Sean Mooney 1,983 Posted November 19, 2024 Pew Research Center came out with the results of a poll today about where 18-29 year olds get their news. The results are probably not surprising. https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/media/news-influencers-social-media-conservative-study/index.html *EDIT* Here is the actual study where they define "news influencers" and everything Highlights: - 40% of that age group get their news from "news influencers" - Of that 40%, 65% said getting their news this way helped shape their understanding of current events and civic issues - News influencers are more conservative with 27% to left leaning 21%. On Facebook it is 39%-13% in favor of right wing news influencers. On Instagram it is 30-25%. - 77% of social media news influencers have no past or present affiliation with a news organization. Ones that did were found less likely to have a political lean but when they linked news stories they were likely to post from right wing news sources. - 63% of news influencers were men. 30% identify as women. (I guess the last 7% are unicorns or something). - Tik Tok is the only social media site where they found liberals outnumbers conservatives. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Make of this what you will but for me there are some issues with this all. Firstly, news organizations have editorial and standards policies. They work to get news stories correct (regardless of what side of the political aisle you are on) and will issue retractions and mea culpas when it turns out they reported something incorrectly. For news influencers they don't have that. They are less likely to backtrack on something and instead will double down onto it or just outright ignore it. However, at that point the story is the story and people won't second see the reality. Additionally- the news influencers blend fact with opinion. Too often when people discuss media bias they focus on left vs right and ignore that a place can be left or right yet be factually accurate. But for influencers they take small snippets of things and craft together carefully edited think pieces that spin lies and then make them easily consumable to people on the go. 30 seconds doesn't allow you to go in depth on something. So what we get are not just people potentially getting incorrect news, they may also be shaping opinions of their own based off the manipulation of someone putting out that incorrect news. And from there it becomes more and more pronounced. And the real problem here is- since so much of this seems to be coming from the right- the way to fight back against it will be more and more people on the left elevating their own edited commentaries as fact into the political spectrum. And then the pushback will be more people from the right doing it. And so on and so forth. So we will have people all across the country pulling their political ideologies from other people's ideologies more and more in a vacuum from the rest of the world AND not necessarily rooted in the reality of the situation. Essentially we will have matching echo chambers over running political discourse even more than we already have. You think it's crazy now- give it 10-15 more years like this. 1 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
seafoam1 3,031 Posted November 19, 2024 It's not "news" they are getting. Dumb to call it as such. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Strike 5,553 Posted November 19, 2024 Wow, so off base. How about people find sources they consider credible, and use multiple sources along with critical thinking skills to form informed opinions on their own. The weakest link is the indoctrination being done in our primary school system and the lack of critical thinking skills being taught. We're dumbing down the country one generation at a time. Hopefully home schooling and school choice can stem that tide. 1 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sean Mooney 1,983 Posted November 19, 2024 On 11/19/2024 at 1:58 PM, Strike said: Wow, so off base. How about people find sources they consider credible, and use multiple sources along with critical thinking skills to form informed opinions on their own. The weakest link is the indoctrination being done in our primary school system and the lack of critical thinking skills being taught. We're dumbing down the country one generation at a time. Hopefully home schooling and school choice can stem that tide. Man you could not have missed the point anymore even if you tried to. Also, what critical thinking skills go into "Hey I like this person on X. I'm going to like their posts and click play." Lastly, your second sentence proves my point. People aren't going to using multiple sources or critical thinking skills. They are finding things that reinforce what they want to believe already. Social media creates algorithms for what we should watch based on our own curation. You aren't getting the opposing point of view. This isn't like days of old where you grabbed a local newspaper, or a national newspaper like The Los Angeles Times or New York Times, or hell the USA Today and read all the stories over a cup of coffee or while taking a dump. Social media news is like if I got the paper one day and only read the sports section. The next day the paper came and it was all sports. In that paper I just read NFL news and the next day the paper was just NFL sports news. Like this should worry people. Home schooling and school choice isn't going to stem that. In fact, it has little to nothing to do with it. And the other reason it should worry people is what I said- if one side does it, the other side will as well. And then it will be a battle to flood the market with as much one-sided content as possible. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
seafoam1 3,031 Posted November 19, 2024 Liberal 20 year olds are as stupid as their liberal parents? Shocking. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
