Today, the internet and social media platforms have greatly expanded the scope and reach of communication within society. However, as Visual Capitalist's Nick Routley and Carmen Ang detail below, these positive impacts are sometimes overshadowed by harmful practices and negative externalities occurring in the media ecosystem.
Explicit Bias vs. Implicit Bias
- Broadly speaking, bias in media breaks down into two types: explicit and implicit
- Publishers with explicit biases will overtly dictate the types of stories that are covered in their publications and control the framing of those stories
- Unintentional filtering or skewing of information is referred to as implicit bias
Misinformation vs. Disinformation
- Misinformation: imply that information being shared is not factually sound
- Disinformation: intentionally created to deceive people
- Fake news stories, and concepts like deepfakes, fall under this category
- The key difference is that misinformation is unintentional and disinformation is deliberately created
Simplify, Simplify
- Through social media, stories are shared widely by many participants, and the most compelling framing wins out
- This process strips context away from an idea, potentially warping its meaning
- Video clips shared on social platforms are a prime example of context stripping
- They unintentionally encourage viewers to stereotype the persons in the video and bring our own preconceived ideas to the table
The News Media Squeeze
- Newsrooms are operating with much smaller teams and budgets, and one result is 'churnalism'.
- Churnalism not only replaces more rigorous forms of reporting-but also acts as an avenue for advertising and propaganda that is harder to distinguish from the news
- High-quality content is increasingly being hidden behind paywalls.
- The average age of today's paid news subscriber is 50 years old, raising questions about the future of the subscription business model.
How Can We Fix the Problems with Media?
- The first step is identifying these issues, and talking about them.
- The more media literate we collectively become, the better equipped we will be to reform these broken systems.
- We must push for accuracy and transparency in the communication channels that bind society together.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/33-problems-media-one-chart
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