Media Law

Has the Internet placed you in a filter bubble? Do their algorithms limit your feeds to the people and organizations who only think the same way as you? Today, our marketplace of free ideas seems constrained by the instruments that social media providers are using to show us what they think we will be interested in seeing. Additionally, it is human nature to want to interact with people who have shared thoughts and ideals.  See Echo Chambers are Dangerous.  We tend to hang out with people like ourselves in person, so why not hang out online with people who are like ourselves as well. When we are not exposed to people who think differently than us, we live in what has been termed as an "epistemic bubble." Bubbles are safe and enclosed, but they can be suffocating as well. Unfortunately, for many of us, these bubbles have turned into echo chambers. The term is a bit deceiving, however. In a social media echo chamber, we not only solely hear from people who share our views, ...

For years, governments and other institutions have flooded the marketplace with propaganda. Today, some people lovingly refer to it as "fake news." After World War II, the United States passed the U.S. Informational and Education Exchange Act of 1948, otherwise known as the Smith-Mundt Act. This law prohibited the U.S. Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors from disseminating materials within the United States. The fear was that government produced programming by networks, such as the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, would "propagandize" the American people.  See History of the Smith-Mundt Act. But with the arrival of the 21st century, came the arrival of 21st century technology, including satellites and the Internet. Material produced by anyone in the world could be accessed anywhere in the world, so the prohibition carried little weight and was actually irrelevant. In 2012, the President Obama and Congress adopted the Smith-Mundt Mo...

"For my generation, being anonymous is no longer an option"  (See The Privacy Divide) . Wow. A pretty strong and somewhat scary statement. Is it true? Or, is it simply hyperbole? When I stop to think about my social media footprint and the platforms frequented all day everyday by my friends and acquaintances, the answer is plain to see. My generation lives its life in the public view. We are all, in a sense, public celebrities, as we share all the details from where we are, to what we are doing, to what we ate for dinner on the internet. Will we be forever haunted by our online presence? Can we do anything to put the brakes on this speeding train of losing our personal right to privacy? Does true personal privacy no longer exist in a world dominated by social media and technology? I think there are a few ways that we can try to limit our public exposure. Personally, I have accounts on virtually every common social media account like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapch...

According to professor and author Everett Rogers, "Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread" ( See Diffusion of Innovations).  This may sound theoretical and complex, but in reality, it is just big speak for trying to explain why something goes viral. The theory focuses on four main elements that will determine the extent to which a new idea or piece of technology will spread ("the innovation itself, communication channels, time and a social system" -  See Diffusion of Innovations ). For Snapchat, all four of these elements fell into place with a perfectly tuned synchronicity that sent the app skyrocketing onto the phones of 210 million users.  That's right---I fact-checked the number and found that in the past five years, the number of daily users of Snapchat has grown to 210 million people. I'm sorry, but that is a helluva lot of people. So how, and why did this innovation dif...

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, tolerance is defined as “ sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own .” The promotion of tolerance as a value is a leading argument for the protection of speech under the First Amendment. With today’s political divisiveness, however, some are starting to question the legitimacy of this value, because it allows hatred and stupidity to be spewed from the mouths of our citizens, including some of our elected officials.  (See Free Speech has Failed Us).   As much as the tweet to the right goes against all my instincts of civility, we need to tolerate it as a free exercise of speech. The importance of tolerance for differing views was initially argued by John Stuart Mill. In his essay entitled, “On Liberty (1869), Mill encourages diversity of thought, opinion and speech in the marketplace. Allowing people to challenge each other will, in the end, result in a better society. ...

We do it every day...pictures of ourselves at school, on the beach, getting ready for a party. Posting selfies to Instagram is a common occurrence in many of our lives today. We generally do it for fun and to share our lives with our friends and followers. It usually doesn't take much thought and not much thought is usually put into it. But when we post those images of our faces, do we realize the power of our message? It is actually way more powerful than we may know. Just recently, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, made a speech in front of the United Nations General Assembly. At the beginning of his speech, he took out his phone and snapped a selfie. Some may argue that this action was completely inappropriate at the time. But Bukele strongly believes otherwise. He said, "Believe me, many more people will see that selfie when I share it than will listen to this speech...A couple of images on Instagram can have more impact than any speech delivered in this asse...