Millions of TikTok Accounts Deleted Overnight! Tech Giants are Stealing YOUR Information!

Millions of TikTok users around the world are being prompted to delete any online accounts associated with the content-sharing application TikTok. This is a result of the company being accused of selling its interface user’s collected data to Governments and data miners who are paying billions for it. This is a highly illegal operation as individuals are not offered to consent to this when registering an account with TikTok. The company may also be working with other sources of information to gain more knowledge of its audience, as information such as a person’s gender are somehow displayed on a user’s profile, however this information is never provided to TikTok’s database during account creation. This has lead to rising suspicion levels surrounding the Chinese company, a country in which the app is banned. BANNED in the country it was created in. The company has publicly stated that over 15 million accounts have been deactivated remotely by the users since accusations arose yesterday afternoon. Many country’s Governments are recommending that their population delete private and personal information stored in accounts registered with TikTok, in order to prevent as much of the data leak as possible. Nation leaders including Boris Johnson and President Biden have stated that they were not aware of the entire operation and will be inducing strict rules and regulations for people who choose to continue to use the social media site. Hopefully, these precautions will help prevent such an event from ever recurring.

IDEOLOGY CAN BE DEFINED AS A COLLECTION OF VALUES AND BELIEFS. TO WHAT EXTENT DO MEDIA PRODUCTS TARGET AUDIENCES BY CONSTRUCTING AN IDEOLOGICAL VIEW OF THE WORLD? YOU SHOULD REFER TO YOUR NEWSPAPER CLOSE STUDY PRODUCTS, THE I AND THE DAILY MAIL.

On either end of the stereotypical political scale, there is Authoritarianism, where individuals believe in more individualistic ideals, and Libertarianism, who have more community/communist beliefs. Almost all newspapers have a determined political compass. For example, The I creates contrast compared to The Daily Mail and appears that it is positioned on the left-wing spectrum. However, the I is owned by the Daily Mail General Trust which presents views of patriotism and right-wing conservative. 70% of all newspapers across the country are owned by just three companies, displaying how conglomerates narrow the public sphere and control the population.

The Daily Mail contains a number of examples of semiotic signs, theorised by Roland Barthes. Most are visible instantly on the front cover of the newspaper. These include imagery, font selections and colour schemes to back this political viewpoint. A great example of this is the text placed over the main front image, reading “Magnificent celebrations climax in pageantry and parties for millions”. This shows clear support for the Queen herself’, as well as her Jubilee and her family alongside her by the use of words such as ‘magnificent. This is idolised as a patriotic viewpoint because of how it is supporting the country. On the contrast to this, The I shows no credible incline to supporting the Queen on her outstanding achievement. The cover image is captioned with “The new Firm, Slimmed down Royal Family is revealed in Jubilee finale”, as well as “The reign of King Charles III”. The I is focusing more on the future than what is happening in the present. This is most likely because some people as a collective may want to know what life in Britain will be like under a new ruler. However, most, including myself, might find this disrespectful to her Majesty during her time of well-deserved celebration.

Livingstone and Lunt state that the values and interests of citizens and those of consumers cannot be easily connected/merged, that there is an increasing tendency in recent UK regulation policy to place the interests of consumers above those of citizens, perhaps giving newspapers more of a role in entertainment and advertising over education for the general public (an example of this is Sky TV, who now have at least 20 minutes of advertisements for every hour of scheduled programming). Curran understands now that the primary democratic role of the media is to act as a watch dog, rich and powerful companies have more control and giant conglomerates own all newspapers and enforce their political compass viewpoint onto their newspapers, Curran states that “Instead of providing conduit for rational critical debate, the media has manipulated mass opinion”.

Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, historical essayist and political activist. Sometimes called “the father of modern linguistics”. Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and an Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and is the author of more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. He theorised the 5 Filters of Mass Media Machine. This is a chain of filters that the media industry follows in order to operate.

1. The first has to do with ownership. Mass media firms are big corporations. Often, they are part of even bigger conglomerates. Their end game? Profit. And so it’s in their interests to push for whatever guarantees that profit. Naturally, critical journalism must take second place to the needs and interests of the corporation.
2. The second filter exposes the real role of advertising. Media costs a lot more than consumers will ever pay. So who fills the gap? Advertisers. And what are the advertisers paying for? Audiences. And so it isn’t so much that the media are selling you a product — their output. They are also selling advertisers a product — YOU.
3. The establishment manages the media through the third filter. Journalism cannot be a check on power because the very system encourages complicity. Governments, corporations, big institutions know how to play the media game. They know how to influence the news narrative. They feed media scoops, official accounts, interviews with the ‘experts’. They make themselves crucial to the process of journalism. So, those in power and those who report on them are in bed with each other.
4. If you want to challenge power, you’ll be pushed to the margins. When the media – journalists, whistle blowers, sources – stray away from the consensus, they get ‘flak’. This is the fourth filter. When the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you’ll see the flak machine in action discrediting sources, trashing stories and diverting the conversation.
5. To manufacture consent, you need an enemy — a target. That common enemy is the fifth filter. Communism. Terrorists. Immigrants. A common enemy, a bogeyman to fear, helps corral public opinion.

In conclusion, The Daily Mail General Trust owns both of these newspapers. I believe that the contrasts between the two are intentional. This is for the company to broaden its target audience to the widest possible degree, and like in all businesses, in order to produce the most profit. There are clear lines to be drawn between this and Chomsky’s theory of media ownership.

 The i and the Daily Mail attempt to establish a distinctive identity within this free market

Free market =  free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are self-regulated by buyers and sellers negotiating in an open market without market coercions

Curran and Seaton: Liberal theory of press freedom

To discuss key concepts such as Authoritarianism, Libertarianism, Right wing, Left wing. Use secondary sources (ie quotation) to help to support your knowledge and understanding

Show some knowledge of media regulation – you can draw upon Livingstone and Lunt

Definitions

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state’s violation of individual liberties; emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association.

Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting.

Hedonism comes from the ancient Greek for ‘pleasure’. Psychological or motivational hedonism claims that only pleasure or pain motivates us. Ethical or evaluative hedonism claims that only pleasure has worth or value and only pain or displeasure has disvalue or the opposite of worth.

The Frankfurt School was a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), during the European interwar period (1918–1939), the Frankfurt School comprised intellectuals, academics, and political dissidents dissatisfied with the contemporary socio-economic systems (capitalist, fascist, communist) of the 1930s. The Frankfurt theorists proposed that social theory was inadequate for explaining the turbulent political factionalism and reactionary politics occurring in 20th century liberal capitalist societies. Critical of both capitalism and of Marxism–Leninism as philosophically inflexible systems of social organization, the School’s critical theory research indicated alternative paths to realizing the social development of a society and a nation.

Habermas and the Public Sphere

The emergence of an independent, market-based press, created a new public engaged in critical political discussion.

The public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. 

The public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can come together to openly discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action.

‘Habermas argues that the development of early modern capitalism brought into being an autonomous arena of public debate.’

‘He argues, the public sphere came to be dominated by an expanded state and organised economic interests’.

‘Created a new public engaged in critical political thinking’.

Newspapers

The 5 Filters of Mass Media Machine

1.Structures of ownership

2.The role of advertising

3.Links with ‘The Establishment’

4.Diversionary tactics – ‘flack’

5.Uniting against a ‘common enemy’

Al Jazeera English – The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine

AGENDA SETTING

FRAMING

MYTH MAKING

CONDITIONS OF CONSUMPTION

The emergence of an independent, market-based press, created a new public engaged in critical political discussion.

The public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action. 

The public sphere is an area in social life where individuals can come together to openly discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion influence political action.

‘Habermas argues that the development of early modern capitalism brought into being an autonomous arena of public debate.’

‘He argues, the public sphere came to be dominated by an expanded state and organised economic interests’.

‘Created a new public engaged in critical political thinking’.

There are many varied similarities and differences between the creative industries and the cultural industries.

Public Service Broadcasting

The primary mission of public broadcasting is that of public service, speaking to and engaging as a citizen. The British model has been widely accepted as a universal definition. The model embodies the following principles:

Music Video – Letter to the Free is a product which possesses cultural and social significance. It will invite comparison with other music videos allowing for an analysis of the contexts in which they are produced and consumed.

This is a targeted CSP and needs to be studied with reference to two elements of the Theoretical Framework (Media Language and Media Representation) and all relevant contexts

Common is an Oscar and Grammy award winning hip/hop rap artist who wrote Letter to the Free as a soundtrack to The 13th – a documentary by Ava DuVernay named after the American 13th amendment (the abolition of slavery). His output is highly politicised, existing in the context of a variety of social and cultural movements aimed at raising awareness of racism and its effects in US society (e.g.: Black Lives Matter). The product can also be considered in an economic context through the consideration of if and how music videos make money (through, for example, advertising on YouTube).

Postcolonialism

Overall, this is a topic that concerns IDENTITY and REPRESENTATION. In other words, where does our identity come from? How is our identity formed? How do we understand our own identity and how is our identity represented in the local, national and global media? You can look at another post that looks at identity, representation and the self. But here it is specifically looking at identity and representation through the lens of Empire and Colonialism.

The Shadow of Slavery

Postcolonial critical thought emerged as a distinct category in the 1990’s, with an aim to undermine the universalist claims that ‘great literature has a timeless and universal significance [which] thereby demotes or disregards cultural, social, regional, and nations differences in experience and outlook’ (Barry, 2017: 194). In other words, postcolonial criticism challenges the assumption of a universal claim towards what constitutes ‘good reading’ and ‘good literature’; questioning the notion of a recognised and overarching canon of important cultural texts – book, poems, plays, films etc – much of which is institutionalised into academic syllabi.

The Link between culture, imperial power & colonialism

the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism

Edward Said Culture and Imperialism, 1993: xiii

Jacques Lacan

The Orient of the ‘Other’

Each media form has its own set of rules. We can follow these rules to improve our sequences. Creativity comes with the fundamental principles of space, size and scale.

Focus

Focus in a shot can be used to direct the audience’s eyes to wherever the filmmakers want. A change in focus from one subject to another in a single shot is called a ‘rack focus’.

Shot size, angle and movement

Parallel editing is the use of sequential editing (editing one clip to another) allows for a number of key concepts to be produced:

I will attempt to use this method throughout my sequence.

Montage

Condensing a longer story into a few minutes or sometimes seconds of film. Numerous linked shots that clearly display a progressing story.

Shot Progression

Conventional shot progression – to create VERISIMILITUDE (ie realism, believability) usually involves the following shots (although not always in the same order).

Shot / Reverse Shot

The Shot / Reverse Shot a really good starting point for students to both think about and produce moving image products. The basic sequence runs from a wide angle master shot that is at a 90′ angle to (usually) two characters. This sets up the visual space and allows the film-maker to to then shoot separate close-ups, that if connected through an eye-line match are able to give the impression that they are opposite each other talking. The shots are usually over the shoulder.