HCRHS Media Lit

"'Black Mirror' is a satirical anthology series that examines the dark aspects of modern society, particularly as it relates to our relationship with technology. Each standalone episode presents a picture of a world that's futuristic, yet believable; cool, yet horrifying. Each of these study guides will touch on some of the themes the episode explores."

"Back when I was in university, a friend of mine called his parents every single night. That's sweet, you might think. But no, it was a ritualistic, mandatory process that he was required to complete. Before the dawn of the mobile phone, the university send-off would be the start of some semblance of independence for parents' children. That's not so true any more, with our technologically connected world. Arkangel is a Black Mirror episode that conveys the cold, hard reality of helicopter parenting: a term describing over-involved parents that make decisions for their children, solving their problems and shielding them from making mistakes."

"In our almost complete transition to a digital culture, we are changing in ways we never realized. There is as much reason for excitement, and for caution, if we turn our attention to the specific changes in the evolving reading brain that are happening now and that may happen in different ways in a few short years. This is because the transition from a literacy-based culture to a digital one differs radically from previous transitions from one form of communication to another. Unlike in the past, we possess both the science and technology to identify potential changes in how we read - and thus how we think - before such changes are fully entrenched in the population and accepted without our comprehension of the consequences."

"in recent years, it's taken more effort to distinguish where advertising stops and reality begins. In many ways, ads are reflective of a world attempting to hide its problems from itself. This is true both in the way they portray imperfect products and in their silencing effect on the platforms that shape the way we see things - platforms that rely on ad dollars to survive. The result is a sanitized, "ad-friendly" world, one that conceals injustices and real issues to evoke a false, temporary state of comfort. Is the world we exist in - a world in which products and services are seemingly gifted to us by short, perfect vignettes we might even relate to on some level - the real world? Advertising is present in the vast majority of our media. It's so normal that pointing out problems with ads is sometimes met with annoyance or even argument. On one of my YouTube series, Adversaries, we've received more than a few hostile comments because we're "critiquing something that doesn't even matter, which is kind of a weird thing to get angry about.""

"If it's easy to ignore the ceaseless drone of ethical violations from the social network, turn your attention instead to the companies who happily shared in the harvesting of your personal data to bolster their own products - without clear disclosures or any consent whatsoever. Facebook is a problem, but the online economy that trades on your data is a bigger one."

"There's a popular suspicion, for example, that Tinder and other dating apps might make people pickier or more reluctant to settle on a single monogamous partner, a theory that the comedian Aziz Ansari spends a lot of time on in his 2015 book, Modern Romance, written with the sociologist Eric Klinenberg. Eli Finkel, however, a professor of psychology at Northwestern and the author of The All-or-Nothing Marriage, rejects that notion. "Very smart people have expressed concern that having such easy access makes us commitment-phobic," he says, "but I'm not actually that worried about it." Research has shown that people who find a partner they're really into quickly become less interested in alternatives. Finkel believes that dating apps haven't changed happy relationships much-but he does think they've lowered the threshold of when to leave an unhappy one. In the past, there was a step in which you'd have to go to the trouble of "getting dolled up and going to a bar," Finkel says, and you'd have to look at yourself and say, "What am I doing right now? I'm going out to meet a guy. I'm going out to meet a girl," even though you were in a relationship already. Now, he says, "you can just tinker around, just for a sort of a goof; swipe a little just 'cause it's fun and playful. And then it's like, oh-[suddenly] you're on a date." The other subtle ways in which people believe dating is different now that Tinder is a thing are, quite frankly, innumerable. Some believe that dating apps' visual-heavy format encourages people to choose their partners more superficially (and with racial or sexual stereotypes in mind); others argue that humans choose their partners with physical attraction in mind even without the help of Tinder. There are equally compelling arguments that dating apps have made dating both more awkward and less awkward by allowing matches to get to know each other remotely before they ever meet face-to-faceâ€

"As internet-connected devices and appliances accumulate, one academic foresees "the monetization of every move you make.""

"In reality, Google's goal (and our goal, as Google marketers) is to separate you from as much of your money as possible every time you aren't thinking clearly -and we do so through ads. Micro-moments are so important to Google's bottom line that, since a May 2016 keynote, Google has taught us marketers how to best leverage them against you. We do this by serving the ad best suited to your flavor of impulse, and by making sure we're there for each of those impulses. In a perfect world, marketers would be trained to help you use Google well when you are of an impressionable mind. Instead, we're taught to exploit your befuddlement. Whether you're aware of it or not, you have micro-moments about 150 times per day. You will see ads during most of them. These ads speak to what you seek; play on emotions that are unlike you; and fit your age, income, gender, location, and browsing history"

"Michael Brennan, who founded the award-winning safeguarding platform tootoot, was himself a victim of cyberbullying at school. "There were too many barriers for me to speak up, especially in high school. It was all happening on places like Bebo and MySpace, where there was no way to tackle it. So, I vowed to find a solution to the problem." Since Michael launched tootoot in 2014, the reporting app has worked with more than 1,000 British schools, with over 400,000 children registered on the platform. Children can log in and report problematic messages to their school or local council, and are assigned a unique number when they log in to report bullying. Schools can keep track of how many times an individual child has experienced bullying, build a chronology, and identify patterns on a dashboard. If they feel it's necessary, they can click to reveal the identity of a child reporting bullying."

"However, when considering our current fixation on representation, I have to wonder if we have overlooked other meaningful ways of being represented, those that can be pinpointed only in life experiences and emotional phenomenon beyond the visible self. When I think of all the "black art" being ushered in by this new era, I feel conflicted. As a black person, I enjoy seeing artists whose careers are finally being given due praise and whose voices are at last being amplified. However, a question arises of what it means to be truly represented. Is it enough to look like the artist if you do not recognize yourself in the art? And yet there is nothing simple about it. Representation is such a complicated issue because on the surface it presents itself as a politically correct, objective good for all of society. For those being represented, it plays to a collective sense of pride and personal vanity. It feels good to see ourselves and know that people in our communities are being paid to craft their own narratives. Representation also presents the opportunity for other communities, which might have otherwise stereotyped or discriminated against us, to see our humanity and acknowledge our worth in the art we produce. However, while representation may be a praiseworthy standard for creative industries, it cannot be the bench mark against which we measure good art. Good art must do more than reflect our own images back at us. It must move us to a place beyond our obsession with identity, sense of tribalism and fear of others."

"When Tinder became available to all smartphone users in 2013, it ushered in a new era in the history of romance"

"CNN's Kirsten Powers asked critics of the Gillette ad targetting 'toxic masculinity' why they find it so "triggering" and what is it about "treating women with respect and equality that's so offensive to you?" Powers said Wednesday that if you're upset about this, you should be asking yourself why. "I think if you're somebody whose having sort of a triggering reaction to this, you might want to look at yourself and ask why that is because what is it about treating women with respect and equality that's so offensive to you?" Powers asked."

"How you see the role of men and women at work and at home has become an integral element of contemporary political conflict. Until recently, most of the attention has been focused on partisan evaluations of problems confronting women. A 2017 Pew Research report found, for example, that by nearly 3 to 1 (73-25 percent), Democrats believe women face "significant obstacles that make it harder for them to get ahead than men," while Republicans believe those obstacles are largely gone (63-34). Last week, however, the American Psychological Association entered the fray with the release of its long-planned "Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men." The A.P.A. guidelines argue that the socialization of males to adhere to components of "traditional masculinity such as emotional stoicism, homophobia, not showing vulnerability, self-reliance and competitiveness" leads to the disproportion of males involved in "aggression and violence as a means to resolve interpersonal conflict" as well as "substance abuse, incarceration, and early mortality.""

"A Gillette advert which references bullying, the #MeToo movement and toxic masculinity has split opinion online. The razor company's short film, called Believe, plays on their famous slogan "The best a man can get", replacing it with "The best men can be". The company says it wants men to hold each other "accountable". Some have praised the message of the advert, which aims to update the company's 30-year-old tagline, but others say Gillette is "dead" to them. The ad has been watched more than 2 million times on YouTube in 48 hours."

"Fake news is a term that's become popular today, but what does it actually mean? And how pervasive is it?"

"Songs by rising artists like Sam Fender and Henry Jamison, and the bands Idles and As It Is, protest old notions of manhood."

"What are we to believe, even when we see something with our own eyes? As Poynter senior faculty member Al Tompkins says, "The difference between accuracy and truth is context.'' That's the lesson when it comes to looking at the video of the standoff between Catholic high school students and the Native American drummer in Washington, D.C., over the weekend. We all saw what we saw. A young man wearing a Make America Great Again hat standing in front of a Native American banging a drum and chanting. But did we really see what we think we saw? Some of us saw a long video of the event. Some of us saw an abbreviated version. Some of us saw just a photo."

" Despite dramatic changes in the form, the basic premise of advertising has remained unchanged-strangers with an agenda attempt to co-opt your attention and guide your thoughts. But technology has fundamentally changed the extent to which we experience advertising. Empowered by technology's inexorable expansion into every facet of our lives, modern advertising has become so ubiquitous that it is unavoidable. Every new technology has advertising potential, and the brands of our brave new world hate nothing more than wasted potential."

"How will life change when every noise becomes a search prompt?"

"Retail and Alexa are just the start of the path toward total domination"