Monday, 18 September 2017

We Media and Democracy - What i've learnt.

We Media and Democracy - What i've learnt -



In all honesty, I already expected what the booklet would be about. With my experience on Facebook mainly and other social media apps, all I see in the comments section of official political pages are hundreds if not thousands of people arguing and fighting with each other, within literally 3 minutes of it being published. Through reading the booklet it really made me reflect on how vicious social media can be, especially when so much conflict stirs. You’ve got the idea of democracy and that people now have much more accessibility to view their opinions over the internet, and although this is what society lets people do, I think that a lot of the time it isn’t necessary. There’s no chance that Susan from Birmingham is going to influence Parliament, because of her views about privatisation. I know that’s an offbeat example but the booklet really made me sum up my opinion on that. Frankly, I don’t agree with democracy, and this is part of the reason why. People truly uneducated in politics shouldn’t have a voice in the way a country should be run, especially when these uneducated votes are in abundance. It should be left to those who have actually spent a lot of time and learnt about politics. That’s my opinion on democracy and that’s fair. News…


In terms of ‘the news’ as a whole, I do read the news. I read it on my phone on the news app that Apple iPhones already have installed. It’s similar to the BBC news app we were told to download as it gives you the ability to choose and cater your own news, so I didn’t bother downloading it as it’s the same concept. Plus, I don’t particularly like the BBC as a news outlet. I think it dominates the TV enough as it is, so I stick to my own preferences. Regardless, some categories I chose a while back were The Daily Mail, Politics, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Music. I chose more but they’re the main ones I use the most. I think the way in which news is made more accessible is liked and so popular is because it can be easily used by my generation. Everything is convenient, and the idea of technological convergence is really prominent in our lives.


I’d say I’ve read the news now for at least 6 months, I decided to take up reading it, for one I’m a media student and I knew it may be beneficial for this year’s course, and I know that personal preferences are available for us to cater. The reason I chose the Daily Mail is because I think it’s reliable. Others may not think the same but we all have preferences, and I believe it’s the must trustworthy outlet of news for my tastes. It’s like it agrees with me, and I agree with it back.


I understand the con of narrowing your news down can feed you biased news and information, but I know that my beliefs would stay the same regardless of what I read, as I’m adamant about what I think about today’s society, and I know that by being ‘more unbiased’ it would reveal to me all the conflict that has risen recently over social media (reference to my first paragraph). It’s not like I feel obliged to narrow my news down, it’s more my personal thoughts on it. It gets irritating and it annoys me!
As for the task of noting down various news stories, I didn’t particularly enjoy doing it, as I aimed to get a very varied sum of news to talk about. Not much of it was news I was interested in, so I didn’t find that useful, but it did make me learn how a lot of news stories get unnoticed. In one case, a couple in Blackpool used to shoot their children with a BB gun if they misbehaved. Child abuse is obviously no laughing matter, but it made me laugh as I saw it, because it’s such a ludicrous headline to see. This is one reason I like Apple news. It gives you stories what wouldn’t usually be seen on TV news, or ‘big news’. It offers news which I now prefer to big news, so that’s one way it’s engaged with me. However, one thing I dislike would be how some stories direct you to news companies I don’t particularly enjoy. For example, I’ve seen The Guardian appear before, when I didn’t want to read from it.

Apple news is one of two sources of news for me. The other would be Facebook. The reason I don’t trust Facebook news is because of the concept in which people share it who are gullible enough to believe it and pass it on to me. Something I do on Facebook which is a bad habit of mine is to hide sponsors and certain pages. Like I’ve mentioned, I don’t purposefully do it to narrow my news, I do it more so because it gets irritating. Fake news is clear to see, its cheap, weak, and makes me cringe. In terms of other news outlet, I don’t listen to the radio as the music is horrendous, I don’t really watch TV anymore, and newspapers can be deemed as outdated for me now.

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Apple news application - Apple news.


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