"Somebody’s watching you: Social media and surveillance"

This article started off talking about how a school in Philadelphia, installed cameras in school-issued laptops which would be used to watch pupils and there were many negatives about this idea. For example, the students may be getting changed and this is taking away their privacy from where they believe that they are safe and are able to do whatever they want; however, they didn't know that someone was spying on them. This article also talked about how a bedroom is meant to be a private place for teenagers and aren't really getting that privacy which is why people were against this idea. In addition, this article also talked about the practise of examining large pre-existing databases in order to generate new information. However this is known to be illegal and which is why the bigger companies are free from this.

In my opinion, if someone tried to tracking every single online tracking movement, I wouldn't be too bothered about it because of the fact that nowadays, everyone would be doing to the same things as everyone else, e.g. going onto YouTube or Twitter; this has become a daily routine which everyone at our age does nowadays when they finish school everyday. For example, many people do illegal things for example downloading music for free and this wouldn't be an issue for me since it is being done by a lot of online users. On the other hand, I still believe that this is something that shouldn't be done because of the fact that some things should be kept private by the user (everyone needs their own space and shouldn't have someone monitoring their every online movement). Also, I disagree with 'there is a small price to pay' because the internet should still be about having your own privacy and no one should have access to that unless if you want those people to, e.g. Twitter is quite open to a lot of people but they still have that option of making their profile private to people they may trust. 

Audience Research

—How much you have spent on books this year?

I have spent roughly around £7.

—How many books you have read this year?

I have read 2 books (Harry Potter and the Witcher). 

—How many web pages you have read this year?

Too many to count.

—How many Facebook profiles you have read this year?

I don't really go onto Facebook a lot nowadays. If I do, it would just be to look at the news feeds page.

—How much TV you watch each day?

I spend around 2/3 hours a day watching TV.

—How long you’re online for each day?

Near enough the whole day if I am at home.

—How many hours of music you listen to each day?

Roughly around 2 hours

—How long you’re on your mobile phone every day?

I would spend around 3-5 hours per day on my phone, especially when I'm watching TV.

Introduction to NDM: reading and blog task

1) A media studies teacher was temporarily working as a researcher for year 9 students and wanted to see the difference in their life between at home and at school. This research was done by the way in which the students would use the media and technology. The researcher would also go on a say that students nowadays would keep aspects of their lives hidden from the families and wanted to know the inside towards all of this. Talking about social media, this researcher had acknowledged that there is a division between social media being private and a public space, and that leads to Facebook. For example, the teachers would hate the fact that the young users would be on Facebook due to the fact that it may cause bad tension in the classrooms and could potentially resolve into fights that may take place outside of school.

In the second article, it's talking about a brand new app called Periscope. The article itself talked about what the app is about and who owns it. In addition, the article had been negative to the app throughout the most of the article; it would talk about how it effects companies and how it can also affect the lives of the users who are on Periscope without them even knowing it. For example, it can effect businesses because something could be on paper-view and people can watch it for free since they may have found someone on Periscope who is doing a live recording of it. Therefore, this is where periscope is seen negatively and for which, periscope are trying to find out way that they can improve it so they can block people who may do this; it can lead to copyright and people could potentially get into trouble. 

2) In my opinion, I believe that this A2 A* essay was successful because of the following:

• Strong Introduction on actually answering the question
• Extremely good topic sentences with good examples related to the sentences. For example, if they were talking about statistics, they would back it up by giving an actual statistics number.
• Talked about famous people, e.g. Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Jay Z.
• Finally, he linked his conclusion back to the actual question and gave strong reasons for his view.

3) In my opinion, i strongly believe that digital media has changed everyone's, including my own, lives in many ways. Many years ago, I would either be on Bebo or MSN talking to my peers and being excited as all of this way really new at the time. However, as time is moving on with technology you lose that interest in it being exciting and now, it has become more of a daily routine for a lot of people as you can be on your smartphones surfing the web and chatting to you friends 24/7. I believe that this is becoming more of a negative thing for myself instead of positive because even though it is gradually becoming exciting with different technology coming out, it is still a distraction to school work and also, this technology means that people are less aware of the older media outlets.