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Social Media Overtakes Television As Young People's Main Source of News, Says Report (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: Of the 18-to-24-year-olds surveyed, 28% cited social media as their main news source, compared with 24% for TV. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism research also suggests 51% of people with online access use social media as a news source. The report, now in its fifth year, is based on a YouGov survey of about 50,000 people across 26 countries, including 2,000 Britons. Facebook and other social media outlets have moved beyond being "places of news discovery" to become the place people consume their news, it suggests. And news via social media is particularly popular among women and young people. The study found Facebook was the most common source -- used by 44% of all those surveyed -- to watch, share and comment on news. Next came YouTube on 19%, with Twitter on 10%. Apple News accounted for 4% in the US and 3% in the UK, while messaging app Snapchat was used by just 1% or less in most countries. According to the survey, consumers are happy to have their news selected by algorithms, with 36% saying they would like news chosen based on what they had read before and 22% happy for their news agenda to be based on what their friends had read. But 30% still wanted the human oversight of editors and other journalists in picking the news agenda and many had fears about algorithms creating news "bubbles" where people only see news from like-minded viewpoints. Most of those surveyed said they used a smartphone to access news, with the highest levels in Sweden (69%), Korea (66%) and Switzerland (61%), and they were more likely to use social media rather than going directly to a news website or app. The report also suggests users are noticing the original news brand behind social media content less than half of the time, something that is likely to worry traditional media outlets.
OK, so now we have more people getting their news from facebook than from TV, newspapers or any "traditional" source.
And then look at something like snopes.com to have an idea how much of this so called news are hoaxes, misinformation or blatant lies*!
And none of them gets an even remote feeling that something as unreliable as facebook is as usefull as a rubber knife when you treat it as news source. Yes, it's great for cat pictures. And I love the "25 incredible stupid things stupid people did" stuff. But that's it. It's a SOCIAL media. Is your social environment a regular part of the news? No? See?
* and sometimes misunderstood satire
bickerdyke
That would explain why most kids now adays are so ill informed. My younger sister is 30 and lives on social media, it never ceases to amaze me the shit she believes or doesn't know about, especially around science where the just plain WRONG information is more abundant than facts on social media.
I'm closer to senior citizenship and get more news from Facebook than TV. Basically because I nowadays turn on the TV very rarely for live events (like the current football championship, the eurovision song contest or election results like the UK leaving Europe next week) and it stays off otherwise. If my current satellite TV system breaks down it will not get replaced, the usage doesn't justify keeping it. If I had to pay for TV beyond the TV license fee, it'd be gone already. So it doesn't suprise me that young people no longer care for TV as a news source or an anything source. It rarely covers important issues anyway. Of course I get most of my news from news web sites and blogs nowadays...
I'm 54, and haven't relied on Television for news in well over a decade.
Social media ? Not so much. Although I do use it as a bird-dogging tool. . . ."crowd-searching" the news, and then checking a few other sources.
Lately, the noise-to-signal ratio on social media, and Fecesbook and Twatter, respectively, has approached 99%. . . .
Even things like Wikinews at least have some element of journalism and truth to them more often that the TV channels or papers.
This is the problem I have with the Press. They have too much power and influence.
Currently, the UK is debating whether or not to remain in the EU. The UK's most popular* newspaper is telling its readers to vote out. The Press should not be allowed to influence its readers into making decisions based upon its** opinion.
* Popular != Good
** The opinion of the editor
Summation 2
We never had good news before so what is the difference?
Sure we have. We've also had crappy news before. It's trivial to point out examples of news done well over the last 100 years. It's even easier to point of examples of it being done badly.
Sure back in the 1950-1990 we had our "trusted" news on TV. However they tried to cover a Whole days of activity around the world in 1 hour. The first half covering Local and State News, the second half World and National News. So much of the coverage didn't spend more than a few minutes on the topic.
That's was the state of affairs basically until around the the late 1980s to early 1990s for television news. The first big change was CNN and the 24 hour news cycle. The second was the internet (specifically the web) in the 1990s.
The News Papers had much more depth to them. However during newspapers popularity there was a much lower literacy rate, so a good portion of the population couldn't fully read them, and just read what they could. So the headlines. Which is much shorter than a Twitter post.
Literacy rates have been rather high for well over a century in the US, particularly for white americans. Literacy in the 1950s was well above 90%. The percentage of the population that couldn't read a newspaper in the US hasn't been over 10% since before 1910.
While it may because of more polarization, but it is also because people are getting exposed to different ideas thus need to make their decisions from more data.
The evidence seems to show people doing exactly the opposite. People are now able to seek out niche news sources that support their already existing world view and disregarding contrary view points regardless of their validity.
The Media liked JFK, so his indiscretions were ignored. The Media didn't like Nixon so he was kicked out of office.
Must be nice to have such a simplistic world view. Nixon getting kicked out of office had a LOT more to it than whether "The Media" liked him or not. Saying something like that is the sort of idiotic sound bite we get from the Rush Limbaughs of the world. Sounds good to people who want it to be true even though it's complete nonsense in reality.
The point of the Slashdot moderation scale is to control the visibility of posts. More highly moderated posts are more highly visible, but you can still see the low-moderated ones if you want. It's not really about measuring your e-peen. For the purpose for which it's intended, a 7-point scale is absolutely fine. Capping negative moderation at -1 means that posts which get "unfairly" moderated down soon after going live can be "rescued" relatively easily.
I've seen sites which use uncapped community-moderation scales (e.g. Eurogamer). My experience with them is that they tend to have a much stronger culture of "+1 means agree, -1 means disagree" with less regard for the quality of the post than you get at Slashdot. They give a bigger incentive to try to tailor your posts to the group-think, by allowing users to aim for "high scores", where posts are moderated +100 or something silly like that.
How many news stories by the supposedly professional news gatherers are festooned with copies of tweets by some random joe? Many stories are 80-90% Twitter comments.
Useless.
Social Media hasn't taken over the News Media, the News Medaia is freely giving itself over to Social Media.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.