Google’s Takeover

Today’s society is so quick to give out their personal information and to agree to terms that they have not read through. You can access almost anything through the internet such as banking information, credit score information and standard entertainment. There are many ways that your personal information is at risk and is being surveilled by outside sources. Companies such as Google, use your information to target ads towards you. Advertisers pay Google to get their ads featured.

In Mark Andrejevic’s article The Work of Being Watched: Interactive Media and the Exploitation of Self-Disclosure, Andrejevic discusses the importance of privacy rights as he critiques surveillance. According to Andrejevic, “More information than ever before is being privatized as it is collected and aggregated so that it can be resold as a commodity or incorporated into the development of customized commodities” (Andrejevic, 2002). Your private information that you are providing to companies is being sold to companies so that they can target you with ads. Companies such as Google are using your information to make the ads targeted towards you relevant.

In Siva Vaidhyanathan’s article, The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry), Vaidhyanathan discusses how Google came to be. According to Vaidhyanthan, “Google dominates the World Wide Web. There was never an election to determine the Web’s rulers. No state appointed Google its proxy, its proconsul, or its viceroy. Google just stepped into the void when no other authority was willing or able to make the Web stable, usable, and trustworthy. This was a quite necessary step at the time” (Vaidhyanathan, 2011). While Google does not sell your information, they target ads based on information that was provided. According to Vaidhyanthan, “Whenever we write blog entries, post reviews of products, upload photos, or make short videos for viewing by anyone who is using the Web, Google finds them. And it copies whatever it finds. All search engines must make a “cache” copy of material they find so that their computers can conduct a search. Then, when others search for content relating to their search queries, Google places revenue-generating advertisements on the margins of the search results through its Ad Words auction program, described above” (Vaidhyanathan, 2011). Whatever you search on Google, is now saved to Google so that they know what you are interested in. People exchange their privacy/personal information for access to content they wouldn’t be granted access to normally. Google invests billions into developing techniques to target you.

These articles compliment each other. Andrejevic’s article discusses privacy on the internet. The internet would not be much without Google. Google has managed to monopolize the internet. Both articles warn about how the information that you provide is collected and used. The two readings have helped inform my progress toward meeting the learning objectives for this course. They have given me an insight into how data can be used and sold by companies. It has made me more aware of the information that I provide online and what terms I am agreeing to.

References

Andrejevic, M. (2002, June 22). Work of Being Watched. Retrieved December 03, 2017, from https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzlNbYYWRMSHZi1GQTk0aWRHSTQ/vie w

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2011). Googlization of Everything (And Why You Should Worry). Retrieved December 03, 2017, from https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzlNbYYWRMSHcE1VRHFJTldWZWM/vie w

It’s Time to Broaden the Conversation About the Student Debt Crisis Beyond Rising Tuition Costs

In the article, It’s Time to Broaden the Conversation About the Student Debt Crisis Beyond Rising Tuition Costs, Timothy Ulbrich discusses student loans and debt with a focus on pharmaceutical debt/loans. While pharmacists make a decent income, around $120,000, new practitioners are graduating and they are drowning in debt. Ulbrich states, “The average amount borrowed for students graduating from pharmacy school increased from $101,892 in 20096 to $163,494 in 2017. Looking further at the amount borrowed by pharmacy students attending public or private schools, those graduating in 2017 from public schools reported borrowing an average amount of $136,328, compared with those graduating from private schools, who reported an average amount borrowed of $189,317” (Ulbrich, 2017). This article will be important for my research because Ulbrich shows how a person can graduate and get a high paying job but still be paying off thousands in student loans. He also touches on student scholarships and financial assistance as well, which he believes play critical roles in college student’s lives.

 

https://search-proquest-com.mutex.gmu.edu/docview/1944212011?accountid=14541

Net Price Keeps Creeping Up

It is no secret that college tuition has continued to rise over the past few years. According to Rick Seltzer’s article, Net Price Keeps Creeping Up, “Private nonprofit four-year institutions’ average published tuition and fees increased by 1.9 percent, to $34,740, in 2017-18, after adjusting for inflation. Public four-year institutions’ tuition and fees rose by 1.3 percent, to $9,970. Public two-year colleges’ tuition and fees increased by 1.1 percent year over year, to $3,570” (Seltzer, 2017). Seltzer questions the affordability of college for average income families. With a rise in college tuition, one would expect to see a rise in financial aid as well, which we did see. Seltzer states, “Grant aid for post secondary students totaled $125.4 billion in 2016-17. That was 74 percent more than 10 years earlier, adjusting for inflation” (Seltzer, 2017). A 74 percent increase is the largest increase on record. This article will help me write my final paper because he talks about why tuition has risen and why financial aid has risen as well. There are several interesting graphs as well that will come in handy.

 

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/25/tuition-and-fees-still-rising-faster-aid-college-board-report-shows

Click of a Button…

We live in a world today where you can access almost anything you want with a click of a button. Many people fail to realize how much technology truly affects us and how it has changed our everyday life. Technology not only affects the average person, but it affects companies, big and small. One field that the growth of technology has had a major impact on is photojournalism. Digital technologies have had a detrimental effect on professional photojournalists careers.

In Gregory Paschalidis’ article, Mini Cameras and Maxi Minds, Paschalidis references a French Newspaper called the Liberation. Paschalidis states that, “Οn November 14, 2013, for the first time in its 40-year history, the French daily Liberation was published without any photographs at all, having in their place a series of empty white frames with their telltale captions and signatures” (Paschalidis, 2015). Many praised Liberation for paying homage and drawing attention to the fact that many newspapers are eliminating their photography staff and replacing them with freelancers and citizen photojournalists.

Lindsay Palmer’s article, iReporting” an Uprising: CNN and Citizen Journalism in Network Culture, touches on similar points that Paschalidis made. Palmer examines how television news organizations, in particular CNN, depend on unpaid labor for its iReport. iReport is a website that allows everyday people to upload pictures from anywhere in the world and have the picture tagged to their location. CNN has created a space for people or citizen photojournalists to publish their photos with a reputable news organization.

In Palmer’s article she states that, “CNN did not need to pay as many professional reporters to travel the world, so long as they had iReporters who could upload the images instead. The trick was to take advantage of this free labor without forfeiting the network’s professional credibility and without allowing the network’s newscasts to be inundated with a glut of information” (Palmer, 2012). This is similar to the point that the French magazine, Liberation, was trying to make. They were highlighting the fact that many professional photojournalists are losing their jobs because companies, such as CNN, are relying on citizen photojournalists to provide photographs. These citizen photojournalists can provide photographs of current events a lot quicker due to the fact that news organizations don’t have to fly them to where the action is happening because they are already there.

Both of these authors agree on the fact that citizen photojournalists have had a drastic effect on the careers of professional photojournalists. Why would a company pay to hire a professional photojournalist when they have people that are willing to submit their photo’s for free? These articles have informed my progress towards meeting the learning objectives for this course by helping me understand in more detail the effect that citizen photojournalists have had on professional photojournalists as well as news organizations that used to rely solely on professionals. It has made me more aware of how news organizations can profit off photo’s submitted by citizen photojournalists, while the citizen is more then likely unpaid.

 

Works Cited

Palmer, L. (2012). “iReporting” an Uprising: CNN and Citizen Journalism in Network Culture.Television & New Media,367-385.

Paschalidis, G. (2015). Mini Cameras and Maxi Minds.Digital Journalism,635-651.