HCRHS Media Lit

"The tech giant records people's locations worldwide. Now, investigators are using it to find suspects and witnesses near crimes, running the risk of snaring the innocent."

"This week my daughter's school became the first in the nation to pilot facial-recognition software. The technology's potential is chilling."

"Smartphones and social media may be, in fact, transforming the experience of childhood and adolescence in some ways. But the hard (for many adults to hear) truth is that many of technology's effects on kids have less to do with screen time per se than they do with the decisions grown-ups are making - many of which place children's privacy at great risk. First, there's surveillance. Children are now under intense scrutiny from a young age, from platforms and advertisers, but also parents and other authority figures. Many public schools use online gradebooks, and sometimes app-based communication systems like Class Dojo. Depending on their settings, these systems allow parents to instantly see the score on every quiz, and a record of every time their child is disciplined or praised. Family dynamics vary; these updates may be the catalyst to an important conversation, an invitation to hover or get overly involved in a child's progress, or a prelude to harsh punishment."

"It's not just making people believe false things-a new study suggests it's also making them less likely to consume or accept information."

"From reality TV show Big Brother to warnings about surveillance, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has had a lasting impact on modern society. With the very idea of truth under attack, the Guardian's Dorian Lynskey explains why, 70 years after publication, the dystopian classic might matter more than ever."

"In the hope of finding a new way to fight malaria, scientists have used a spider gene to genetically engineer a fungus to produce a venom that can quickly kill mosquitoes. The modified fungus was a highly effective mosquito killer in the first tests mimicking conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, where malaria remains a major public health problem, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science. "We're very excited," says Raymond St. Leger, a professor of entomology at the University of Maryland who led the research. "The results are very good. This could save many lives." But others worry the approach may be unsafe."

"AirDrop is a file-sharing feature on Apple devices that lets users send photos, videos, contacts, links, and more via a combination of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Phones with AirDrop enabled can exchange files from up to 30 feet away, whether or not they're in each other's contact lists. Many adults use AirDrop to share files one-on-one, but teens have embraced mass image sharing via AirDrop for years. As more teens get their own iPhones and a rising number of schools crack down on social media, AirDrop culture has gone mainstream-and more adults are getting caught in the crossfire."

""Future You" is a monthly video series in which NPR's Future Correspondent Elise Hu explores how today's emerging science and technology could change what it means to be human by the year 2050."

"A week ago, The Washington Post reported that altered videos ("shallowfakes") of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - slowed down to make it look as if she were drunk and slurring her words - were spreading on social media. Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's personal attorney, tweeted one of them (though he later deleted the tweet). From the Post: One version, posted by the conservative Facebook page Politics WatchDog, had been viewed more than 2 million times by Thursday night, been shared more than 45,000 times, and garnered 23,000 comments with users calling her "drunk" and "a babbling mess." YouTube took the videos down. Facebook said it would downrank them, but wouldn't remove them altogether. "We don't have a policy that stipulates that the information you post on Facebook must be true," Facebook said in a statement to The Washington Post. The company said it instead would "heavily reduce" the video's appearances in people's news feeds, append a small informational box alongside the video linking to the two fact-check sites, and open a pop-up box linking to "additional reporting" whenever someone clicks to share the video. Monika Bikert, Facebook's head of product policy and counterterrorism, told CNN's Anderson Cooper that Facebook's policy is that "people make their own informed choice about what to believe. Our job is to make sure we're getting them accurate information." She claimed that "anybody who is seeing this video in their news feed, anybody who is going to share it to somebody else, anybody who has shared it in the past, they are being alerted that this video is false.""

"nstagram accounts that "expose" female influencers' digital retouching strive to empower women. In reality, they're hotbeds for sexist vitriol."

"By preaching acceptance and questioning gender, the company's kids films offer a queer-studies crash course."

"Movies like Boy Erased and Love, Simon show gay teens undergoing rites of passages that upend the classic Breakfast Club script."

"This week, PBS portrayed a same-sex relationship on a children's TV series-and got much more positive feedback than the last time it tried."

"Recent research finds that eye tracking, which is often used as an assistive technology, could be used to help people be more productive."

"According to a Pew research study, 57% of searches for professionals under-represent women. Learn more about the image problem in search engines. Try searching the word "professor" in Google images, and you'll be hard-pressed to find photos that include non-white and non-male scholars. It's even worse when you search for illustrations of professors. Sexism has found its way into machine learning and search engine algorithms-and unfortunately for us, society's unconscious bias is mirrored in search engine results."

"Despite shifting norms of fatherhood and masculinity, women continue to be the societal default when it comes to managing the details of their children's lives. The unfair division of labor in the home costs women's well-being as they pass up leisure time and professional a Take Action! Try this calculator to measure the yearly value of invisible labor. Women and men can define the unpaid labor imbalances in their households and work together to correct them."

"Division of labor in the home is one of the most important equity issues of our time. Yet at this rate it will be another 75 years before men do half the work."

"China's social credit system isn't a world first but when it's complete it will be unique. The system isn't just as simple as everyone being given a score though"

"How technology affects our well-being partly depends on whether it strengthens our relationships."

"The winner of this year's Modern Love college essay contest explores the comforts and limits of online connection."