In the world of media everything must be under extreme time constraints and budgets. Through the linked videos you can see that media has to make every action fast and dynamic to build tenson and drama in the scenes which are referenced by Keren Elizari. This conveys to the general public that while the actual techniques and tools the characters are using might be very accurate, it conveys to the public that hacking is more akin to a video game or that it takes a hacker mere seconds to crack into complex systems when in actuality it would take a few hours. This leads to public perception of the practice being a high pace computer game more than a calculated dissection of systems.

This perception has definitely changed over time due to the average cyber literacy going up overtime. Cyber-awareness, while still under what it should be, has exposed the general public to the inner workings of how hackers operate and the limitations that they must operate under though many misconceptions could still happen when discussing the finer details of hacking. The difference seen in older media portrayal of hacking shows in the approach as well as the people participating. The older media depicted either young hackers hacking against an entity for altruistic means or a large entity hacking for supremacy. Newer media has a lot more nuance in the motivations of different hackers (money, revenge or notoriety) as well as more varied representations of groups who participate in hacking like environmental hackers. The methods being presented also widened overtime. While older media relied on showing technical methods like brute-force hacking, newer media likes to focus on the social engineering aspect of hacking such as phishing.

Reference:

·         Insider (2021, Mar 16) Hacker Rates 12 Hacking Scenes In Movies And TV | How Real Is It?, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=6BqpU4V0Ypk

·         Wired (2021, Apr 21) Haker breaks down hacking scenes from movies and TV, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsCrY2vWSr8

• Wired (2018, Nov 13) Hacker breaks down 26 scenes from movies and TV, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZQz9tkEHIg