Rewrite #2 - Media Ethics

   Ethics and morality have always been incredibly difficult topics to deal with. It permeates through everything we interact with and consume. Intrinsically, this week's video task is important as we, CDM students, must look into media ethics and how it affects how people interact and consume media and content. However, this topic is quite broad - where do we even begin to talk about Media Ethics?

    To start, it is best to have a foundation of understanding for the topic you are researching. What is ethics? As stated by the first video, " The term ethics often describes the investigation and analysis of moral principals and dilemmas." (McCombs School of Business, 2018). Here we get the most basic definition behind ethics however they offer the second definition of, "-rules or guidelines that establish what conduct is right or wrong for individuals and for groups." (McCombs School of Business, 2018). This video goes on to further explain these definitions and provides us with a stable foundation for us to continue our task at hand. 

    "The Medium is the Message". Our second video expands more on this phrase's meaning and how it may be relevant to us. The video informs us that the meaning behind the phrase is how "mediums have a far greater impact on the fundamental shape and nature of society than any message that is delivered through that medium."(Olson, 2015). It discusses how our tools affect the way we see the world and brought examples such as how Twitter or Tumblr can strongly affect their users' vocabulary. In addition, the video brought up a second phrase that further helps our understanding, "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."(Olson, 2015).

    When social media sites become the tool that everyone uses, this can be taken advantage of in various malicious ways. One such was the Cambridge Analytica Scandal in 2018. Cambridge Analytica was a political consultation firm that was under scrutiny due to the malicious targeting of users. Our third video, spoke on this event, as well as brought in the whistleblower that brought the issue to light. They spoke of the harvesting of information from Facebook users who have interacted with their content as well as the people they are friends with. With this information, the firm cultivated and targeted users in order to change or manipulate the users' opinions. This hostile targeting of users was compared to propaganda and brought to light several questions about the state of online privacy and media ethics.

    While this event was a grand display of how companies can host negative experiences for users, there are more minuscule but frustrating interface designs that can bring a negative user experience for people. One such category of design is Dark Patterns. These dark patterns are integrated into a service to guide the user into doing things they may not wish to do while benefiting the company. A specific example that was provided in our fourth video where it is excruciatingly frustrating to delete your Amazon account. Amazon has specifically designed its website to make it incredibly difficult for users to delete their accounts in order to maintain their user base. On the opposite end of the account's lifecycle, creating the account was a smooth and easy process. These are called Roach Motels, as explained in the video, where a situation is easy to enter but difficult to escape. At what point can these underhanded and malicious tactics can be considered harmful? The severity of these designs vary so much that it would simply be foolish to try to find a concrete way to deal with them. In the end, we'd have to resort to a more fluid solution to work it out. But even then, it would be incredibly difficult to do.

    Our final video, while not directly linked to what we have been speaking on so far, holds relevance to the topic of Media Ethics. Edward Bernays was a pioneer in terms of modern-day advertisement. His work with the American Tobacco Company in advertising Lucky Strike notably had an effect on advertisement and society as a whole. Bernays notably advertised a lifestyle when creating advertisements for companies. At the time it was far more common to be advertising the positives or the features of your products to convince consumers to purchase their products. However, Bernays targeted consumers' inner desires to conform to trends or to achieve a certain lifestyle. As well, women were entering the workforce and a number of women had begun smoking as a symbol of their independence. Bernays caught onto this and as such created an association between Lucky Strikes cigarettes and women's independence, increasing Lucky Strikes' popularity with women. This method of marketing, while highly effective, can take issues with media ethics as this tactic can seem underhanded and even manipulative at times. Even so, the topic of ethics, let alone media ethics, is so highly debated. It is near impossible to come to an agreement on such a grey topic when we often search for a black and white answer.

References:

McCombs School of Business, 2018. Ethics | Ethics Defined. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vWXpzlL7Mo>

Olson, D., 2015. Minisode - The Medium is the Message. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OseOb_wBsi4> 

The Guardian, 2018. What is the Cambridge Analytica scandal?. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q91nvbJSmS4>

Nerdwriter1, 2018. How Dark Patterns Trick You Online. [video] Available at: <https://youtu.be/kxkrdLI6e6M>

Freedom in Thought, 2017. How One Man Manipulated All of America. [video] Available at: <https://youtu.be/nj_UWbifM2U>