Neoliberalism: “a more virulent and brutal form of market capitalism”, where “the market should be the organizing principle for all political, social, and economic decisions” and “everything either is for sale or is plundered for profit”. “The environment is polluted and despoiled in the name of profit-making” and “public services are gutted in order to lower the taxes of major corporations”.

Militarization: A key component of neoliberalism which is “An intensification of the labor and resources allocated to military purposes, including the shaping of other institutions in synchrony with military goals”. Militirization can also be “a shift in general societal beliefs and values in ways necessary to legitimate the use of force, the organization of large standing armies and their leaders, and the higher taxes or tribute used to pay for them”, or “a powerful cultural politics that works its way through everyday life spawning particular notions of masculinity, sanctioning war as a spectacle, and fear as a central formative component in mobilizing an affective investment in militarization”.

Legacy Preference: As public funding dwindles due to privatization, some schools adopt a legacy preference where they give preference to applicants of wealthy alumni in hopes that their parents will contribute to the school. A spin-off emerged in the 1970’s called the “development admit” where schools would give preference to the children of wealthy parents who did not attend the school in hopes of establishing a lasting relationship with the parents. These practices damaged the careers of “brilliant but ‘unhooked’ applicants”.

Mobilize: A key component of any movement is mobilization. Mobilization is defined as “make (something) movable or capable of movement.” Mobilization is necessary to transfer key ideas and ideology into actual reportable outcomes.

In the reading on Hate Crimes in Cyber Space, Danielle Citron describes incidents of cyber harassment:

“Their social security numbers and medical conditions are published for all to see. Even if some abuse is taken down from a site, it quickly reappears on others. Victims’ sites are forced offline with distributed-denial-of-service attacks.”

This action: the publishing of personal information such as home addresses, work addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, phone numbers, etc is called doxxing. This action is meant to further harass victims online and in person/real life.

Trolling is what people call it when someone uses the internet to insult someone with the goal of getting a rise out of them. Someone who trolls uses inflammatory language or starts arguments to provoke a reaction. For example, in the episode of ‘This American Life,’ the woman who spoke was trolled because someone impersonated her dead father and used his persona to insult her. They were attempting to upset her. In the episode, she says ‘never feed the troll,’ referring to the fact that if you are being trolled, you should not respond because it only gives the troller what they want.

In modern language, trolling refers to slowly dragging a lure or bait from the back of a fishing boat, to sort of lead the fish on. Translated to internet language, it refers to leading a person along, to encourage a reaction.

Key term: Cyber Mobs
“Mobs from dominant groups are notorious for shaming relatively powerless groups, in taking delight in the discomfort of the excluded and stigmatized. Cyber mobs gather online to harass individuals in degrading and threatening ways”, where “posters compete to be the most of ensive, the most abusive”. (Citron, 5). This mob mentality can push cyber harassment and stalking to even higher levels, as members of the cyber mob constantly compete to one-up their peers and abuse the victim more than the last person.

Problem/Solution:

As the internet expands and constantly becomes more  integrated with society and can lead to real-world problems, how can one distinguish legitimate articles found on the internet from ones made by trolls or by other malicious people on the internet?  That is, how can, for example, an employer, when researching about a new possible hire, differentiate legitimate articles pertaining to the candidate from untrue ones? This can also hold true for the opposite: suppose a person fabricates false credentials and simply puts them online to look more favorable. How can one find what is true?

Solution(?): Are there companies employers can hire to dig through the files on the information and find relevant ones? Are there computer programs that can do that and somehow verify what sources are legitimate? If one wants to hide the many false websites in a google search pertaining to them, is there a program/service that can generate thousands of irrelevant articles that come up and effectively bury the negative ones deep within the web? Would this option make google/search engines somewhat useless as people could simply hide whatever they didn’t want found? Would people be able to use such programs to generate a plethora of false information about a person, ultimately increasing the potency of online defamation/harassment?

Inundated

I felt this word really brings out how cyber harassment feels to the victim. Especially in this day and age when we are so connected to the Internet though all our devices in all aspects of our lives. So many people have presences on a multitude of platforms so when you are being cyber harassed it feels like it is coming in from all sides. Like you are drowning in attacks.

“Victims’ invoices are inundated with threatening emails. Their employers receive anonymous emails accusing them of misdeeds. Fake online advertisements list victim’s contact information and availability for sex. On message boards and blogs, victims are falsely accused of having sexuality’s transmitted infections, criminal records, and mental illnesses. Their social security numbers and medical condition are published for all to see. Even if some abuse is tea Allen down from a site, it quickly reappears on others.”

“Elizabeth Cargill, a psychologist who works with cyber stalking victims, explains that when someone is harassed online, it feels like the perpetrator is everywhere: Facebook, e-mails, message boards, and outside the office.”

French Toast Mafia

Podcast (podcasts3)- “a bridge between internet radio and traditional wireless radio”. “An extention or radio”. “A mid-term technology”. The future of radio is still evolving.

Medium (podcasts2)- “scholars have argued that radio is a deeply intimate medium”. “Listening often imparts a sense of emotion stronger than that imparted by looking.”
Both radio and podcasting have concepts in common despite their differences. For example, radio and podcasts use the idea of listening rather than seeing to convey their message. Also, both radio shows and certain podcasts have become available as downloads for easier access.

Serial (podcasts3)- “Serial is something of a gateway drug, leading many of us to other podcast”. “It offers good insight to the future of podcasting”. Serial is popular enough to encourage newcomers to begin listening to podcasts but it has also been credited with showing more potential than others.

In the USA Today article, “new Golden-age TV” was used to describe the movement of Amazon towards producing more original programming, namely with it’s success in winning a Golden Globe for Transparent as well as securing Woody Allen to make an original film series. The term encompasses the popularity and profit of TV moving from a linear system to Internet TV. TV used to be about watching your favorite shows on the days and at the times they were scheduled, on a television in your living room or bedroom. Now, however, the system of watching TV shows on your computer or any other Internet connected device is taking over. Network websites have the TV shows available for weeks to watch online, and more particularly, Netflix is taking Internet TV by storm. With the introduction of it’s streaming program in 2007 and it’s improvement as the years go on, paying customers can watch whatever shows are available whenever they want, on whatever device they want. The introduction of Original Programming adds a whole new area to the game. These new shows, produced by Amazon and Netflix as opposed to the CW and AMC (etc.), are available a season at a time, so you can binge-watch the whole thing the weekend it comes out.

“New Golden-Age TV” also references the way it is paid for, and what is paid for. The article says “for people to pay, they have to want the product…without it, I’m missing something.” Therefore, the targeted audience for many new shows has changed. It isn’t the child with the credit card. So, much of the great new television is middle-age television, like Mad Men, House of Cards, Transparent, etc… TV is also not paid for as much by advertisers. As people discover streaming, which usually offers shows with few or no ads, that is much more attractive than packing thirty minutes worth of ads to a two and a half hour movie.

So, TV is taking over again, but now it’s aimed at older audiences and produced by companies who are more focused on what the customer wants so they’ll pay for it. “New Golden Age TV” is the new way TV is produced, paid for, and advertised.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XqloQhcbu4[/youtube]

All of the new shows involve adult themes and are aimed towards older audiences, and include a Hulu and HBO original, as well as a revival of sorts of The X-Files.

Disintermediation – reduction in the use of intermediaries between producers and consumers, for example by investing directly in the securities market rather than through a bank

Disintermediation is mentioned in The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Have Redefined Business as an example of what Amazon performed in the world of book publishing and distribution, but it is a process that all four of the giants that the book concerns itself with utilize, and one that is central to the concept of new media.

Disintermediation constitutes a breakdown of barriers in between two parties, typically those of producers and consumers, though it can be abstracted to fit a number of roles and roles are redefined in the digital age. The example touted in the book is that of Amazon taking up the role of publisher in order to combine the publishing, distribution, and selling platforms into one, thus eliminating the boundaries that had previously existed. A similar process (albiet a more hidden one) occurs with Google, when it combined image searches, news searches, video searches, and multiple other kinds of search under one browser. Facebook has done the same thing with promoting the integration of Facebook into many sites and applications. Apple has done the same thing with the app store.

Disintermediation is an intrinsic aspect of new media platforms, for new media inherently defies and transcends the old media, and its means of reaching the consumer. In “the medium is the message” sort of thought, disintermediation creates the new mediums through which messages are created.