Digital Story Final

http://photopeach.com/album/r2ta2h

Codes of Gender Project

Here is a link to my codes of gender project.

http://photopeach.com/album/oegyhk

Initial proposal for digital story

In the advertisement world men and women are displayed to attract the eye of the audience. Now in almost every case they portray a very strong message but in two different ways. Men are portrayed as always being muscular, powerful, and in complete control. Women on the other hand are always made out to be defenseless, hopeless, and seductive, ready to be taken advantage of as a human being. Now allowing these advertisements puts pressure on the everyday citizens viewing the ad. It makes them feel as if they have to look the same way to be accepted or “sexy.”  This stress to be muscular, strong and powerful for men or thin, sexy, innocent for women has shaped our youth culture in thinking if they want to be anything important or have a good time as the ads portray they have to fit those roles. And in todays day and age sex life and personal habits are more talked about publicly and portrayed as being acceptable on T.V. or in movies makes kids growing up feel more pressured on how to look. My goal is to develop a story showing the struggles growing up as a young boy transitioning into an adult and facing those pressures on how to look or act to be socially accepted, and how a person may handle or react to these pressures.  

Individual Literature Review

The issue of Government surveillance came about when a man named Edward Snowden issued a news paper article accusing the government of going against the fourth amendment from the Constitution of the United States. He accused the government on secretly surveying innocent peoples lives based off of their social media lives and what they put on the Internet. People view this two different ways, that of which it is a good thing to eliminate any possible threat of terrorists, or that of an invasion of privacy on their personal lives. The safety issue is a very strong argument since technology is a very big way of communication the government could potentially intercept any possible threats of terrorist or any threat to the citizens of the United States. But then again it is an issue of invading privacy. People use social media such as Facebook and twitter to express their personal beliefs and interests. Now is it to much that intelligence agencies can thrive off of these websites by surveying people without them even knowing they are being watched. Now is there a happy medium? Can the government keep a close eye on people who set off red flags on things the post or recent purchases? This is a strong debate and people swing both ways of this argument. But personally I think that it is to much of invasion of privacy that the government is able to watch over anyone at any given time without them knowing.   

Social Action Project Problem Statement Part C

Part C-The practical questions about our project are who, what, where, when, and how. The first one who, is all five of us. We will be the ones responsible for the project and making it happen. Connor, James, Ethan, Mason, and myself will be accomplishing the what, which is creating a cross between guerilla art and culture jamming. We will be crafting and putting up posters with fake personal information on them, such as usernames and passwords to social media sites and other private material. Since our issue is NSA surveillance, our aim is to show the general public private information and emphasize to them that privacy is important by forcing them to ask themselves the question “What if this were my information? Would I permit it to be accessible?” We chose the Lombardo Student Center atrium as the location of the posters. We chose that site because a great deal of students pass through it multiple times a day, whether they are going to lunch, or going anywhere in the LSC. Also, the Atrium always has posters and such covering the walls, and thus it is the ideal place for our project to take place in. Ideally, the project will be on the Monday November 24, which is the Monday before Thanksgiving Break. This is a suitable time to do it, because our project is due soon after that. And as for how, we will be asking permission for the use of the Lombardo Student Center from the Office of Student Activities.

Social Action Project Problem Statements(Parts A&B)

Part A-On June 17, 2013, Edward Snowden alerted the world to what the United States organization known as the NSA was perpetrating; the simultaneous surveillance of multiple entities across the world in search for a terrorist threat. The reading of emails, texts, posts, Facebook updates, phone calls, everything, all done for the purpose of national security. The defilement of the Fourth Amendment, created for the defense of one's privacy and the inability for the government to gain evidence illegally, while the Supreme Court proceeded to call the act constitutional because of a ruling in 1979.

To some, this is acceptable. National security should be a nation's prime focus, and the Supreme Court did declare this acceptable. This is a price we must pay for our safety and our protection.

To others, it is a breach of freedom and must be destroyed. To forsake the Constitution and ignore those laws put in place by our founding fathers is an action considered dishonorable and wrong. Groups such as the ACLU and millions of independent Americans protest these actions, pushing for Congressional laws and restrictions, urging presidential action. They attempt to keep the fight precipitated by Snowden's betrayal going, reminding people of this problem.

As with any political issues, the main problem is the short term memory of the public. People forget great problems rather quickly and, unless continually reminded by the media, cease to pursue the completion of the original goal. With the case of this serious breach of our human rights, we need to keep the knowledge and movement alive because if this heinous crime falls into anonymity, or rights as a whole will remain in a state of peril.

Part B-In our social action project my group is discussing the issue of government surveillance and the abuse of their power provided. Our ethical goal would be to raise the public’s awareness so they can monitor what information they provide of themselves. The significance of doing this will limit the availability of the governments access to the person lives of the individuals and keep their private life private. Making people aware of the government surveillance will cause them to get involved and possibly starting a change reaction letting the awareness to rise quicker. We would like to reach the political goal of restricting the access of the government to their citizen’s personal life. If possible we could limit the access of personal information of the government by passing a potential law making it illegal for the government to access certain information. The significance of this would be that of allowing citizens to live a private lifestyle keeping personal things personal.

Government surveilance

A very popular topic is that of government surveillance. People tend to think that the government has the ability and abuses the ability to keep surveillance on its citizens.  There is no doubt in my mind that our government has the ability to view the person lives of each and everyone in the world, there are hackers that are able to hack into peoples webcams and view peoples lives what is there to stop the government from doing it. Now many people begin to get upset knowing this possibility, but my view on it is that there should be no problem with it. If you sit and actually think about it you could see that it could be for the good. Why would people be afraid of the government being able to see personal information, unless people were hiding something potential illegal activity? But again the government should have a system set up just like they do on social media, on peoples phone calls, and text messages where there are red flags every time “hot words” are used that trigger off warnings depending on how serious the trigger is. My class is doing a project on government surveillance. Our main goal is to allow people the opportunity to become more aware of the situation so they can be more careful with what they share online regarding their personal information. We plan to hang posters in our student center, take surveys, and hopefully get a speaker who is knowledgeable on the topic to come in and speak.