This document discusses several topics related to digital media and journalism. It summarizes how internet-based companies have disrupted traditional journalism by moving users and advertisers online. This has undermined the financial model of print journalism. It also discusses how social media platforms have become new "gatekeepers" that control what audiences see and influence the type of content that is produced. Additionally, it describes how echo chambers and filter bubbles can be created through personalized algorithms on social media, and how this allows misinformation to spread rapidly.

1. A. I need to remind the people who help me with this paper that
my experience is not with a disabled child, but I experience
with an adult disabled person.
B. My paper’s topic is “The physical health of adults with
disabilities.”
C. Please follow the information that the teacher give us.
D. Please find 12 references those about “the physical health of
adults with disabilities.”
As you complete the assigned reading for class on April 23,
please submit short answers to the Three Things to Know.
2 sentences for each of the below questions
· How does media impact what we learn, as well as the way we
learn?
· How has the nature of digital media made it central to our
thinking and behavior?
· How has the nature of digital media shown the potential for
limits of human control of media?The Crisis in Journalism
Internet-based companies have used technology to disrupt
existing industries, undermining the financial foundation for
traditional journalism (Franklin 2011; Jones 2009; McChesney
and Pickard 2011; Meyer 2009). Subscriptions that had once
funded newspaper journalism plummeted as users flocked to
“free” online content. Print advertising, which had made up the
bulk of revenue for news organizations, also fled to the internet;
Craigslist and eBay replaced the newspaper classified ads,
whereas Google, Facebook, and online ad brokers replaced
display ads. As users and advertisers moved online, publishers
decided they had to follow.
Stand-alone news websites offered free online content,
reinforcing the expectation that news should be available
without cost. Some introduced pay walls to try to recapture

2. some lost revenue. In the hope of finding greater readership,
“distributed content” became common, where publications
allowed their content to appear on Facebook and other
platforms. Unfortunately, of the people who find a news story
from social media, about two-thirds remember the social media
site where they found it, but fewer than half remember which
news outlet originally published it (Kalogeropoulos and
Newman 2017). Still, publishers competed to create content that
met the format and content preferences of those platforms.
When Facebook research showed users engaged with video
presentations more than text, the call for news outlets to “pivot
to video” followed. In one example, The Washington Post, best
known for its sober political coverage, began creating scripted
funny videos as a way to attract more users via distributed
content (Bilton 2017).
That is a change from how news organizations have operated in
the past. At legacy news sites—whether the printed newspaper
or online website—news organizations offer the user a package
of content. Users might skim the headlines, check out the
sports, and delve deep into a feature article—all from a single
news outlet. That means the editorial staff at the outlets
produces a well-rounded package of information and news,
along with lighter lifestyle and entertainment stories. With
distributed content, though, each story—or video—must stand
on its own. Users graze across many different outlets without
ever leaving the Facebook or Apple News platform where they
first see the content. They may not click on that serious Post
story on health care reform, but they might watch a funny video.
When the financial success of news outlets comes increasingly
to rely on the “success” of clicks on individual articles, the
dynamics of journalism change. Fed with the metrics that
measure every move of a reader online, editors cannot help but
be influenced by the likely popularity of a story when making
decisions about what is worth assigning or writing about and
what is not.
Rather than bypass gatekeepers, as some had predicted, the

3. internet has merely created a new category of gatekeepers. As
one journalism study (Bell and Owen 2017) of the situation put
it, “There is a rapid takeover of traditional publishers’ roles by
companies including Facebook, Snapchat, Google, and Twitter. .
. . These companies have evolved beyond their role as
distribution channels, and now control what audiences see and
who gets paid for their attention, and even what format and type
of journalism flourishes” (p. 9). Meanwhile, as we saw in
Chapter 3, print journalism jobs continued to plummet,
newspapers closed, and the rise in internet-based journalism
employment did not come close to keeping up with job losses
elsewhere. Cuts hit local and state news organizations
especially hard, often leaving city halls and statehouses with
minimal coverage or none at all.
Some scholars have tried to strike a more positive tone, arguing
that other developments offset the economic and technological
challenges that news organizations have faced (Alexander,
Breese, and Luengo 2016). For example, a generation of quality
journalists has taken up the new tools of digital journalism,
More important, they claim, in the face of economic and
technological trials, journalism has produced a robust defense
of its goals and purpose in our culture, even if the traditional
mechanisms to deliver that journalism are less viable. In a
digital world, assisting citizens’ involvement in democratic life
and holding those in power accountable continue to be
journalism’s reason for being. However, developments online
are making those tasks more difficult than ever to
achieve.Information Distortions: Misinformation and Echo
Chambers
Forty-seven minutes after news appeared about a high school
mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, right-wing posters
on an anonymous chat board known for racist and anti-Semitic
content were already plotting how to respond. They decided to
try to influence public perception of the event by spreading the
lie that the students interviewed afterward were “crisis
actors”—performers pretending to be students—and that the

4. event was a “false flag”—staged to generate support for gun
restrictions. Right-wing activists have used this tactic on other
occasions, including after the Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and
Aurora, Colorado, shootings. Over the next few hours, they
scoured the students’ social media feeds looking for anything
they could use against them. They created memes ridiculing the
students and questioning their truthfulness. They darkened
photos of the shooter so he would not appear so white. Before
the end of the day, right-wing conspiracy radio host Alex Jones
was raising the possibility of a “false flag” on his Infowars
program. After posters found out that one student was the son of
an FBI agent, they promoted this as “evidence” that the event
was part of a larger FBI-run anti-Trump campaign. The Tweets
and memes circulated rapidly through social networks, with
Donald Trump Jr. even “liking” a tweet about the supposed anti-
Trump campaign. As these fallacies circulated, people outraged
by the offensive claims criticized them, inadvertently helping
spread them across the internet. Within the week, the number
one “Trending” video on YouTube labeled the FBI agent’s son a
fake “actor.” One regular poster in another right-wing forum put
it this way the day after the Parkland attack, “There’s a war
going on outside . . . and it is only partially being fought with
guns. The real weapon is information and the attack is on the
mind” (Timberg and Harwell 2018; Yglesias 2018).
Right-wing memes like this one falsely suggest that tragic mass
shootings were actually staged by liberals and populated by
“crisis actors” playing the roles of victims. Such messages try
to sow seeds of doubt about the authenticity of news, encourage
divisiveness, and undermine any calls for gun legislation.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/2/22/17036018/parkland-conspiracy-theories
The ability of a small number of anonymous users to influence
the national discussion of major issues speaks to the power of
social media. The decentralized internet offered the promise of
democratic participation and a “participatory culture” (Jenkins

5. 2009) without the gatekeepers that controlled traditional media.
Ironically, highly centralized, corporate-owned social platforms
emerged to display user work, host discussions, and facilitate
networking. Some of this was beneficial: Charitable causes
could crowdsource funding for their projects. Activists could
use Twitter to help organize against repressive regimes.
Citizens could start Facebook groups to help address community
concerns. Amateurs could share their creative talents on
YouTube and post instructional do-it-yourself videos on an
incredible range of topics. Reddit users could find a treasure
trove of information in sub-forums on countless topics.
However, in bypassing traditional news media gatekeepers,
information—and misinformation—could travel quickly and
unimpeded across social networks because of how social media
platforms work (Cacciatore, Scheufele, and Iyengar 2016).
First, to serve the needs of advertisers, social media sites use
their algorithms to divide users into tiny niche groups and steer
users toward the same kind of content for which they have
already shown a preference. Second, amid an abundance of
varied content, users may select only information consistent
with their views. Third, users can also interact only with like-
minded individuals in self-selected online social networks. The
result can be “echo chambers” (Sunstein 2002) or “filter
bubbles” (Pariser 2011), where users are never exposed to
alternative views but have their existing views constantly
reinforced. If users “like” stories or videos taking one side or
another on a social or political issue, the algorithms will feed
them similar stories and downplay opposing views. If users
“follow” active Twitter accounts or “subscribe” to YouTube
channels that share political content with which they agree, they
will be exposed to a steady stream of reinforcing messages.
Over time, Facebook news feeds, Twitter streams, YouTube
recommendations, and other sources can all amplify a single
point of view.
Sometimes the promotion of fake news is not for political
purposes. People can make money by attracting viewers who are

6. sold to advertisers. One news story traced a stream of largely
fabricated pro-Trump stories to a website created by a 22-year-
old computer science student in Georgia, one of Russia’s former
republics. The student said he’d tried to promote Hillary
Clinton at first, but his site did not get many views. He
switched to fabricating clickbait stories that promoted Donald
Trump with headlines such as “Oh My God! Trump to Release
Secret Document That Will Destroy Obama!” As a result, his
traffic—and revenues—soared. “For me, this is all about
income,” he said (Higgins, McIntire, and Dance 2016).
One way to look at this development is as the digital version of
the “limited effects” model (Bennet and Iyengar 2008, 2010).
From this perspective, social media’s influence on political
communication is limited because users are self-selecting what
they are exposed to and algorithms are just serving up content
that reinforces existing attitudes and beliefs. Such arguments,
though, are subject to similar critiques made about the earlier
limited effects work: They overemphasize the importance of
changing people’s minds
Computational Propaganda: Trolls and Twitter Bots
Facebook’s own published research shows that the social media
platform can influence voter registration and turnout (Bond et
al. 2012; Jones et al. 2016). In a randomized, controlled
experiment involving 61 million Facebook users during the
2012 election cycle, the company tweaked the news feeds of
some of them and increased voter turnout by more than 340,000,
a potentially significant number. In 2016, voter registration
spiked when Facebook temporarily placed a simple reminder
encouraging people to register to vote (Chokshi 2016). These
examples are a reminder of the potential power of social
media—and the potential for abuse.
So far, Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential
election is the most prominent—but certainly not the only—
example of computational propaganda, “the use of algorithms,
automation, and human curation to purposefully distribute
misleading information over social media networks” (Woolley

7. and Howard 2017: 6). Although the impact it had on voter
turnout or voter preference is unclear, election inference was
aimed at helping Donald Trump win the presidency. The various
U.S. intelligence agencies investigated this interference, and the
declassified summary of the joint Intelligence Community
Assessment (2017) concluded:
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an
influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential
election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the
US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm
her electability and potential presidency. We further assess
Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference
for President-elect Trump. . . . We also assess Putin and the
Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s
election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary
Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. (p. ii)
From this assessment and media accounts (Dewey 2016;
Parkinson 2016; Reed 2016), we know that Russian operatives
bought ads to spread false information, created fake Facebook
groups and Twitter accounts to rile up the electorate and spread
disinformation, and even organized both sides of competing
protests to stir up discord. For example, a Russian effort created
a “Heart of Texas” Facebook group that eventually had 225,000
followers and a corresponding Twitter account. The group
organized a series of anti-Clinton and anti-immigrant rallies in
Texas just days before the election. Many similar efforts took
place, including one that created an anti-Muslim rally in Idaho
promoted as “Citizens Before Refugees” (Bertrand 2017). In
Michigan, one of the key battleground states, junk news spread
by social media was shared just as widely as legitimate
professional news in the days leading up to the election
(Howard, et al. 2017). At this writing, the FBI’s investigation
into Russian meddling in the election is continuing, but we
already know a considerable amount about using media in such
efforts in the United States and elsewhere.
One overview of the current state of knowledge about

8. computational propaganda comes from an Oxford University
project carried out by an international team of 12 researchers
(Woolley and Howard 2017). The researchers examined case
studies of computational propaganda in nine countries,
including the United States, Brazil, the Ukraine, Russia, and
China. They interviewed 65 leading experts in the topic;
identified large social networks on Facebook, Twitter, and
Weibo (the Chinese micro-blogging site that is like a mix of
Twitter and Facebook); and analyzed tens of millions of posts
on seven different social media platforms during periods of
intensified propaganda efforts around elections and political
crises. These social media accounts are important because, as
the researchers note, in some countries “companies, such as
Facebook, are effectively monopoly platforms for public life”
and are “the primary media over which young people develop
their political identities” (p. 2).
The researchers found widespread computational propaganda
that employed different tactics and took on different
characteristics in different settings. In authoritarian countries,
“social media platforms are a primary means of social control,”
and some platforms are controlled or effectively dominated by
government and disinformation campaigns aimed at their own
citizens. For example, nearly half of Twitter activity in Russia
is managed by highly automated government-connected
accounts. In democracies, advocates or outside forces can use
social media platforms to try to manipulate broad public opinion
or to target specific segments of the population. In such cases,
large numbers of fake accounts are set up and managed to give
the appearance of widespread public support or opposition to an
issue or candidate. (Fake accounts are a broader problem for
Facebook and Google. They charged advertisers by the number
of clicks on their ads, but it is well-known that a significant
percentage of these clicks are produced by bots using fake
accounts. The industry publication AdWeek estimates that one
out of six dollars in online advertising is spent for fraudulent
clicks [Lanchester 2017].)

9. The researchers note that “[t]he most powerful forms of
computational propaganda involve both algorithmic distribution
and human curation—bots and trolls working together” (p. 5).
They point out that social media bots used for political
manipulation “are also effective tools for strengthening online
propaganda and hate campaigns. One person, or a small group
of people, can use an army of political bots on Twitter to give
the illusion of large-scale consensus” (p. 6).
Right-wing organizations and causes are the source of most
misinformation in the United States (Howard et al. 2017).
During the 2016 presidential election, a network of Trump
supporters on Twitter shared the greatest variety of junk news
sources and circulated more junk news items than all other
groups put together; extreme-right groups did the same on
Facebook.Hate and Censorship
On May 18, 2015, at 11:38 a.m., President Barack Obama
posted his first Tweet from the newly opened @potus Twitter
account. Presidential tweeting was a novelty then, and his
friendly first greeting was, “Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack.
Really!” It took only 10 minutes for the racial epithets to start;
at 11:48 someone replied “get cancer nigger” (Badash, 2015).
New technologies have enabled old racism to flourish—the
latest media content filled with racist overtones and imagery
include Tweets (Cisneros and Nakayama 2015), viral videos
(Gray 2015), memes (Yoon 2016), and even search engine
results (Noble 2018)—and racist hatred permeates the web
(Jakubowicz et al. 2017).
Racism—and hatred more broadly—seems to thrive online. At
home, a broad variety of hate groups uses the internet to recruit,
organize, and spread lies. Globally, terrorist groups do the
same. These groups used to rely on mainstream media to
publicize their cause. As Barnett and Reynolds (2009) note, acts
of terrorism were primarily efforts to attract “the attention of
the news media, the public, and the government. As coverage of
September 11 showed, media are delivering the terrorist’s
message in nearly every conceivable way” (p. 3). Some critics

10. argue that mainstream news media often indirectly assist
terrorists in publicizing both their grievances and their
capabilities. However, in recent years, terrorists have relied
more heavily on their own media. The internet affords global
terrorist groups and their supporters opportunities to
communicate through both social media sites like YouTube and
their own websites, which include discussion groups, videos,
political articles, instruction manuals, and leaders’ speeches
(Seib and Janbek 2011). They also can use the internet for
encrypted communications.
In the wake of Russian interference with the 2016 presidential
election that used these platforms, public concern grew, and
elected officials began considering possible regulation if the
companies did not address the most egregious issues. Now on
alert, the corporations that owned the platforms began stepping
in to try to identify and prevent “fake news” and hate sites.
Google’s head lawyer announced new steps to combat terrorism
content on its YouTube platform, including hiring more humans
to staff their “Trusted Flagger” program. It also would devote
“more engineering resources to apply our most advanced
machine learning research to train new ‘content classifiers’ to
help us more quickly identify and remove extremist and
terrorism-related content;” in other words, it would tweak their
algorithms (Walker 2017). Twitter (2017), too,
CFD 590 – Instructions for Final Project
The Final Project is an opportunity for students to integrate the
formal information, theoretical material, and research data
presented in class and through the texts with their lab
experiences with their children and families (I need to notice
that my experience is working with an adult disability people).
The project will also offer students an opportunity to undertake
an in-depth exploration of their child’s (changing to a disabled
adult) disability/diagnosis in order to deepen and broaden their

11. knowledge of developmental disabilities. Lastly, the project
will provide students with an opportunity to further develop
their research and formal writing skills. The project will be
multi-faceted and will culminate in a lengthy written product.
Detailed instructions are below:
Step 1: Gather data from books and periodicals (12 references
published in the last 10 years (2005-2015) about the particular
delay/disability/diagnosis that pertains to your child (not child,
my experience is working with a disabled adult). These
materials will be the basis for the Literature Review section of
your paper, which will be further described below. Your
research needs to be focused on a particular aspect of your
experience with your child or family. For example, if your
child (not child, my patient is a disabled adult) is an adolescent
who has a diagnosis of Down Syndrome you may want to focus
specifically on Down Syndrome and peer relations, sexuality,
obesity, or independent living. Your 12 references should
pertain to the specific topic you have chosen. (My topic is about
“disabled adult physical”)
Step 2: Gather information about the local, national, and
international services available to individuals with your child’s
disability/diagnosis. You may obtain information from the
family, the Exceptional Family Resource Center, and other
agencies, as well as the internet. This information will be used
to write a section which focuses on services offered to children
with your child’s particular special needs.
Step 3: Organizing and writing your paper. The format of your
paper is to be as follows:
A. Title page.
B. Abstract: A brief summary of the main ideas in the paper. It
must be accurate, coherent, and succinct, not exceeding 150
words.
C. Summary: Write a summary of your experience with the

12. child and family describing the child’s disability and your
visitation with him/her.
D. Introduction: Discuss the purpose of your paper. Why is it
important to consider this issue? Present the theoretical
background concluding with a statement of the purpose of your
paper.
E. Literature Review: This is the major portion of your paper.
Review the 12 research articles from the professional journals
that deal with this issue. Summarize main ideas in the articles
and point out shared outcomes and differences.
F. Discussion: What does this review tell us about the issue?
What are your conclusions based on the literature review? What
are your expectations in regard to your experience with the
child when considering the literature presented in your paper?
Discuss and analyze the research data and your practical
experience. Make sure to relate to specific articles in your
discussion. The Discussion section is one of the most important
parts of your paper.
G. Services and Treatment: List and give information about
available services in your community, as well as at the state,
national, and international levels. Also, describe more
specifically the various services used by your child/family.
H. Conclusions: Write about and describe your personal gains
from your experience with your child/family.
I. References: List all references used in your paper. Use the
following form for reference entry (see APA 6th Edition for
more clarification):
a. Citation of Books:
Author(s) (Date). Title, Edition. Place of Publication.
Publisher.
b. Citation of Periodicals:
Author(s) (Date). Title of article in full. Name of Journal,
Volume, pages.
-Check for spelling and grammatical errors.
-Start each complete idea in a new paragraph with a

13. 5-space
indention.