In today’s world, information is a valuable currency. While the age of social media has inarguably broadened our horizons and our accessibility to information, our society is facing a massive crisis of counterfeiting due to the flood of misinformation. Social media sites and big technology companies continue to grace headlines for their oversight or lack […]
Tag: Facebook
Institutional Fragmentation and the Future of American Data Protection
All social media companies operate around the same basic principle. You are not the customer of Facebook — you are the product. When we speak about data, we are referring to bite-sized pieces of information about people. Where you live, how you vote, and what your favorite soda is are all examples of individual data […]
The U.S.-China Brain Drain
This publication, the Berkeley Political Review, is situated within the Bay Area, a section of California that is best known for its incredible innovations in the technology field. The ecosystem created in Silicon Valley is unlike any other comparable industry ecosystem in the world and has led to the creation of world-conquering technology companies. Focusing […]
Facebook: Myanmar’s Misinformation Megaphone
UN Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee, upon reporting about the Rohingya crisis last March, concluded, “Facebook has now turned into a beast.” Indeed it has. In Myanmar, what was once intended as a harmless social networking platform has warped into a powerful vessel for the government to target its citizens with inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda. In […]
You Are Here: How The US Is Missing The Point In Regulating And Protecting Data Privacy
I like conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and flat-earthers. I like them not because I believe in the nonsense they spout, especially when it’s particularly vulgar rhetoric like claiming the Sandy Hook shooting was staged and harassing parents about it, but because their conspiracies are sometimes pretty funny, such as the idea that the world […]
Peaks and Valleys: The Resilient Nature of Silicon Valley
California dreaming is now looking more like California leaving, as recent data reveals an exodus of Californians is slowing the state’s rate of growth. IRS data revealed that between 2007 and 2016, 1.2 million more residents departed from the state than entered. This problem is particularly accentuated in the Bay Area. A survey taken in […]
Search Engine Politics: How Algorithms are Creating Political Controversy
With new and emerging technologies including social media platforms and search engines, old problems are being brought to the forefront once again. One of those issues is political bias and it is an issue that is now being discussed, investigated, and debated in the halls of Congress. Discussing political bias, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter […]
Double-Edged Sword: The Weaponization of the Digital Landscape and its Impacts on American Democracy
By Alexander Casendino Breakthroughs typically arise from strange beginnings. In his early years as a student at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg had no clue that he would forever change the world upon launching the “hot or not” website, FaceMash. The same concepts and software behind Zuckerberg’s sophomoric project would later be applied to the social media […]
Uncharted Waters
The last time you used Facebook, it is entirely possible that like any normal social media user, you saw a cute picture or an interesting post and reacted by clicking the like button or commented how you felt about it. Sounds pretty innocent, right? False. The recent Cambridge Analytica scandal has revealed that not only […]
Whole Foods in the Rust Belt
“Bright” is the word that might best describe the United States’ economic powerhouse: Silicon Valley. Yet while San Jose and Palo Alto sparkle in the political spotlight, Midwestern towns of Detroit and Dayton have been left in the dark. For the last two decades, while manufacturing towns in the Rust Belt have declined, Silicon Valley […]
Fake News is Real: The Rise of Computational Propaganda and Its Political Ramifications
“Fake News” — two words that have become synonymous with Donald Trump and his 2016 bid for the presidency. Some wholeheartedly believed it, some cast it aside as irrelevant, and others avidly denied it. Yet, President Trump was right. Fake news is real, but not necessarily in the way that most imagine. In the 2016 election, […]
The Conflict of Curation
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell in his dystopian 1984 warns that the mediums through which individuals receive their news, political history and current events hold influential power. Today, while sources of news have never been as present, the mediums in which individuals receive the […]
Capitol Hill or Silicon Valley? Big Tech’s Growing Influence in Political Arena
Since its inception as the the hub of innovation, Silicon Valley has primarily been known as a bastion of promising startups, cutting-edge technology, and endless wealth. Lesser known, however, is the influence companies and their respective CEOs wield in the field of politics. Uber has both revolutionized the driving world, given the taxi industry steep […]
A Second Look: Shaping Public Opinion
By now, most of the world has heard the story of Ahmed Mohamed. On September 14, 2015, this high school freshman brought a homemade clock contraption, complete with a ticking timer, to school. A teacher who thought the device was suspicious reported it to the principal, who then called police. Police questioned Ahmed for about […]
Don’t Snooze, S-News!
While one might not see applications like Facebook, Twitter, or even Snapchat as anything more than entertainment, that perception is changing as more and more of these companies creatively combine knowledge of current events alongside the entertainment options they offer. Popular applications such as Facebook and Twitter incorporate news and current events headlines into their […]
Not Another Hashtag: Social Media’s Failure to Fight #BokoHaram
The power of social media can only extend so far. While our tweets, Facebook statuses, and tumblr posts may be effective at generating publicity, their effectiveness at actually catalyzing change is questionable. A recent example of social media’s failure to catalyze tangible change is the “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign that dominated twitter this past […]