Surveillance

Surveillance

We Media – My Own Media Use

We Media – My Own Media Use

As someone who is usually very passive when it comes to the news, I found it difficult to record my findings, as I didn't think that the news affected me. However, I realised that I was finding out more information about the news than expected. Although I don't read the daily newspaper, or watch the BBC news on TV, I was actually receiving my news from different types of media. Sometimes this was from people sharing news stories on social media such as Facebook and Twitter, sometimes it came from people around me talking about it, and sometimes it even came from memes (an image or video intended for humor) found online.

However, the problem with receiving news this way, is much of it is what is known as fake news. This means that the news stories may have been altered to be biased towards a certain political party, or even just to make the story more interesting. However, some big news companies also release this 'fake news' if they believe it to be true. This was a big problem during the previous presidential election as fake news may have been the difference between Hillary Clinton losing the presidential role to Donald Trump. Back in 2016 a news story appeared, suggesting that Hillary Clinton started a child sex ring at a Washington pizzeria which then led to a man opening fire at the pizzeria. However, after this happened at an interview with the man he said that he believed he was doing the right thing. He had believed these conspiracies and thought that he was a hero. Although this story about Hillary Clinton sending emails was all over the news, the way that I had originally heard about it was through memes found on Facebook. Although this wasn't because they were on pages that I had liked or followed, but it was because my 'Facebook friends' had shared them.

Again, there are many problems with receiving my news this way. After all, memes are intended for humor, so they don't want to be over complicated or long, so they often give the wrong story or don't give the full story. This is also a problem when people share news stories on Facebook, as I rarely have enough time to look beyond the headline. For example, a recent headline came up on my Facebook saying 'North Korea could fire NUCLEAR MISSILES at UK as defense secretary warns of world war 3'. Without reading beyond the headline this can cause panic. However, after I read beyond the headlines I learnt that in fact there was an unlikely chance that North Korea will fire missiles at us, and it is the US that they are firing missiles at, and the US will try and get the UK involved if this happens. Obviously, this shows that reading beyond the headlines is important if you want to believe the story you are reading.

Sometimes, even reading beyond headlines still isn't enough to rely on the source. A fake news website called The Onion regularly posts false news with headlines including 'New iPhone will no longer record every word you say' and 'panicked John Kelly ushers half-naked Trump away from podium as president shouts support for eugenics'. Obviously, these news stories are 'fake news', but few people may actually believe them if they don't check the liability of the website they received them from. Forbes recently posted an article on '10 journalism brands where you find real facts rather than alternative facts'. The New York Times came up at number 1, but this
doesn't necessarily mean you can trust all information supplied through this media outlet. After all, both of these companies are huge conglomerates which means that they can advertise each other to build up the amount of readers they each get.

Because all news is written by a person, none of it is completely unbiased. Just because the news story doesn't always make it obvious, like the headline might not say 'Donald Trump shouldn't be president', this doesn't mean it's not biased. When writing a news article, you have a choice what you can include. Sometimes being biased isn't about stating all the negatives about people, sometimes it's more about ignoring the positives, or giving one political leader more articles than another. This also happens in online news or TV news, and although we media helps circulate the news, giving people more information to decide on their own views, content is still filtered and can be biased. When a member of the public records and incident that has happened, they still get to choose when the recording starts and ends. Say, for example, a video goes around of a police officer shooting a civilian. There would be headlines going around saying that this policeman should be arrested and shouldn't be able to hold a firearm. However, the audience may not have seen 30 seconds before the video started recording where the man had threatened the police officer with a weapon. We media gives more power to the public, and means that the news is no longer controlled by large conglomerates, but it also means that news can be easily manipulated without it affecting large conglomerates.

Another problem with we media is the fact that our perspective gets narrowed down and filtered as we often associate our self with people who have the same views as us. This means that when we often see news articles being shared on Facebook and Twitter, we see opinions from people who share the same opinions. If all your friends support the labour party, then you'll see news articles on your feed which also support the labour party, making you less open minded. Also, thanks to the increase of WEB 3.0, now when we go online to get our news we also get a narrow-minded view of the news around us. When I go on my google app, the news articles that come up are 'tailored for me' which means that I very rarely get to see opinions other than my own. This also happens on the BBC news app, as you can set up the 'my news' section, which finds news stories for you. This is done so that you read articles suited for you and go back on the app so the companies make more money. However, sometimes reading different news stories can make you more open minded and can give you a more rounded view of what's going on in locally or globally.