Extra Credit 1

Publish or perish was the main topic of this discussion. Which provides an interesting question to the ethics of researchers and their published works. It has been found that there have been many peer review scams that leave many researchers feeling the pressure to publish so that they don't perish as a researcher. As retractions of papers are on the rise, more and more researchers are getting caught by peer reviewing their own work. This manipulation of publishing is harmful and not ethical to the research community. Especially when journals often fail to alert readers that they are reading retracted content. So a reader could be reading articles that they think are 'scholarly journals' but because they were not peer reviewed by someone else than the original author, they can be obtaining information that is wrong or made up.

The biggest problem with these retractions is that the information in the scholarly articles are filled with falsification and fabrication. Which technically makes these papers illegitimate. The biggest way these researchers get caught is for making up data. There have been many papers that have been retracted because of this misconduct in researcher's articles. Hopefully there will soon be an end to this fabrication and falsification of research papers due to an increase of these researchers facing jail time because of their misconduct online.

Personally, I believe it is very important to in force the rules on this matter because it hurts the education and the research of many. If there is a way to implement these rules and have a strong out come there could be a huge change in research and new research articles could be 100% reliable. As a college student, I find these papers very valuable. It is very important that research remains to have quality and quantity.

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Week 6

This week, we got the opportunity to learn about the Black Lives Matter Movement. After looking a little more in depth into the movement I finally have a better understanding of the movement. This movement has not only become big within communities but online media as well. This movement proves that everyone has the power to stand up for what they believe in and by using social networks, you are able to achieve a network of people larger than you could ever imagine. This being said, the Black Lives Matter Movement has been very influential when learning about online communities and how they operate and thrive off of spreadable content.

Although I do not have a problem with the Black Lives Matter Movement, I think a lot of people (of all races) continually get lost with what is portrayed in the media and what is shown on their media screens. I think its hard to accurately depict what is really going on in the world due to the gate keepers of media. Often times the media makes it seem like there is only crime with other races or that other races are being targeted by the police- and not to degrade what is happening to black people all around the world- I think we need to take into consideration that these things also happen to other races. The media favors news that gets attention, when I was a journalism major the first thing I learned in my classes was "if it bleeds, it leads," in other words the news filters what happens in the world to get the stories that will get the most attention. Therefore leading more people to watch the news and to talk about the news, creating spreadable content and in turn promoting the news stations. The media shapes our reality and makes us believe that everything we see or hear is true. We are so skewed to think that the world is this mean and negative place when we often don't actually ever experience any downfalls in the community.

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Week 5

Copyright is one of those terms that many know but hardly any really understand the concept and what it entails. This week we have learned about what defines copyright and how you can use copyrighted work and how you get in trouble using copyrighted work. It’s all about following the rules! These rules include asking for permission to use someone else’s work or getting a copyright exception which allows them to use someone else’s work without permission and for free. Another important aspect is to give the author credit for their work and by doing this you are letting everyone know who views your work that you are not the original creator of this work. Despite there being many rules to follow with copyright you only need to find one that you can find an exception to in order to use copyrighted work! Click here for a great resource on all things copyright, this website is really insightful on all aspects of copy right and breaks it down so its an easier concept to understand.

The most important thing to take away from this weeks lecture is that copyrighted work can be used and more importantly I learned how to use it and when it is okay to use it. Its just all about knowing the rules! The rules and regulations of copyright should not shy you away from using copyrighted work but instead encourage you to use these works for collaboration to make something new and build on what someone has already done. Many great works have come from using copyrighted work. So let this be a lesson as it has to me and use work that has been copyrighted to create something great just remember the rules!

Another great resource is right here.

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