[Essay] – “Breaking” News: Democracy

Social media and digital platforms are technologies of the 21st century that allows for the instant flow of information from one end to another. It allows for people to connect with each other and be connected to information, as various types of content are enabled by these technologies we have today. One of the content types is news. Newspaper to radio to television broadcasts, and now, social media can be a source of news as well. In this blog post essay for Publishing 101, I will be exploring the ways in which the general public access their news and how social media allows them to be able to make an informed decision to participate in the democratic processes. This essay will briefly explore how the general public obtains information and news through digital platforms and what are those implications. 

To begin with an anecdote, I seldom seek out news myself. Often, it comes from what pops up on my search feed, recommendations and friends. If a certain trending topic/news is floating around for a while, I will likely hear about it through these channels. While I am not an active reader or seeker for news, I like to stay informed. My usual experience is with local or national news that could have an impact on my life in the immediate future. Thus, giving space to read news that I do not read often is important as well.

A question from this anecdote leads to a two-wave panel survey, where the “News Finds Me” perception occurs. The perception is where people do not actively seek news, but news finds them. The study investigates the structural influences that causes of this perception. One of the findings is the frequent (daily) social media use that forms the News Finds Me perception (Strauß, Huber & Gil de Zúñiga, 2021). The frequency of social media use is critical to reflect upon as it reveals the habits that people engage with social media. Whether they open social media to find news or they feel the perception that news finds them, both different approaches to news that changes the way they perceive their participation in the democratic process. One possibility that will not be explored in this post is the algorithms to push different ideologies based on user input data and other external factors. However, in this article’s introduction, they bring up that news exposure has two camps where it does or does not equate to any gains in political facts. This is a question that my next text discusses. 

In an article written by Prior in 2005, there are findings that although there may be greater chances of political information exposure, it does not correlate for a greater increase in political knowledge. This is an aspect I would like to discuss further because the users are the ones that act and vote in the democratic process. Their results also indicate what people choose as their media content has an influence on overall knowledge and turnout/voting rates. Recognizing that this paper is from 2005, it sheds light upon how social media may have an effect on political knowledge. Cross-checking a more recent study by Lee and Xenos in 2019, their findings about political knowledge and social media use also comes to a similar conclusion. Instead, misinformation and disinformation on social media causes further confusion, thus people do eliminate the factual political information. Lee and Xenos state in their findings that “Facebook may distract its users from learning politics.” This is an important point because the basis of social media contains primarily entertainment content. The digital platform is fighting for your attention and the advertisers on the platform are also as well. Prior’s study discusses how the user’s choice to watch entertainment or politics can determine how much they learn. Overall, unless someone is on social media to actively look for political news and gain information, the incidental exposure has little effect. 

There are some caveats to my previous findings. A study conducted by Schulz, Fletcher & Nielsen in a peer reviewed article in 2022 found that those with higher knowledge levels of how the news is made are positively associated with using social media as a news source, but only when it is not their only news source. Essentially, those who are well informed will use social media as part of their information gathering point will “combine it with other sources of information.” To briefly point out lenses that this study looks through, the study mainly focuses on five Western countries. The limitation of this would be this understanding and conclusion to apply in other scenarios like other countries. That said, it can provide valuable insight as to how certain groups of people approach news in the context of today. 

My final concluding point is that it may be tempting to consider social media, digital technologies and platforms as democratic spaces for the public to engage in. However, this is only looking at it from one specific framing in my discussion. I would invite you to look at it from a globalization perspective. For example, according to Jin (2019) the “free flow of information” is a concept with “direct government support by the U.S. State Department [to] expand” U.S. platforms around the world (p. 69). Search engines like Google and media industries like Hollywood work with the public sector to push for foreign policies that benefit the American ideologies like capitalism, democracy and the free market. While this post discusses the role that social media plays from an internal perspective, there are various facets of approaches and framing to consider as well. 

References:

• Jin, D. Y. (2019). Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age. Taylor & Francis Group.
• Lee, S., & Xenos, M. (2019). Social distraction? Social media use and political knowledge in two U.S. Presidential elections. Computers in Human Behavior, 90, 18–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.08.006
• Prior, M. (2005). News vs. entertainment: How increasing media choice widens gaps in political knowledge and turnout. American Journal of Political Science, 49(3), 577–592. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2005.00143.x
• Schulz, A., Fletcher, R., & Nielsen, R. K. (2022). The role of news media knowledge for how people use social media for news in five countries. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221108957 
• Strauß, N., Huber, B., & Gil de Zúñiga, H. (2021). Structural influences on the news finds me perception: Why people believe they don’t have to actively seek news anymore. Social Media + Society, 7(2), 205630512110249. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211024966