chinemere’s blog

Critical Reflection

This feature article is titled “Are men afraid of rejection?”

The feature article  is targeted at both male and female genders from age eighteen to their  sixties. They are targeted to youths in the society who are interested and are seeking relationships/married. It’s written to reveal to people most especially women that despite how tough and strong men seem , they have fears and have weaknesses and are very much human, they feel things too and sometimes a little too much. It  was revealed by relationship/ marriage counsellor  Adim Ogudu that about 82% of men in our society are afraid of being rejected when revealing  their intentions to their love interest.  It’s like a coin, faced with head and tail, they either get approval or denial and they dread this. This feature article is for publication in www.RTE.ie under lifestyle.

In this feature article I interviewed two relationship experts from Nigeria via skype. I initially reached out to them via their emails  Oguduadim@yahoo.com  and Faridaubandoma@gmail.com

I made use of materials provided for us on moodle.griffith.ie for writing features.

Writing this feature wasn’t so easy for me, I reached out to about three relationship experts here in Ireland from Instagram they never replied my emails and the one person who replied my mail refused my interview I had to make use of relationship experts back in my country. In my next feature what would be done differently would be to get at least one relationship expert in Ireland and to interview men ranging the age of sixty to sixty-five just to get their opinions, I believe they would be chatty and divulge interesting facts young men would not.

“We need new independent regulation bodies to sanction forces using technology to subvert our democracy”- Tom Watson

BY Chinemere Ikpe

  Face book breached data protection and confidentiality guidelines by using millions of  users accounts to make software’s and influence their choices at ballot box with the help of Russia.

According to 18 months inquiry  which was launched in 2017 by the digital, culture, media and sport committee, the platform consciously broke confidentiality and competition law according to legislative report, tagging the company as “digital gangsters” 

 In March 2018, the New York times, the observer, and channel 4 declared that the Cambridge Analytica had secretly acquired data gotten from millions of Facebook users.

 It was also revealed by Christopher Wylie, who worked in the academic university to obtain data told the observer how Facebook used million people’s profiles, manipulated them and used the information they got to build a system which were used to sway voters.

 This action puts the democracy of the people at great risk. Citizens are continuously misinformed with shady commercials from unknown sources and are delivered through the key social media platforms made use of daily.

Damian Collins further argued that big technological companies are failing in their responsibilities when it comes to the care of user’s personal data and they owe this to their users, data privacy should be taken seriously.

Facebook is one giant tech company which has a massive market power which enables them to make more money by suppressing smaller tech company who solely depend on Facebook to reach their respective customers.

Major tech companies are very aware of this, but repetitively fail to address.

Collins said that “there is a radical shift in the balance of power between the platform and the people” he also added that “ The age of insufficient  self-regulation was be brought to an end.”

Collins stated that if Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg “doesn’t believe he is accountable to the UK Parliament, he is to the billions of Facebook users across the world”.

Zuckerberg “still has questions to answer yet he’s continued to duck them, refusing to respond to our invitations directly or sending representatives who don’t have the right information”.

“[He] continually fails to show the levels of leadership and personal responsibility that should be expected from someone who sits at the top of one of the world’s biggest companies,” Collins added.

  Collins said “a radical shift in the balance of power between the platforms and the people” is needed, adding: “The age of inadequate self-regulation must come to an end.”

He said the inquiry also found that electoral regulations in the UK are “hopelessly out of date for the internet age” and need to be reformed.

Over 87 million people were affected by the privacy breach who were mostly in the US which was the largest in Facebooks history. This cause the collapse of Cambridge Analytica administration.

The firm was popular for its work during Donald Trumps US presidential election campaign. It used the data it derived from Facebook to design software’s that influenced votes.

Alexander Nix the firm’s CEO was suspended after he was caught on camera touting the use of bribery and set-up to sway election

Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was accused of Contempt of legislature for his refusal to provide evidence and sending younger employees to represent him and answer questions which they had no answer to.

The British government was sought to investigate “Foreign influence, misinformation, income, voter manipulation and breaking data protection guidelines” in the Scottish independence which held in 2014, the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 general election.

Which made the committee come to an agreement that tech company’s self-regulation 

 must be abolished.

Tom Watson, the party’s deputy leader stated that “We need new independent regulation with tough powers and sanctions regime to curb the worst excesses of surveillance capitalism and the forces trying to use technology to subvert our democracy”.

Concern began to grow in 2017 about Facebook and its influence in regard to fake information and the speed at which this information gets to people so fast within few minutes.

The committee contended that if Facebook had accepted the agreement made with the US regulators in 2011 whereby the access to consumer data should be limited, the scandal would not have occurred.

The report also stated that Facebook chooses to make profit rather than protecting its user’s data which should be their top priority, rather they cover up data leakage

The report stated that Facebook prioritizes shareholders profits over user privacy rights. Facebook. 

Mark Zuckerberg was greatly criticised by the committee because of his claim that Facebook had never sold the data of its user before which was dismissed by the committee sating that this was untrue.

The Committee stated that “Mark Zuckerberg continually fails to show the levels of leadership and personal responsibility that should be expected from someone who sits at the top of the world’s biggest companies”.

The guardian stated that Facebook should not be allowed to be have like digital gangsters especially in the online world, whereby they see themselves ahead and beyond the law.

 Facebook said in a specifically measured response that “It was pleased to have a significant contribution, we are open to meaningful regulation and supports the committee’s recommendation for electoral law reform, said Palant Karim- Facebooks UK public policy manager.

Changes are being made now as every ad of Facebook must be authorized,

Whoever that is paying for the ad must be clearly stated, and the information concerning the advert is stored in an archive for 7 years.

Palant revealed that Facebook now supports confidentiality statute and believes that they have made improvement compared to the previous year. 

He stated that face book has greatly increased the team that works on abusive content to 30,000 people, machine learning and artificial intelligence was greatly financed on to resolve the problem.

Changes were also made to the group and event pages. They stated that “Currently apps need the permission of a group admin or member to access group content for closed groups and the permission of an admin for secret groups”

It is believed that this will help admins do things easily post and respond to content on their groups.

All third parties making use of the group API will require an approval from Facebook and an admin to make sure that they grant the group.

In regards to events, the statement notes that “ Until today, people could grant an app permission to get information  about events they host or attend , including private events

This change made it easier to add Facebook events to calendar, ticketing or other apps.

It’s of great importance that social. Media accounts use their access to people’s private information properly as because they have information about other people’s attendance and their posts on event wall.

The DCMS article demanded that sites like Facebook should be regulated and should not be left without control, it further argued that social media companies should not hide under the shadow of just being a platform, and even as a platform they have the responsibility of regulating the content placed on their sites.

 The report called for the following:

1. A mandatory code of ethics guarding tech companies supervised by an independent regulator.
2. Authority given to regulator to act on any tech company that breaches code.
3. The government should reform present electoral communication statues involving elections in the UK
4. Social media companies are expected to take down known sources of harmful content including proven sources of disinformation.

The regulation recommended a mandatory code of ethics and a sovereign regulator endowed to bring authorised proceedings against social media enterprises and force them to hand over used data.

 A good example is Germany, which passed a law in January 2018, which enforced that tech companies remove hate speech within the given period of 24 hours or pay the sum of €20 million fine.

With such law put in place Tech companies would go above and beyond to ensure that hate speech is removed from their applications/ platforms.

This video was shot at Tesco, Clare hall shopping centre Malahide Road. The concept of this video is to capture a friend of mine doing his grocery shopping for the week and using various shots to tell a story. This video was shot with an iPhone 11 with the filmic pro App and edited with Kinemaster and is one minute long.

      This video contains Wide angle shot, close up shot, long shot, medium shot and B-roll. Before I started recording, I adjusted my Focus and lighting to suit the environment till it was stable for shooting. I shot this video in sessions, according to scenes and not at once, then merged them accordingly to flow and tell a story. 

       This video started with a medium shot of his legs on the escalator, then a full shot of him facing the direction of the camera. A wide shot was taken of him walking towards Tesco, a close-up shot was taken of his legs as he walked through various shopping racks. This shot was employed to give details.

 I took this shot bending down and placing my phone horizontally on the ground for support then moving it slightly as he walked past me.

       A wide shot was taken of the entire environment which he was in to show which section of the mall he was in.  I placed my phone inside the basket ensuring the cameras were facing the celling, to capture a pack of chips fall into the basket. I also employed the same technique as he placed all the food items, he purchased into his shopping bag. 

       I felt this was a creative way to tell my story. Each scene was shot independently and later merged to form a sequence and to tell a story.

The media is an institution in the society which is placed with public service responsibility and accountability. Hence, the media serves the people and the people in turn are highly dependent on the media.

it’s the voice of the people. The people look up to the media for the truth and information in politics, health, social and economic activities.

Emile Durkheim, a founder of sociology (1858-1917) mentioned that we rely on the mass media to tell  us  what is  in the society and what’s important, since there is no central authority telling us what to think, the media serves as the watch dog  of the society and is therefore accountable to the people.

The people always demand truth from the media, the news we see and hear is something we do not directly experience but it’s something we inculcate in our day to day life. The people want to be and need to be aware of important activities, laws made and events that affects their lives. The media owe it to the people to publicize the good, bad and ugly that occurs in the society, the media checks and balances the activities of our leaders and because of this, it wields so much power that can make and break.  

Despite the power wielded by the media it also encounters difficulties when reporting reality. This was perfectly reflected in these two movies I watched, two media theories were used in this movies which made reporting reality difficult.

1. Fair game 
2. The Insider

1. Fair Game

            Valerie plume works for the CIA and is married to Joseph Wilson, both couples are career driven, comfortable and somewhat influential because of the kind of jobs they do.

The movie showed us what American politics really is. George W. Bush was president at the time when Valerie was given an assignment of investigating Saddam Hussein’s Nuclear and Biological weapons programme in 2002. Valerie realizes that Iraq was not developing weapons of mass destruction., she made this known in the office but was overridden by I. Lewis Libby (men in the vice president’s office).

Valerie see’s what is trying to happen and acts accordingly because of her confidentiality. The full movie began when joe Wilson, Valerie’s husband sent to Niger by the CIA (14:24-14:44) to find out if large quantities of yellow cake Uranium was purchased by Saddam Hussein. He finds nothing (19:21-20:00).

    When President George Bush (48:30) in’ the state of the nation’ addresses the nation that Iraq is preparing weapons for mass destruction with n his findings cake Uranium from Africa. Joe tries to let the people know that its untrue based on his findings in (19:21 -20:00)

He does this by publishing his findings on New York times in an OP-ED article. (57:40).  Due to Joe Wilson’s action Valerie’s cover was blown. Joe decides to campaign to expose the people involved but then the CIA denies working with Joe in (1:14:37) this made it look like his information was false.

In 54:40 we can see that the president George Bush was hiding the truth, there was no Uranium 

(yellow cake) transported to Iraq from Niger for weapons of mass destruction. He spoke to Pete about it in (54:56- 56:22) and Pete said do nothing but consider his family.

Joe Wilson is relentless and very persistent, in 957:21-58:39) he released his statement, this brought a lot of controversy. To protect themselves in the American government, the CIA denied working with Joe Wilson but that they worked with Valerie his wife (1:00:32 -1:00:50) they made it seem like she divulged top government secret to her husband Joe Wilson. Joe Wilson was denied by the CIA and made look like a liar.

We can see how difficult it can be fighting the government, in (1:17:00 – 1:17: 08) joe and Valerie have a heated argument about how it’s impossible it is to fight the white house because they will always win. In (1:14: 47- 1:14:51) her colleague wishes her husband good luck fighting against the white house alone because its mission impossible.

Agenda setting theory 

Agenda setting theory was used by the government and the media in this movie. The government used the media “ New York times” to shape the mind and thinking of the members of the society, they used the media to influence and sway public opinion. The American government did this by; declaring publicly on New York Times that they never worked with joe Wilson, rather Valerie his wife divulged confidential information to joe Wilson her husband in (1:00:25- 1:00:48) 

The American government also planted the thought in the mind of the people through the media that Iraq  had possession of Uranium (yellow cake)  for mass destruction (38:06- 38:25) despite the fact that Joe Wilson stated that there was no Yellow cake in Iraq for mass destruction in (57:40). The media believed the Government and the media over Joe Wilson.

I mean, who  is one man to fight the white house? That was the situation in this case. Rogers (1998) explained that Agenda setting theory is used to Influence the audience by instilling what they should think instead of what they think. Agenda setting impact on the audiences is not on Peoples attitude but on their cognition. When agenda setting is used it changes the cognition of the audience on a particular issue. Agenda setting also creates public awareness and importance on certain issues to influences viewers which brings a hierarchy of news prevalence.

In order words, two things are key here;                                                                                      

1. The media sometimes does not report reality, sometimes news is filtered to make it suit them or the media owners.
2. The media can narrow few issues to the public  and make it seem more relevant than others  by its constant appearance in news.

THE INSIDER

Jeffery Wigand a top scientist in Brown and Williamson tobacco industry was suddenly dismissed from the tobacco industry for no good reason, they said he had poor communication skills. He got paid a lot (40:59)This dismissal affected him as he had children and a wife to cater to, his elder daughter has acute asthma(09:12) and he was left without medical coverage.

Lowell Bergman a journalist with CBS news aware of his dismissal sees him as the ultimate insider to reveal the secrets of Brown and Williamson Tobacco company. Jeffery Wigand has a confidentiality agreement with the tobacco company in (43:28-43:44) initially, refuses the interview but later on, due to anger, bitterness and frustration he decided to grant the interview for public good he breaks his confidentiality.

In (57:20 -57:40) he discusses going public with Bergman. In (1:09:35 -1:10:05) he went tapping in New York. In (1:22:24 – 1:22:53)he suffered assaults financially, physically, for reporting reality. In (1:29:25 -1:30:58) he goes to court to testify against Brown and Williamson  tobacco company. In (1:38:17) CBS begins to have a cold feet in airing the 60 minutes interview with Jeffery Wigand because the company he testified against are very powerful could sue CBS which became their fear in (1:39:02- 1:39:29) .

CBS refuses to broadcast Wigand’s testimony against Brown and Williamson company because they are at a greater risk of losing their company. Berg (1:41:40-1:41:55).  Bergman feels bad because he convinced Wigand that his truth would be told and he will be safe. In (1:42:40-1:43:10) he confronts CBS executives of being unprofessional and letting him down because of the effort he has put into the 60 minutes show.

In (1:49:41) Jeffery’s  past was dug (shoplifting, failing to pay child support) in order to discredit him and make his testimony seem like its untrue. Bergman fought till the end, and ensured that the truth was broadcasted in (02:21:53- 02: 23:51) despite his forceful vacation. The tobacco industry settled the law suit filled against them  by Mississippi and 49 other states  for 246 billion dollars. In (02:25:16), Bergman quit because of the difficulty he faced with CBS in reporting the truth and cannot guarantee security for his next source. 

GATE KEPPING THEORY

         In this movie, ‘The insider’ CBS news agency made use of gatekeeping, they tried to prevent the Interview with Jeffery Wigand to protect their company from being sued by Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, but they also needed to air the 60 minutes interview for the public good and because of this they were in a dilemma.

Where they performing they public responsibility by preventing the interview from being broadcasted? A gate keeper is as the name describes, he/she decides what type of information should be supplied to group of people or individuals.

The gate keeper makes decisions .A gatekeeper has its influence in the media on what information should get to the public. Through this filtering process the unwanted and controversial information  are retracted by the gatekeeper, this controls inflow of information to the society. In media the editor plays the gatekeeper, he decides the news item that will be broadcasted to the public each and every day, he/she sometimes rejects news items because of media policies. he makes ethical decisions daily , through this ethics and policies he makes his decision  on what should be aired.

REFERENCES

Dearing, J. W.(1996). Agenda-setting. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE.

Doug. L (2010) Fair game. USA.

Mc Combs, M.(2013). Setting the Agenda. John Wiley & Sons.

Michael. M (1999). The insider. Beverly Hills. USA

Roger, E .M. (1986). Communication technology. New York :Simon and Schuster.

Taylor, P.A. (2008). Critical theories of mass media. Maidenhead, Berkshire, England: Mc Graw-Hill Education (UK)