Suggested Essay Structure?
Remember to focus on key issues around new media – privacy, knowledge, understanding, education, friendship, behaviour, thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, politics, economics, employment, war, conflict, food, the environment, space, science (essentially social change)
- Overview: New media always creates change (printing press, telegram etc)
- Q: so how has recent technology changed (society, individuals, organisations, ideas, beliefs etc etc)
- CSP 1 – show knowledge of CSP
- characteristics of new media (in reference to CSP 1)
- theoretical / conceptual analysis of new media (loop theory, network theory, Dunbar number, McLuhan, Krotoski)
- Critically thinking about new media (Baudrillard, McLuhan, Krotoski, B. F. Skinner, Zuboff, Lanier – are all essentially critical of new media technologies. But Gauntlett, Shirky, Jenkins are all very positive about new media technologies)
- CSP 2 – show knowledge
- Draw parallels and conclusions
- Suggest future pathways / developments
Some themes and discussion points from Great Hack:
Independent investigations into data mining, along with whistle-blower accounts of the firm’s impact on Brexit, led to a scandal over the influence of social media in political elections.
The Exchange of Data
Search for Truth
Behaviour Management
Propaganda / Persuasion – The master manipulators didn’t go after people whose minds had been made up; they went after on-the-fence folks referred to as “the persuadables.” Using the collected data, Cambridge Analytica set out to create fear to achieve the results of the political parties that hired them.
Regulation