Digital Writing Style + Licensed Image Reaction Post About Privacy Issues

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How social media is invading our lives

The topic of social media and privacy issues has been trending over the past month and much of that had to do with hearings held by the House and Energy Commerce Commission. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was questioned in these hearings  which examined privacy rights on social media, with a particular emphasis on regulating political advertising. There were reports on these hearings, offering feedback from leaders of a venture capital firm, a digital privacy expert and even quoted some senators. The article showed varying opinions, but came to the conclusion that any typed of federal regulations on digital media privacy rights are not on the horizon and that CEO’s like Zuckerberg are expected to be more accountable.

The New York Times took a different approach in a recent article entitled “Can Social Media be saved?” The entire premise of this article was that social media is a broken entity and there were a number of potential solutions offered. Among those solutions was allowing a community of users to control the privacy issues. This campaign was being billed as one that gives power to the people. Another scenario proposed to fix the problems was to create a social federation, which described a smaller group of independently-monitored social media sites under one larger social umbrella. The Wall Street Journal took a different approach, establishing Facebook and Google as the enemy. The article discusses ways to avoid exposing yourself on social media. This was done by highlighting the different ways that personal information can be collected by online sites. It essentially portrayed the internet as a haven for ways to extract personal information that went as far to list past boyfriends/girlfriends of people.

Each of these three news outlets showed social media in an unfavorable light. The Wall Street Journal took perhaps the most hardened stance by showing extreme ways people’s information can be obtained online. Privacy is a constitutional right and each of those articles attempted to convey that message. Each contained traces of anti-establishment viewpoints, as large corporations were deemed as the enemy. The Washington Post continued to be critical of the government and ultimately blamed federal legislators for failing to show signs of any solution. The New York Times took on a more creative approach by introducing innovative ways to combat this problem. Each outlet tackled the same issue, but their own unique spins on it. The theme was common, although each agenda for promoting the problem was much more individualized.