Assessment

I'm defiantly not a person who finds interest in the news I find it boring and I'd much rather watching anything else in all honesty, but that's on TV. When it came to doing our summer work we had to note down what news we heard and where we heard it. In my results none of the news stories I heard were off TV, however seeing the news stories which I did hear and where from surprised me.

Most families after a long day of work or school come together at night to enjoy their dinner together and the majority of these families will have the TV playing in the back ground possibly with the news on. I know I used to. However, as my life's changed due to me being at school till six at night some days or I start work at five before my mums even gets home or my brother getting his own house so there's less of us, sitting down having a family meal just doesn't happen anymore. And until now as I've had to address how I find my news, I thought that watching the news at tea time with my family had a large role in the way I found out news. However, as I did my research over the summer it didn't! I imagine yes if I took the time to watch the news I would find out more news much quicker then I possibly do but it wasn't essential.

One of the main media outputs I used to gather my news was by the radio, this surprised me as I was expecting this to be by social media but that was my second way of finding out. I feel like if I had done my research before the summer this would have been the other way around however as I passed my driving test at the beginning of summer I've been listening to the radio in my car therefore hearing the news more. This shows how the change in lifestyle just from walking to school and work to driving has affected my media usage. Whenever listening to the radio news you can’t just listen to the headline you have to just listen to what the presenter is saying whether that’s the headline the main story line or the whole thing. News stories which I heard from the radio such as the next royal baby on the way, and another hurricane in America these stories I can’t imagine that the radio would make up stories like this, and the majority of radios tell the same news so I believe their news is trust worthy. The news stories you mainly heard on the radio are there to make people aware of what’s happening around them it’s not usually gossip or shocking news but to make people of the outer world.

The second most common way of me finding my news was through social media which was expected as I use Facebook and Snap-chat every day. Yes! Sometimes my news feed is full of rubbish or funny videos but when I began my research I started to notice a lot of news does come up on my feed. Through the summer I noticed both news off a news company such as BBC news or SKY news came up frequently or some unknown sites had news popping up in my news feed. News from SKY and BBC I find trust worthy because like BBC they are paid by tax payers meaning they have a duty to tell the world real news. Unlike SKY who could bend the truth to their will because they don’t have a legal duty to tell the truth. With the websites that aren’t well-known or just random things that pop up you can’t really trust them because it could just be gossip or a way to target reputations, such as trying to ruin a person’s reputation by starting a rumor using young, gullible minds. Through the summer I saw news stories on Facebook such as the breakup of Angelina and Brad this could have been false to draw attention to the couple however, it was then confirmed through magazines and the radio. Sometimes the news comes up on my news feed which is shared by my friends on Facebook, which means I wouldn’t have seen it without them sharing it. This is just another way that news found its way to my attention.

Since being back as school we were given the task to download the BBC News app to see if it affects the way we find our news and media usage. The result to this wasn’t surprising to me because I knew that using this app would increase my awareness of the news because as I said at the beginning of this assessment I don’t use my time to watch news. So having this app, which allowed me to select what type of news I was more interested than others. Now with this app I find news out as soon as its reveled to the public and my phone alerts me to these new stories, this makes find out the news easier and faster because it goes straight to my phone and I know its reliable facts as it’s the BBC. However, because I see the headlines I never feel the need to click on them and read into them more, which I feel indicates that even though I have better access to the news and it’s much easier it doesn’t affect the way I feel about news as it doesn’t make me any more interested than before.

Overall, the way I find my news is very modern, rather social media or radio or possibly their new BBC app however this doesn’t affect my point of view on news .However, it does show even if someone like me who finds no interest in the news still somehow is effected by it.

Exam Question - We Media

I don’t watch or read the news on a daily basis and therefore don’t keep up to date with the main news stories at the time. I would say that the main time that I would really read past the headline would be at the weekend in the newspapers that my grandparents have, usually ‘The Derbyshire Times’ or ‘The Daily Mail’, however, the stories that I usually read are not major news stories. I read the articles about crime, celebrities and the many other weird and wonderful articles that appear; this is because this appeals to me and isn’t too heavy and therefore not as depressing or upsetting as some of the other major news stories. These sources of news are, in my opinion, trusted as they’re available to the to the wider public and they don’t have algorithms like the news websites and social media do which means that the news more unbiased and I have access to everything, not just what my interests usually are. Recently I have also downloaded the BBC News app and therefore can access the news that I’m interested in quickly and easily. 

When I downloaded the BBC News app I enabled the ‘My News’ feature which allowed me to filter the news that I see and the main story that repeatedly appeared was centred on music gigs, media and health because this is what interests me; I like to keep up to date with the gigs to know who’s cancelled and what artists are planning. Many of the stories that I found daily were based around the ‘Foo Fighters’ but again, I rarely read past the headline as Foo Fighters are not a band that I am particularly interested in. This app has a feature where I can choose the things that I see through the ‘My News’ feature whereas social media platforms and other websites learn what you like to see using cookies etc. which worries me as computers start to learn what I like and the internet can adapt the search results to suit me. To me, news stories that come to my attention through social media are not always true and I am more cautious of what parts of the story that I believe and trust as fake news gets shared around the internet on a daily basis, like the death of a celebrity who hasn’t been in the spotlight as much as they used to, forcing them to come out of ‘hiding’ to prove that the story is a hoax. Each time a new news story that I may be interested in becomes available on the app, I get a notification on my phone telling me the main headline, this also happen when a breaking news story appears making me more likely to read the whole article. 

Over the summer I followed a couple of major news headlines that I came across on the internet, the headline was what made me want to read, however, they do often have “click-baiting” headlines to exaggerate the story and increase the chance of readers clicking the link, ultimately earning the corporation’s ad revenue. One of the stories that interested me in particular was the death of Sir Bruce Forsyth at the age of 89. I found this article particularly nice to read considering that it was based on a death; it was full of plans that people had to remember Bruce, including the BBC through a dance tribute during the first episode of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ as he was the show’s host for years and was also a dancer himself, and the memories that people had with him that would last forever. This news was something that people wanted to share to make sure that everyone was aware of this tragic loss, many tributes were made to him and others sent their condolences to the family that Bruce had left behind. I trusted that this story wasn’t a hoax like many others before it as it was broadcast on TV news as well as TV programmes, social media pages were making tributes of his ‘best moments’ as well as the established news social media pages, it was the main headline on many newspaper covers and everyone knew about it. 

Another news story that took my interest was from the ‘Washington Post’, it was about the arrest of a nurse at work who refused to draw blood from an unconscious patient without a warrant; I read this article in depth and loosely followed the story as it progressed. The patient was involved in a car accident and so the police wanted to draw blood to make sure that they were investigating every aspect of the crash but the officers were told that to draw blood from someone who was unable to consent at the time, they would need a warrant or formal consent to get it, colleagues told him that they would pursue another strategy. When Nurse Alex Wubbels held her ground based on the hospital’s policy, Payne (one of the officers) dragged her screaming from the hospital in handcuffs and held her in a police car outside of the hospital. This only escalated from here as the district attorney asked the FBI to look into possible civil rights violations. This was a news story that people wanted to spread to show the police brutality in some areas of America; others stories like this have previously been shared through the means of social media and that was the only way to get the victim justice. At first I was wary of whether to trust this story or not as I came across it on Facebook in the form of a video and many fake news stories circulate around social media as people can misinterpret video footage and only get one side of the story, but as the story developed and became more popular, I began to see more and more articles on the story in both internet form and newspaper form which led me to trust both the article and the source.

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

Generally I don't look at the news very often, if at all really. the main way I'll see a headline is if it is shared on social media, or if I'm notified by the news app on my phone.

There are lots of news organisations all over social media which share information straight from there own website through links. This could lead a large audience to enter their website and would then create more income for the company. Social media, such as Facebook, is a growing source for news to be published and read. Lots of people sharing the same article will spread it around the whole of Facebook through friends and their friends. However there are also downsides to this as some pages tend to share clickbait stories which are fake and only there to create controversy. Lots of pages are sharing this type of content lately, such as UniLad or Ladbible, which is why I only ever read into headlines published by big news companies such as the BBC news or Sky news. If they are not from well known news companies then I usually suspect it to be fake or unreliable.

One story which I had seen over the past few weeks was that North Korea had tested ballistic missiles by firing them over japan. This was published by The BBC which are a trusted source for real news and not fake. In the article, it has statements from the president of America, Donald Trump, and from the North Korean ambassador, Han Tae-song, to the UN. This story was widely published along different forms of media which shows its severity and how we should all take notice of it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41078187

For me, I discover the breaking stories from the Iphone news app which notifies me every time a new article is published by the big news companies. I found out about all of the tension in North Korea through this app as it shares all the major headlines from the biggest news companies and displays them in one place. This is one of the main ways in which the younger generations will get their news as they don't watch news programs like the older generations did. More and more people each day are changing to access new news online as it has wider accessibility and can be updates as soon as a key event happens.

There are endless capabilities to how much news will be available to us at our fingertips but will always be fake articles published on forms of social media. On the BBC news app, you can filter the news to just show you the areas you want such as; Sports, Technology, The E.U, Brexit and so on. This filters all of the news that you aren't interested in and makes it more specific to you. This also cancels out all of the 'clickbait' or 'fake news' as this is all published and checked by the BBC who's aims are to 'inform, educate and entertain'. Them wishing to 'inform' us shows that they would need lots of members of the company to constantly be doing research and getting the most in-depth understanding of recent and new events.

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

Reflecting on your research from the summer and from the BBC news app: what have you learned about your own media use and how you access news content?

As somebody who very rarely reads/watches the news through means other than social media. My findings over the summer really demonstrated to me how social media platforms can target the news and viewpoints individuals are interested in and make sure that they only see these types of posts.

Most of what is considered “mainstream news” that I read is from the Daily Mail and the BBC’s Facebook pages. Although I consider both these sources reliable, they do often have “click-baiting” headlines to exaggerate the story and increase the chance of readers clicking the link, ultimately earning the corporation’s ad revenue. The rest of my news intake either comes from posts shared on Facebook or Twitter, videos posted about certain subjects on YouTube or from the android news app Flipboard that gives me a highlights notification daily, however unless I am specifically interested I very rarely read past the headline.

Over the summer holidays I followed the news loosely, my main interests being in the growing tensions between North Korea, America and Japan. I tended to read the entire article on posts about this but ignored the waffle and repetition Daily Mail put in their online articles to try and increase readership times. As the summer developed I became interested in the McGregor – Mayweather fight and began reading the daily rumours and articles on the subject, this lead to some issues of bogus articles claiming the fight was cancelled as one of the fighters had been found to be taking a supplement. However most of these articles were actually just to advertise the supplement by highlighting the “massive gains” and “minimal effort” they required.

While reading my daily news posts, for about a week the top headline I kept receiving was “Big Ben won’t sound for four years!” which suggested to me that there must not be any real news to report if that was the most important story three days running, this demonstrated to me just how much content aggregator’s and author’s algorithms are capable of working out which stories will get their sites the most viewership as after clicking on the app I could see stories that were much more meaningful and important to me, they just weren’t being selected for the apps notification as they weren’t deemed as “read worthy” or appealing to Flipboard’s consumers.

Another issue I have with online news distribution is the reliability of the sources, a lot of the posts I see on my Facebook timeline are either sponsored posts from miniscule news networks I’ve never heard of or from pages such as Lad Bible and UniLad who don’t even bother to cite their sources 90% of the time. Even big name companies such as the BBC, Daily Mail Online and The Guardian use click baiting titles and often questionable article content that often seems like a bent version of the truth. Due to this, I struggle to trust the majority of posts I read online especially with the idea that an algorithm is learning more and more about me to only display me posts I’ll be interested in. The idea of this does cause some concern in my opinion as it seems already there are less and less people with different opinions to me online.

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.

What I have learned about through my own media use and how I access the new content

In these past few weeks especially over the summer, I have taken much more of an interest in the news and the sources in which I gain knowledge in regards to news and current affairs/ happenings all around the world and this is due to reading ‘We Media’ and Democracy.  However, I have always taken an interest in regards to keeping up to date with the latest news.

I have a very active lifestyle and am often on the go which means I very rarely get the chance to sit down at home and watch the news via the TV which is why the development of news apps means I can get the latest news to my iPhone which allows me to stay knowledgable about the happenings within the news yet still maintain my desired lifestyle.  Many of the information I gather in regards to the news is via the BBC news app which I downloaded to my phone.  The BBC is a proffered choice in source of mine as i believe like many others it to be a very trustworthy source and provides me with impartial view points as it is a public service and is funded by license fees.  The impartial views are increasingly important to me especially in regards to politics and Brexit as it will be something which will affect me massively and I will be eligible to vote in the next election or even referendum, so its essential I know the facts from all parties before making such a colossal decision which will be sure to affect my future.  Also in regards to using the BBC news app it means that I am able to choose what type of news information I get alerted about or the relevant articles appear; for example I opted to receive news about: Sports, World, Politics, Brexit and UK current events.

However, I also use some not so trustworthy sources of which I use in order to gain my news and this is via Social Medias following/ liking pages such as The LAD Bible.  This particular page can be very informative yet in a light hearted manner which can sometimes make particular articles a much more enjoyable read and can be less daunting, as one of my main reasons for not reading some of the news is due to the content striking fear into me which can sometimes affect the way i judge/ react to certain situations, so in that respect I believe that sometimes not knowing is the better option.  However The LAD Bible makes the more serious, devastating and fearful news less scary by turning it into a bit of a joke, but, this is not the case all of the time, they still use some very reliable and informative sources in order to relay the information back to us readers.  Despite following the more reliable pages on social media due to the cookies I use and media 3.0 I receive/ see many relevant news articles to my interests or my viewpoints on a particular subject which can then provide me with false information and false articles.  For example an article that appeared on my twitter feed and one that I viewed was quite clearly fake in regards to the information is was providing me with (article: 

http://southendnewsnetwork.com/news/prince-george-sent-home-on-first-day-of-school-for-wearing-wrong-trousers/ )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 very close friends who fall for these sort of things every time! Despite me knowing this article wasn't genuine it still made me share it with my friends as I found it rather humorous, 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.

This idea that we are using more social medias to gather our news instead of what Dan Gillmor calls ‘Big Media’ supports his idea that the development in media is allowing for more perspectives to be heard which in turn makes the media more democratic and representative of the people.  Which explains why there is such a shift in the way we gather our news content through new and more accessible mediums.

As I mentioned earlier I am often out of the house so the programmes that I do want to see often means I have to record them so that I can watch them at a more convenient time where I can sit down and fully engage with the programme, however, this means that during the commercial breaks where news is often talked about I just fast forward straight past them so that I can immediately resume watching my programme, which can result in me missing very important headlines which I later discover at a later date, which isn’t always ideal especially if it is something that will have a direct affect in regards to me.

Overall, I think that its pretty evident that there are multiple ways of gathering the news via the ever expanding media links, granted, some more reliable than others; but each individual has there own proffered method and for people amongst differing generations will be more ‘stuck in there ways’ in regards to how they access the news.  I myself have my preferred methods which works well for me and ties in well with my lifestyle, which is very much so a win win situation for myself, so I intend on sticking to my methods.  Such as using the BBC news app and vaguely relying on information that circulates around social medias as the more news circulates the more people that have the opportunity to change/ twist things in various different ways which can often lead to the retention of false news.

Exam Question

'We Media' and democracy

There is a large variety of different ways people access the news, for example, newspapers, tv, radio, online articles and smart phone applications via social media. The newspaper 'The Sun' is the most popular newspaper, however through some research it is evident that the older generation are buying newspapers and the generation today are interested in technology a lot more, therefore the popular newspapers 'The Guardian' and 'The Daily Mail' can also be viewed online. I access the news mainly through my mobile phone, this is because it is easy access and there is a hypersonic way of disseminating therefore the news travels a lot faster through the technology, however social media sites such as Facebook often display news contents although its not always genuine. Personally I don't watch the news or read a newspaper, however I do look on news articles online on my phone or read articles on social media networks such as Facebook however I do look in to whether its trusted or not.

I also view the news on my phone on the BBC news app, and i have selected topics I am interested in which makes it more engaging when I read through it, for example a few of the topics I have picked are 'mobile phones, children and social network' this refreshes my news feed so I can read the news which I am interested in reading. There is a danger of reading the news online as people always get into the trap where they believe the news content its almost like Chinese whispers but online.

Recently the main headlines on the news are the hurricane in Miami and Florida, North Korea, and Brexit these news events are not the most engaging topics, however it is still important that everyone should know what is happening around the world. The North Korea news event about the bomb, indicates that the bomb could be set off at any time and there could be another war, however no one actually knows the truth on the news as no one has been in contact with North Korea therefore this implies we shouldn't rely on everything we see and read on the internet. I accessed this news from the BBC news app which is on my phone this is easy to access but also because these news events are large, i have seen them on newspaper covers,on the TV and also on social media apps.

The 3rd royal baby is shared information, therefore its found on social media a lot and a lot of people have discussed it around the world.I found this information from the news on TV and the newspaper and heard it on the radio, This makes people feel happy for them and some people decide to name their own children after the name of the royal baby therefore its a popular event.

In my opinion i think that people have started relying too much on the internet rather than newspapers, It is evident of this as I see on my Facebook news feed people sharing news which is not true for example that famous people have died and people start commenting 'RIP' even when its a hoax, is this really acceptable that everyone relies on things such as social media, Facebook,twitter, Instagram? Even the new trending application snap chat has its own cosmopolitan, this has its positives and its negatives as the app is mostly used by the younger generation,therefore it allows the young people to browse the news through the app, however how truthful exactly is the app?  Most people are trapped into believing all of the news and information on the internet is the truth. People are becoming addicted to their smart phones simply because they are easy access and everyone wants them on them all the time because they are a hypersonic way of disseminating and because they are a fashion statement people are not going into shops and buying newspapers, people are relying too much on the internet and social media.