Maeve Gustafson Final Project

Maeve Gustafson

March 2014

Digital Media
Professor Williams

Big Brother Is Watching

As the twenty-first century begins to enter the digital age, society is leaving behind old analog technology, and buying each new generation of data-transmitting smartphones. However, this huge technological leap forward does not come without tradeoffs. Digital patterns and algorithms are now able to predict your next step based on the digital footprint you leave on every website you visit, every ISP you use, and every text you send. The average internet-user is being watched and is highly traceable. Every year since 2009, the United States government invests almost ten billion dollars towards its National Security Agency, whose main priority is to spy on the digital information produced by its own citizens, as well as some information from foreign diplomats. This type of massive data mining occurs without any public knowledge or consent; and the collected terabytes of personal information is stored until the government pleases. Recently, the NSA has come under major scrutiny from the American public due to some of its sensitive documents being leaked by Edward Snowden. The NSA whistleblower case of June 2013 has officially brought to light the extreme measures of public surveillance taken by the U.S. government, and has caused serious debate over the ethics of this practice, and whether or not it should continue.

Government surveillance is not a new practice, and it has been ongoing since at least 1952. Since then, government surveillance has become an extremely common practice in the United States since late 2001. After The Patriot Act passed in congress in 2001, wiretapping has started to become increasingly less restricted and easier for the government to access. Advocating for public safety, the U.S. government has been able to twist its secret security measures into seemingly helpful routines to protect the greater good, which in turn have opened the flood gates for the National Security Agency to spy on everyone and everything. Under the guise of collecting information assurance to keep the United States safe from foreign threats, the government is able to also collect whatever information it wants from the general public. This type of information gathering includes stockpiling cell tower dumps, Google search history, text, Skype, and IM messages, as well as phone calls. Since 2001, the U.S. government has become adamant about spending almost 14% of the government's entire intelligence budget on the NSA due to the terrorist attacks that took place on September 11, 2001. Since then, it is clear that the United States government has made intelligence gathering a top priority.

The National Security Agency uses many methods to collect the American public's data, and also collects and stores massive amounts of it. The United States government is interested in data mining people's metadata, including what people are doing on all of their devices, what places they have been, what websites they have visited and who and what they interact with online. Digital footprints are everywhere, and the government has ultimate access to all of this information, supposedly in order to protect the United States. However, it is an asset for the government to keep digital information on everyone in the event that information on a specific target is ever needed or wanted. The government wants to be more than just the protector in this case, it wants to have complete, while silent, control over its citizens.

While the U.S. government would like to have information on everyone and everything, while still keeping their surveillance a secret, some of its citizens feel differently. Former Central Intelligence Agency employee Edward Snowden released some of the NSA's classified information to the public in the “NSA whistleblower” case of June 2013. Via encrypted emails, Snowden communicated with journalists at The Guardian to disclose roughly 2 million intelligence files. Snowden has since been persecuted and is currently in exile from the United States and in asylum in Russia. Snowden has been on the run from the United States government since he decidedly leaked private government information under his own name. In an interview with The Guardian in Hong Kong in 2013, Snowden reveals his ultimate goals in releasing these NSA documents to the public. Not only did Snowden broadcast private digital NSA documents, but he also disclosed his own personal information in the hopes that the American public would follow his story and become aware of their collective stalker: the United State government.

The ethics of the government's secret practice of stalking its citizens have been widely questioned since the Snowden Whistleblower case recently came into the limelight. The public has been becoming increasingly concerned about their personal privacy on the internet and on their digital devices after learning how much data the NSA has been collecting. The issue the NSA raises is not an easily solved conflict. The United States government argues that the tax money is well-spent on the hunt for digital terrorists and radical threats of the like. However, the reality is that the real threat is not that readily available to them, but regular American citizens who do not have firewalls in place, private VPN access, and who also do not participate in illegal activities are the only ones being spied on. While the NSA's intentions are good, in practice, the protection is not as widespread and useful as this much espionage is worth. The value places on the public's personal privacy is starting to outweigh their protection, due to the fact that innocents are being constantly watched with no prior or just cause per individual. While some people may have "nothing to hide" from the NSA's security, there is still a borderline between privacy and protection, and that border should still exist as we enter the digital age.

The threat of personal digital privacy being invaded in the twenty-first century is not only very real, but also currently occurring without the user's consent. The United States government secretly keeps tabs on every single internet user, cell-phone owner, and even anyone existing in the digital universe. Individuals no longer have personal privacy, people are only seen as numbers and data clusters. According to the National Security Agency, based on your internet history and web interactions, your entire life and everyone and everything in it is able to be measured in gigabytes. While this type of local espionage is still in practice in 2014, the ideas Edward Snowden has brought to the table cannot be erased from people's minds. Awareness is the first step that the Snowden case has taken in fighting back against an issue the American public never even knew existed.

Works Cited:

Crowley, Michael. "The NSA Report: Another Step Toward Ending The War On Terrorism." Time.Com (2013): 1.Business Source Complete. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.

Dunn, Catherine. "10 Most Shocking NSA Revelations Of 2013." Fortune.Com (2014): 1. Business Source Complete. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.

Elmer-DeWitt, Philip. "Apple's Security Bug: Five NSA Conspiracy Theories." Fortune.Com (2014): 1. Business Source Complete. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.

Etzioni, A. "NSA: National Security Vs. Individual Rights." Intelligence And National Security (2014): Scopus®. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.

Frizell, Sam. "The NSA Is Even Spying On Computers That Aren't Online." Time.Com (2014): 1. Business Source Complete. Web. 21 Mar. 2014.

Greenwald, Glenn, dir. Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations. Dir. Ewan MacAskill, and Prod. Laura Poitras. Guardian News, 2013. Web. 30 Mar 2014. <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance>.

McNiff, Catherine. "Timeline: U.S. Spying and Surveillance" Information Please. Pearson Education, n.d. Web. 19 Mar 2014. <http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/spying-surveillance-timeline.html>.

Macaskill, Ewan, and Gabriel Dance. "NSA Files: Decoded." The Guardian. Guardian News, 01 Nov 2013. Web. 1 Apr 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/snowden-nsa-files-surveillance-revelations-decoded>

Landau, S. "Highlights From Making Sense Of Snowden, Part II: What's Significant In The NSA Revelations." IEEE Security And Privacy 12.1 (2014): 62-64. Scopus®. Web. 22 Mar. 2014.

Sahadi, Jeanne. "What the NSA costs taxpayers." CNN Money. Time Warner, 07 Jun 2013. Web. Mar 30 2014. <http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/07/news/economy/nsa-surveillance-cost/>.

Subramanian, Courtney. "NSA Collects Online Address Books And Buddy Lists." Time.Com (2013): 1. Business Source Complete. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.

"The USA PATRIOT Act: Preserving Life and Liberty."Department of Justice. Department of Justice, n.d. Web. 19 Mar 2014. <http://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/highlights.htm>.

Doryana Robins Final Project

Digital Media: Art, Culture, and Theory

Doryana Robins

March 19, 2014

“Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 advertising messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today. About half the 4,110 people surveyed last spring by Yankelovich said they thought marketing and advertising today was out of control.”(8) The ads we see today are images of women who are beautiful, sexy, and something we strive for, but these are images that media companies have created to sell products. Our idea of what is beautiful has become so distorted, but can you blame us when the pictures themselves are? Media corporations in the 21st century United States are intentionally presenting images of women that are simply beyond what is attainable. The images that media and advertising companies are creating are having a negative impact on women today. In the movie Miss Representation “53% of 13 year olds feel unhappy with their bodies.”(7) Photo-shopped pictures that media corporations are creating make women question their own beauty.

In today’s society, media companies are creating images that objectify and sexualize women. They are creating an “ideal women” who has been digitally changed so that it is impossible to attain her beauty because it isn’t real. The images we see every day make us question our physical attributes and give us something to hope or strive for. “Unfortunately, this is no simulated game. This is real life. This is what publications do every day” (9) Media companies are using programs like Photoshop to digitally alter images so that they create an unrealistic and unattainable image of a woman. They start out with a model who is already attractive but with Photoshop they create an extreme version of that image where in some cases one can’t even tell it was the same person. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XHEZwEhJvI ) Media companies may think they are creating a better version of the model or a more aesthetically pleasing image, but what they are really doing is creating an image that is physically impossible to attain. “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.”(1) The type of images media and advertising corporations are creating for advertisements depict women as if their body was the only thing the viewer was looking at, rather than what the model was actually selling.
The advertising companies create these images to get women to buy the products they are advertising. For example, they show an image of an incredibly beautiful woman who has Photo-shopped eyes with gorgeous make-up. The average woman looking at the advertisement doesn't have eyes that are anything like the woman in the advertising, but she wants to look like that. She might buy the eye make-up that is being advertised. Or the shampoo and conditioner, or the clothing, or the car, or the smart phone, or whatever it is the advertisment is selling, because she wants to be as beautiful as the model in the picture, just that the image isn't really what the model looks like. Women sometimes end up feeling frustrated because they can never be quite as beautiful as the image in the advertisement.

In Dove’s new campaign “Dove Real” a short film documents how women perceive themselves based on a simple experiment. Women were asked to describe themselves, and then a sketch of them was drawn by an artist based only on the verbal description. Then another person was asked to describe the same woman, and another sketch was made based just on the second verbal description. After both drawings were done the two sketches were shown next to each other. In every case the second sketch, the one based on the description made by another person, not the description the woman made of herself, was so much more beautiful. The artist said “The women were very critical about moles or scars or things like that, and yet they were describing a normal beautiful person” (2) At the end of the video one women said “We spend a lot of time as women analyzing and trying to fix the things that aren’t quite right, and we should spend more time appreciating the things we do like.” (2) This campaign showed how women have developed a more negative view of themselves compared to how other people see them. I think that in today’s culture women have a lot of pressure on them and feel as though they have to be as beautiful as the people they see the in the ads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=litXW91UauE
Every day women are subjected to ads showing them how they should act, look and be. Many women are influenced by this image of beauty and try to attain the impossible. In today’s society people criticize themselves harshly. In an article from Upworthy.com there is a video about four girls who get covergirl makeovers but don’t like the results. One of the girls in the video said, “You look at yourself and you know you can never attain that ideal.” (3) I think one reason ad companies create images that women strive for is because it creates desire and sells products. When women feel as though they need to look prettier or they need to change something about themselves they generally go out and buy a product they hope will make the change. If the ad companies create an image that is unattainable, women will always think the next new beauty product will help them to achieve “beauty”. http://www.upworthy.com/4-ladies-get-the-cover-model-makeover-of-their-dreams-and-then-hate-the-results-11113
Digitally altered images in the 21st century have become the norm. But Aerie, which is a branch of the company American Eagle, has launched a new campaign called ‘Aerie Real’. Aerie Real’s campaign is to use ad images that are not photoshopped at all. They feature women who are naturally beautiful. Although Aerie’s models aren’t Photo-shopped, they are presented in the same way as in other ads where the pictures have been altered. Even though the images are not digitally altered, they still portray women in a way that appears to objectify and sexualize them. Aren’t the models there to show off the product the company is selling? Maybe our attention should be turned to the products rather than the models.

 

The film ‘Miss Representation’, is about how women are misrepresented in society today and what it means to be a powerful women. The movie quotes women in today’s society who are considered to be in a powerful position or who have power. One woman says that “to be a women is to be the unattainable idea of beauty.” (6) If beauty has become unattainable then what exactly are women trying to attain? “When is it going to be enough?”(6) 21st century girls are judging themselves so harshly by standards that are unreal. “Not only are they seeing others as objects they see themselves as objects.” (6) http://www.greys-anatomy.cz/wp-content/uploads/ženy-6.jpg

The media and advertising companies may have gone too far in how they use and modify images of women in advertisements. They create images that are Photo-shopped to make women look beautiful in a way that can never be attained by most women. Many women will still want to look like the images and buy the products being advertised but for some women the images are so unrealistic that they might stop caring about buying the product. Women may start to resent some of the companies that sell products with these unrealistic images because the images make them feel bad about themselves instead of wanting to look like the Photo-shopped images.
Some companies like Aerie are now using pictures of models that are not altered, but they are still presenting the models in a way that are objectified and sexualized. I don't think it makes much difference whether the images are Photo-shopped or not, it's the way the companies are portraying the women in the images that is as big an issue as the altered images.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/79585/watch-this-woman-get-a-complete-photoshop-makeover-in-3-minutes-flat

Bibliography

 

1.   Dove. "Dove: Evolution." YouTube. YouTube, 02 May 2011. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.

2.   "Dove Real Beauty Sketches." YouTube. YouTube, 14 Apr. 2013. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.

3.   Gilkey, Melissa. "4 Ladies Get The 'Cover Model' Makeover Of Their Dreams ... And Then Hate The Results." Upworthy. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.

6.   Miss Representation. Dir. Jenifer Siebel Newsom, Kimberlee Acquaro. 2011. Film

7.   "Mind-Blowing 'Body Evolution' Video Dramatically Alters Woman's Body With Photoshop." YouTube. YouTube, 31 Oct. 2013. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.

8.   Story, Louise. "Anywhere the Eye Can See, It's Now Likely to See an Ad." The New York Times. The New York Times, 14 Jan. 2007. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.

9.   Wallace, Tracey. "Watch This Woman Get a Complete Photoshop Makeover in 3-Minutes Flat." PolicyMic. N.p., 24 Jan. 2014. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.