In the past, broadcasting and movie making were attainable only to a few affluent individuals or large corporations. With the rise of inexpensive, and compact, digital media equipment, coupled with social media, the common man can now ‘speak’ to and influence others across the globe. With that power comes responsibility. The overall goal of this unit is to help students develop their own closely-held digital media code of ethics. This unit will be done over the course of ten classroom periods at the beginning of the first course in the sequence of three for movie production. This first course is called Digital Media Movie Making. In this unit students will study the use of media to manipulate people; followed by the power of media to call people to action; then the potential for calls-to-action based on social and/or digital media to have unintended consequences. The students will then reflect on which types of societal consequences for posting digital media would be unacceptable to them. Armed with this knowledge they will create personal standards that will empower them to steer clear of undesired outcomes.
