The first piece of research I read had this to say: For example, Facebook knows where you typically “log in and on what computer”, your demographics, “birthday”, where you “work”, your political stance and what you tend to click on 

it made me think this: They track and store data on everything they can in order narrow down what advertisements they show you, and how they structure your feed of photos to hold attention. The danger in this is when large companies gain too much control. 

The second piece of research said: an artificial intelligence (AI) system correctly predicted the last three U.S. presidential elections puts Republican nominee Donald Trump ahead of Democrat rival Hillary Clinton in the race to the White House.” 

this built on my understanding of the implications of theses algorithms and AI bots. Our country’s future relies on media.

The third piece of research said:  if “you like ten pictures, just ten, he could aspects of your personality better than your average coworker. If he knew 150, he would know you better than your mom and with 350, better than your average spouse.” And this does not even include all the data they pick up on you

This lead me to think about how easy it is for companies to gather information about us. After only liking a handful of pictures, they know more the people who surround us.

The fourth piece of research talked about how for “more serious matters” that “require thoughtfulness, discussion, clarity, empathy… our divergent filters fail”. He states that “social media should be bringing us together“ “but instead they are pulling us apart”

This built off of my other research about companies controlling us through their algorithims. Once they catches onto our patterns, they are able to manipulate us. So in theory the big media companies are the ones determining the direction of society. 

The fifth piece of research states: Because, we as humans have a “the general tendency toward similarity”,we are “lead... to create echo chambers where we are presented with and recycle information that is meaningful to our core group.” In these echo chambers, we tend to ignore outside opinions. However, due to the current political turmoil, there have been more open discussions  across “barriers”. “We find that some of our closest connections may hold different opinions on the political agenda/actions of Donald Trump.”

These echo chambers relate to the last post about how social media is dividing us. We are trying to form safe groups to communicate in but recently these groups have been experiencing fractures because of political instability.

What inference or conclusion can you draw based on evidence? 

Write a thesis: Successful advertising relies on people’s tendencies of addiction and has become central to the way that society functions.

My next steps are going to be to organize all the of the different pathways that I explored. I went from exploring addictive tendencies, to how companies exploit these tendencies, to how social media influences society.