week 9 – globalization

In this weeks topic of globalization, it was the turn of our group presentation on the topic. Globalization is the “process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale”.

Our group had been researching all the necessary information we needed from either the core readings for the from our own independent sources. we did struggle to begin with a it was difficult to find the right information on this topic as its such a broad one and the fact globalization can be taken in so many different ways. we decided to slip the group presentation between us with each of us doing their own mini presentation within the presentation which worked out well.

The core reading didn’t help us with our work so we decided that we would do independent research. Once we knew what we needed to do it was much easier to find what we needed, for example i was tasked with explain what is globalization, anti-globalization and the pros and cons of it. there where some parts of the presentation that didn’t go well in my opinion; for example during my speech i showed a video and afterwards our presentation had gone off the screen where we have to restart and look unprepared.

Overall i think that the whole preparation and the final presentation went really well, we got all our points across to the class and we engaged with them a lot throughout the presentation with quiz and a debate on whether globalization was a good or bad thing.

Week 7- privacy and digital human

in this weeks lecture and seminar we were discussing the matter of privacy. Privacy is very important to people because it’s something that everyone should have the right (unless your are in prison) and there are somethings that we won’t to protect from other people. We started to speak about how an online an profile of yourself is all someone needs to know basically everything about you and your life. I believe that this is very true as we also watched a video where an interviewer asked someone where they can have their friends numbers, but got declined. Instead they went on their Facebook profile and got all their numbers through their profile without any of their permission, as information about people are very searchable in this day of age.

Privacy is considered to be a universal value and a fundamental value to a free society. There are some who deny that this is the case and feel that they have no privacy with so many cameras and police officers patrolling the streets, people feel watched 24/7 but get told it’s for their safety and therefore are willing to swap their right of privacy for safety.

 

 

week 5 critical analysis of network society

This week we were examining social theory contributes to the understanding of the relationship between societal change and the diffusion of new media technologies. We learnt that from Castell that he predicted, before the invention of the internet, that everything will be connected to a network. There are four things to make something be classed in a ‘network society’: people, thing, big idea and interactivity. For example someone came up with a big idea of connecting with people through their mobile phones. something i didn’t understand was what would happen if everything was working fine but things suddenly don’t start to work?.

We also touched on something that a few of the tech giants are going and this is something that is considered new technology. Our example was ‘Apple’. We looked at how they have given the option to their female stuff to freeze their eggs and offering a sum of around $12000 for those who go through with it. They are offering this because they believe that this will help their female stuff members not worrying about have children at a later date and can concentrate on their work life in the mean time. I don’t think this is a bad idea because it’s something that will work for both parties and at the end of the day it’s an option not a requirement from the staff members. On the other hand i can see why this could be a problem for future female employees, because it might be an advantage to agree to freeze your egg then agreeing not to.

week 3 reflection media technologies and social change

in this weeks lecture and seminar we were introduced ways of thinking in the analysis of the relationships between media, technologies and social change. about the birth of the internet or online internet. we discussed how the first exchange between two computers in the USA were able to send and receive the word Login. we talked about how the web and the internet are two different things, which was interesting as i would have thought them to be the same thing. the lecture went on to talk about how this paved the way for social change as it introduced us to electronic mail or E-Mail and how in the 2005 on wards its brought us social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

in our seminar we were split into two groups and given the task to answer a question. our question was; ‘are we more of a democracy because of the internet?’. our group was given the task to explain why ‘it has’. where started of with writing down a list of reasons why it has. we came up with reasons such a online petitions, online movements, such as the #MeToo movement etc. we also spoke about how information it free and access to it is very easy as you a can visit any school in the country or library to have access to the internet. we also spoke about how people are able to use social media to voice their opinion about a certain topic. we then debated the other group hows question was the opposite to ours.