Thursday, November 15, 2018

The Future of News Consumption

One phenomena that I have been seeing recently is the growing connection between media platforms, the people, and news. It has come to my attention more because of the recent mid-term elections that were help November sixth. I try to limit political content on my timelines to the point where I am still informed on the issues of the state I live in as well as the state I go to school in, as well as the major events in the Countries politics. However, I don’t want to get to the point where it’s all I’m seeing on my timeline. The reason for me blogging about this is because I truly believe that without these platforms I would be less educated about the current events that effect me.
I really think that these platforms have enabled us to see what we want to see and become informed on issues that may effect us or people we care about. It’s a lot more specific now. If I was only watching broadcast television, I would only see what the news station determined was newsworthy, which would then make me believe that what they report is most important. With social network sites, I can customize what I think is important by following accounts that focus on what I am interested in. This is great because these accounts don’t lose anything from me following a similar account. One example I can think of is if I want to see what is going on in Syria or Israel, I can follow Al-Jazeera and then click on links from the tweet to read the full article. On the other hand, If I want local news, I can follow the Wilmington patch and do the same thing with them.

I can confidently say that most people seem to be using social media more and more as time goes by, just like me. I say this because I looked at this pew report from 2016 and then an updated pew report from 2018. The numbers show that between 2016 and 2018, there was a 6% increase of people that got their news from social media platforms, with a total number of 68% of people.

1 comment:

  1. I thought that this was interesting subject to blog about. I agree with you that social media is becoming a huge way for people to get their news now. I know that before November 6th this year I was looking at different social media to see what I thought was right. I think that it is also really interesting to see what the political candidates tweet or post. I think that it is helpful to be able to go back and look at what they said and see if that a lines with your view. I think that social media can be a very helpful way for a person to get their news because it is quick and easy to get to. Someone can be on the train going to work and look up the news on Snapchat. They can also look at what the candidate posted that day. I feel that you still need to be very careful looking at any news because it can be one sided. I think with Instagram or Twitter seeing what the actual candidates is something that is so different and helpful. It is coming from them so you can get a feel for what their views are and how they act.

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