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Social media apps. — © AFP
There’s been a steady stream of surveys and observations in the last year or so indicating people are actively avoiding the news. Avoidance is often according to specific subjects. This is an undisputed global trend.
The “information revolution” has turned into a revolution against information. Reasons for avoidance are many and understandable. The news is often depressing, infuriating, and extremely negative.
One problem is that it’s such a huge quantity of unrelieved negative news. Social media aggravates it severely, an associated smell with the news. Social media and news are now seen as effectively the same thing. Somebody obviously thinks that constant doom sells. Apparently good or even interesting news is at most a grudging optional extra.
Polarization definitely doesn’t help. Politics paints hysterical pictures and calls it news. It creates heroes and villains at kid-stuff level. A source of information that polarizes also antagonizes. It’s a major disincentive. In its most extreme form, it’s also intolerant of other views, adding genuine anger and resentment to a blatant mix of selective information.
This “implied information” tends to fragment into smaller subjects and bits and pieces. These sub-subjects then take up more space in the news at the expense of all else. Other subjects are then plugged into the narrative.
Put it this way – If the news was “the cat sat on the mat”, you’d be lucky to find out there was ever a cat or a mat in the deluge of instant digressions. Schrödinger would never have got a word in.
Add to this that news media pitches at very low levels. I saw a FOX stream where that picture of Joe Biden tripping was repeated at least 3 times in 10 minutes. It’s infant-level propaganda. This is simply not news in any sense of the word.
It’s also not the Fourth Estate or the Fifth Estate, the theoretical roles of information in society. It’s just marketing, and lousy marketing at that. The beat-ups in property prices and financial markets are almost identical.
What’s the point of news? The theory is that the public is informed and can act on reliable information. Someone can be held accountable and something can be done. That just doesn’t happen anymore if it ever did since Watergate.
This message to the media has either not been received or understood. The news media has also demoted itself to a groveling servant of political and corporate interests, undermining its already very dubious credibility.
…And nobody’s watching. A survey of Australian news avoidance was pretty indicative of the many turn-offs in news. Agree with the survey participants or not, it’s an unequivocal picture of highly selective rejection of news.
In basic market research, you’d call a figure of 60% plus a major rejection of any product. It’s a marketing disaster like few others. You’d then have to look at reasons for rejection, like the perception of opposing or hostile agendas, bias, one-sided coverage, etc. This leads back to policies and management. In news terms, it’s the antithesis of basic journalism. It’s also that obviously the antithesis of news people will look at.
The news has made itself useless and in so many cases actively despised.
So, poppets, any theories?
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