I think that the media has influenced our understanding of cybersecurity in a few ways. The media has given cybersecurity/hacking this aesthetic to make it more visually appealing. In the beginning of the video, specifically when they’re looking at the movie “Skyfall”, there is an instance of this aesthetic, where a file on the computer screen has this strange, moving animation to it. This is not accurate to what it would look like in real life, and I think it’s simply added in to make the movie more interesting/visually appealing. Another part of this aesthetic is that they make it seem like cybersecurity/hacking is a mysterious/illicit activity to partake in. The segment in the video from “Mr Robot”, where it talks about CTF (Capture The Flag) portrays cybersecurity/hacking in a negative light in my opinion. The setting of the CTF in “Mr. Robot” is dark and there isn’t much light at all, which makes me think as a viewer that they are meeting in some sort of secret, underground location, kind of like an evil lair. This point is further proven by the fact that in the same segement, they show a real picture of a CTF event and it’s just in broad daylight at what appears to be a library/cafe. With these two things in mind, I think that the media has influenced what we think cybersecurity looks like. They add all these fancy animations and they cloak some of it in mystery when it’s really not all that.
I also think that they have influenced our perception of privacy. Take “The Social Network” for example. The scene in particular they show is Mark Zuckerberg doing what seems to be collecting data on people at Harvard University. Seeing this scene made me realize, and possibly others, how much of our information is actually out there on the internet, and how much of it can be collected without consent. It makes me feel like I don’t have as much privacy as I think I do.