EOTO: Gatekeeping and Agenda Setting

 Blog Post #8

Gatekeeping and Agenda Setting

Something that has become such a big thing within the world of social media especially on apps such as TikTok, we constantly either see or hear the word “gatekeeping” being used. This is being used in the context of people not revealing the name of something such as a product one may use in order to keep it from being sold out by people now buying it because they want to use that product. The definition of gatekeeping is the activity of controlling and limiting general access to something. 

As mentioned before gatekeeping has become a more popular word on social media and the people using it are in fact using the word correctly. These days when we think of the word gatekeeping we think of someone not releasing a name of a brand, product, or even a specific band to keep it from becoming sold out or becoming more in demand that it is now either hard to find or becoming ridiculously expensive. The word “gatekeeping” was first used with this definition back in 1943, which isn’t that long ago when you really think about it. It was coined by a social psychologist named Kurt Lewin. Now back in 1943 this word would not have anything to do with social media as it was yet to be a thing at that time. Gatekeeping was used in the sense of information being put out by journalists and the censored information they would put out to the public of what they wanted them to read and what the editors wanted to keep for themselves. Although it started out as just a journalism thing to do, of course social media now has a use for that word within the people using whatever app they choose to apply their “gatekeeping” on. Gatekeeping is seen more as a negative thing nonetheless by people who want to know information that is being kept from them, while the people using gatekeeping think it’s a positive way to keep things from becoming too popular and they are in jeopardy of not being able to use something anymore. 

Agenda setting can go along with gatekeeping in the aspect where we see it happen online especially on social media and used by news outlets constantly. This is something used to make something more appealing to people from what they are reading or seeing. It can cause an influence or determine a program of action. This can be done through thumbnails within social media posts or videos where words that may be intriguing and cause people to view something. It can also be used as headings within newspapers or news outlets articles they put out when they want to get the attention of an audience and will do whatever they can by using big headings with the words “special report”, “breaking news”, etc. Agenda setting can also be used within political ads, campaigns and pr with the intentions of getting the grasp of people's attention. 

Agenda setting and gatekeeping can really go hand and hand as you have the intentions of grabbing the attention of an audience and when you are doing so you may want to censor information in order to keep people intrigued and only put out things you believe will benefit you and keep out information that may hurt you and keep people from paying attention to what you are putting out. These are two key terms that we see being used more and more these days and have created a whole new way we get to see information being put out and realize how much things are censored in order to grasp the attention of people and keep it there with understanding what people want to hear and see and keeping the rest of the information kept away from the public eye. 

Privacy On and Offline

 Blog Post #7 

Privacy On and Offline

In the videos I had watched, there were a lot of issues that have affected me. I never realized the importance of being careful on social media until it hit me personally. I’m sure we have all had the talks with our parents at some point in our lives about the importance of being careful on social media but sometimes we don’t listen and there are consequences that follow. In each of these videos, there were many issues that are important and that really do have an effect on our lives especially because when you put something out on the internet it will stay there forever. 

These issues can affect me in many ways. It can be harmful with how everything online can be traced and tracked without us even realizing what is happening. There are many occasions where we either post things on social media and have some idea of how it can all be traced back to us whether it is good or bad, but beyond social media there are so many other things we don’t realize are being tracked as well. Nothing with technology is private. Even with emails that we think are private, they too collect data from us especially overtime because there is never just one single email. Data is collected through emails we send and given to the government, internet providers and email providers which we never really realize when we are in the moment of sending an email out or afterwards. By the time we realize who else has access to our data online it’s too late. Our data will live longer than we will and it can find out a lot about us that we don’t realize. We all know that the more we post or look up things on the internet, we put out more and more of our private information and now have a digital footprint that can cause more harm to us than we may realize. Technology takes away and causes us to lose control over our privacy and data. When it comes to us losing our privacy we lose the idea of it as well which can cause issues down the road and changes the entire meaning of privacy. 

It’s interesting to see how much the internet affects us today with the amount of privacy we have left from it. As much as we love to rely on technology especially with how the world is moving today, it causes issues for many and overall affects our privacy we have as people. You never realize how this will affect you until it comes to something bad happening which can happen at any moment.