"We Media" and Democracy - Max Jackson

"We Media" and Democracy

 

Over the summer holidays we were set the task of collecting several news stories as an introduction to the second year of the course. In doing so I noticed a lot about my personal media usage and where I source my news from.

The first news story as such that caught my attention was the Shoreham air show plane crash. I initially heard about this story via the BBC news app that I have on my phone, on this app I have notifications turned on to alert me when any major news stories take place. On the 22^nd August a notification came through from the BBC news app with the headline ‘Plane crash at Shoreham air show, numerous casualties and some presumed dead’. This immediately grabbed my attention upon seeing it as I was interested to see what caused the plane to crash and how many deaths were actually caused by the unfortunate event, so this made me go straight onto the app to view the story in full. Upon opening the story and reading further I discovered that the official number of deaths was believed to of reached 11 and the actually cause of the crash was due to the pilot Andy Hill performing loop-the-loop at 200ft when actually he was only licensed to perform such manoeuvres at 500ft and above and therefore this caused him to lose control and upon his descent from the manoeuvre he didn’t have enough time to level the plane off and struck the westbound carriageway of the A27. I believe the way in which I collected this news story shows a lot about my personal media usage and the way in which I obtain news because as I realised before I am very reliant on getting my news from the internet, however what I didn’t realise is that I don’t go looking for the news I either expect it to be sent to me via the BBC news app or to accidently stumble upon it on social media or other forms of news found on the internet. This shows that I don’t particularly follow the news by choice but when it is presented to me I do take an interest.

The second big news story that I came across was almost by accident. I was on Facebook just casually checking my news feed as I’m sure most people do and one of my friends had commented on a particular post by the Telegraph. The post was to do with a Virginia news reporter and cameraman being murdered during a live interview, this immediately grabbed my attention because the headline alone was shocking enough however there was a video to accompany it, of the incident taking place itself, in which distressing scenes are shown. In the video gun shots are heard during a live interview and then the camera, along with the cameraman drops to the floor. Upon watching this video it made me want to read further into why this horrible occurrence happened. I believe this particularly shows a lot about my personal media usage as again it comes back to the idea that I don’t go looking for the news however when presented with it I do take an interest. It also says a lot about how I discovered this particular piece through a social media website and my media usage is mainly based around social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. It is also very interesting that I was exposed to this news via a friend commenting on this particular piece by the Telegraph and shows that social media platforms show you what your friends have took an interest in and therefore it generates it on your news feed because it believes you will also take the same interest as your friend. I think this shows a lot about how technology is beginning to learn and adapt itself to our personal usage of the internet.

The final news story I came across was one I followed in the most detail and over the greatest period of time, this was the Premier League transfer window. The reason I followed this in more detail is because football is a big interest of mine both watching it and playing it and the summer transfer window Is always an exciting time for any football fan. The window for any transfers to happen took place from 1st July to - 1st September. As always a lot of transfers were made some bigger than others, with clubs such as Manchester City spending £124.45 million alone. All this added up to a big headline that the Premier League clubs collectively managed to brake the summer transfer window spending record, according to analysis from Deloitte. Clubs in the English top flight spent a total of £870m, up from the £835m record set last year. This to me was big news as I like to see the daft amount of money spent in football and whether or not it does actually make a difference when it comes to the football being played because as its been seen over the years these teams can spend astonishing amounts of money and still see no results come from it. My main source of information when looking into the summer transfer window was yet another social media platform, which was Twitter. Twitter is the social media platform that I use most frequently purely by choice but it was actually best to find out the latest transfers etc. Because I could set it so I could see the latest tweets from accounts such as BBC Sport and other transfer related accounts which kept me up to date with the latest news, rumours and actual transfers being made in and around the Premier League. So for me I thought instead of going out my way and looking for the information I saw it as easier to set my Twitter feed to find and bring the information directly to me. Also due to cookies being used more and more in today’s internet which is an example of Media 3.0, Twitter actually brought me news updates from accounts that I didn’t personally follow because they will have followed my interests and then filtered in related information into my feed. I think the summer transfer window linked with Twitter is a perfect example of what Dan Gillmor who is the author of ‘We Media’ said about the internet has made it easier for people to post their own content online which is an example of Media 2.0 and in some cases on twitter people have made accounts claiming to be transfer update accounts but instead created rumours and false content to receive views or in some cases just generate conversation and debate. So I think social media in some cases can be trusted however can feed lot of false news to people.