Portfolio Assignment #9

From Ferrari’s (2020) lecture, I learned that empathy is not always necessarily positive. For instance, she said: “people have to constantly be performing as subjects of someone else’s empathy or objects of someone else’s empathy rather.” This relates to my own experience because I never considered how empathy could be problematic for those that others are empathizing with. Furthermore, Pedwell (2017) wrote about how since those who are “less privileged” are those who are being empathized with, “their own emotional complexities are never engaged.” This changes how I think about digital media and society because I see social media posts that empathize with others often. They are usually posts made or shared by those who are more privileged. I never realized how these digital media posts reflect the societal issues of inequalities and privilege.

In Solove’s (2011) article, he addressed the flaws of the “nothing-to-hide argument.” Even if one claims that they do not have anything to hide, it is still possible that a lack of privacy can inconvenience them (Solove, 2011). One example of this that Solove (2011) suggested was: “What if the government thinks your financial transactions look odd — even if you’ve done nothing wrong — and freezes your accounts?” This relates to my own experience because I always thought that the “nothing-to-hide argument” was valid (Solove, 2011). However, now I understand why it is problematic. Furthermore, at the end of the video from The Guardian, Krotoski discussed the benefits of the Internet of Things but also encouraged viewers to be cautious about their use of them due to privacy concerns. It is even more clear to me now that the relationship between digital media and society can be troubled by privacy issues.

It is difficult to think of how empathy in media can relate to deepfakes. Perhaps deepfake videos could be used as a tool to bring about empathy to an audience. Other than that, these topics, in particular, are not really related. However, deepfake videos relate to privacy issues because when one creates and posts a deepfake video somewhere, they are sharing information about themselves. Furthermore, if the content of that video is considered controversial in any way, it could come back to haunt them because of how their information is tied to it.