The Founding Era

I learned a lot of information in our first timeline of the semester. The Articles of Confederation and State Constitutions were prime examples leading up to the Federal Consitution that I did not understand as clearly until now. Despite taking plenty of American history classes, I do not remember learning directly about "The Fugitive Slave Clause," directly but at a generic series of events that was taken. I remember learning an outline of the clause but not as in-depth about it. I also learned that the Constitution is very broad and not as specific as I believed it to be. That is why it is open to vast interpretations. In prior classes, I only learned about sections of the Constitution and not as a whole. 

The most surprising thing I learned is how Virginia and Kentucky were essentially allowed to ignore a federal law and how strong The Sedition Act was at the time. The videos did not change my view of the Supreme Court gave me a better understanding of what it does. 

Do YOU Truly have Ownership of Yourself?

Social media and the online world can essentially control one's life, and in addition, can own the personal data of the platform's users. The government can have access to your search history without a warrant resulting in personal information and interests being discovered with ease. Any pictures or other personal information someone posts on the internet can be copied and used for exploitive or nefarious reasons.  Privacy settings should always be used and personal information should only be shared with great caution, or someone’s personal identity could ultimately be stolen. 

Social media allows people to follow their friends and stay up to date with news and connect to people around the world. However, sometimes it can be used for detrimental reasons. For example, through social media people can commit blackmail, extortion, or cyberbullying, causing victims to lose money, lose credibility, and even hurt themselves. 

These issues can affect me because even when I take the most recommended steps to secure privacy, there is still a level of risk in using social media platforms. Even though what I text to my friends through a social media website or app is supposed to be private, the information is still stored and can be hacked into. I have experienced my Instagram account being hacked, which resulted in everyone I follow receiving a direct message pretending to be me when it was not. 

One of the videos presented during class dealt with how our phones listen to us when we talk or track what we search for on Google Chrome or Safari. One can reasearch something or say something to someone and a few moments later whatever the topic was may show up in a post or an ad on your feed. One instance that I remember this happening to me occurred when I was with my friend Mitchell talking about his favorite team, the Washington Nationals. I never have Nationals media on my feed but five minutes after Mitchell and I talked about the team, a post showed up about it.  We then purposely talked about another team, and the same thing happened. 

My Top 5 News Sources

News on a vast amount of topics are posted continuously throughout the day on numerous platforms. People choose different platforms to pay attention to which can influence formed opinions. I use many sources to obtain my news but five are used more often than others. 

My main source of news online is social media. I look to Instagram to get most of my news about sports, politics, current events, and entertainment. This often comes in the form of various influencers giving their opinions so I need to balance this with other sources. Instagram allows my consumption of news to be more visual than written which is easier for me to process. 

I also check Twitter throughout the day as it tends to provide more up-to-minute breaking news on topics I pay a lot of attention to such as professional sports. Sources post about sports transactions and sports injury updates, as well as political news and current events that I am interested in. 

Following professional sports being my largest passion, ESPN is another main source of news that I use each day. Although sometimes there can be an overlap of information with Twitter or Instagram, ESPN gives me game scores and player statistics in real-time as it happens.

CNN strictly contains more political news for me to consume. I know many online news sources can present stories with some political bias in one way or another, but I tend to lean in with CNN the most. CNN pushes content throughout the 24-hour news cycle and I find it one of the most efficient ways for me to find news other than on social media platforms.

As of late, NewsNation has been a news source that I have used on a daily basis. I find an interest in true crime and events that are in need of a murder board like the ones we see on TV shows. I have partaken in researching more about the University of Idaho quadruple-murder investigation, and I find that NewsNational reports the most credible and up-to-date news. NewsNation describes the true crime in a descriptive way that really makes sense to me.