We Media & Democracy - Brantley Steer
Almost all of the news stories that I collected over the summer for my 'We Media' I collected via the internet. I mostly saw posts about such stories on twitter from the people that I follow and I read them due to them sounding interesting and me wanting to learn more. Also, some of the news stories that I read came from news websites which I actively looked for. The reliability of these sources can vary due to the site they were displayed on, For example, stories on the official BBC website are more like to be of a higher reliability than those found on websites such as Twitter, since the BBC is a large news corporation, and Twitter is simply a social media site. Which leads me to believe that things posted on Twitter about such news stories are, for the most part, peoples opinions and do not display and actual facts of the news itself. Having said that, some of the Twitter posts were links that sent me directly to the BBC website. Also, since the BBC claims to be an unbiased news corporation, this further reinforces the reliability of this source, since the BBC is public funded it is within their best interests to be unbiased.
My first story was one about a young girl name Kayla Mueller who was supposedly murdered by IS. The reason I use the word 'supposedly' is due to the story being told to the BBC through ex-slaves and not going off first hand evidence. Having said that, the possibility of someone lying about something as tragic as this seemed very unlikely, and if that is the case, then it is disturbing indeed to think that someone would lie about such a matter. I found this story on the BBC news website, which leads me to believe that the chance of this story being accurate are fairly high for reasons previously discussed. The story is about an American girl named Kayla Muellar, who was taken hostage by IS, forced to convert to Islam, and was made a slave. After a while of being made a slave, the girl was made to be the wife of a man named 'Baghdadi', he threatened Kayla saying that if she did not agree to marry him, he would behead her. After marrying 'Baghdadi' the girl was repeatedly beaten and raped until she was murdered. This story is very disturbing, and to know that such things happen in a world that we live in is very scary. I did not find any information on this on social media sites, and I had to actively look for this rather than just stumbling across it while scrolling through twitter.
A story I did see on my Twitter however, was a story about the current refugee crisis, which mainly consisted of contrasting beliefs on the matter and whether or not the refugees should be brought into the country or not. I in particular do not voice my opinion on such matters since I believe it can result in unnecessary conflict. As I saw on Twitter there were many conflicts about this matter, which lead to arguments and abusive language being shared by other people toward those writing the post, and those agreeing with it, which leads me to believe that my opinion is better off kept to myself. This shows how controversial this subject is and how simply someone's opinion can stir up quite the argument. Onto reliability, since these sources were purely opinions and didn't discuss any of the actual facts about the story, this ultimately leads me to think that these sources are unreliable and aren't ones that I would pay a lot of attention to.
What I see on my social media is to a large extent down to the people I follow on these sites, and knowing that a post simply expressing ones opinion on a matter can cause so many people (a lot of whom the person did not know) to cause an argument and result in potential fallouts and abuse being given to one another.
You said you "I did not find any information on this on social media sites, and I had to actively look for this rather than just stumbling across it while scrolling through twitter", which makes me wonder the reason this story wasn't shared on social media. I feel that these days everything is shared and can be found on social media, however there's possibly an explanation to this. I believe that arguably the reason this story is not widely shared across social media, and the reason you had to actively search for this story, is because this is an extremely sensitive subject. Whilst the Syrian Refugee crisis story is also sensitive and upsetting, the two stories contrast each other due to the subject they're related to. News stories involving such a horrific incident such as rape or slavery, like in the Kayla story, are often pushed to one side by the public. Not because the public don't care or want to hear about the story, but because I feel, as you pointed out, the story is "very disturbing" and therefore people don't want to believe it is happening. Stories relating to rape are more likely (in my opinion), to be a more sensitive subject, as horrifically and unfortunately, it could be a subject closer to home which affects more people emotionally. Whereas, the refugee crisis on the other hand, arguably it isn't going to be such a sensitive subject, as it isn't as likely to happen to the readers, and therefore they're not necessarily as emotionally affected by it.
ReplyDeleteI also feel that the reason you didn't see the Kayla story on your social media, is because news surrounding that subject/issue, isn't something you necessarily discuss, search for, or talk about on social media. Therefore your 'friends' on social media will more or less have the same interests as you, otherwise you wouldn't follow them, and therefore because they're not talking about it, you're not reading about it.