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

Over the summer and the last few weeks, I’ve looked closely at the news after reading 'We Media' and Democracy. However, I’ve always been interested in keeping up to date with the news.

I access news easily from the News IPhone app which offers news from different news provides. I trust this app as it always seems to show official news which is accurate. For me, it mostly comes up with BBC news as that’s what I’ve favoured on the app. Receiving the news on an app is handy as you can pin it to the lock screen, meaning you can see the headlines straight away, which means I can see if I’m interested or not in that particular article.

Another way is from Facebook and Twitter. I think this way is one of the most common ways of finding out news for younger people as it’s a social media so you don’t realise that it actually gives you news. However, this comes with a danger on social media as there are always fake news articles which you must watch out for. For example, I viewed an article: http://southendnewsnetwork.com/news/prince-george-sent-home-on-first-day-of-school-for-wearing-wrong-trousers/ the other day and it was obvious it was fake. It was more humorous than truthful due to quotations they used to exaggerate the article. They often use provocative headlines as clickbait in order to reach their existing and new audiences. In my opinion I think this works on a lot of people, especially my mum who falls in this trap all the time! This article also made me share it with my friends as I found it funny, showing that the clickbait does work. This makes me wary of news articles which are on social media as they aren’t trusted compared to news providers such as the BBC.

I also receive news from the Television as in the morning, my family has it on and at night they do. This gives me a brief overview of what is happening.

The BBC is more trusted as they are publicly funded. This means the BBC tries to not be biased and show everyone’s different opinions in the news. This is shown when there is something political going on – they don’t favour a particular party. I downloaded the BBC News App and turned on my preferred news. I noticed that I'm interested in big events such as, Hurricane Irma, Brexit, Hurricane Harvey floods and North Korea. This is because, although they are quite negative subjects, which put people off of news, I think it’s still important to be informed about events like these.

For example, the natural disasters can help bring awareness to people who need help. This is also shown by people making YouTube videos about their own experiences in the recent events. This brings their usual audience (who may just watch them for entertainment) to realise what is happening. This gives normal people (Youtubers) the power to control news given to us. This means they can control the amount they share, which could make you optimistic about the information given.

Also, Brexit is something the nation voted for, so we need to be aware of the process and how it will affect us.

Furthermore, due to me doing history, I know that North Korea has an important role in today as they could start a war any moment. However, due to no one actually really having contact with North Korea, we can’t trust these sources and we should doubt the articles.  If not, we would accept a lot of what we are told by our TV stations, websites and newspapers, this is Hall’s ‘Reception Theory’ – dominant reading.  The BBC News app has a ‘Top Stories’ section which allows other news articles to be shown which I haven’t chosen. For example, the headline ‘Murray: Tennis women makes same sacrifices as men’ is shown. This headline would never catch my attention as I’m not interested in sports. In this section, it also shows things I’ve chosen, even though I’m not on ‘My News’.

As our internet learns about us through things we search and like, we begin to be surrounded by advertisements and posts which apply to us. For example, on my Facebook, promoted posts on clothing brands always come up. This is because of me look at clothing sites. This shows how your own internet can show you certain things, but maybe miss out others.

Overall, I think I always try to stick to my own way when accessing news. I prefer the BBC and my IPhone News App as it’s more reliable compared to news which is shared on Facebook. This is because news which circulates around social media networks are trying to gain views, whereas the BBC are funded to share news to inform us accurately.