Area #1: In the reading, Remediating Social Media: Why Layers Still Matter for Internet Policy, the author Annemarie Bridy addresses that the broken internet, especially during the time of the most recent presidential election. Groups of believe should give people more freedom of expression, and like conservative activist Phil Kerpen, they advocate for “layer-neutral net neutrality”. They believe that companies should be able to filter what is posted on their media sites. With the rise of fake news and other political tactics since the presidential election, the media has been at the core of all the scandals and schemes. Bridy argues that certain social media bias played a large role in the presidential election and the public believed everything on the internet besides much of it being opinion based hypocrisy. She proposes the “Good Samaritan” provision that is meant to hold media platforms accountable for the distasteful articles and news they may post.

Area #2: In all honesty, I still don’t know enough about net-neutrality to form an opinion on the matter. To my understanding, net-neutrality means that one internet provider cannot over charge for internet and everyone pretty much pays the same; there’s a certain level of consistency and moral code providers need to uphold. Some people are against net-neutrality because there are people who cannot afford the prices or don’t need all the extra features involved, but without net-neutrality the carriers can limit or control what channels or streaming sites are available. This relates to the issue Annemarie Bridy is talking about with social media sites because she believes that there should be a certain level of regulation for social media sites as far as what they post. With the most recent presidential election, social media and fake news played a large role. Bridy believes that social media platforms should have to regulate what they post because a lot of it is garbage. Again, I don’t really understand the situation so I’m not sure where I stand, but I feel like social media platforms should not be regulated. Yes, there is a certain moral code that media sites should follow but I don’t see how that can be a thing without all types of media being filtered. Giving large dominant platforms the ability to choose what is and is not posted creates an even bigger issue than if it were posted anyways.

Area 1: The authors, Lakoff and Johnson, write about the importance of metaphors. They believe that people underestimate the importance of metaphor. Without knowing it, we use metaphor in our everyday language. They provide the example argument is war, people use war language to talk about arguments which leads society to view an argument like a war that can be won or lost. If argument had not been correlated to war, our perception of an argument would be dramatically different. We view an argument as a negative and our goal is to “defeat” the opponent as if we were in combat with them. This metaphor structures the way we act in an argument because our actions are guided by our perception.

There are different kinds of metaphor that we use. A structural metaphor describes a concept that has metaphorical meaning. This is different than an orientational metaphor which has to do with spatial orientation. Lakoff and Johnson believe that the orientational metaphor was created through a physical, cultural, and social basis. They provide examples and reasoning behind the metaphors we use every day.

Area 2: I think that Lakoff and Johnson care very deeply about metaphors, but I don’t really understand the purpose of the article. Before this, I didn’t know that much of my language was metaphorical, so I gained that knowledge, but other than that I’m just unsatisfied and slightly confused. I think their intention was for people to grasp the importance of metaphor and to consider the metaphors origin, but I don’t fully understand the purpose. However, Lakoff and Johnson did a good job proposing their ideas and thoroughly examining metaphor. I think metaphors are important, but we don’t need to overthink or over analyze our use of them. I am also interested to see how this article relates to our classwork in DTC 206.

Hello! I’m Emily Henspeter and this is my blog for DTC 206. I’m currently a sophomore and my major is Digital Technology and Culture with a minor in creative writing. I originally came to college as an English major but wasn’t convinced that the job field was what I wanted so I switched to business but I quickly found out that I it was not for me. All of this lead me to DTC which I am excited about and looking forward to. In the future, I hope to design promotional posters and t-shirts.