'We Media and Democracy' - Tasmine Benton.

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

During the summer, I found I didn’t keep up to date with the news or what was happening in the news, and therefore didn’t actively search for it, or watch the news on TV. However, I did still hear about the news and different stories within it, and I found I mainly heard or read about these stories from social media. The news stories I read/heard about were mainly shared by ‘friends’ on social media, with the occasional story being heard on the news.

One of the biggest stories I heard about was the killing of Cecil the Lion.  I heard about this story on the day the event happened, which is rare. This story was originally shared on my newsfeed on twitter, however I felt that it would be a good news story to read about, and I wanted to understand the events of the story and find out more; so I searched on google the heading of the story, which led me to a newspaper online. Furthermore, once I had read the first article on the story, I felt passionate to find out more about the story, and therefore searched for more online newspapers in order to find out if they had any more information. I also searched hashtags on twitter to see what other people had to say about the story, and to find any more up to date information. While I know twitter isn’t the most reliable source to get information from, I felt that it was a quicker way to find people’s opinions and gain more recent information, due to there being more ‘citizen journalists’ now, who distribute and share the information quicker than newspapers or large organisations. Once I read in depth the details of the story, I found the story to be emotional and upsetting, as the world’s most famous lion had been shot and killed by a dentist, whom claimed he didn’t know the lion was famous. I felt that the producer of the main news article which I read, and everybody else who shared the story, wanted to make the reader aware of the killing, and therefore wanted the reader to understand the emotional details of the story.

Another news story which I saw during the summer was the Bangkok Bomb, however this time I saw this on my twitter newsfeed, as one of my ‘friends’ had tweeted about it. I looked at what was trending on twitter, and saw that ‘Bangkok’ was trending. I clicked on the hashtag and scrolled through the tweets to see people sharing news links to the story and saw people writing about how it made them feel and wishing that the residents of Bangkok were safe. Whilst at first I was sceptical about what had happened and whether or not the story was true or not, as I began reading more tweets I found that verified and large news accounts were also posting links to articles about the story. Furthermore, this made me believe the story much more, while not everything we read about in the news is always completely true, I felt that because so many people knew about it and were posting about it, some of it had to be true. However, even though there were multiple opportunities for me to click on news links and read the full story about the bomb, I didn’t click on any links and only read the headline. I feel this was because even though I was interested in it, I felt it would be upsetting if I read more in depth and found out all of the details. Furthermore, I felt that the producer of the articles intended for the reader to feel sympathy or emotional when reading about the story, however I also feel that they producers intended for the articles to be informative and for the reader to learn about the events which have happened.  

Another news story I read about, is arguably much less important than the others, however I still came across it, was the wedding of Tanya Burr and Jim Chapman. This news story was first shared by Tanya Burr on twitter, which immediately tells me that it is reliable as it came from one of the main people involved. This news story was backed up with photographs, and soon after they announced they had got married, my social media blew up with people tweeting ‘congratulations’ and other family members or close friends sharing photographs from the day. I read in depth about the wedding for a couple of days afterwards when I saw a link or post about it, and I also shared a couple of photographs on social media. I feel that this is a good representation of what my ‘friends’ on social media share, and therefore it says something about who my ‘friends’ are and what my interests are. I feel that this news article exemplifies that on social media I don’t particularly follow people or are friends which people who share exceptionally important information. To me, the information of the wedding was important in some ways as I had an interest in it, however I didn’t find it extremely important, and didn’t find it as important as the next news story I saw. This exemplifies and supports Tapscott and Williams’ theory that we’re becoming ‘prosumers’, a mixture of producers and consumers. In this instance, this is applicable to me, as I consumed the news and read the article, however I also shared the news and produced my own opinion of it on social media.

The final story is the news story about the Syrian Refugees. Interestingly, I saw this news story in a restaurant, where they had a TV behind the bar on the wall with BBC news on. Whilst eating my dinner, I kept glancing at the TV and caught the brief glimpse of a video footage, caught by a ‘citizen journalist’, which was of Syrian Refugees on the boarder of a country.  Due to the fact I was in a restaurant, I didn’t find much more information out about it, however I did later come across a BBC article on the Refugee Crisis on twitter, and therefore opened it. I read the article which was informative and was the clear purpose of the article, and I trusted what was said. The article I read was from the BBC, which is funded by the taxpayer, and not owned by a ‘Media Baron’. It is therefore accountable for the public, and also lacks being bias, which therefore also makes the BBC a reliable source, compared to the more unreliable, bias social media sources.

Overall, I found that recently, where I get my information and news articles from is becoming much more from news apps, rather than social media. I get a lot of my news information from the BBC article now, especially since being back at school, as I have to keep up to date with things in the news for Geography. However, I have found I have become more interested in the news, and actively look for new news article rather than being told I have to look for them. On the BBC news app, when I open it, it automatically filters through the topics and articles which they think will be most appropriate to me, based on what I have read and searched for previously, including things such as the latest earthquake or migration issues.  This is a perfect example of Bernes-Lee’s semantic web theory, as they said that there was almost too much information on the internet. They said the next stage of the internet is the ‘semantic web’, where the internet starts to make meaning, think and act like a human being. This is clearly exemplified as the internet now brings up articles relative to you, based on what you have read, therefore picking out pieces of information like a human being would.