Carter Spearry Professor Hogan Survey of Mass Communication 25 April 2020
Module #4
GLOSSARY 1. Censorship through Noise -- instead of trying to silence or respond to dissenting voices, this is a method of censorship of creating chaos surrounding the subject so no one knows what to believe 2. Brad Parscale -- Digital director of Trump's 2016 campaign, responsible for ads on Google and Facebook 3. Twitter bots -- a type of bot software that controls a Twitter account and autonomously performs actions such as tweeting, re-tweeting, liking, following, unfollowing, or direct messaging other accounts 4. Tara McGowan -- established a media organization with a staff of writers to produce left- leaning "hometown news" stories that can be micro-targeted to persuadable voters on Facebook without any indication that they're paid for by a political group. 5. Deep Fakes - digitally manipulated videos that can, with alarming precision, make a person appear to do or say anything 6. Mark Zuckerberg - founder of Facebook ANALYSIS 1. In the run up to the 2016 presidential election Parscale and Trump's team ran 5.9 million
felt like he was playing from behind and needed to do everything he could to get as many eyes on his message as possible. According to a Facebook executive, Trump "got elected because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I'd ever seen from any advertiser." 2. The problem with this is that once you realize the possibility that you're being manipulated by someone, you are completely unable to trust anyone or anything. A person is unable to accept anyone else's opinion and they think it's a bot, that any headline is "fake news," and any developing political story is part of a conspiracy. 3. Some democrats, like some republicans, are uncomfortable with disseminating untrue or somewhat true information because they feel as though it's "cheating." Democrats are trying to use a different type of social media advertising because they don't want to be associated with Republicans, who use more aggressive, sometimes untruthful ads. Democrats are hoping that people don't believe the Republican ads and just by not advertising in that way, they hope to be more believable. 4. The author of the second article seems very upset with Facebook because they have a history of abusing their user's trust and have had to apologize for privacy breaches for over ten years. Zuckerberg has had to apologize several times for his company poorly handling a situation - and every time its after they get "caught." This is a classic concern
of "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, can't put the blame on you." The author is frustrated with the repeated problems caused by Facebook. 5. The author is frustrated with the use of the term "Facebook Community" because a community is supposed to be made up of equal people who help each other and make decisions together. Zuckerberg has abused his power and made unilateral decisions for his "community" and violated their privacy a numbe