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Automatic Attitudinal Response

After reading through the things I have posted from "On The Media" it was interesting to see the different automatic attitudinal responses that I had which come from primary certitudes or hidden presumptions. Each person has their own pre-determined responses and automatic attitudinal responses and I definitely do. This isn't bad nor good but we need to be mindful of opting to go beyond our automatic response and to dig deeper. One thing that seems to resonate in each of these posts from a primary certitude is that I was raised in a home where there is a belief that all people are doing there best and we should give each other the benefit of the doubt. I was raised Christian and believe that we all make mistakes but we are trying hard and I seem to give people the benefit of the doubt but they needed to fix their mistake. The hidden assumptions I have had is that we all need to love each other. I come from a home and community that there wasn't much conflict and the importance of love and compassion and I have the hidden assumption that we all love others and respect the circumstances they are in. Another primary certitude is that I was raised by my parents that when something was wrong it was my fault. In each of my posts there is a hidden assumption as well that people need to take ownership or accountability for their mistakes and need to take action themselves to correct it. I need to be better at assessing the situation and think maybe there was other factors in it that caused it.

In these posts I tried to look at all the facts of the situations and post on them from a unbiased view but in all reality that is almost impossible. We were all born into different circumstances and had different experiences our entire lives and that is what shapes our thoughts and ideas. I lived in a foreign country for 2 years and was able to be more open to other people and the challenges that they face. From that experience I am able to be more compassionate and has helped me open up and understand we are each here doing our best and just trying to do our best with the situations we have been put in. These assignments to post on various stories has helped me to look deeper and try to think deeper and consider the other sides. Talking with others has helped me to see other perspectives and try to see it how they do. I have consciously tried to look at other sources to see different sides and see that my opinion isn't the only one out there and isn't always the right one. Hopefully I can continue to improve and not default to my automatic attitudinal response but think deeper and look closer at the matter at hand.  We all must be better at this if we want to continue to grow and hopefully be able to unite our country once again.

OTM: How Prisoners Get Punished When Their Families Post Online

In the episode of On The Media titled "Do Better" a segment within that episode has been titled "How Prisoners Get Punished When Their Families Post Online". In this segment Bob Garfield interviews Dave Maass. Dave is a investigative researcher and has studied this issue for some time for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The EFF is an organization that looks to protect civil liberties in the digital world (1). Dave states that he isn't a lawyer but classifies himself as a "muckracker". He studies and digs up dirt on several issues and uses activism to get different policies that have been passed to be reversed. The issue is that Texas has recently joined South Carolina, New Mexico, and Maine by creating policies that does not allow inmates, their families or any other third party to post on their behalf on social media. The prisons will look at social media platforms to see if any posts are made on an inmates profile and will try to link it to the the actual inmate in prison and will punish them for that behavior. In South Carolina they use to give a Level 1 offense for this activity which is the same level for escapes, rapes, assaults and others. For committing this action they can be put into solitary confinement or can lose telephone privileges. They do this to censor the inmate as well as censoring the outside to know what it is really like in prison and the conditions the inmates live in (2). This was an interesting topic after recently talking in my social media class about the prison system and the flaws within it.This was quite eye-opening to me.

I believe that when you commit a crime and have been sentenced to go to prison that you lose some of your freedom and in a sense lose some rights because of your wrongdoings to society. In this case it is about their first amendment right of free speech. I believe that since they have been convicted of a crime their right to the first amendment can be limited. To punish them for a family member posting on their page is a bit much. In the interview Dave mentions that they don't use the modern technology of what IP address was used to access these platforms. The forum created to monitor their social media accounts merely look and see that there has been content posted and will try to link it to the inmate to then in return punish them. I believe the forum that looks into these social media accounts need to look more into the records of where the login occurred and take a deeper look into it before punishing an inmate. I hope that the EFF will find alternate ways to monitor this and eventually come to a compromise with these forums to be more accurate in if there was collaborations or not and reduce the number of punishments handed out for this.


1. Electronic Frontier Foundation

2. How Prisoners Get Punished When Their Families Post Online