We media and democracy- Annabel Lowe

What have you learned about your own media use and how you access news content?

From reading about democracy and how easily people are influenced by the news, it’s clear to see how much of an Impact news stations, articles and even social media has on our choices and opinions. Personally I get my news from social media, sites like facebook with links from ‘the sun’ and friends sharing posts. I don’t think their reliable, when looking at the headlines and then reading the actual article its completely different to what I would have thought, it’s so easy how manipulative writers are and how clever the wording can be in order to portray someone as bad or to show how vulnerable someone can be which potentially couldn’t be true. I think social media are not trusting sources, I think rumours can start and people can create a story from a simple thing. We see all the time on social media of people videoing occurrences on their phones for example, a man hitting a woman, automatically with think he is the villain, he needs to be sent to prison and all of a sudden he has gained a lot of bad publicity, when actually the woman/women were beating him, swearing at him and at one point had him on the ground, he was simply defending himself, but, from the video we watch and the point to where someone starts videoing, we think he is ‘the bad guy’.

When questioning my peers I found that most people barely look beyond the headline, however check the BBC news app often. I also found that the vast majority of people my age are more interested in media, music and film rather than politics which shows that younger people seem to be less interested in politics than the older people I asked.

I recently downloaded the BBC news app, and I chose a few topics which I found most interesting; I chose, media, entertainment and arts, food, mental health, US election 2016 and many more. To an extent I do feel my choices are bias, I do not have any politics on ‘my news’ simply because I’m just not interested, which, I feel puts me at a disadvantage as I’m not seeing any news about politics, I simply don’t know anything about it so won’t have my own opinion. I feel the fact I don’t have my own opinion on politics makes me rather vulnerable as people can tell me their opinions and I automatically agree, when in actual fact, I don’t know both sides. I feel that’s what a lot of people did when the vote came about whether Britain should leave the EU. A lot of people didn’t know both sides of the party and were very easily manipulated by others and so chose leave/stay just from the influence of others. The reason I have US election 2016 on ‘my news’ is simply to see if Donald Trump has any chance to become president as I don’t think he’s a good person or would do good things for America, I feel he only has an interest in one thing and that’s himself, I simply have US election to see how he’s doing in terms of chances of becoming president.

I found a few examples of recent news stories in which I found really interesting. One news story I found particularly interesting is the death of ‘harambe’ the gorilla. When I originally saw the clip it was on Facebook but I was in so much shock by it so I decided to look more into it. I noticed from this that more outbreaks about injustice for animals and animals being mistreated became more serious and started to be noticed a lot more. People, including myself became more sensitive towards animals and took it more personal. The death of harambe, I think, was the starting point for the protection and vulnerability of animals. I think in some ways, I do agree of his death as he could’ve potentially harmed a child, if Harambe wasn’t shot, he probably would’ve killed the child, however, there may have been other ways to stop him doing it, and it wasn’t a very fair way, especially when gorilla numbers are at a minimum. Some argue that it was the parents fault for not watching the child closely enough which in some ways, I agree with as harambe was an animal and didn’t really know any better, he can’t possibly be blamed for behaviour like that, after all he was a wild animal. (Video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py_1aCt2c0s)

I feel that I get most of my news and information from social media the majority of the time. I don’t despise watching the news, I’ll watch it if it’s on, but it’s not the first thing I think of when turn on my T.V, I think it’s much quicker and easier for it to come up on my news feeds on social media sites such as Facebook and if I’m interested, I will look more into it. It’s more likely I’ll look into news articles as I find that things we see on social media never seem to be true so I prefer to find reliable sources. In conclusion I feel that Dan Gilmor’s (author of ‘we media and democracy’) views prove to be correct as he states that ‘the spreading of news will occur’ which in my opinion is very much true as people are able to access and post information and news. People are not only able to post facts, but opinions too, which enables others to contradict and question their views.