Natalie's Notes

  Diffusion theory Diffusion theory is a theory that explains how new technologies and ideas spread around. In order to explain it, I want to use Spotify and music streaming in general as my examples. I love Spotify, and music streaming in general, but I also remember when it was a new thing and not many people actually used it. During the innovators stage of Spotify, the idea of music streaming was introduced. The first one I remember was pandora. Pandora allowed users to listen to certain radio stations of their choice. They weren’t able to choose what song to play, but they could create their own stations. Spotify was created only a year later.  Before this itunes store was introduced. People could buy digital songs and have them downloaded directly to their devices.  People that originally started using itunes, pandora, and spotify were the early adopters. Those who created the platforms were the innovators. After more and more people started to use the platforms, it became more of

 Gatekeeping is the idea that a gatekeeper controls what is consumed by the media. The idea of gatekeeping was first brought up by Kurt Lewin. The original idea was very simple, a filter to weed out useless and unwanted media. However, in practice the person/thing that decides what is useless and unwanted is influenced by its environment, beliefs, and society. So why is gatekeeping a thing? Without gatekeeping our feeds would be flooded with so much information that we would not be able to find the important news we need. On the flip side, news that is important to us may not be important to the gatekeeper, therefore we never see it. Gatekeeping was not intended to be a bad thing. News outlets get a lot of news in a day, and they have to have a system to decide what is worth publishing and what is just useless. Even this seemingly innocent design has early implications. The gatekeeper, which for news sources is normally a chief editor of some kind, may not even know it, but their pers

 I am a very avid user of twitter, and so are 330 million other people. I use twitter everyday, sometimes to check whats trending, see the top news stories, or just to laugh. While I haven't thought much about the history of twitter until now, I have thought a lot about the pros and cons of twitter. Most people either love twitter or they hate it. But whether you like the website or not, the history of it is pretty impressive. The History     In 2004 Odeo, a podcasting service, was started. This company, Odeo, is the parent company of Twitter. After Odeo failed, the company asked some of its newer workers to pitch in ideas for a new program. Dorsey talked about the idea of a text messaging app that could be used to send status updates to friends. The idea of twitter was then born in February of 2006. Less than a month later the website was officially set up on March 21st.     Twitter became its own company in April of 2007. The famous hashtag was introduced four months later. Betwe

    The past few years have been filled with #insertnameiscancelled trending on twitter. Practically every morning I wake up and check twitter to see that someone is being cancelled. These cancellations can last for years, or merely a day or two. There is a problem with "cancel culture" however, as sometimes it goes so far that peoples livelihoods are disrupted.      First I'd like to distinguish the difference between a difference of opinion and harmful speech/actions. Everyone in America has the right to have a difference of opinion, it is encouraged, it is what makes America America. However, sometimes some of the celebrities or influencers that are cancelled on social media are cancelled because they have different political beliefs. For example, Dixie Damelio is a tiktok influencer (I still can't believe we've made this a thing). Someone found an old picture of her room where she has a Trump flag hanging on her wall. She was cancelled for the day. This was si

I don't really see a lot of AntiWar voices in the media. I have friends who are antiwar, but I never actually see headlines about it in the war. I did not even realize that there were websites dedicated to anti-war polices. The website antiwar.com is very outdated, the website layout is crowded and messy. This shows me that it probably isn't making a lot of money. This isn't surprising however, as the US has spent $6.4 trillion on wars in Middle east and Asia since 2001 .      Why are the AntiWar voices so quiet? Why have I never seen them in mainstream media? I think its because of how much money the US spends. If the antiwar voices are shown in mainstream media, the people of the US would see how much money is being spent on war. These are their tax dollars. Even if someone isn't antiwar, they are probably anti spending 6.4 trillion dollars. When antiwar voices are in the news, the amount of money spent is never mentioned. I had no idea we spent so much money on war.

The First Amendment gave us six freedoms. The freedom from religion, of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition. What is actually covered under these freedoms is heavily debated, and has come up most recently with the Black Lives Matter Protests and the Capitol riot on January 6th.  On January 6th a group of Americans gathered around the capitol building while congress was verifying the votes. The gathering quickly turned violent with people smashing windows, tear gassing, and breaking into the capitol building itself. It was a riot. During May of 2020, the Black Lives Matter protests started all across the United States. Thousands of Americans gathered with signs and began peacefully protesting. A lot of these protests then became violent. Were these gatherings protected by the First Amendment. Yes and no. When a large group of people gathered around the capitol building with trump merchandise and signs, it was protected. This was a group using their right to assembly, petitio