User:Yifanbao1/sandbox

Possible articles to work on
ONE

Article title: Civic technology companies. Link: Civic technology companies


 * Article Evaluation
 * The article's content is relevant to the topic. The article is written neutrally that it is solely a list of all the civic-tech related companies. The citations are reliable. The article doesn't tackle equity gaps. The article could be improved on offering a detailed comparisons between all the companies listed there. Some of the example factors for comparisons include their main functions, their main target audiences, their customers, and their political affiliations.

TWO


 * Article title Media democracy. Link: Media democracy
 * Article Evaluation:
 * Based on comments from previous Wikipedia editors, this article is written like a personal reflective essay where personal feelings and biases are strongly involved. The article also contains "weasle words," vague phrasing that often accompanies biased or unverifiable information. The article also contains original research.

THREE


 * Article title: Canvassing. Link: Canvassing
 * Article Evaluation
 * The article is neutrally written to demonstrate the workings of canvassing / political phone banking, an effective community engagement strategy widely utilized by political candidates. All the citations of this article seem credible. The article doesn't tackle Wikipedia equity gaps. The article could be improved by including more up-to-date examples of how political candidates across the country are utilizing canvassing to help with their campaign and whether it is indeed an effective strategy.

Article evaluation
Canvassing. Link: Talk:Canvassing

All the sections in this article are relevant to the topic. The article explains both the historical origins of canvassing and its modern forms and applications. The article overall presents an unbiased perspective, objectively covering all aspects about the practice of canvassing.

All the viewpoints are equally represented, although the article does have strong a focus on discussing the western/European political systems as canvassing is more prominent in the western societies than in the east.

All the facts are presented logically and can be checked through links that actually work. The sources of these citations are mostly American and British, creating a possibility for undesired biases to occur. However, these biases are not noticeable from reading the article.

Another aspect that the article could improve is its utilization of out-of-date examples. Nearly all of the examples given in the article are from distant history or the 20th century. I could help to improve the relatedness of this article by researching more 21st century examples of political canvassing.

As for the Talk section, there aren't many discussions. The last discussion made was to include more external links to the page as a citation for the facts mentioned in the article.

Finalized Topic: Media Democracy
Ideas for contribution:

According to the "flags" raised in the Wikipedia page, this article lacked enough citations for evidence, contains vague phrasing that might be biased, is written like a personal reflective essay that has strong personal opinions, and contains original research. I plan to add more scholarly articles from other reliable sources as well as learnings from books about media and politics. I also plan rephrase a lot of the biased sentences in this article.

Bibliography:


 * 1) https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/11319/media-democracy-and-governance-in-a-digital-world-peoples-representation-in-south-asia
 * 2) https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499/ref=zg_bs_11764688011_13?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=A5STF8HDAWFTKJM2AS0H
 * 3) https://www.amazon.com/LikeWar-Weaponization-P-W-Singer-ebook/dp/B0795FB3ZY/ref=zg_bs_11764688011_14?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=A5STF8HDAWFTKJM2AS0H
 * 4) https://theconversation.com/media-have-helped-create-a-crisis-of-democracy-now-they-must-play-a-vital-role-in-its-revival-139653
 * 5) https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.polisci.6.121901.085707
 * 6) https://aceproject.org/ace-en/topics/me/mea/mea01a
 * 7) https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1981-38212014000100008
 * 8) https://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Business/dp/014303653X/ref=zg_bs_11764688011_11?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=A5STF8HDAWFTKJM2AS0H

Draft 1
Media Ownership Concentration

While media democracy advocates for media to be free of bias, commercialization, and political inclination, the current situation for American news outlets tends to stand on the opposite side. Many television channels and news sources have a political leanings and are financially supported by respective parties. Below is a spectrum of ideological placement that demonstrates relative political stance of many major American news outlets.

In the middle:


 * Wall Street Journals: this finance magazine is read by people from all political backgrounds and the Pew Research center labels WSJ to be “more trusted than distrusted” by people with all political stance.
 * BBC News: Similar to Wall Street Journal, the British news outlet is trusted by people of all political leanings. Yet, extreme conservatives doubt BBC’s trustworthiness and views it not as politically neutral as how non-conservatives view it.

On the left:


 * MSNBC: A general news outlet that reports a wide range of current events, MSNBC places on the left of the spectrum and is distrusted by 75% of the conservatives who participated in the study conducted by Pew Research Center.
 * CNN: An American television channel famous for its democratic and liberal leanings, CNN is regarded by 66% of audiences in Pew Research Center’s study as “mostly liberal.”

On the right:


 * Fox News: Republican surrogate is rated as “mostly conservative” by 72% and “consistently conservative” by 88% of the audiences in Pew Research Center. Hence, conservatives perceive Fox News as “more trusted than distrusted.”
 * Limbaugh: Widely perceived as having strong conservative background, Rush Limbagh, a republican political commentator, is distrusted by 75% of the survey subjects that identify themselves as “consistently liberal.”

Five Countries with Severe Media Censorship

Eritrea: According to Committee for Project Journalists, president Isaias Afewerki’s 27-year dictatorship locked 16 news journalists in jail by late 2018. Furthermore, internet is only available to 1% of the population, making it harder for people to communicate with freedom.

Turkmenistan: In 2017, International Research and Exchange Board publishes its Media Sustainability Index, where Turkmenistan is condemned for outlawing the use of individual third-party internet surfing tools (VPNs) and independent media sources that might pose a threat to president Berdymukhamedov’s regime.

Saudi Arabia: Under the iron fists of prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia started a wide range of campaigns to captivate reporters that voice opinions deemed undesired by bin Salman. Perhaps the most infamous and symbolic case of Saudi’s media censorship is the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and a journalist for Washington Post that sometimes criticize the policies of the Saudi prince.

Iran: Tight internet surveillance in Iran banned a wide range of American social media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. One typical case is the detainment of Yashar Soltani, who published about the unspoken corruption in Tehran’s real estate industry that made government officials ashamed, resulting in a 5-year imprisonment.

Belarus: In June of 2018, Belarus drafted and passed a law that gives government power to take down “fake news,” a move widely regarded as a pretext for tighter control on media and press. One notable example would be the punishment faced by independent media journalist Maryna Zolatava, who received a 3600-dollar fine for “accessing a state-run news site.”

Media Democracy in Black Lives Matter

Since 2013, #BlackLivesMatter or #BLM has become an online movement that raises awareness of police brutality and different kinds of racial discrimination toward black people. According to the data provided by the Social Media Analytics Center at University of Connecticut, posts on Instagram with hashtags #BlackLivesMatter received almost 340 million likes and over 5 million comments. The movement reached a peak in May 2020, when African American man George Floyd was brutally killed by a kneeling white policeman. The incident sparked nationwide outrage through social media, a form of democracy media. Within 30 days of the incident, Floyd’s name had 80 million mentions and 1.1 billion engagements from multiple social media platforms. Terms related to the Floyd incident such as “looting,” “anti-racist,” and “Defund the Police” also gained tremendous popularity online. Moreover, people across social media started making a wide range of infographics to educate others about the movement Black Lives Matter as well as some implicit or subconscious racism that people are likely to encounter from day to day. Through online platforms, the Black Lives Matter movement is able to educate others about democratic ideals, fulfilling the mission of media democracy.

The George Floyd incident further catalyzed #BlackoutTuesday and #BlackoutDay2020. The former asks people to log out of their social media on June 2, a day when some businesses such as Fenty Beauty and Lucky Brand also collaborated and did not conduct business. The latter was organized by an influencer on social media named Calvin Martyr, who calls for a halt on spending on July 7 to inspire attention towards police brutality. The impact of halt on purchasing goods can be clearly seen from a 2018 report from Nielsen, which states that the aggregate expenditure of the black community can sum up to more than 1.2 trillion dollars per year.

Tik Tok and Media Democracy

Downloaded 315 million times in the first quarter of 2020, TikTok became a new culture among the Generation Z and a phenomenon in the United States. The popular video-sharing app soon expanded its antenna into the world of politics. Young people began using TikTok as a democratic media platform to voice their opinions and ideas about politics through lip-syncing political speeches and songs as well as dancing to express their political thoughts. Some of the notable political hashtags on TikTok include #BLM, which stands for the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as #BooForBoris, a hashtag to support the Boris administration in the U.K.

One famous case would be how TikTok teens collaborated to boycott Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Teenagers on TikTok conspired to first reserve seating at Trump rally but then return it on the day of the rally, hence leaving many seats empty. The Tulsa incident indirectly led to the ban of TikTok by president Trump for “national security” reasons, which are actually deemed by some as for “anti-China” purposes. Trump’s anti-China campaign soon applied the same reason of national security and data security to ban China’s social media super app WeChat, which is a clear violation of media democracy.

Peer Editor: Tasmia Rahman I think that you did a really job good on your article because you kept a very neutral tone and presented a lot of factual, useful information that is important to your topic. I also really appreciated your section on Tik Tok and Media Democracy because it was really interesting and I feel that you really showcased how democracy, specifically within the Trump campaign, was really effected by it. Some things I would improve would include some of your citations. You have a lot of really good quotes but a lot of them are not properly cited so I would add that. Additionally, on the section regarding Media Ownership Concentration, I feel that the format you used (in the middle, on the left) is possibly not the best formation and doesn’t look the most professional due to the bullet points. I would instead convert into paragraph form to make it look better. I feel like your tone was very well done and it did not sound encyclopedic. Great job!