HON 480: Psychological Impacts of Social Media

The whole concept behind trolling is that the users or "trolls" want to get a reaction or response from someone. There are many different kinds of "trolls" so each "troll" wants to get their own specific type of reaction or reponse. Some troll because they want to upset or anger other people. Others do it because they want to produce laughter.  There are six key factors on why there are trolls or why people are more likely to troll on the internet. First is dissociative anonymity which means you are able to hide your real identity online. The second is invisibility because you do not actually see the person you are trolling so it desensitizes your actions. The third is time disconnect or asynchronicity meaning you do not have to respond right away; you can respond on your own time. The other factors involve dehumanizing and disconnecting online actions from reality. What we need to understand is that social media or anything online act only as an am...

   To be completely honest, I could not define privacy in today's society. So I got the general definition from an article,  “broadly speaking, privacy is the right to be let alone, or freedom from interference or intrusion. Information privacy is the right to have some control over how your personal information is collected and used. ”    Personally, I never had an issue with how much privacy we have or have not been given. I don’t mind the FBI or the government looking at my recent search history or the most recent Netflix show I watched (if they even do that) just because I don’t do anything worth paying attention too and I have nothing to hide. Many people argue that their freedom is the most important thing to them but personally, I value security over freedom. If the government is able to monitor and flag certain keywords such as “bomb” or “drugs,” and are able to use this to their advantage to keep our communities a safer place, then I am all for it...

   Before this week, I thought the term "catfishing" was a negative concept because at its very core, it was lying. After taking a second look at it and reflecting on all the factors, motives, and intentions that can be correlated to "catfishing," I'm starting to think that maybe the concept isn't as bad as I initially thought.    So what exactly is "catfishing?" "Catfishing" is the phenomenon in whihc people take on different identities on social media and establish relationships with others who are unaware of their real identity. There are many reasons for someone to have a fake profile: they could be trying to trick you into handing over money or other resources, for amusement, or it is their only way for them to express themselves. Many sources have found that most social media profiles reflect who people really are if they weren't too scared of what society's reaction would be.    I have found that "catfishing" is...

I never realize the impact Fake news has had on our society until this course. Just the past events opened my eyes up to the impact that Fake news can stir. For example the conspiracy theory about the Florida shooting, how they claimed that the eyewitnesses were "crisis actors." There was also news going around that a person from a school shooting in the past was also in the Florida shooting. I'm not familiar with the details but I know that the conspiracy theories of the school shooting have been debunked and dismissed. It is crazy to think that social media allows one believer to amplify news like these to other people and those believers can also share the same thing. I don't think I have ever really questioned the validity or accuracy of the websites I have been using for school. Since I am a biology (pre-med) major, a lot of the information I use and see is repetitive so I feel like any false information/ fake news I come across, I should be able to recognize. ...