Smartphones and the News by Andrew Duffy

Author:Andrew Duffy [Duffy, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Nonfiction, Computers, Internet & Social Media, Language Arts & Disciplines, Journalism, Social Science, Media Studies
ISBN: 9781000091076
Google: FrnjDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-05-11T03:50:38+00:00

Minority reports

Once again, this chapter ends with a counterbalancing perspective. First, as most people will observe from their own experience, news does not dominate social media. Following a study comparing the role of social media in news consumption across eight countries, Nielsen and Schrøder (2014) found that only a few respondents shared news through social media, a conclusion that was also reached by Costera Meijer and Groot Kormelink (2014) who found that people were worried about what their friends might think, which reduced their intentions to share news.

Second, and perhaps as a result of the frugal news diet on social media, the early enthusiasm that the online sphere would contribute to deliberative democracy has died down, to be replaced by the more pessimistic observations that “instead, social media is being used to serve specific interests, spread propaganda, and misinformation” (Nee, 2019, p. 172).

And third, despite the variety, and the lack of cost of these stories so freely shared, not everyone is pleased to find news on their social media feed. One study found resistance, concluding that:

news access through Facebook … SNS, may be causing undesirable consequences – overloading its users. Perhaps, Facebook users do not expect to or want to encounter news when interacting with friends on the platform. In other words, news might only get in the way when delivered through Facebook.

(Holton & Chyi, 2012, p. 622)

In another study (Fletcher & Nielsen, 2019, p. 1757), one interviewee grumbled: “We don’t look for news on Facebook. They throw it at us.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.