tech

More than half of online users get news from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter: study

12 Comments

The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.

© (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2016.

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

12 Comments
Login to comment

By the time those articles of 'news' have passed through all of the 'feel good' algorithms, fiddle factors, psychographic profiles, vocabulary simplifiers, paying advertisers influence and other digital enhancements, it is no wonder that people are so badly informed.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

We're doomed.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Let's get the first fallacy out of the way: no one gets their news for free. We may not pay a subscription, but one way or another we all pay- usually in some form of ads. Maybe it's a banner ad, maybe it's a commercial, maybe it's a paid advertisement disguised as a news story, but we're paying with our time, attention, and for online news, bandwidth.

Now for the second fallacy: It may be impossible to get good news for free, but decades of history have shown pretty conclusively that paying for news doesn't necessarily result in quality news. Sloppy writing, shallow investigation, uncritically copying articles from other wire services, and these days even automated news article writing... there's plenty of rubbish to go around even when people do subscribe. Just look at the quality of news in Japan.

I get the feeling that news organizations are trying to shame the public for not giving them money, but frankly news organizations have spent the decades before the Internet took over training their audiences for this exact mindset. Your CNNs, Fox News's, and network news organizations spent decades feeding sensationalist, dumbed-down reporting into people's homes. And lest you think this is only a TV news problem, when was the last time you saw a newspaper company not charge you for an issue because nothing of import happened that day? Even when people paid subscriptions for news, the advertisements were too much of a cash cow to let a day slip by without an issue, so they always invented something to report on.

The news' constant search for more eyeballs to point at their ads has trained the public to tolerate the antics of BuzzFeed et al. They can't then turn around and blame the public when these new Internet companies play the game better than the crusty old news organizations who got fat making the game in the first place. Give us consistently quality news, and I'm sure you'll find someone willing to pay for it.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Unfortunately, mainstream media in the United States has NO professional journalists. They are all, "spokespersons", commentators and "talking heads".

It's a tossup as to whether the, so-called, "News" or online information is most truthful and informative. For example, the Press and The News is "supposed" to be the link between the "event" and The People -. but if you live HERE you can see the glaring inconsistencies and disconnects between these two pillars. NO coverage of a certain popular and major Presidential candidate because the media is owned by six corporations who are more interested in prolonging their subversion of fact in order to keep the corporate status quo than in reporting the truth and informing the populace. So, we seek information online as well?? Go figure !!!!

2 ( +3 / -1 )

The only people who think this is news are the people who did not see it coming. The only people who did not see this coming are people who have not been paying attention to what has been happening to journalism.

Journalists don't think this is news. They have seen it coming for two decades. Misinformed people think this is news.

Followed all that? Then let me end with saying that "the medium is the message." And "it is later than you think."

To paraphrase George Carlin, think of the average intelligence of a Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube user. Half of them are dumber than that. Why would we expect EVEN THOSE people to actually seek their own news sources?

2 ( +2 / -0 )

More than half of online users get news from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter: study

More than half of online visitors are stupid, and getting more so by the day.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

That explains the misinformed.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

No wonder the world is misinformed

0 ( +3 / -3 )

“These things are happening because of us,”

Yep.

The day people had their say on what 'should' make the news or even what news they wanted to fed with was the beginning of the end. Now we are just spiralling down.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The world is turning head over heels, and my grandparents are spinning in their graves. Of course that's what they said as my generation was maturing... What's so different between social media and tabloids?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I'm not exactly sure what this article is saying. "Getting your news from Facebook" is sort of misleading. People share stuff they think is interesting on their Facebook page. It's really just a big virtual water cooler to socialize around. The news itself is usually just short summaries with links to the source material. Facebook isn't writing the news. Facebook users aren't writing the news. They're just choosing what to pay attention to. I don't think that much has changed, except that Facebook skims the ad revenue.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Social media and tabloids are the same. If someone is getting their news from twitter, then they must twitch and jerk a lot pondering what the end of every sentence might be.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites