Paper on New Journal Assignment Power and Its Three Dimensions According to Stevens Lukes Definition

Over the last decade, several social media platforms have been developed. Facebook is one of the major social media platforms in the world today. Mark Zuckerberg founded the application in February 2004, with millions of users registered. It helps people connect with their family members and friends. Apart from social uses, Facebook helps develop emerging and existing brands by providing organizations with unique ways of presenting themselves through advertising. Lukes's dimension of power explains cases where a person or a group of people exercises their power by controlling people's needs. Social media and advertisements portray themselves through the use of cunning ways to reach out to users registered on a particular platform.

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The article Facebook Has a Prescription was written by Natasha Tiku affiliated with the Washington Post. The author is gender-biased because mostly she talks about women. With the daily increasing number of Facebook users, companies, especially pharmaceutical, use this to advertise various drugs to consumers. In late 2016, that is when Facebook involved itself actively in the advertising of pharmaceutical ads. These companies are extra careful about their advertising to not invade users' and consumers' private lives. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates drug advertising in the United States. FDA sets policies and guidelines that the companies follow on social media advertising.

Pharmaceutical advertising has helped a lot of people in the country and globally. Eric Peraklisis, the former chief information officer and top scientist of informatics at the Food and Drug Administration, has encouraged advertising because it reaches a broad audience. For example, AMAG pharmaceuticals have gained about 25 million women globally. It has done this through a disease awareness campaign called Un Blush for hypoactive sexual desire disorder. The campaign offered women a platform to express themselves and interact with each other. The campaign helped women around the world speak freely about stigmas surrounding their sexual health. These pharmaceutical ads provide knowledge on people living with various diseases such as HIV and AIDS, Diabetes on drug prescription. Seeing these ads, when going through the news feeds, reminds them to take the drugs. On these platforms, the companies have provided people with medical experience who answer various questions directed to them by multiple users.

Facebook and other social media platforms have played a significant role in helping young people in the United States. They achieve this by promoting the prescription of substantial health issues like depression and weight loss for overweight. In most cases, youths with those issues feel embarrassed to seek medical attention, and they get the help they need through Facebook. Social media platforms have played a significant role in recruiting patients for clinical trials. Celebrity and patient influencers aid a lot because they share their experiences with drugs, which encourages people to try on them. As a learner, it has improved my knowledge of various medications and how to use them effectively.

Everything that has an advantage has its share of disadvantages as well. The ads appearing on users' feed makes them so sensitive people feel that their privacy is being interfered with. For example, Lemasters said he felt 'invasive' seeing a hyperactivity ad appearing on his page. Prior he had taken a drug with the same purpose, but he never publicized it. Kara M. Hoeger, the director of corporate communications for neuroscience in Tekada Pharmaceuticals responsible for making Adderral a drug Lemaster, said they do not have access to present and past patients' prescriptions. Although Tekada failed to answer the questions asked, they said they are so committed and dedicated to protecting their client's privacy and rights. Personal information on health may be leaked by data brokers who collect information on health records and leak them to advertisers. They access the information from pharmacies, hospitals, and places with emails and phone numbers and come up with a list of people that the advertisers want to target.

The article was written to show that apart from catching up with friends and relatives, Facebook and other social media platforms have played a great cause in creating awareness of various drugs and a healthy lifestyle. Facebook prescription has influenced our social, cultural, and political lives. Socially, it has helped people from all over the world to engage in campaigns that promote the well-being of the community and society. It has encouraged people to engage in sensitive conversations where they end up getting help. For instance, the group on cancer containing 10 million people has helped people with cancer share their experiences, and this helps them encourage each other. People sharing ideas has helped reduce cases of people with depression. Cultural-wise, it has led people from different countries all over the world to share views on different aspects of life. They also share different drugs that serve the same purpose giving one different option to choose from. These people end up adopting other people's ways of doing things. Facebook prescription enhances political success. A healthy country leads its members to come in large numbers when electing leaders of their choice. Proper decisions make them elect good leaders with good judgments. The elected leaders rule the country well, and this ensures political stability.

The article has helped the public to know how Facebook identifies particular ads to appear on people's news feeds. The spokesman for Gilead Sciences, responsible for running Facebook ads for the HIV drugs Descovy and Biktarvy, their spokesman Ryan McKeel says the pharmaceutical company targets consumers based on non-sensitive data. Pharmaceutical companies say they use aggregate demographic data on age, gender, and geographic location to identify what type of ad to avail to consumers. There is a belief that pharmaceutical companies use advertising tactics, such as using cookies to target members based on the websites they visited target consumers. Ogilvy consulting chief digital officer Ritesh Patel identified using cookies as risky and said that they do not have a way to identify their clients' personal information, and their clients are sure about their programs. Joe Osborne, the Facebook spokesman, says that they prohibit the companies from using medical history when advertising. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces actions to companies that use deceptive measures to disclose sensitive personal information on social media users.

Using Lukes's dimension, the Takeda Pharmaceuticals, during the press briefing, they failed to answer the question the questions they were asked the right way. These companies also use manipulative tactics like accessing information on personal health so as to determine their consumer's needs. The government should ensure that advertising companies follow the policies and measures put in place when advertising.

Bibliography

Hathaway, Terry. "Lukes reloaded: An actor-centred three-dimensional power framework." Politics 36, no. 2 (2016): 118-130.

Tiku, Nitasha. “Facebook Has a Prescription: More Pharmaceutical Ads.” The Washington Post. WP Company, March 6, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/03/03/facebook-pharma-ads/.

Whitaker, Christopher, Sharon Stevelink, and Nicola Fear. "The use of Facebook in recruiting participants for health research purposes: a systematic review." Journal of Medical Internet Research 19, no. 8 (2017): e290.