We Media and Democracy - Rebecca Wood

The proliferation of technology means that we aren’t limited to a select few providers and platforms of the news. With social media, radio, TV, word of mouth, newspapers, there seems to be no shortage of potential news outputs that we can decide to reject, believe or question. Reflecting on my own news consumption, I’d say that I don’t just get my news from one place, rather from a range of sources and sites. If a news story is frequently repeated across, say multiple news platforms, I’m more likely to trust it because its seems likely to be true if it’s from a diverse range of sources.  Social media plays a significant role in my news habits, Twitter especially. I don’t follow news organisations but I seem to see a lot from them on there, due to people sharing from these kind of accounts. Perhaps the news is becoming more democratic like Dan Gilmore said in his book, ‘We The Media’. For instance, social media sites work in a way that we can not only see what is shared but the person’s thoughts and feelings on it.  Then if we choose we can start a discuss the topic instantaneously almost no matter where we are.

I’d say that I trust BBC more over the popular news organisations, as it is supposed to be unbiased. You’d honestly hope it didn’t provide false stories, but can you really be sure if anything is true? Looking at my research the BBC was consistently found trustworthy despite age or gender. I honestly find it a little scary that we put so much trust into the one source. I personally feel that I don’t so much mind that an organisation has opinion on something or biased, as long as they report the facts and that there isn’t just theirs to read and that other organisations and news outputs put out another side. I find it quite interesting to read from multiple perspectives, as it helps me decide how I feel about a certain thing.

The booklet I’ve looked at over summer raises some interesting points about news that I hadn’t really considered before. I quite like the idea that the news is becoming less black and white, with little room to question; and somewhat, that it’s becoming more of a grey area where we can question, debate and contribute to a fuller understanding of the issues around us and across the globe. I don’t tend to get involved with these debates, as they can get quite abusive at times, which can be expected, but they are important for democracy. On the other hand, I’m not saying that this is perfect and amazing, with anything there is pros and cons. I guess you could say that this technological advancement is having an exponential effect on news material, meaning that we are now by no means limited on the sides of a story. The internet, now providing us with numerous sides, the evidence for both and everything else in-between in which we can make our minds up about how we feel about the story. The #BlackLivesMatter movement is an example of how social media has challenged what is present in the news, and from my experience there seems to be an increasing amount of this occurring across social media platforms, it is not just limited to sites like Twitter and Tumblr where you may expect to find debate but is extended to places like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, all which can be influential due to sheer amount of users. The news seems to almost be bringing people together, no matter their location in the world, which wouldn’t be possible without technology.

Yet of course there are the cons of the internet, such as photoshopped photos to look almost genuine and the misleading news articles. I’m not saying that we are naïve if we believe these, as people put a lot of effort into creating these, and I’m sure that we’ve all clicked on those fake links to news sites on Facebook to discover at the bottom of the page that you can share more fake stories for any topic you would wish.

I have found that there is no rule in where people get their news from, typically you would expect your grandparents to get their news from newspapers and the six o’clock news, but the technological surge isn’t just limited to young people. For example, my grandparents get their news from online websites like the daily mail and the news section on Bing. I remember my grandma checking the daily mail website purely to see what ‘ridiculous’ story they had put up now. Often people think of the older generation as more naïve, and less questioning towards the news, but I don’t believe that it’s not a generational feature, rather perhaps having a smaller news diet and being less aware of alternative sides to the story.

A news story I found out about in the summer was that a man had been attacked by a Pitbull, and consequentially died trying to protect his dog. I found this out through BBC Radio One, I listened to the full story about this. I trusted this news story because I had also seen it on the news section of my phone, which combines the news organisations across the world, from well-known ones to the, well, not so known. I think this preinstalled app is quite a useful one, as it combines the variety of sources together so you start to get the bigger picture. Another story I found out about was Donald Trump’s Anti-science campaign, I didn’t read beyond the headline as I wasn’t interested in the story at all, while I don’t know if it’s particularly as dramatic as the headline implies, nothing would surprise me with him. I also find myself increasingly not reading further than the headline for the hard hitting stories, like the war in Syria, as I do truly feel helpless and saddened when I heard about it. Maybe there is a certain sense of bliss in totally rejecting the media? But alas the media is pretty tough to ignore and you could hardly miss out on the big stories, if they aren’t on the school’s TVs, you would hear by word of mouth, or hear from a radio that you were walking past.

What I’ve found interesting, is that one of my friends was telling me about a controversial documentary they had seen in the news I had never even heard about; even though I frequently check the news. This an example of how selecting topics can lead you to miss things and be less informed. Although, when I was using the BBC news app, even though I picked topics I was interested in, I still came back to reading the most read, trending, and news stories from different categories. So maybe the news isn’t becoming so tailored as you think, and that actually the news is what you make of it.