EOTO 2 - Gatekeeping in Modern Media

The term "gatekeeping" is commonly used among millennials as a term to describe someone making judgments. The person making judgments about someone in this context is the "gatekeeper." This contemporary usage of the word is amusingly inaccurate. Gatekeeping is defined by Mass Communication Theory as "the process of selecting, and then filtering, items of media that can be consumed within the time or space that an individual happens to have." 

Gatekeeping is associated with different forms of power such as selecting different types of news to a consumer, brokering and storing information, and controlling to access networks. These networks can be anything from social media to mainstream news. Provided by UMN Library, gatekeepers are people in a position of power who decide which messages are produced, what they contain, where they are placed, and who places them.

As humans, we gate keep information inherently to filter out information that we don't need. We consume data that is relevant to us and ignore billions of data points. This helps us maintain our personal sanity. While we gate keep for ourselves, the information and media that we consume has been already "gatekept" for us. Gatekeeping has evolved to become the center of media's role in our public lives.

Gatekeeping is most commonly used in news. Editors and journalists filter content for publication, content that is tailored for viewers. While the content that consumers view that has been filtered by information tech companies, news companies, and social media firms is very important, the content that we as viewers see is also something that should be highlighted. Gatekeeping is a form of "neutral censorship" that is normally viewpoint neutral, but gatekeeper biases create hubs for partisan selection of media. This is the danger in gatekeeping if it is left unchecked. Companies gatekeeping information should be kept under strict scrutiny to minimize propaganda and avoid controlling people's opinions.

Privacy Has Become a Luxury, Not a Right

The TED Talk "How To Avoid Surveillance... With Your Phone In Your Pocket" by Christopher Soghoian raises the significant issue of major privacy breaches within telecommunications by the government. These breaches come from surveillance that has been wired into the core of our telephone networks. Soghoian furthers that they are also wired for surveillance first. The difference that separates telephone companies from Silicon Valley companies is that the Silicon Valley companies have grown to build strong encryption technology to counter said surveillance. Does this mean we are safe?

Soghoian argues that after "100 years of being able to listen to any phone call," governments are not happy that they are being locked out of people's private information (Soghoian). He posits that tech companies have democratized encryption and privacy, something that governments are upset about because these features are built into Silicon Valley smartphones by default. While surveillance of communication can be beneficial for national security, it comes at a cost.

This surveillance feature built into many forms of communication is something that compromises the integrity of entire systems when breached. These systems connect millions of individuals and can hold important private information. This is also the problem with backdoors. With backdoors, there is no way to control "whether it'll be used by your side or the other side" (Soghoian). To prevent the bad guys to accessing our information, the good guys' operation must also be restricted. The alternative to this is mass surveillance and authoritarian ruling. 

In order to protect your information, try to use an application that has enhanced encryption. Apps such as iMessage and FaceTime owned by Apple and WhatsApp owned by Facebook provide protected services that make spying on communications extremely difficult.