This is an ongoing course and I hope to learn more about the medium that shapes our public knowledge. I look forward to topics like fake news, cyber privacy, digital surveillance and the role of big tech companies in feeding or concealing information. I think I will learn a lot in this course about the shaping of the internet on how we think and make decisions. I am really interested in how power works behind the scenes, like who decides what we see, and why? It is my hope this class will prepare me to become a critical consumer of media.
Reflection
Every week as I'm taking the course Public Knowledge in the Digital Deep, I am learning greater concepts in how public knowledge is constructed, shared, and understood in the contemporary era. The course has digital literacy, research skills, and the relationship of curiosity in the public with scholarship, which helps me understand how information is produced and consumed on the internet.
By January 29, we have looked at the impact of public digital platforms in sustaining public interest and studied the more advanced social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, and how they create the need to know and the type of information to be sought. I have focused on one Google feature, People Also Ask, and how it reveals public curiosity and the prevailing narratives that guide it, such as misinformation and cultural bias. We were also taught the cross platform approach and were asked to compare knowledge on YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Reddit’s circulating of knowledge. This makes me appreciate the role of digital echo chambers and algorithmic bias towards public knowledge and perception.
In this course, I want to learn how academic research can resolve the gap that exists between public knowledge and the actual information that exists. I am looking forward to examining case studies that show how people’s prying on the internet correlate with academic research, especially in the areas of politics, media, and international activism. Moreover, I want to know more about how misinformation is created and spread in the world today, and how we can use digital tools for verifying and fact checking the right information.
When the semester comes to a close, I expect that I will possess a comprehensive understanding of how public knowledge transforms and evolves, the research methods that can be employed to extract deeper truths, and how digital literacy can be used to empower the general population to think critically online. This course is developing my capacity to analyze digital phenomena, assess credibility, and participate proactively and responsibly in the discourse of the digital world.