Supercurricular

Cold War & Divided Germany                09/06/24

The Cold War was a period of tension between the Soviet Union and the United States that began in March 1947 and lasted approximately 45 years. There were never any instances of direct conflict between the two factions, however each side did involve itself in a number of proxy wars in which they played the role of third-party powers, aiding each other's enemy.

The tension in this period was largely spurred by the prospect of 'mutual assured destruction'. This is the idea that a nuclear attack on one power would surely result in a reaction of similar magnitude from said power.

During the Cold War, Germany was divided into two countries. East Germany, a soviet satellite state, and West Germany, a democratic republic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of East and West Germany, East Germany has been characterised by western observers as another dark period in German history. Its flaws are largely exaggerated and its successes, such as the women's rights that were lost in 1990, downplayed or ignored in contemporary western society.

Cold War & Divided Germany - Source Library

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Stasi_State_Or_Socialist_Paradise.html?id=ORNIjwEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction#:~:text=Mutual%20assured%20destruction%20(MAD)%20is,the%20attacker%20and%20the%20defender.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cold_War_history_of_Germany

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_state

The Leveson Inquiry                02/06/24

The Leveson Inquiry was a comprehensive public investigation established to examine and scrutinize the ethical standards and practices within the British press. The hearings surrounding the inquiry were conducted over an extended period, spanning 2011 to 2012, and drawing significant attention from the media and public.

News of the World, owned by Rupert Murdoch's conglomerate media firm News Corp, was involved in a number of illegal phone hacking scandals. The most notable such instance was the hacking of murder victim Milly Dowler's phone. When this information was revealed in July 2011, it shocked the nation and highlighted an urgent need for reform. Prime Minister David Cameron therefore announced that a public inquiry would take place.

The inquiry culminated in the publication of the Leveson Report - a detailed document which provided a critical review of the ethics governing the British media, and proposed the establishment of a new regulatory body which would replace the Press Complaints Commissions. This new entity would have to be legally recognised by the state to ensure a higher standard of accountability withing the press.

Despite the findings of the inquiry, and recommendations featured within the subsequent report, David Cameron declined to enact the proposed legislation, leaving the status quo largely intact. The News of the World was ultimately replaced by The Sun, a publication not largely different from its predecessor, even employing some of its former journalists.

The Leveson Inquiry - Source Library

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveson_Inquiry

Filter Bubbles                16/05/24

Eli Pariser is an author and public speaker. He gave a TED talk in 2011 regarding the tight control that tech giants have over contemporary media. Prior to the talk, Pariser carried out an experiment, in which he asked each of his friends to look up the term 'Egypt' on Google. While his friend Scott was presented with multitude of headlines regarding a recent protest, the focus of Daniel's search results was primarily on travel and vacation in the country.

Pariser talks about how, in archaic "Broadcast Society", gatekeepers and editors controlled the flow of information; news would be carefully curated in order to present the public with a certain point of view of the world. He the goes on to undermine the popular belief that, with the establishment on the internet, said flow of information has been liberated. Rather, he argues that the internet has been more of a means of "passing the torch" from human gatekeepers to algorithmic ones.

Pariser's experiment illustrates the idea of what he terms 'filter bubbles'. A filter bubble is the cumulative effect of the algorithms that curate what information an audience is presented with, and what they are left without. The problem with filter bubbles is that we cannot see what gets edited out - they create echo chambers in which individuals are indulged with information that they like to hear: information which will keep them on whatever platform they are on. Pariser emphasises the importance of challenging points of view; if all the information we consume from the media simply reaffirms our own beliefs, we become unable to empathise with those who hold different beliefs - echo chambers will always lead to intolerance and inflated disparity within a society where each individual's echo chamber is based on their own unique filter bubble.

Researchers at Netflix noticed a trend in the way audiences watched movies and shows - people tended to watch more of the casual action or romance films in their queue before consuming more intellectually stimulating products such as documentaries, even if the documentaries had been waiting in their queue for longer. Pariser uses the examples of Favreau's Iron Man and Davis Guggenheim's 2010 documentary film Waiting for 'Superman', which is in essence a feature-length criticism of the American public education system. He describes a struggle between out "future aspirational selves" and our "impulsive present selves", stating that the best algorithms should present us with a balance of both "information vegetables" and "information desserts", as he puts is. The problem with modern algorithmic filters however, is that they always prioritise what we are likely to click on over what we are likely to learn more from. He once again employs a culinary analogy, proclaiming that we are left at the end of it all, surrounded by what he dubs "information junk food". Pariser quotes Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google: "It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them".

The problem that arises from the algorithmic filter of news and media, according to Pariser, is that algorithms do not yet have the 'embedded ethics' that the human editors of broadcast society did. However, times have changed since 2011, and the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence in recent years has rendered this idea of the integration of embedded ethics in algorithmic filtering a plausible idea.

Filter Bubbles - Source Library

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bt26wLYmL8

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_%22Superman%22