Netherlands passes net neutrality law, first among EU nations

The Verge: All in all, it’s a good day for privacy and internet freedom in the Netherlands, now how about we spread the good cheer throughout the whole European Union?

2 weeks ago

Preparation Tips for Final Exam

The MCS final exam will evaluate your knowledge about media, your critical thinking skills, and your ability to express your thoughts clearly in English.

The most important way you can prepare for the exam is by reading the course materials, including the course packet, the assigned chapters in Carr, and the course website. (Helpful tip: Make sure to review the first seven pages of the course packet that we read together the first day of class.)

Ideally, reading stimulates thinking, i.e. new questions…

Prior to the exam, prepare several of your most important questions about media and people, your own authentic questions that you don’t have an answer to yet. Be prepared to discuss why you believe your questions are important. These questions will be different for each person.

Why prepare questions for an exam? Your questions will reveal a) your knowledge and understanding of media, and b) your critical thinking skills.

Top grades will go to students who show that they have excellent understanding of course material, are able to think about information rationally and independently, and can express their thoughts clearly.

The 90-minute exam is a mixture of written answers and multiple choice. It counts for 66% of your course grade.

YB

2 weeks ago

“Le temps de cerveau disponible” was a documentary film broadcast on France 2 in 2010. It examines the cultural, psychological, and political economic evolution of television in France and, beginning in the 1980s, the revolutionary use of television in the exploitation of irrational psychological impulses for business purposes.

3 weeks ago

Documentary Film: “Toxic Sludge is Good for You: The Public Relations Industry Unspun” (45 minutes, Media Education Foundation)

While advertising is the visible component of the corporate system, perhaps even more important and pervasive is its invisible partner, the public relations industry. This video illuminates this hidden sphere of our culture and examines the way in which the management of “the public mind” has become central to how our democracy is controlled by political and economic elites. Toxic Sludge Is Good For You illustrates how much of what we think of as independent, unbiased news and information has its origins in the boardrooms of the public relations companies.

PR critics include PR Watch founder John Stauber, cultural scholars Mark Crispin Miller and Stuart Ewen. Toxic Sludge Is Good For You tracks the development of the PR industry from early efforts to win popular American support for World War I to the role of crisis management in controlling the damage to corporate image. The video analyzes the tools public relations professionals use to shift our perceptions including a look at the coordinated PR campaign to slip genetically engineered produce past public scrutiny.

Toxic Sludge Is Good For You urges viewers to question the experts and follow the money back to the public relations industry to challenge its hold on democracy.

3 weeks ago

What would Orwell say about society today?

“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other, but it is “not done”… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing…“—George Orwell

3 weeks ago

How Apple Avoids Billions in Taxes

The New York Times: “This tax avoidance strategy used by Apple and other multinationals doesn’t just minimize the companies’ U.S. taxes,” said Mr. Kleinbard, now a professor of tax law at the University of Southern California. “It’s German tax and French tax and tax in the U.K. and elsewhere.”

France Uncut is a citizens’ group raising awareness about the ways that many large French companies are legally able to avoid paying taxes. To learn which CAC40 corporations are the biggest esquiveurs d’impôt, see here.

4 weeks ago

Xenophobic propaganda from the United States.

4 weeks ago

What Everyone Who Uses The Internet Needs To Know About CISPA

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act passed the US House of Representatives yesterday and will now be taken up by the Senate.

4 weeks ago

Video: Sebastian Thrun interview

Sebastian Thrun, Founder and head of Google X, discusses Google glasses, self-driving cars, and his online University project called Udacity.

4 weeks ago

The group European Digital Rights (EDRi) contributed this video, also available in French and other languages, to the organizing effort for June 9, a Europe-wide Day of Action Against ACTA.

For students wishing to keep up-to-date with Internet rights issues in Europe, the free, bi-weekly newsletter EDRi-gram is an excellent source of information.

1 month ago