In this class we’ve talked briefly about citizen journalists, and the impact they can have. To refresh, citizen journalism refers to the general public (not professional journalists) collecting and analyzing news, data, and information, among other things, and “reporting” through the Internet. Twitter’s platform, for a variety of reasons, has undoubtably provided an avenue for citizen journalists to thrive.

Now, citizen journalism has been around years before COVID-19, but never has been more prevalent until these past 2 months. Our mainstream media today is shockingly biased. CNN, MSNBC, and about 96% of political donations from the 2016 election openly support the Democratic Party, while FOX undoubtably sides with the Republican Party. I find this particularly scary for a couple of reasons. First, obviously, this discrepancy does not represent the values, beliefs, and opinions of the American people. But second, and more importantly, these are the people that are supposed to be reporting the news, not their opinion.

In my freshman year of High School, I took a journalism class as an elective. This was 2014, before rise of fake news as populated by Donald Trump and the 2016 election cycle. On the very first day of class, we learned one thing, and this one thing was supposed to be our bedrock for understanding how to be a journalist.                                    “When reporting the news, Journalists must be unbiased.”  Our mainstream media breaks the golden rule of journalism, and America knows it.

This has led to the rise of citizen journalism, even before COVID-19. Americans, increasingly distrusting the media, began seeking the facts for themselves, than forming, and tweeting, their own opinions. Twitter has allowed for these opinions to be potentially be seen by the masses, a revolution in the spread of information that has never been seen before.

Now today, with COVID-19 making it’s way across the nation, the time was now for the mainstream media to throw away its political biases and keep the public properly informed by reporting the facts and the data. If there is anything that shouldn’t be political, it would be a relatively unknown, and potentially fatal virus sweeping the entire nation. And yet, the mainstream media has failed to provide the facts and proper data in context without political biases, and instead has favored opinions, hypotheticals, and overall fear-mongering. As results of antibody tests were showing significantly more people have had the virus than confirmed cases, and it has been widespread confirmed by Dr. Deborah Birx and others that any death that tested positive for COVID-19 is a COVID-19 death, even if they were already dying of other causes,  the New York times headline was “The coronavirus is far deadlier than the official numbers show,” referring to analysis that more people may have died of COVID-19 before we truly recognized what was thought to only be in China had spread throughout the world. Around the same time, the Washington Post neglected reporting up to date data to instead use the headline: “Young people with coronavirus are dying from strokes” in reference to a handful of people worldwide that had suffered a stroke while infected with coronavirus. Just today, the headline on Bloomberg was “What COVID-19’s second wave could look like.”

This is not the mainstream media doing its job. Why are they clearly promoting an agenda of lockdown and governmental control, instead of actual data and updates that Americans crave? This is where citizen journalism comes in. Just look at the comments on the Twitter posts of hysteria articles. More and more people every day are looking at the official data and information provided by the CDC and our government themselves, figuring out what it means, and commenting or tweeting on their own. They are filling the void that the mainstream media should be taking up. And widespread, the conclusions of the people about COVID-19 does not match what the media is telling us, as shown by the numerous protests now happening daily across the nation. Citizen Journalists, in my opinion, are starting a much needed movement by defying the mainstream media and what they want us to think, and instead collecting news, data, and information and analyzing it for themselves. Citizen Journalism, journalism without network political biases, can be a really amazing thing, and I think it is one of the great benefits of social media and Twitter in particular, especially in a time like this.

I’ve been really wanting to write something like this for a few days now, but really had no platform to do so. But being that we discussed these concepts in class, I figured I would expose how they are impacting people every day. I hope you enjoyed.

Sources:

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/435273-americans-are-tired-of-liberals-skewing-the-mainstream-news

https://news.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx

https://nyti.ms/3eHn0iM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/24/strokes-coronavirus-young-patients/

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-29/what-covid-19-s-second-wave-could-look-like

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be launching a video chat room service on their Messenger platform called Messenger Rooms, as a rival to the now widely used Zoom video conference call.

There are a couple differences between Messenger Rooms and Zoom. Messenger Rooms will allow up to 50 people in a call at a time, but an unlimited time on call. Zoom’s free version currently allows for up to 100 people at a time, but a 40 minute limit on call. Penn State pays for our own psu.zoom platform, so our classes do not have to confine to the limits of the free version. The other major difference is by far what is most interesting to me. Zuckerberg said that the backgrounds on his new Messenger Rooms service will span 360 degrees, which he asserted will take the experience to “the next level” as CNN reports. Its a bit difficult to really grasp how a 360 degree background will look compared to the flat backgrounds that Zoom allows for, but I think it could create a more realistic and professional picture. It will now be seen how the market reacts to Facebook’s entry and approach into the online chat market.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/24/tech/facebook-video-calling-upgrades/index.html

With shortages of ventilators, PPE, and other medical necessities being used to fight the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States, 3D printers have become a bit of an unexpected weapon.

According to CNN, a gentleman named Christian Parker, a “3D printing enthusiast”, realized that he could use his 3D printer at home to make ventilator splitters, which can divide the air flow from one ventilator to multiple patients, thus increasing the efficiency and reducing the demand for more ventilators.

With how much we have discussed 3D printers and their practical real-world uses in class, I think that this is the best way that I have seen the power of the 3D printer being taken advantage of to create a product that really has an impact on the lives of others.

Considering the size of the United States and the reach of the virus to all 50 states, supplying the necessary medical equipment at sufficient levels was always going to be an uphill battle, no matter how hard the producers of these necessities and our Governors and President work.  Something as simple, and as cheap, as using a 3D printer to create a product that more efficiently divides these resources could mean the difference between life and death for some patients.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/18/tech/us-coronavirus-ventilator-3d-printer-intl-hnk/index.html

Apple and Google, bitter rivals in a more normal time, have come together to develop technology that could help track the spread of COVID-19. The technology, which will hopefully be released to the public in May, would have people who test positive anonymously input their result into an app, and eventually, users of the app who had been in contact with this person would be alerted. It seems that there are still some details to be hammered out. President Trump said that the technology is “very interesting but a lot of people worry about it in terms of a person’s freedom” and went on to say that “We’re going to take a look at that.”

This technology is particularly innovative and revolutionary because as far as I know, the world has never seen such a service that can track a virus electronically. While there have been some positive signs in the past few days, the world, along with us, are still struggling to track and slow COVID-19. I think that if this type of technology can become widespread, it can have two extremely positive effects. First, it should help us track how the virus moves so we can better contain it and more effectively quarantine those infected or exposed. Secondly, and in my opinion most intriguing, could this technology give an individual  “all clear” for healthy and non exposed people to return to normal life? What if we had something on our phones that indicated that we are free of COVID-19 exposure that allows those to resume things that we enjoy such as sports, restaurants, and public parks? Over time, as people who are infected are cleared of the virus, they too would rejoin society and soon life would be back to normal. There is no indication that this technology would be utilized in this fashion, so it is just a thought on my part. I think we all want our country and the economy to open back up as soon as possible and I think this technology could be critical in doing just that.

SOURCE: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/10/tech/apple-google-contact-tracing-technology/index.html

The always innovating Amazon is back at it again. The company is currently working on a concept in which grocery store shoppers no longer have to waste their lives waiting in a line to check out. Instead, shopping carts will be installed with Artificial Intelligence that sees the items that you take off the shelf, and charges you through either Apple Pay or a pre-established credit card as you leave the store, without having to go through a traditional check out.

There is no doubt that this technology is really cool and revolutionary. Amazon, in the grocery business through owning Whole Foods, debuted this concept in Seattle way back in 2018, with plans to expand to several thousand stores, but only a “couple dozen” have opened since. But is it practical? According to the article, it seems that the expansion has been slowed by cost issues. More issues could be, is a minimum wage grocery store staff going to be able to fix issues that come with this technology? Is this technology so important that it is worth eliminating millions of now unneeded cashier jobs if this goes national? Will people find ways to sneak items away from the view of the camera and get items for free?

I’m on the fence with this technology. On one hand, I think the technology is very cool and efficient, but overall I think the unintended side effects in costs, jobs, and potential technological glitches make it so a “smart shopping cart” is not going to be the way of future in every grocery store. That being said, I can’t wait to see what becomes of this technology because I could be very wrong.

Source : https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/23/tech/smart-shopping-cart/index.html

Investigators have found that the deadly March 2018 crash that caused the death of Walter Huang, an Apple engineer, occurred while Huang was on his phone playing a game with his Tesla on the new, and somewhat controversial, autopilot mode. Autopilot mode is supposed to allow the driver to not have to do any of the actual work, but questions about safety have arisen due to accidents involving the technology since its rollout.

We know that this type of technology is coming to our everyday lives, not just those with Tesla’s, in the coming years. But should we trust it? From my point of view, I don’t see that we are at the point that we can trust a machine to drive a car for us without serious concern. The problem is, however, is that this type of technology is being mostly marketed as something that can safely allow you to let the car drive itself while you sit back and play games on your phone, and that simply does not appear to be the case.

As this technology starts to come into our everyday lives, we need to understand that we must still pay attention while driving and be in control of our cars. It will be an exciting technological development when when cars really can drive just like a human, but we aren’t there yet.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/25/tech/tesla-autopilot-safety-ntsb/index.html

With Vine by now having long since been retired, the need for a platform for Generation Z to post short videos of themselves dancing to a popular song or just simply making an effort to be funny has finally been filled over the past year or so by a new app, TikTok. I for one, am so thankful for the arrival of TikTok and can not think to imagine a world where I wouldn’t have access to these absolutely hilarious and well-made videos.

Clearly, it seems that anyone outside the ages of 13-22 just isn’t up with the times. As it turns out, TikTok is absorbing so much of the time of our future world leaders that they have announced new parental controls that allow parents to determine a time limit of how long their child can spend on the app each day. Some of the interval options include 40 minutes, 60 minutes, and 90 minutes, which doesn’t seem like enough time for me to properly lie in bed watching TikTok’s instead of going to sleep like I should be. The rollout also includes options to turn off direct messaging and only allow children to see “age appropriate” content, and is currently only available in some European countries as TikTok tests the technology.

I want to focus on what I think is the most innovative part of these new parental controls, the time limit. Please, in the comments, correct me if I am wrong, but a technology that limits the amount of time children can spend on an app is new to me. If we apply this idea to other fields, I think this type of technology could be a huge breakthrough in the fight to keep kids active and engaged with the world and off their screens as much as possible. When my mom realizes that my younger sisters and their friends have been making TikToks for 3 hours and maybe they should be doing something else, the solution is to take the phone away. But having your phone at all times is vastly important in today’s world for communication and informational purposes. What if my mom could just press a button that puts the phone in “communication mode,” disabling games and distractors to encourage kids to focus? To me, this seems like a practical technolgy that becomes even more useful when we think past TikTok.

SOURCE:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/19/tech/tiktok-parental-controls/index.html