M2017 ITGS HL section B

Scenario: Social Media is now very influential during elections and the US Presidential Candidates are using it to their advantage. Social media has so much power because more people than ever get their news mainly from social media networks. When something exciting happens online, the news talks about it. Social media then goes and talks about what happened on the news. So it's a growing accumulation of attention. Trump, Clinton and Sanders communicate their thoughts through free social networks and get a very widespread response. Young people especially obtain most of their information online. One thing that Trump does differently that gains him attention is his convoluted messages. His statements induce a strong response and get people communicating around him. Social Ethical Issues: Power of media - One issue that the US presidential election brings up is the power of media. How much what is written and said online can affect our judgements and ethics. We can't believe everything on the Internet but it definitely influences our thoughts. When seeing posts from a Candidate we should question why they said why they did. False statements - Some of the things that Trump says on social media is not true, things he may not even believe in. He posts these things solely to get attention. Attention by any means. Technology allows these false statements to be spread around the world. IT Systems: Networks Social Media Management Systems Computers Social media software Stakeholders: Candidates: They can use social media as a platform to reach more people, influence responses and gain attention. Public: They have candidates entering their ecosystem, trying to communicate with them. They also have the ability to evoke responses from the Candidates and demonstrate what they think.

Scenario: This article from the guardian focuses upon the positives to online campaigning, and states that citizens should drop the criticism they impose upon online campaigning. Instead of stating the possible concerns alongside online campaigning, the article mentions Barack Obama and the success he has achieved through extensive online campaigning. The author seems to firmly believe that online campaigning should simply be accepted and embraced instead of criticized. Social and Ethical significance: With the widespread use of digital technology all over the globe, it is not a surprise that many political candidates have understood the power of the online world, and have played it to their advantage. As mentioned in the article, Barrack Obama spent a generous amount of capital on his online campaigns, and this eventually led to his success in becoming president. Above all, online campaigns can give candidates a voice which extends far beyond the reach of their rallies or campaign areas, a voice that all citizens who are involved in the voting procedure may then acknowledge and be influenced by. IT Systems: Online campaigning can be accomplished through many varying methods. However, one popular form of online campaigning involves candidates publishing advertisements/campaigns on popular media websites, such as youtube. Anyone who then watches a video on youtube will have to watch the advertisement campaign before proceeding. There are very few IT systems which are involved in accomplishing this step. First, the candidate approaches the website giant and forms an advertisement contract. Then, the candidate provides the corporation with a form of advertisement. This can be in text, image, or video format. The corporation then uploads this form of advertisement onto their servers, and the advertisement is incorporated into their ads section and in some form affiliated with their website so that users of the website may also experience the campa

In New Zealand, numerous security and privacy issues of their e-voting system couldn't be addressed in time for the elections so they scrapped the plan. 2 stakeholders: The people running for elections and the people voting. The turnout of the elections would decide which person running would end up as the local president/prime minister which would also affect the people who voted during the elections. 2 social/ethical issues: If the issues with the e-voting systems weren't fixed by the time of the election, there could have been risks of hacking into the system and purposely altering the votes to go the way of one of the people running in the election. If it wasn't purposeful, there may have been accidents occurring with the system which would cause some votes to be miscounted or counted as invalid which would make it unfair. Possible solution: To help with the security risks, they can implement firewalls and password protection to prevent hackers from accessing the voting system.

Situation: Marketing has been transformed by technology. Ads are found everywhere and there are specialized ads that target a specific group of people. Businesses need to keep up with new marketing techniques by gaining new skills. Marketers must have sufficient experience with dealing with technology. Technologists in combination with marketers are becoming key to successful marketing. Social and Ethical Significance: With marketing expanding to the Internet and mobile devices, some of the limitations that marketing used to have are now diminished. No longer are ads confined to billboards and flyers. Now there is a whole other world of possibility. Markers can affect people through their phone, laptops, tablets, watches and even glasses. This open up so many doors for marketing. One aspect of marketing that has been expanded is the reach that campaigns can have. More places to put ads means more eyeballs on the ads. Companies can also target market. Using data from people, companies can target ads to specific people whom they believe the ad will be most effective. The article mentions that some marketing people believe that targeted marketing is not improving and companies are just wasting their money. This is something that the business owners need to think about when making marketing decisions. Stakeholders: Marketers: People who work as a marketer now have to think about other aspects of marketing like how the technology works and what type of online marketing would be most effective. Marketing business owners: Business owners will have tough decisions on deciding who to hire to market. Employees will be expected to be more than just a create advertiser. They will have to know how to work with technology in real-time. Owners will also have to determine to what extent to they want to advertise online. IT systems: Although no systems were specifically identified in the article a few technologies that marketers use for research and to reach people inc

Situation: This article pertains to the United States' Presidential Elections of 2008 that was won by Barack Obama and his usage of the Internet as well as Social Media. The reason he won the 2008 elections was not just because of his presidential policies, but however due to his personal reach and trust that the Internet will help fund and run a primary part of his campaign. Social and Ethical Significance: This article talks about how online campaigning is the key to 90%+ of political campaigns of the future and how they function. The article takes the (obvious) example of Barack Obama's presidential campaign of 2008 that was a historic campaign for multiple reasons. The article [published in 2008], claims that the primary reason that Obama succeeded because he "understood the potential of social media to communicate and raise funds - leaving his 72-year old opponent floundering." This campaign is the first election where all candidates utilised online social networks like Facebook [and still popular then, MySpace] to send forward their messages. This article also talks about personal knowledge of a person can be gained by reading a candidate's personal details such as favourite musicians and pastimes. Obama was successful on Facebook, rather than other competition, because he was engaging to people younger to him on his online campaigns, who appreciate casual behaviour, online and offline[while his competition kept it overly professional online]. "At 47, he may be older than the average user there, but Obama is a natural Facebook politician. On his personal profile there - which featured his "Our Moment is Now" motto - Obama named his favourite musicians as Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, and Bob Dylan, and listed his pastimes as basketball, writing, and "loafing w/kids" " Stakeholders: Candidates - They are the people relying on the Internet and their campaigns, that he can get the kind of reach he needs to move forward in his own elections. Voters - They

Scenario: Different US states are taking different approaches to voting. Maryland is enforces paper voting, with some digital use by scanning a copy of each vote to have on record. On the other extreme, Utah Republicans are embracing technology by having everyone vote over the Internet. Social Ethical Issues: Security: James Evans, Utah GOP Chairman, thinks "the risks associated with Internet voting aren't worse than the current system". Learning Curve: Maryland bought new machines for voting and there was some concern about people being confused when using them. IT Systems: Optical scanner for a digital record of votes Electronic Voting Machines Internet Stakeholders: Voters - Do they care about the convenience of online voting or the more reliable security of paper voting? State - Depending on what method of voting, time and money will be used more or saved. Applications to Specified Scenario: The article questions why there is so much concern with voting electronically when we already do so many important things online. We do our banking and buying online, giving out personal information, so why not elections? The article answers, "e-commerce expects and is comfortable with a certain level of fraud. Our electoral process, however, has zero tolerance for fraud". With banking and e-commerce, the costs aren't as high as with elections. Any risks also outweigh the benefits. Elections have also historically never been electronic until now. So there is a certain security and assurance that comes from the traditional paper ballot votes.

Scenario: The article I am analyzing focuses upon the disadvantages brought about by electronic voting. The article attempts to convince the reader that there are absolutely no advantages to e-voting when compared to traditional voting, and the chance of fraud is much higher in e-voting than it is in traditional voting. The article does give credit to the fact that traditional voting, especially in the US, can also be prone to acts of fraud and corruption, however, he seems to be inclined towards this being less likely than the possibility presented by e-voting. Social/ethical issues: The social and ethical issues that show up in this article are primarily security and reliability. The writer clearly does not seem to believe that the e-voting system is too secure, as he often states that there are many ways in which the e-voting system can be cheated and violated. He believes that e-voting often generates results that do not match up with the predicted results from the votes cast. He also does not seem to comfortable with the idea of fully trusting a machine to measure and calculate the result of the votes, as he seems to favor the idea of votes being manually counted and recorded by poll workers. IT systems: E-voting often takes place on a particular website or on a private network which specific voting computers are connected to. Here, voters can verify their identification before proceeding to cast a vote. After the vote is cast, the information is sent to a central server where it is stored and constantly recalculated by the system for an updated vote count. Stakeholders: Regionally, everyone is a stakeholder in electronic voting. All individuals in the particular area are effected by the results of a large-scale electronic vote, as these are usually to decide governmental leaders/officials. Local businesses might be the most impacted stakeholders, because they are heavily effected by the policies and laws that could be passed by the new official,

The company that ran Swindon's 2002 e-voting pilot is sued amidst allegations of flaws in its software.

The company that ran Swindon's 2002 e-voting pilot is sued amidst allegations of flaws in its software. ____________________________________________________________ In this article, the author describes how an employee of a voting software company was fired because he was going to expose the flaws of the software. This shows that some software is not reliable, and in fact easy to hack. The one that Daniel Spillane worked for obviously had integrity problems. It also shows that no one is trustworthy of software malfunctions, even employees of the company.

Situation: With countries such as the UK and India already implementing e-voting as their main method of voting for their desired candidates, it is hard not to see that e-Voting is slowly taking the concept of voting for elections, to a new front. Social and Ethical Significance: The article brings to us the example of the 2003 elections in the UK and how e-Voting "failed to make an impact to the people." That was moreover, because there were many people who didn't own a smart device/laptop, and a few didn't even know what the internet was, yet. The Issue with e-Voting then was that it hadn't made the impact because it wasn't the primary method of communication yet. Online voting has been trialled all over the world now, in hopes that it may be implemented in the future. However, developers have claimed that they see major amounts of issues with the softwares and networks/servers that are online. They claim that the reliability and security standards are very hard to meet, when it comes to e-voting systems. Furthermore, they have stated that th requirements are very tough and too high to be met, unlike other transactions. "Online banking suffers problems but refunds are possible after checking your bank statement. You can't 'refund' a vote and 'vote statements' can't be provided to check your vote was correctly recorded as that would enable vote selling and coercion." Stakeholders: Candidates - If the servers are mendled with by a virus or hacker, the results of the ballot could potentially be rigged and the candidate would lose his/her chances of winning the elections. Voters - If the servers are mendled with by a virus or hacker, the voter's vote can potentially be changed, and as a result, the voter feels a loss of security.

The robots aren't doing so hot when it comes to policing copyright infringement. Computers are answering to copyright take down requests and some people are misusing it. 2 stakeholders: The people posting things online and the original creators of content that are being pirated online. 2 social/ethical considerations: If a new movie was to be leaked online then it would cause the movie creators to lose a lot of money as more people would just watch the movie for free online. With the computers deciding on the copyright requests, they can target blogs and personal websites which use other contents to post reviews or summaries or fan pages. This can potentially infringe on freedom of expression. A possible solution: A solution to prevent blogs and personal websites from being targeted is to have actual people doing the job instead of robots as us people would be able to decide whether the website is required to taken down or is safe under the creative commons law. "This infringement of copyright is called "fair use" and is allowed for purposes of criticism, news, reporting, teaching, and parody." A robot would not be able to tell between these and would take down innocent blogs while possibly leaving some that are really pirating content up on the internet. List of IT systems: automated bot-based systems

Singers such as Katy Perry, Bryan Adams and Christina Aguilera are among hundreds in the music industry calling on US lawmakers to reform online piracy law. 2 stakeholders: Songwriters and artists, as well as the people who purchase/download their works online or in stores

Situation: Digital Piracy can be publicly and officially classified as an offence or a violation of intellectual property. However, there are many violations in the present time, that people don't think are morally wrong. Social and Ethical Significance: The article takes the opening example of the new Game of Thrones episode which comes out on HBO, and how millions of individuals who wouldn't be able to watch it during the screening time, would download the episode illegally to watch it. It's true, that at some point or the other, people would tend to use means of digital piracy to receive what they cannot without it. Now, it's true, that all assets, ideas and artistic creations be held in common, and kept free for all. They believe that intellectual property, in the form of copyrighted information restricts that idea and creation. There exist these individuals that consider illegal downloading a crime, and that it wouldn't impose any sort of cost on anybody. However, there do exist "fundamentalist protectors" that would believe that illegal downloading equivalent to theft. This article speaks about the ethical considerations of why digital piracy occurs and why it's an issue not very publicly criticised upon. Stakeholders: Producers - Those who take countless hours creating the movie/audio that would be pirated. End users - Those people who would like to watch/listen to the movie/audio clip so that they receive more public entertainment.

I enjoyed reading the article you selected and your analysis of it. The thought that when stealing an object, your gain is their lost, but when stealing a movie or music, the cost is not the same as the gain, is an interesting perspective. Do you agree more with the "fundamentalist libertarians" or "fundamentalist protecters"?

Situation: Recently, Kayne West was caught looking at music software on Pirate Bay. Although there's no evidence that he downloaded anything, his internet search for software add-ons highlights how much software the music industry uses illegally. These softwares, such as synthesizers, composers, sequencers, etc, are available on the internet for free and are easily found on torrent sites. An array of music producers use software illegally, from people to just starting out by making music in their bedroom to people that have made millions from their music. Social and Ethical Significance: Influence on Public - If there are these major music producers illegally using software, then what's to stop the rest of the public from doing the same thing. People look up to these artists and may think that if those people can do it and get away with it, so can they. However, the opposite could be true if these artists are punished or called out for their actions. People could then see it is wrong and that they could be caught too. Another effect the widespread downloading of illegal software by artists could have is that it would lessen the value of their music. People could refuse to pay for their music and download it illegally. "The irony is that musicians and music producers, far more than most other creative professionals, have been hit especially hard by the wave of digital piracy that washed over the world nearly two decades ago" (Willens). So musicians are creating their music illegally and the public listens to that music illegally. Maybe a solution is to not have music be an industry that is profitable. Violation of Intellectual Property - "Widespread availability has created an endemic problem for software makers, who sometimes see piracy rates north of 90 percent for their creations" (Willens). The Internet has made it so easy to download unlicensed software. These are softwares that people put time an effort into creating. A generalization about s

Situation: The article focuses on the extent of losses on industries which have been affected by digital piracy, such as major film and music industries. The article states that these industries have taken tremendous hits because their content is simply copied and illegally distributed, resulting in major losses of profit. It says that in our time, it is far too easy to get a hold of pirated content, and as a result, it is virtually impossible to punish every single violation. Social and ethical: The article relates to several social and ethical concerns. It links to security because it states that pirated content can often contain viruses and other forms of malware, and attempting to pirate content means that you are putting the information within your system at risk. Intellectual property is the main focus of the article, which is obvious because it focuses upon the control content creators should have over their works and how this control is violated by individuals who pirate content online. It also links to the issue of digital citizenship in that it seems to set an expectation for users of the online world to be just and reasonable with their activities online. It discusses why it is wrong to pirate content online, which further displays that the writer is trying to indicate the privileges of the digital world and why they should not be misused. It systems: The article does not discuss the IT system behind online piracy. However, it is rather simple. Firstly, original content is published on a domain which is approved of by the author. Often, the author will require money in return for his or her work, and this will be handled by the administrators of that domain. The content is then either bought or hacked by an outsider, and given away for free or cheaper on another domain which has not been approved of by the original author. Outside users may then access this domain and take part in the piracy chain. Application to applied

In the article, the author describes how the music label, Sony, was creating an anti-piracy software to try and stop piracy in 2001 with Michael Jackson's song. They were unsuccessful in the beginning of their studies, because of a radio company played the song without being authorized. Sony was hoping that recent online piracy websites would not destroy the sales of Jackson's album. Even today, their are many record companies that have the same worries. Today, piracy is even more severe, because once a copy of a song is released on the internet, it is readily available to everyone to listen to and download. The hackers used a software/website called Napster to create MP3s (converted from the CDs), and send them across the internet. A way artists are trying to stop this problem, is to not allow free streaming networks to play their songs without pay. This allows the artists to be successful, and also is a way to try and stop illegal downloading of songs and albums. It is expensive to create an album, Jackson's took $28 million and 3 years; the artist should at least be able to have success, and not have to worry about trolls pirating their music.

Situation: Technology is making businesses more optimised, efficient, and faster. Social and Ethical Significance: The ways that businesses work have changed over the past few years, is all due to the advancements in technology, that allow the companies/businesses/industries to work much quicker, efficient, and cover a much wider horizon, to achieve profits. The use of technology helps in allowing instant communication to any location around the globe, a more optimised mode of production of goods, services or a certain product, a much better, more efficient inventory management, allowing zero loose ends, and not to forget, better management of finances, anywhere at any time. IT systems: Well, IT systems in businesses vary from company to company. However, I'll take the example of a hypermarket chain, and name it X. X would have formal employees,as well as normal employees using personal laptops and smartphones, and that would require IT technicians to create working servers for the company. There would be a website portal for those who would like to order online, as well as customer calling services etc. Then, X would have checkout machines; some self-checkout and some, standard checkout, and these checkout machines would require regular maintenance to make sure it's in proper working condition. Then there would be barcode scanners all around the stores to check prices of a product in store. Application to Specified Scenarios: Supermarket and Hypermarket companies such as Asda, Carrefour, Spinneys, Choithram's, etc run using a similar system as described in the IT systems.

I agree that business and technology are accelerating the news industry a lot.

Technology has helped businesses in lots of ways in this case, Facebook launched a tool for nonprofits to raise money. The company is partnering with 37 organizations in order to try the new option, which enables users to set up pages where they can share videos, pictures and more about their organization. These features come with normal Facebook pages, so the special parts are where they can collect money towards a goal, and donations in general. People can now also donate on certain posts where the nonprofit puts a button to make donations easier. When this feature is enabled nonprofits and donors who support a cause(s) will change completely, especially since Facebook is a page where social movements and certain posts gain quite a lot of attention. Facebook currently has over a billion users, having this feature means that thousands of people will now be able to donate instantly, only needing to press a button to do so. Socially and ethically this feature is a big pro for Facebook and the world in general, when donating is this easy people will support more nonprofits, removing the hassle of going to different webpages or going in person donations will increase. People who are helped by these organizations are going to see more benefits since nonprofits can now raise money faster. Despite the fact that these are for social causes it also raises some concerns, Facebook is known to be a place where posts can cause social pressure on people. We have all seen the "Like and share this post if ________", it is very common, and a great way for pages to make themselves popular. A similar outcome could be placed when presented with these new features, and people might start saying "Donate to this post if you feel sorry for _____", making people succumb under social pressure, which might be even stronger if many of your friends and relatives donated. It is also important to note that fake pages might be setup and many people might donate money where it ends up in

Good analysis. It's crazy the amount of power social media sites like facebook has.

Summary of the Article: Major newspaper companies such as the NY Times, and Al Jazeera, emphasise on the need for websites for their articles, to give news under a good amount of time. Stakeholders: Those companies who now need to spend more money and resources in order to provide both paper print and online copies of their news articles. The people who used to read the North Adams Transcript on a daily basis. Social and Ethical Significance: Reliability and Integrity - The fact that news outlets now work on a globalised, 24/7 and instant response system, means that they need to be able to take the risk to upload or run an article about certain news, that a random person must have claimed. As a result, if the news is unreliable, the news publisher is at risk and fault for running a story without backing their facts with suitable evidence. Intellectual Property - Usually there are videos or images online that are taken and uploaded by a person and the news outlets find it as the best feed for the certain news article or live upload. The person responsible for capturing the video or image has the right to reclaim the image from the news outlet if he/she deems necessary. That way, news outlets have to be very cautious about using images and videos, about the certain live news. Application to various scenarios: There are many examples about how news outlets have been warned yet not fined for using copyrighted or unreliable information.

Summary of the article: With technology, criminals and terrorists can use media to send threats, images and can even broadcast their crimes. 2 stakeholders: The criminals who use media and the viewers who end up watching their broadcasting. 2 social/ethical issues: With this technology, it is easier for terrorists to create a propaganda and they can easily spread fear by broadcasting their killings. For example, ISIS' videos include the killing of journalists, aid workers, government soldiers, etc. They would post this on the internet uncensored so anyone can watch everything that happened and may be unethical to certain cultures. We probably can't stop them from continuing to post these videos but there should be at least a program or a person who would censor the more gruesome parts. In the example of Mohamed Merah used in the beginning of the article, he used a Go Pro camera, his laptop and a USB drive to create a video documentary of his killings.