2022.1.20

     In the last class, we watched a movie called "War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death". The film was made in 2007, directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp. To summarize, it exposes how the American government over 50 years has tried to strum up war effort using the media as a tool, focusing on parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq. For today's class, we considered the connection of the film with what we learned in the first and the second term and how the media has been changing.

     The main topic was Net Neutrality. Back in the day, media was owned only by the rich people so it told information that rich people wanted to tell. For example, newspapers,  radio, and TV stations were only owned by people with money. I was surprised by how websites, which are often represented as a mutual communication media tool, also started just like the other media. However, through technological development, it become easier to make a new website, and more people started to use SNS which allows people to give out information as well. I believe this was when people got equal right to give out information as well as receive it. However, the problem of Net Neutrality came out. The smartphone companies and provider companies were trying to make people pay extra money to make the connection of their websites faster. Indy media's website was even slowed down by the traditional media and taken down. I believed that the internet's key concept was equality and neutrality so it was very shocking to know this information. However, one question came to my mind, net neutrality's regulation treats all content equally, but can it be withdrawn if it is fake news or if it is determined to be harmful to people? I would like to know how net neutrality and regulations on the net are balanced.