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Mainstream Media Finally Catching On To How News Propagates
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Friday March 28, @01:17PM
from the whole-new-idea-of-trusted-networks dept.
from the whole-new-idea-of-trusted-networks dept.
Techdirt is reporting that the mainstream press may finally be "getting it" when it comes to how the next generation of news readers consumes and shares news. One student summed it up very succinctly by saying "If the news is that important, it will find me." "According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well -- sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter -- reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com -- with a social one."
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Slight problem for slashdot readers and others... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slight problem for slashdot readers and others. (Score:5, Insightful)
But you do get to share in a community of readers who never read the news articles or get the wrong end of the stick. I mean this wouldn't be slashdot if we didn't start reacting to the article summary that has little or nothing to do with the referenced article
Re:Here's the FAQ (Score:4, Informative)
There is too much news (Score:5, Insightful)
And even if it is, it often isn't relevant to our lives. Yes, everything affects everything else at some level, but the truth is that most of what you read in a newspaper doesn't is irrelevant to you, out of your realm of influence, or merely speculative. Pick up a year-old newspaper and see how compelling it is.
Psychologically, it's interesting to consider that while a major tragedy may happen to you or someone close to you just a handful of times in your life, a major tragedy is happening somewhere to somebody every hour. There was a time when we were blissfully unaware of that fact. Now we have a constant barrage of it. It is wearying, and to cope we have to tune a lot of it out.
Brittney (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Brittney (Score:5, Funny)
(P.s. You spelt Brittany wrong.)
The obvious down side (Score:5, Insightful)
If the opposing viewpoint was important (Score:3, Funny)
Wait, what?
Re:The obvious down side (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm telling you, even amongst the most herd mentalities of political parties and religious groups, get them into smaller groups and make them actually describe what they believe and why and you will likely start a brawl amongst them (they don't tend to deal with differing opinions well). They all think they think alike, and the illusion is blissfully maintained so long as they don't have to think for themselves or form their own opinions, but make them talk about that stuff, think about that stuff, without giving them the opportunity to express herd mentality for eachother and you will frequently see divergent points.
Re:The obvious down side (Score:5, Insightful)
That just proves the point. You're hanging out with a group of like minded people who have diverse interests so you don't notice the fact that most people really don't.
Re:The obvious down side (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, just how is that different than any other time in history? If I ask you to tell me the initials of the person you know that believe everything they read or hear, I'm willing to bet that 99% of those that read this post will be able to. That person will tell their friends whatever they hear about as if it were written below the 10th commandment when moses came down off the mount. And so the wrong news spreads. Despite, or because of it, a couple of months ago my (not near me) family had not heard of Obama or Paul. If the MSM actually does start picking up on what is spreading via the intarwebtubes, perhaps people will get to hear more varied information? They thought the race was going to be between huckabee and *HER*.
The simple truth is that there is NO reliable steady source of information when it comes to news. Informed people will always seek multiple sources of stories and read multiple sources for variance. (still waiting for a lolcat to attack Colbert live on tv).
Ever hear your grandma tell you not to believe everything you hear or read? There is a reason for that. No matter what you use for news source, it cannot be the A-Z of news. period. ever. I mean it. Whether you get it from TV or the Internet or the radio or your friends and family.
Personally, the Internet makes me happy. I can get BBC and other European news sources too, not just the Whitehouse propaganda that much of the US seems to thrive on.
Re:The obvious down side (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The obvious down side (Score:4, Interesting)
Compare that with just watching fox news...
Compared to the Old Media (tm)? No WAY! (Score:4, Insightful)
As compared to the Old Media? ROTFL!
The former mainstream media systematically suppress the news they don't want you to hear or they don't want to cover. (They were PARTICULARLY blatant during the presidential primary season, where they systematically avoided covering certain candidates: Ron Paul, Alan Keys, and Dennis Kucinich to name just three where they were particularly blatant.) If you compare the coverage on the Internet and that on the Old Media you'd think they were operating in two different universes.
In particular: Ron Paul was VERY popular with the people who actually found out about him. His single-digit showing in most of the primaries, despite his all-time-record fundraising (virtually all from individuals contributing an average of about $100) is a measure of how small a fraction of the population is currently getting a significant portion of their news from the Internet.
On the internet your social contacts might bring something to your attention and/or help you filter it. But if your circle of friends is missing some point of view, the first time you do a search on it you'll find plenty of opposing voices - and other circles of potential friends if you happen to change your mind about the issue.
This will continue unless/until the operators of all the major search engines become as politically corrupted as the operators of the Old Media, figure out how to work their bias into their search engine results, yet still manage to avoid being replaced by more open competitors. (Or some world-wide Stalinist-style regime manages to censor the whole internet.)
So, no. For the forseable future switching to internet news and social sites from Old/Mainstream Media will increase, not decrease, exposure to opposing points of view.
Maybe true, but ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Traditional news broadcasters do a reasonable job of filtering information, but people tend to seek out filters that match their own interests, which is not only why news is broken up into sections on BBC's website, but why we have "News for Nerds" on slashdot, and news for surfers on surfline, etc.
Good and Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of linking to Techdirt (Score:5, Insightful)
Only for mainstream news (Score:4, Insightful)
Naturally there will be certain circles where some types of news is more popular. But what hurts is that it reinforces the popular == good methodology. And that's what hurts me about people these days. They don't seem to be interested if they don't see one of two things. An immediate effect on them, or most of their friends being interested in it.
This is why I started the website in my sig. It's hard to find people who don't just read popular news, and like to think and discuss it.
The article is right in that news does propagate that way. But until we're at a point where we're propagating useful, knowledgeable news, we will still be doing a disservice to people.
How many of us get links to the economist in our email? It's certainly not popular on the social news sites. The potential is there with social news. We just need to get a larger mass of people disseminating useful news. Then we won't have to worry about things like "Mainstream media", as only the knowledgeable news will be propagated.
Hardly (Score:4, Informative)
In the Old Media? Hardly.
Case in point: Ron Paul.
His grass roots campaign - composed mainly of the Internet-connected, because the MSM totally suppressed news of him - ended up with a head count comparable to the US troop strength in Iraq and broke all previous fundraising records via individual contributions averaging about $100.
If the operators of the corporate media don't want a story to get out they're fully capable of sitting on it no matter HOW popular is becomes by word-of-mouth - or word-of-net.
Please try to keep up. (Score:4, Informative)
Except when the tubes are clogged and my emails take days to get through.
Really? People send each other news stories? Through email? And here I thought moving from making photocopies of the newspaper articles and mailing them through the postal system to using the fax machine was high tech!
Also; email's soooo 1990s. RSS, delicious for: tags and IM messages are how I keep up; mostly RSS.
Dear old media: I know things on the intarwebs change fast, but please try to keep up a bit better?
News? Hardy (Score:5, Insightful)
Less trust for mainstream media sources (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who has been paying attention these days realizes that the mainstream media is pretty much bought and paid for propaganda. Good propaganda contains a high percentage of truth, that makes it harder to detect the spin. There are so many cases on record where there has either been a concerted and deliberate effort to twist the news for political and financial gain or there has simply been gross incompetence where journalistic safeguards failed to operate in the intended fashion.
"Americans are the only people in the world who believe their own government's propaganda." Well, probably not the only people in the world but certainly among the most notoriously credulous.
Our biggest problem with the media is consolidation, the major outlets are now owned by gigantic corporations who have a vested interest in "creating their own weather" by steering news coverage. With smaller news organizations, the primary goal is still making money but they make the bucks by finding and publishing the dirt rather than by suppressing the facts to keep the corporate masters happy. Media that rely on ad revenue are just as untrustworthy, just look at the game reviews. "Festering Piece of Crap 4, at least a 7/10!"
I think generational attitudes are changing. People in my parents' generation have become disillusioned with the news and people my generation and younger never had any faith to begin with.
How News Propigates to Me (Score:5, Funny)
Jon Stewart is my Walter Cronkite
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Me too, I ignore all the other tech sites, and pick up an inaccurate rendering here.
About 3 days later....
Re:They are stupid fucking kids people !! (Score:4, Funny)
I'll be 56 next week and I'm still like that
-mcgrew