Mikael Michalik's Learning Journey

Every time I see debates and discussion about allowing employees to use social media at work, I start to get a bit anxious. I hate the idea of being monitored the entire time I am working and it honestly feels like a major invasion of privacy. While I understand that there are those who use social media instead of working and allow it to decrease their performance, I feel that it's unfair to group everyone who uses social media at work into the same group. Like Firmplay (2020) states, it is impossible to completely block social media use anymore. Not only is it useful for some work functions, whether it be your job in general or answering questions, it can help some peoples' productivity (Businesswire 2018). This is the camp I find myself in. Often when doing homework or have been doing work for an internship, I need to have something playing in the background on Youtube. This could be music, a random video, or a documentary, but something I don't need to pay too close of a...

 Part 1: It is always interesting, and incredibly concerning, to learn about social media, the internet, and ethics. In fact, it often feels like "Social media ethics" is an oxymoron. While many people do consider the ethical implications of using social media and providing these services, it is too obvious that corporations, especially the ones providing social media to the masses, lack ethical considerations. Casert and Chan's (2021) article about Facebook's rebranding to Meta and its focal shift to the Metaverse as a way to avoid controversy and current issues was eye-opening. Previous readings had merely discussed the Metaverse as Meta's next step and the rebranding as a whole, so this article and the other articles relating to it in this module helped to provide extra context to the shift. I agree with O'Flaherty (2021) when she says she doesn't think Facebook is safe and, if Facebook continues with current trends, the Metaverse certainly won't be...

 The reading from Kray et al. (2009) made me think this week. I had never before considered how the experience of sharing photos digitally versus physically could be different. Having grown up in the junction between physical and digital photo sharing, with my younger years consisting of physical copies of photos saved in albums and my current life being dominated by technology and digital sharing, I am completely accustomed to both modes of sharing images. To me, passing a phone with an image around is no different than passing around a physical print of a photograph. However, Kray et al. (2009) draws a distinct difference between these experiences that I honestly cannot fully grasp even after reading the article. The thought of technology image sharing being "cold" and "impersonal" (Kray et al. 2009) is not something I had thought of before and while I can understand Kray et al.'s claim that "the requirement for a degree of technical understanding, which ...