What have you learned about your media use and how you access news content?

I have learnt that I tend to read a variety of news stories and I usually access them either online or by watching a news story on TV. I tend to read news articles on the BBC news app, watching the BBC news bulletin, articles written by The Times, The Guardian or that are on the Sky News channel. The types of news articles I read about are usually to do with entertainment, politics, world news or local news.

One news story that I saw over the summer was about North Korea and the missile tests. I saw this story on Sky News and saw it was being updated regularly which led me to believe that it was mostly accurate because they were bringing in new information as it came in rather than waiting and only giving certain information. The story spoke about how North Korea was threatening to send a missile to Guam which is linking to the US which meant Donald Trump was getting involved causing controversy. This story was widely reported on across various media platforms including the BBC channel, Channel 4 news, in online newspapers and was also discussed on various panel based satirical shows.

Another story I read over the summer was about the Barcelona terror attack. I first heard about this attack on the radio whilst I was in the car and when I got home I looked it up on the BBC News app where it was under breaking news and was being regularly updated as more information about the location of the attack, who was involved and how many people had been injured came in. I believe that the BBC is a trustworthy source of information because the BBC is funded by the taxpayer meaning it must give accurate and unbiased information. I chose to use the app to find the information on the attack because I find that the app is simple to use, is regularly updated and convenient as having an app for the news is simpler than having to search a website for a news story.

Using the BBC news app’s ‘My News’ feature, one of the topics I chose to have filtered for me is UK politics. From reading the stories that the app suggests for me I believe there is an equal amount about both the labour party and about the conservatives showing them both in positive and negative lights though majority of the stories in the news at the moment to do with politics are negative. Personally, if the headline interests me I will go onto read the whole story because I want to know more. However, if the headline doesn’t interest me or if the headline is explanatory about what the article will be about I might scroll past.

I watch the news every morning before I go to school. I watch BBC Breakfast because there is a section on local news. I watch this with my family so the stories that appear during the broadcast I normally discuss with them. I personally do not have social media sites such as Facebook where people are sharing news stories with their friends. Because of this I don’t share the news stories I read with other people the way a lot of other people my age would. Instead I choose to discuss news stories with people in person because I believe that online, through a comments section for example, people can express their opinions and people take what they’ve said the wrong way, they can be offensive or they could completely misread what the article is saying and make a comment without even really knowing what they’re talking about.

I use the Apple News app more often than I use the BBC news app purely because it offers a range of online newspapers including the BBC. I like using the Apple News app because through Cookies it learns the kind of articles I would be interested in reading and suggests articles for me on TV shows it's learnt that I watch and on other things I may be interested in such as politics, media and technology. Through this app I then choose which online news articles I want to read based on who they are and what they’re talking about. For example, I would read an article on Brexit if it was written by the BBC but I wouldn’t really read one written by the Sun because I believe it to be less reliable and more about just getting people to read the article. Also I might avoid reading a political article written by Sky News because of the idea that it might be biased because of the political opinions of the owner Rupert Murdoch.