Digital Story

For my Digital Story I plan on doing surveillance and how it is used in todays society. I will use SlideRoll, One True Media, or PowerPoint to depict my story. I will create a slide show with pictures and text underneath to describe the picture. I have not decided yet, but I was also thinking about playing music in the background, or taking out the text on the screen and doing a voice-over.

As we all know, government surveillance is an issue that bothers many people. In my slideshow, I will create a first person narrative about what I believe and some of the facts that are present. The reason I chose surveillance is because I believe that it as a great example of something at the intersection of digital media and social justice. As said before, I will incorporate my opinion about government surveillance as well as general facts found through online resources. In my opinion, I have nothing to hide when on the internet and so on. That does not mean I am for the government to continue tapping into our electronics. Some people are against it even if they nothing to hide due to it being a violation of their freedom. I am 100% for the government still using surveillance to catch terrorists or anyone that threatens our country or people. It does not make sense to spy on innocent people who have no ties to terrorists or any organizations along those lines. Its a tough subject because if the surveillance is halted altogether than its hard to catch terrorists, but on the other hand, if we do keep allowing them to spy on us but only for security purposes, how do we know that they will only spy on terrorists and not regular civilians? I do not know very much on this topic, just the basics, so it interests me to research it more and develop more of a backed opinion in order to create  a Digital Story. I will likely research the positives and negatives of the topic and decide what point of view I want to portray my story.

The first part of my story will be background information about the topic of surveillance, along with the Edward Snowden case. The middle part of my story will consist of my formed opinion on surveillance, facts, and first hand experiences. Lastly, the conclusion part of my story will consist of what i believe our government and country should do next. To elaborate more on how my story will be organized, I will most likely have pictures relating to the corresponding text box along with music. I was also considering doing a voice over explaining the text boxes in  more depth.

Sulmasy, Glenn, and The Opinions Expressed in This Commentary Are Solely Those of Glenn Sulmasy. "Why We Need Government Surveillance." CNN. Cable News Network, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.( This source is joing to be used in my story on why surveillance is good)

Hightower, Jim. "8 Terrifying Facts About NSA Surveillance." Alternet. Alternet, 16 Apr. 2014. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. ( Used for facts pertaining to surveillance)

Murphy, Dan. "Americans Say They Are Pretty Comfortable with Expanded Government Surveillance." CS Monitor. N.p., 11 June 2013. Web. 20 Nov. 2014. (Used as well for facts)

Education- Web log 11

One of many social justice issues that is overlooked is access to education. In todays generation, it is almost necessary that one attends college to have a solid job when they are older. Someone should not go to college just because they can't afford it. I do not have a solution, it just seems unfair that some people can't attend school because of financial issues. If more people attended college our country would be better off. It would allow for jobs to be more competitive and to get the best of the best. Drop out rates for individuals between the ages of 16- 24 with low incomes are seven times more likely to drop out of school. Granted some of them might have dropped out due to bad decisions, but some of them also may have dropped out because of money issues. Even though school is free up until college, teens still have to have transportation to school, the supplies, and internet access. If you do not have these things it is extremely hard to keep up. Less than 30% of students in the bottom quarter enroll in a 4-year college, and less than 50% of them graduate. These stats are real, and something needs to be done

https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-education-and-poverty-america

Permission for SAP

For our SAP, we are using the PollEverywhere to create polls with questions about cyberbullying. We are going to post flyers around campus with the questions and the number students can text to give their answers. We learned we need permission to post flyers around the school and they needed to be approved so we went to Rodman Hall to see if they could help us. They told us that we would need to go to the student center. We walked to the atrium and then up the stairs and found a room over the university bookstore that was the office of student activities. There, we spoke with a woman named Janet Paradise. She told us that she was in fact in charge of approving flyers that go out on campus. We explained to her our project idea and how we want to execute it. She seemed to like the idea and explained that we should create an original copy of the flyer with the information we need and bring it back to the office. Then we would give her the flyer, and if approved, she would stamp it saying so. She would give us back the flyer and it is our responsibility to make about 65 more copies. We would bring the copies back to Janet and she would distribute them that day. We are going to create two sets of flyers. The first will have the questions we want to pose to the student body. The second set will be the results so everyone can see how the polls worked out.

DigitalStory

I have not came to a conclusion for what my digital story will be, but i have a couple ideas. My first idea deals with digital media and how surveillance affects our decision. Not only does surveillance deal with just government, but with companies as well. Companies use surveillance to view their employees/ future employees social media profiles. Knowing companies see this information, it affects what people post, such as myself. Surveillance can also deal with family. I have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and i am extra-careful of what i post due to my family seeing. I will use an app from Cogdogroo in which i will share my personal experiences of how i am extra careful of what i post. 

My second idea lies along the intersection of digital media and social justice, because it deals with cyberbullying, which is also what I'm doing for my sap project. I will use OurStory and create a timeline in which it shows my experiences and the actions i took. I will add pictures and captions, adding on to the affect. Although i have not come to a conclusion, i believe that these two ideas will be the ones i work with. I was also thinking of using six.com to create a website, such as one of the previous students did in the examples. By using a website i can spread out my information i need into separate categories and add a video if necessary.

Literature Review:

A. In an article I found, Technology Hurts? Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth Perspectives of Technology and Cyberbullying, they used 18 students who were either gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Within this article they took a survey and asked them what the predominant reasons they were cyberbullied for. 61% of the participants said they were targeted for their sexual orientation, while 33% said they were targeted for revenge. Although the participants all deviated from the norm, it still shows that the majority of them were cyberbullied because of their sexual orientation. As they were questioned about why they got cyberbullied, they were also asked how. The two most used ways, according to the participants, were electronic victimization and electronic action. Electronic victimization was said to be used 78% of the time, and electronic actions were used 44% of the time. One teen said people would text him and message him on social media saying "You look like a faggot" on his photos after he came out via social media. Another participant said that he has seen it all, and one of the electronic actions used against him was someone sending him a virus because of his sexual orientation. One of the individuals stated that cyberbullying was predominant in his early years of high school, but as the 4 years went on, it slowed down. This proves that as we get older, people start to mature and realize their actions. We are in college and cyberbullying still occurs but not in a big manner like high school. Our group will use our polls to target why people are cyberbullied and pinpoint the most pressing issue to raise awareness and help put a stop to it. 

B. The form of social action project our group has decided to do is creating polls to pinpoint why people get cyberbullied. We will be canvassing the community via electronics to get peoples feedback. What were planning to do is create 3 different poll questions from an internet website. These three questions will be: Have you ever been cyberbullied? What have you been targeted for? Have you ever cyberbullied an individual based on choices from the previous question? These questions will all be multiple choice. The first one will be true or false, the second one will consist of answer such as: Appearance, opinions, friend groups, sexual orientation, personal actions, or other, and the third question will also be true or false. Our group plans to contact the school and send out a mass email to the student body making them aware of the polls and how they can respond. Along with the polls, we will also create flyers and place them around the campus, such as in dorms, the library, the student center, and the cafeteria with the approval of the school. The flyers are used so students can see them because most of us disregard the emails from the school. The flyers will consist of the same questions and different text numbers to reply to in order for feedback. Although the emails are often disregarded, they are worth the shot. The website we will use is poll everywhere.com. This website allows for people to create polls at their own capability. We can receive 40 responses per poll without a subscription, but to make an impact we will use the funding or our own money to create a membership to allow for 250 responses per question. I believe with that amount we can work with a great deal of data to pinpoint why people get cyberbullied. These polls will be based upon people entire lives, not just while in college because it is not as predominant as high school. After we receive the results, our group will create a big poster with the results and we will place this poster in the student center for people to see they come and go. Our goal is to create awareness, and as people see the results they all think twice about cyberbullying. With our results, we can also create multiple posters and ask permission of nearby high schools and grade schools to post the posters in their school to stop cyberbullying in its roots. Another idea with our results is that the group in our class doing cyberbullying as well can post the facts on yin yak and twitter page that they have created to get the information out there on social media, connecting the John Carroll community.