding outspoken political leaders and the reason is simple. Political agendas drive conspirators to spin absurd stories for people of the same agenda to grab onto.

What about the Slenderman? Or aliens and other weird conspiracies? Our prof explained how these cultural conspiracies are responses to the development of technology around us. An interesting example would be the invention of the radio. When the radio was first invented, it spooked everyone. It was the first thing to ever transmit sounds from somewhere else into a room. At times, other metal objects such as spoons or metal chairs would also transmit faint radio signals that result in a symphony playing from the roof or weird voices from the cutlery. Some people believed the spirits were communicating with them and resulted in a faction of self proclaimed spiritual people. A more recent example would be the rising amount of “satanist” or “illuminati” artists that people claim to be sent in the world. For example, in lecture we listened to clips of Led Zepplin and listened how “satanist” messages were shown when played backwards. This came to be when people would “rewind” or “mix” tapes to create different effects. Such a response to tech really require lots of creativity.

The rise of conspiracy theories came with the rise of Internet. Without the Internet, conspiracies wouldn’t spread as much. In fact, we should remember that the Internet didn’t give rise to such conspiracy theories. According to Uscinski, the internet is able to effortlessly spread conspiracies to their apex. “It is such a big factor that when Trump was elected, the internet was blamed for spreading conspiracies of Hilary Clinton.” He stated. He believed that the internet didn’t spawn conspirators so to say, but instead promote them. “Conspiracies existed before the Internet. The Internet contains authoritative information and people’s ideologies still exists,” he explained. Conspiracies would always be around even without the help of the Internet. Unfortunately the Internet has turned into a conduit for conspiracies.

There are two words that I learned in lecture today – Modernity and Modernism. In order not to confuse them, modernity refers to the actual events that took place, such as Scientific revolutions, political revolutions and industrial revolutions. Modernism is something represented in form of art, music of thinking. The Scream is a painting that depicts the artists response to modernity in society – changes and advances in technology etc. The modernity and modernism explanation can be used on the same radio station example again. The invention of the radio and discovery of radio waves is a modernity event. The way people reacted to the inventions with spiritualism is Modernism as it is a response to the event. Cultural modernism nowadays as stated by our prof would include things like the PS4 capturing ghosts on the motion capture camera. Movies such as Paranormal activity would also count as they respond to the rise of new technology in the society.

“The Internet is a very persuasive place” Our prof said when he talked about how his brother believed in an advertising gig by a movie. The Blair Witch Project invested in the Internet to create conspiracies and rumors that the events were real, to a point that most believed (our prof’s brother included) I think we can all agree with the persuasiveness of the Internet and this is dangerous. Because next time when I google something, the truth might just be made up. Who knows, maybe the moon landing really wasn’t real.

Behind the screen – Consumers and Free Labor

TIL that working for Google or in Silicon Valley isn’t like The Internship. Instead of fun and games, it’s more like a sweatshop where the gadgets are from.

I’m sure everyone pictured living in California and working in Silicon Valley as “the dream” or an indicator of great success. Social media is hailed to be a place where everything is wonderful and everyone is created equal. After the lecture I went to – it’s all a facade. In fact according to the readings we were assigned, gender inequalities, class and race inequalities arise in many social media platforms backed up by sleep-deprived workaholics.

Jen Schraide drew on surveys done from 2002 to 2008 in her study and revealed this – there are class and race divides in blogging practices. At that time, blogs were “the poster boy” as she put it before 2010 (post Facebook). Most of these blog posts were created by highly educated college students. This made sense, people of higher education level would have more spare time, the devices, skills and so on to make more blog posts compared to high school graduates. This domination in content creation creates a niched environment for these “elitists” and form their own little groups. Facebook was formed by Mark with the intend to be a place for selected colleges to communicate. And such a class divide arises. Schraide also mentioned an interesting phenomenon regarding racial differences. Even though there are many reports showing racial differences (White people tend to create less online content than their counterparts), almost all agree that these distinctions were eroding over time. If we look at social media now, we can see it’s true. Within this decade, the boundaries of race were broken down and the differences are close to none. On the other hand, class boundaries are experiencing diffusion. The diffusion theory speculated that any activity would first be dominated by a small privileged group and by time, the gap widens and at some point the divide disappears as more and more users come in. Isn’t it wonderful? The internet is slowly getting to the place it was meant to be – classless, raceless and everyone is equal. For digital natives like us, it seems like a paradise.

Let’s take a look behind the screens. What about those who work so hard to create this utopia? In order to access social media, we need devices. In all our devices there is one key component that makes everything we do right now work – Coltan. Coltan is the key material that can hold and transmit signals to other devices, it makes everything work. The largest export for coltan is Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. If you don’t already know, the demand for Coltan is so high, companies like Apple and Samsung would try and take it at any price. Accordning to my professor, on average they expect 10 dollars from Africa for every dollar they invest. As a result, workers get exploited, they are paid for way less than what they should receive and children are used to get into the mines for their small bodies. After these components are gathered, these giant tech companies out source them to other countries. For example Foxconn. Workers are bunched together, treated like machines and forced to work in toxic environments to receive pay that won’t even compare to a fraction of the cost of an iPhone. Fun fact (kudos to my professor), when the first iPhone came out, Steve Jobs had all the iphones remade with a glass screen last minute and expected the products to arrive on the same day.

You may think – most of the money goes to the brains behind it all. And you are right. Most of it goes into the salaries of the people who sit in Silicon Valley. Sounds like a great job, you get to live in a city, have fun while working, great reputation but it’s not what you think it is. What if i told you you get a cool job at the price of overworking, unstable employment and high cost of living. Would you still want it? Tiziana Terranova describes working in the industry as “not as much fun ad it is made to be”. It’s true that there is a general “Playbour” (play and labour) and laid back ideology in most Silicon Valley companies, but these are just strategies that create an illusion to maximize productivity and capital accumulation. Most of the work there is on contract, companies take people in when they are working on a project and fire these contract workers whenever they see fit. The only way to really enjoy the benefits of being in a tech company is by sitting on the top of the chain.

Social media has created this utopia for us users, where everyone is equal and everyone has a voice. But at what cost? If you ask me, a paradise built on the ashes of others doesn’t sound like a utopia at all.

Problems in Social Media

TIL if social media bad or is it good to us. The answer is no one knows. But one thing is for sure – there are problems with it.

For the past decade, our use in social media increased to a point where it entangles into our everyday lives. Not too long ago, mailing your friends was still relevant. Now it’s all about instant messaging, Facetime and DMs (direct messaging).

According to a reading from my Social Media class I had this Tuesday, Mohsin estimated that 45% of the population uses social media 90% of which are millennials like me and probably you too. My group and the class raised a bunch of interesting opinions on what we think about the Cigna Study on loneliness among millennials. I’ll talk about that later.

I learnt a new term in class – dialectics. Or as Heraclitus said “Everything flows”. Which seems all philosophical and airy but it just describes the way the world connects together and influence each other. Our prof raised a couple of examples in class using real life examples which helped me a lot. For example in Facebook, there used to be only “Likes”. After a while, users in Facebook wanted to have a dislike functions. The creators of Facebook however only wanted the”Like” function. So they compromised and developed the “Reactions” function we have now.

I also learnt the rest of Internet History – Web 2.0. It all started with the dotcom bubble ard 1999 – 2000. Everyone was so hyped about the rise of the Internet, businesses and organisations invested recklessly into little tech companies. These little tech companies showed no promise, no progress and no plan on succeeding. The bubble grew and popped. After the bubble, the forerunner of Google and its founders started reforming the formula of organizing information in search engine. Google’s uprising brought new tech startups and birthed the Web 2.0 we are using right now. Web 2.0’s main difference with its predecessor is the relationship between users and creators. Users and creators contribute together to form Web 2.0 rather than just creators in Web 1.0.

One lecture slide really picked my interest – will there be another crash ? Another bubble? Is web 2.0 going to fail? I have a feeling it will. Social media trends are changing as always. We are more aware of the issues tech companies and social media companies raise (hint: it rhymes with secrecy) Users are being more active, they contribute more and more to content and the internet in whole. Facebook is dying and Linkedin became an assignment for business students and VR isn’t as interesting anymore. So when will it crash? I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s coming soon. Whether its a crash in investing in techs like VR and AI (like seriously its been going on for years and there’s not much improvements and its not mainstream) or maybe social media is going to transform into a new Web 3.0 where it becomes a necessity for everyone and not profitable anymore, something is going to happen in the next decade.

Back to social media, the good and the bad. We’re familiar with the benefits – convenience, efficiency, effectiveness and such. But the problems are where it gets messy. Arguments and debates went on and on ever since the birth of social media – Facebook’s uprising, our increased dependency on it, and growing worries and problems it has on our daily lives. The Cigna study directs us to one major problem we have as a millennial. Most of us are born digital natives, 90% of use social media, we are the most connected generation but our levels of loneliness are the highest. So why? A classmate raised an interesting comment – maybe its a trend. A trend where people think its cool to say they don’t have friends or they are loners. I can see why she said that. It makes sense. We all know the person who just likes to be called a loner or a lone wolf. I also think it could be related to how we consider people as close friends. Compared to baby boomers, what is the difference? Maybe for them a close friend is someone you see on a regular basis, but for millennials it could be someone you share everything with even if you never met in real life. If the survey’s definition favors baby boomers, then no shit millennials are lonely.

One thing is for sure though, we are the most connected generation, and the generation after us will be too. No one can say what’s going to happen, but social media and technology will only be more and more intertwined in our lives. As with everything else, I don’t think the problem lies on the tool itself, it lies on how we use it and how we let it affect us. Everything flows in this world, just got to learn how to control it in our favor.

A bit about myself. Maybe more than a bit.

First of all, welcome to my blog!

This blog started off somewhere in Jan/Feb 2020 with my Social Media class at the University of Toronto Mississauga. It was a platform for our assignments and now I’m back as a blog writer.

A bit about myself. I’m an undergraduate at the University of Toronto Mississauga taking a double major in Psychology and Professional Writing graduating in the year 2022. I’m also an elder brother, a child and a growing adult living in the GTA in Ontario, Canada. I grew up in Hong Kong and stayed there for 18 years until I moved to Canada in 2018.

Some things I’m interested in are mechanical keyboards (I recently got into the hobby). I like that clickity clack. I’m also a bit of a gamer, an avid writer (mainly for my program but I plan on writing more here) and also a big sneaker head and a beginner skateboarder!

Some things I’m working towards. Starting the habit of sleeping healthy and eating healthy. The pandemic was NOT KIND. I’m also trying to start writing more often. As well as a graduate program in Clinical Psychology at the University of Toronto. I’m particularly excited in the importance of the developmental period in treating mental disorders.

What I’m doing right now (Updated as of May 19 2021):

I’m doing an intern at NADPE as a blog writer! I’m not too sure when they’ll come out but I’ll link them here when they do!

I’m also learning how to skate. I can jump onto my board, turn a bit, go straight , tap my board and that’s it :D.

I’m working at T&T Supermarket at the Bakery Department as a parttimer!

Once again thank you for coming to my blog. It’s going to be a compilation of rants, my own development, advice or just something cool I learned on the wonderful place called the Internet.

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