Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Comparing News Sources


                    One thing I noticed while reading the posts of my classmates is that we all have something in common: we get our news from a variety of sources. With the advancement of social and electronic media there are so many available news sources that most people do not use just one. The dominance of Facebook often has a huge influence on the news people are informed about. People use Facebook so often that whether they like it or not they read something about a news story on Facebook before they see it on the actual news. And the news cannot be avoided because there is a constant stream of information on the news feed that we cannot control. The news is coming to us rather than us seeking it out. Social networking often dominates reputable sources as the place for my generation to get their information. Facebook and other social networking sites as a source of media has both benefits and drawbacks. Some benefits are the efficiency and immediacy it provides, you get a lot of headlines quickly and get a sense of what is going on. But on the other hand these sources definitely do not provide reputability and there is not a lot of depth to the stories. But the stories are also much more personal which could go both ways. Another commonality I found is that the majority of my classmates and I are not as up to date on the news as we would like to be. We have so many things going on in our lives and so many distractions that the news is not often our top priority. But as we get older we come to realize that the news are more important and hold more relevance in our lives. Another thing I noticed is that people much prefer the more emotional and entertaining aspects of the news rather than reading a story about the stock market or complicated politics. I think this would not surprise Hedges and Carr at all and attribute this concept to the rise of social media and search engines as our outlets for information.

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