In DCI 180, we cover two topics more than anything else, social media and the behavior of major tech companies. If I could add one piece to include int the curriculum it would be the final episode of Patriot Act’s Volume 1, titled Content Moderation and Free Speech.
Patriot Act is a Netflix web series featuring comedian Hasan Minhaj. Minhaj’s segments tackle a wide range of controversial topics, from Affirmative Action to Indian elections, and he can expertly navigate the subjects. Rotten Tomatoes gave Minhaj’s show a score of 100% and said that “Patriot Act stands apart from other like-minded comedy shows thanks to Hasan Minhaj’s masterful blending of thought and feeling, catharsis and criticism.”
The Content Moderation and Free Speech episode features a variety of the topics we have discussed in class such as:
1.) the doxing of Christine Blasey Ford and how white supremacists organize through social media (this would pair well with our discussion about the doxing of the MAGA kid smiling at the Native American)
2.) content moderation of the big four social media companies, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and Snapchat
3.) the impact social media had on the 2016 election and the episode shows clips of high ranking members from each of the big four social media companies dodging their way through interrogations in court and before congress (would pair well with New York Times piece about Zuckerberg’s testimony and the articles about Cambridge Analytica)
4.) the ways social media companies, curate their newsfeed to latch onto the emotions of the consumers (this parallels with the experiment with the readings we had about Facebook running experiments on its users’ emotions)
I believe that this episode would be the perfect way to introduce the central themes of the course to the next group of students. The nature of Minhaj’s humor would put the entire room at ease, while the factual evidence is sure to incite discussion. The best part is that the relevant part of the episode is less than 20 minutes of run time so it would leave 40 minutes left for discussion. This discussion period would provide valuable time for the professors to get an understanding of where the class stands on the topics and to get a scope of their prior knowledge. I think that Patriot Act could be employed similarly to the way Last Week Tonight with John Oliver was worked into the class.
I am not sure if you could tell or not but I am quite a fan of Patriot Act. I have watched almost every episode and I think that there are many options, outside the episode I mentioned today, that could be utilized in DCI 180.
Yours truly, The General
