Final Essay

Tan Wei Long

A04

Final Essay

Privacy issues arise from globalization

Globalization has brought the world closer together through technological advancements. "A lot of us are driven by technologies. Our computer systems will be as primitive as Apollo, how do we manage the technological change?” said Goldin in this TED talk (2009).

With these technologies’ advancement applied to the global media and communications, social networking websites have been created for purposes such as making social connections. With the advancement, social networking site (SNS) has been invented to bring people closer together. However, the invention also resulted in my issues regarding to privacy issues. Firstly, people were careless and neglected their privacy of their personal information and secondly, there are frauds that are misusing identities that do not belong to them.

According to Reed (2012), “Chinese spies created a fake Facebook account of Chief of U.S. European Command and gained intelligence of many NATO Officials”. This example is one of the most extreme cases that can happen when social media users neglect about their privacy by accepting friend request without caution and uploading sensitive information online. Due to their desire to expand their social network by easily accepting friend requests, personal information can be easily obtained. These users and the networking sites must recognize both SNS frauds and the ease of losing private information as a threat and work hand in hand to tighten up the online security.

The Internet today is different compared to in the past where personal identity was kept secret. Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, the leading force of the online social networking website, once said that “having two identities for yourself is an example of lack of integrity.” People are strongly encouraged to use their real identity on social media. Social networking services allow users to easily expand their social network and to keep in touch with their network with just few clicks. Most social media allow users to create their personal profiles and to post photos, location and updates of themselves.  However, if those information were being accessed by frauds, they will be exposed to danger. There is no differentiation between friends, strangers and best friends once the information is uploaded for their online audience to view. Frauds are able to misuse the information for ill purposes (Lee, 2013, p.23).  Anyone can create any online profile they want even if the profile doesn’t belong to them. They can easily intrude in another’s life and get their information by creating a “fake account” that belongs to one of the target’s friend.

Next, randomly adding and accepting friend requests are some common phenomenon today. Astoundingly, the majority of the social media users are ready to give up part of their privacy in exchange for being connected (Lee, 2013, p21). As mentioned in the case where a fake Facebook account of the NATO chief supreme commander was used to gain military intelligence, similarly, the worst thing that can happen to others is someone using other people's identity for bad intent. In the Internet era, the “need-to-know” maxim is no longer respected for personal privacy. There are websites such as Intelius that are selling personal information online (Lee, 2013, p67). As discussed above, the majority of the users were willing to give up some privacy for being connected. They might overlook the existing threat of people posing as them on social media sites, which might lead to consequences that they can never imagine. 

Social networking sites should play their part as the creator to address the issue on tedious privacy settings. Creating an easier user interface for privacy settings such as pre-sets for different scales of privacy will help users who are not tech-savvy to adequately protect themselves from external harm. However, this is not the case. "Keeping your Facebook info private is getting harder and harder all the time—mostly because Facebook keeps trying to make it public" (Gordon, 2013). Luckily, the website 'LifeHacker' has been creating comprehensive guides for users in protecting privacy on Facebook. On the other end, there is a need to increase awareness of SNS users regarding such issues. SNS can create campaign regularly firstly to educated the younger generation that were born into the digital society and secondly to deter frauds from such actions.

In conclusion, as long as people are vigilant and sensitive about accepting friend requests, playing a part in protecting themselves with the aid of the networking working sites providing a more user-friendly privacy setting and helpful campaigns problems discussed can be mitigated. Users can continue to have their life posted for sharing or digitizing purposes but never should forget to have adequate privacy settings for information they don’t want to share. As what the old saying says, “Prevention is better than cure”. Uploading and downloading of information are almost immediate but once published, you can’t retract it. 

Reference 

Goldin, I. (2009). Navigating our global future. Oxford: TED.

Gordon, Whitson. "The Always Up-to-Date Guide to Managing Your Facebook Privacy." Lifehacker. N.p., 1 Mar. 2013. Web. 21 Apr. 2014. <http://lifehacker.com/5813990/the-always-up-to-date-guide-to-managing-your-facebook-privacy>.

 John, Reed. "Chinese Spies Use Fake Facebook Pages to Gain Intel." Defense Tech RSS. N.p., 12 Mar. 2012. Web. 21 Apr. 2014. <http://defensetech.org/2012/03/12/chinese-spies-use-fake-facebook-pages-to-gain-intel/>. 

  Lee, Newton. Facebook nation total information awareness. New York, NY: Springer, 2013. Print.

Reflection for ES1102

The semester is comning to an end. It was pleasant because of everyone's company, I had made so many great friends. I learnt a lot from this module. The main take away for this module wasn't grammars and essays, but i was time management and discipline.

The start of this journey was a pleasant and exciting one, writing reflections about ourselves, interesting blog posts, all these did not feel like a chore to me. I spent long hours trying to craft out the best post that i could with my ability without complaints. However, my attitude started to change when we were tasked with the "Globalization" essay.

The topic was neither interesting nor useful for me. It was very difficult for me to put in 100% of my effort into writing, On top of that, works start to pile up during the middle of the semester with multiple assignments from each modules, naturally, i prioritised ES1102 the least.

Being a Communication and New Media (CNM) major, I am taking a media writing module concurrently with ES1102. The writing style between academic essay and media writing are very different and I had a hard time adjusting. For example, newspaper article focus on front loading with the inverted pyramid structure whereas academic writing focus on building up from problems to solutions.

On the bright side, with the help of this course, the grammar quizes really helped a lot in learning grammar. The quizes were enjoyable and fulfilling. Another component that i enjoyed a lot is the oral presentation. I sincerely felt that i was very useful and applicable.

I would like to thank Brad for being such a great teacher. I can feel the passion within him. He was very patient in teaching students. Reading so many of my substandard essays and still willing to correct me, I felt ashamed.

As I've mentioned, the main takeaway for me was the time management and discipline. Not limited to those, I am more aware of my grammar when writing an essay and was glad that given a chance to have a oral presentation on something we spent so miuch time on.

As I'm typing this reflection, this reminded me of how i let during the time when we were blogging. Honestly, I am enjoying this module again.

Reflection on presentation

I feel that it was beneficial for me to have a chance to present in this course. It is not really about given a chance to improve, but its more about given a chance to present. As Brad had said, NUS students were not given many opportunity to present throughout the years of studies. By having this chance to present, it will let us gauge how much we need to improve and most importantly, how can we improve by learning from our better classmates. The comments and questions asked after all those presentation was very critical and beneficial to both the presenters and the listeners. As a person sitting down listening to the rest of my classmates commenting on the presenter, I will assess all the beneficial comments for myself.

Overall, i feel that we should have more of this kind of presentation because I'm sure that I had benefited from it.

We leaked our own personal information.

Globalization had brought the world closer together through technologies advancements, bringing people around the world closer together. "A lot of us are driven by technologies. Our computer systems will be as primitive as Apollo, how do we manage the technological change?” said Goldin in this TED talk (2009). With these technologies advancement applied to the global media and communications, social networking websites was created for purposes such as self-expression. Internet being such a powerful tool can aid our daily activities but at the same time, it could be a disaster for us if careless. These new inventions then created serious problems regarding privacy issues when personal information were exposed through social media but people were still too comfortable about it.

According to John Reed (2012), “Chinese spies created a fake Facebook account of Chief of U.S. European command and gain intelligence of many NATO Officials. “ This example is one of the most extreme cases that can happen when neglecting privacy issues on the social media. This report will be focusing on the angle of how personal information was given away by the users themselves because of negligence when expanding their social network.

“On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” This was one of the oldest jokes about the internet by a New York Cartoonist in 1993. Internet today is different. People were strongly encouraged to use their real identity on social media. Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, the leading force of online social networking website once said that “having two identities for yourself is an example of lack of integrity.”

Social networking services allow users to easily expand their social network and keeping in touch with their network with just few clicks away. Most social media allow users to create their personal profiles and posting photos, location and updates of themselves.  However, those were the same factors that will expose their vulnerability. There is no segregation of friends, strangers and best friends once the information is uploaded for their online friends to view. Strangers are able to misuse the information for ill purposes (Lee, 2013, p.23).  Anyone can create any online profile they want even if the profile doesn’t belong to them. They can easily intrude other’s life and getting their information by creating a “fake account” that belongs to one of the target’s friend.

For this study, I’ve interviewed LTA(NS) Cheng Yew Toon, 23, former deputy security and intelligence officer of 48 Singapore Amour Regiment on his views specifically about “Accepting Friend Request”.

According to Cheng, he posted his private contact information on his Facebook account but it was private, therefore only friends of Cheng will be able to see. However, the followed up question to him was “Will you accept any friend’s requests?” Cheng replied, “As long as I interacted with this person before, most probably I will.” The problem identified was when someone accepted a friend request, without adjustment of privacy settings, their information will turned “public” to their friends, and people can start to extract information immediately before you finding out if that “friend” who added you was really your friend.

This phenomenon is not uncommon even today. Astoundingly, the larger part of the social media users are ready to give up part of their privacy in exchanged for being connected (Lee, 2013, p21). Cheng also offered an interesting angle of this issue. Cheng said that “The worst thing I can think of is someone using my information and creating a fake account of me.” In the internet era, the “need-to-know” maxim is no longer respected for personal privacy. There are websites such as Intelius are selling personal information online (Lee, 2013, p67). As discussed above, majority of the users were willing to give up some privacy for being connected. They might overlook the existing threat of people imposing them on social media sites which might lead to consequences that they can never imagine. 

Social networking sites should play their part too. Creating an easier user interface for privacy settings such as pre-sets for different scales of privacy will help users who are not tech-savvy to adequately protect themselves from external harm. However, this was not the case, "Keeping your Facebook info private is getting harder and harder all the time—mostly because Facebook keeps trying to make it public" (Gordon, 2013). Luckily, a website 'LifeHacker' had created a comprehensive guide in protecting privacy on Facebook. 

In conclusion, social media have pros and cons. As long as people are vigilant and sensitive about accepting friend requests, playing a part in protecting themselves, problems discussed can be mitigated. Users can continue to have their life posted for sharing or digitizing purposes but never to forget to have adequate privacy settings for information they don’t want to share. As Cheng had mentioned, problems can be mitigated if we can clarify with the person who added us as friends personally and taking more precaution in sharing sensitive information. As what the old saying says, “Prevention is better than cure”. Uploading and downloading of information are almost immediate, once published, you can’t retract it. 

Reference

Goldwin, I. (July, 2009). Navigating our global future. [Video] Retrieved from

http://www.ted.com/talks/ian_goldin_navigating_our_global_future?language=en

N. LEE. (2013). Facebook Nation, Consumer Privacy in the Age of Big Data (Chapter 2). Springer Science+Business Media New York

John Reed. (2012). Chinese Spies Use Facebook Pages to Gain Intel. Retrieved on 10 Feb 2014 from: http://defensetech.org/2012/03/12/chinese-spies-use-fake-facebook-pages-to-gain-intel/

Whitson Gordon. (2013) The Always Up-to-Date Guide to Managing  Your Facebook Privacy. Retrieved on 1 March 2014 from: http://lifehacker.com/5813990/the-always-up-to-date-guide-to-managing-your-facebook-privacy

Reader Response draft 2

In this article on "Globalization of Culture Through the Media", Kraidy (2002) discusses the 2 theoretical views namely, globalization, where an integration process between countries and cultural imperialism, where one country imposed its culture onto others in the globalization of culture. Culture imperialism theory, was argued to be biased towards industrialized countries and Western Media. According to Kraidy (2002), globalization managed to capture the complexity in "transnational transaction" compared to cultural imperialism. Early theories of media influence believed that the mass media had powerful effects over the audiences and Kraidy argues that media only intensifies cultural hybridity rather than homogeneity.

There was no doubt that the mass media have helped in spreading the cultures of the countries. Advancement of technology and telecommunications made free flow of idea possible. Kraidy (2002) explains on the perspective on cultural hybridization which two different cultures create a mixture of traditional and cultural form. Today, we could see that different cultures were adopted in many areas such as filmography, food, fashion, architecture and etc which were integrated with local cultures, created a by-product in an international scale. World Wide Web have also revolutionized the way we receive and share information. You do not need travel to America to know buy the iPhone, do not need to travel to India to show the locals your Youtube videos and so much more. The world became smaller to us, as our reach got longer with the help of global media.

Easier access to the other parts of the world had hastened hybridization of culture. People from different parts of the world started to migrate to different countries due to the advanced transportation such as planes and ships, coupled with the influence of global media, created the multiracial countries. Take Singapore for example, we had a number of variety of different cultures settled in here. People from India, China, Malaysia, America and etc. When people of different cultural backgrounds started interacting, they would share their ideas, taking what worked from the other cultures and creating a new way of communication thus creating a new culture.

The debate for between global media and globalization of culture that Kraidy(2002) talks about had became more apparent after 12 years since the article was published. There is no denial of how the media especially with the aid of internet have helped to bring people around the world closer together. However according to Korhan (2007), "No matter how biased the information that we face is, it is the individual who homogenized, hybridized or polarized." The only thing we can be certain of was that global media exposed people to something broader which changed them compared to the past. Just like a frog in a well was given a chance to see the world.

Kraidy, M. M. (2002). Globalization of Culture Through the Media. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1333&context=asc_papers

KorhaN. D (2007). Globalization, Culture and Roles of Media. Retrieved from http://duygukorhan.com/articles/henrikfinal.pdf.

READER RESPONSE DRAFT 1

In this article on "Globalization of Culture Through the Media", Kraidy (2002) discusses the 2 theoretical views namely, globalization, where an integration process between countries and cultural imperialism, where one country imposed its culture onto others in the globalization of culture. Culture imperialism theory, was argued to be biased towards industrialized countries and Western Media. According to Kraidy (2002), globalization managed to capture the complexity in "transnational transaction" compared to cultural imperialism. Early theories of media influence believed that the mass media had powerful effects over the audiences and Kraidy argues that media only intensifies cultural hybridity rather than homogeneity.

There is no doubt that the mass media have helped in spreading the cultures of the countries. Kraidy (2002) mentions that the American culture had the most influence among other industrialized nations and reinforced this stand by saying that international communication is permeated by power which contributed to cultural imperialism.

However, other concepts of globalization had been conducted to replace cultural imperialism. Using end of the Cold War as a framework, Kraidy (2002) discusses about how the United States lost its dominant position due to transnational transactions which led to concept of globalization replacing cultural imperialism. Kraidy (2002) explains on the perspective on cultural hybridization which two different cultures create a mixture of traditional and cultural form. Today, we cannot deny the fact that a lot of countries are affected by Westernization. A lot of American cultures are adopted in most cultures today. Areas such as filmography, food, fashion and architecture which were integrated with local cultures, created a by-product in an international scale. According to Doran (2012), the global market is trending towards American goods. Is is because Americans had an head start back in the past but other developed countries are catching up.

In the article, Kraidy (2002) mentions that global media and information technologies have slowly increased interaction between cultures. Fast forwarding 12 years into 2014, Kraidy’s point is true. It is evident that media and information technologies have brought the world even closer together. Looking at the current entertainment industries, different countries were already hybridized by "consuming" their medias such dramas, cartoons and songs. Not forgetting technologies and architecture, countries are integrating each other’s idea and these are just tip of the iceberg,

Summary for "Globalization of Culture Through the Media"

In this article on "Globalization of Culture Through the Media", Kraidy (2002) discusses the 2 theoretical views namely, globalization and cultural imperialism in the globalization of culture. Culture imperialism theory was argued to be biased towards industrialized countries and Western Media.  According to Kraidy (2002), globalization managed to capture the complexity in "transnational transaction" compared to cultural imperialism. Early theories of media influence believed that the mass media had powerful effects over the audiences such as international communication that has served as an active role in globalization and how it accelerates interaction and understanding.

Before Shino joined my family, there was not much conversation in the house. My sister and I always shut ourselves in our own room when we were home while my parents were doing their own things. We did not and will not share our problems with them. At the age of 17, I was told that a 3 year old, blind in one eye husky was available for adoption. I was excited and immediately went to seek my parents' approval. I was rejected right away by my mother even though my father was neutral about it. After much consideration, I accepted the offer and went to adopt Shino as soon as possible without my parents’ approval. I can still remember how happy I was when I first saw her, but I was even happier when my mother accepted her right away. However, that was only the beginning of the happiness. With the addition of the new family member, my family and I finally shared a common topic, Shino. We started interacting more with each other, spending more time outside our rooms. Often, I will take a stepped back and looked at my family. I was glad that I made the right choice and because of Shino, I learned to be more responsible and most importantly, I finally understood how much my parents love me because it’s the same as how much I love Shino.

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My English language learning journey

I have no recollections of those times I spent studying in primary school. Hopscotch, volleyball, playing soccer using a tennis ball were all that I could remember. Surprisingly, I managed to get into secondary school but things remained the same. Lessons remained mundane and the only times I looked forward to were recess breaks and co-curricular activities. Fortunately, math and science came naturally to me and again, I somehow managed to advance to junior college. Surviving the 10 years of education without working hard made me believed that things will be the same for the next 2 years of education. However, I was very wrong. I did so badly during my freshman year that I had to withdraw from school. That was the turning point of my life. I tasted failure and that fall woke me up from my foolishness. Picking up from where I had fallen, my perception changed. With as much dignity as I could muster, I applied to one of the local polytechnic. I chose chemical engineering as I believed that math and science were still my forte. Studying hard was once seemed obvious but never an important factor to me in the past. Using the drive and momentum gained from that fall, I was able to graduate with a diploma and also securing a place in NUS. These extra years were definitely well spent.

Fast forwarding 2 years spent in army, I was sitting down in NUS examination hall doing the Qualifying English Test (QET) that is required for all polytechnics' students. I was unprepared, in fact, I was never prepared. Looking back at my English language journey, I did not learn much at all. My grammar was shaky since primary school which I did not bother correcting, English papers in secondary school were basically paraphrasing the passages to answer questions in the comprehension section and finally in polytechnic, numbers and periodic table were the only things I touched.

All this while, I relied too heavily on my strengths and neglected my weaknesses. This QET made me realised how vulnerable I was. I am actually glad that I was given a chance to pick up what I have left behind after so many years.

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