By Alyssa Ramarge

Could you imagine receiving the latest news, sports updates or major events days after they happen?

The months of May and June would have been a lot quieter across the country. Violence was widespread after George Floyd died while being detained by white policeman in Minneapolis. To say the protests sparked a peaceful rage across the country would be an understatement. Hearing about this outrage took minutes from a single post and a single share to spread throughout the country.

News used to travel across the country through rumors, “grapevines” or not until the news was broadcast on the television during certain hours. Sending and receiving mail took days, weeks or months. When missing the nightly news, a person’s opportunity to hear about it was lost until the next morning or night.

The way that several individuals hear about the news is not typically through the news on television or even posts on popular news websites.  A person may hear about a current event and post about it on a social media platform such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and even one of the newest social media platforms, Tik Tok.  News spreads quicker to individuals through those platforms than it does on actual news websites or on television channels. 

Now, more than ever, fake news is inevitable.  Not everything you may see or hear on social media is always true.  These advancements in technology make it quick and easy to create false news and rumors, making them look incredibly realistic.  A Pew Research Center article states that around 57% of the population believes that news portrayed through social media is very inaccurate (Shearer & Matsa, 2018). It is easy for one to be easily fooled by news spread through modern technology.

Sometime really sit down and take a look at how different your life could have been without news at your fingertips or communicating with an individual every second through a handheld and touchscreen device. It may really make you take a look at how fortunate, or unfortunate, these devices alter our everyday lifestyles.

Alyssa Ramarge is a student in a Media and Democracy class at St. Bonaventure University.

References

Shearer, E. (2018). Social media outpaces print newspapers in the U.S. as a news source. Retrieved 9 March 2021, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/10/social-media-outpaces-print-newspapers-in-the-u-s-as-a-news-source/

Shearer, E., & Matsa, K. (2018). News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2018. Retrieved 9 March 2021, from https://www.journalism.org/2018/09/10/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2018/

Categories: Jandoli Institute, Media