Blog 2

When thinking about which article I actually wanted to choose in regards to the “Muslim ban” I knew I wanted it to be something from a source that a lot of people visited frequently. A few months ago CNN politics, a very well known website, released an article with the title “US President Donald Trump signs new travel ban, exempts Iraq”. While obviously we know that CNN leans more against Trump and his cabinet, this situation was a tad different. This headline shocked and enraged people throughout the country because America has always built a platform based around immigration. We find pride in our country on being a “melting pot” of various cultures, and a headline like this goes against that entire moral code. The one word, however, that caused for most of the uproar is the word ban. The worst part about the whole thing? Never once in the actual executive order that was released, was the word ban mentioned. I think this is the best example of fake news for me to dissect because this came from a reputable source like CNN. I also think it really fits well with this assignment because it shows how much of an impact the Internet has on our society. The day after this articles and articles like it dropped, people were going crazy! Twitter was in frenzy with outraged tweets from people all over the world, people were talking about it all over campus. Even in our class we talked about it. This is a perfect example of emotion dealing with social media and political news. It shows how crucial word choice is when trying to make people feel a certain way. It’s bizarre to think that if this article came out with a title like “Trump signs executive order to protect country” the entire feel of the situation would be different. Which is pretty much what the executive order was trying to do. Word choice in a situation, and a time, like this really instill a different reaction to the audience reading it. Especially on a site where (it feels like) people are just looking for a reason to be a little irritated. It is no secret that politics makes people a little on edge as it is, and with a title like this article it only makes sense that it sent a shockwave through the system.

The first line of the CNN article states “US President Donald Trump signed a new executive order Monday that bans immigration from six Muslim-majority countries…”.  While yes, Donald Trump was the one singing it, the six major countries were picked by former president Obama. For my final project I’d like to look at this article side by side with the actual order and see the discrepancies on what was said. It would be impossible to dissect this one piece of literature without looking at the actual executive order itself. I think it’s going to be extremely interesting to really sit down and look at these two pieces.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/politics/trump-travel-ban-iraq/

Blog One

When thinking about “fake news” a lot of things come to mind because of the time we live in. Mass media has such an influence on how we think and act and conduct our day-to-day lives. The media and people in society and on social media love to make fun of Donald Trump and his horrible twitter full of words like “FAKE NEWS”. MY example, however, is actually in favor of Donald Trump and as someone who doesn’t necessarily agree with Mr. Trump, I believe this is a horrible injustice in the media. The example of “fake news” that I think is extremely significant, especially now, is Donald Trumps Executive Order being referred to as a “Muslim Ban” across all mass media sites. While I don’t necessarily agree with Donald Trump’s platform, this situation is just a huge injustice in my opinion. The most ridiculous thing about the entire portrayal to the media is the fact that the order didn’t even mention Muslims, or all or even most Muslim countries. To say where this actually originated would be impossible without addressing the fact that former president Barack Obama designated all the actual groups that were included on this order.  The media calling it a “Muslim Ban” literally just creates hysteria among the masses. Calling it a “Muslim Ban” is just trying to further the agenda people have in regards to calling Trump a racist bigot. While all of that may full well be true, this was not an example of that. The media calling it a “Muslim Ban” literally is just adding fuel to a fire that has been erupting since Donald Trump’s nomination.

This order absolutely resonates differently with different audiences. Reading this as a hardcore Trump supporter you may even see it as a “Muslim Ban” and be fully in support of it. You could feed into the misconception and spew hatred about banning other minorities and use it to make people mad. If you were a hardcore Trump hater when an article such as this comes out it would instill a rage inside of you. I think this order resonates with these two groups (obviously in totally opposite ways) the most. I believe the media using the word “ban” to describe the order symbolizes a lot to me. I think it was used as way to further divide our nation and to instill more hatred in the population. When I first heard about this I was told it was literally an order banning Muslims from entering the country for an undisclosed amount of time. I was under the impression that Donald Trump sat down and made a list of countries he didn’t want to associate with (primarily Muslim based) and made sure to carry out the order. When I was made aware that that’s not even slightly what happened in this situation it actually made me really mad. Donald Trump has done a lot of despicable things but this situation was just not one of them and that is why I think it is so important to analyze.