4 New Media as New Crisis

With the development of technology and media, media has been an inevitable element in our everyday lives. Especially during the special period of COVID-19, media becomes our everyday lives. We need media to get access to news, to chat with our friends, and also to attend our school classes for distance learning. However, each coin has two sides, while new media brings inestimable social and informative convenience to the society, it also brings new crisis to the public, specifically in term of junk news and fake news.

Media as Helpful Technology

It is no doubts that new media has changed our lives. First it brings informative convenience to our lives since we could learn the news of what is happening around the world while sitting in our sofa. And when facing something that we lack knowledge about, we could simply go on our phone and google it, compare to years ago people have to read through books or ask someone who have the knowledge. Secondly, media brings social convenience to people. Nowadays, especially during the period of COVID-19, social lives becomes virtually. To be specific, people could chat with friends through media app such as Facebook. Even more, people could play games and enjoy movies together with friends virtually through media app such as Parsec. Thirdly, media offers a platform for general public to speak out and show themselves. The popularization of app such as TikTok offers an opportunity for normal people to showoff their talents in different field such as video editing as well as their personality. Not only this gives general public an opportunity to flourish, but also offers a chance for the public to learn how lives like of people from different culture and different social background, which helps to create social diversity. However, at the same time, the flourishment of new media also creates new crisis to the public.

Junk Information

First of all, the media workers tend to write to attract viewers, instead of writing what are newsworthy. According to “The Media’s Obession with Gretha Thunberg Is a Problem” written by Herzog, which basically critics about how most media workers only write the story of the little teenage girl Greta Thunberg to attract more viewings and discussions, rather than writing about what people really need to pay attention on, which is the issues of climate change (Herzog). That is a reasonable phenomenon. Reading news such as how serious the climate changing is and we should take steps to save it is really stressful and give a sense of “hopeless”. Nowadays, people got back from school or work with tiredness, they don’t want to see articles teaching them how to behave correctly, just as what their teachers or superiors ask them to do. Instead, they would prefer to go through articles talking about a heroic story of girl saving the planet. They would laugh rather than learn. As a result, in order to survive and profit, newspaper companies and platforms tend to write to attract viewers. According to James Robinson from Columbia Journalism School, “as early as 2006, researchers had noticed that “journalists have begun to see the audience as a critical lifeline for their economic survival and public legitimacy” (Robinson). And in the book No Longer Newsworthy, Martin also mentions that readership is the most important thing that nowadays media want to focus on in order to survive and profit. Therefore, they need to write to attract more and more audiences with “effective buying power” (Martin). In the era of new media, audiences is an equivalence to economic benefits. As a results, in order to survive and flourish, companies need to alter their focus from newsworthy topics to topics that may attract more viewings and discussions. The “title party” is generated under the tendency, especially in online platforms. “Title Party” refers to the group of people use exaggerated title to attract viewing, or even clicking. For instance, titles such as “a secret that newly discovered in 2020 about human body that 99% people don’t know”. And there’s no secret introduced in the article, instead, is just a company advertisement. We are in the era of technology and media, the most often used way to learn about news around the world is through media. As a result there are more active users and viewing rates online than offline, which lead to more “junk news” popping up, and few newsworthy news coming up. During the era of information and technology, in which every one could have access to tons of information, the quality of information is way more important than the amount. Even experts says that the media and technology brings convenience for people to search for information, I would argue that the tons of junk news and articles is really wasting people’s time in searching, and made life even more inconvenience.

However, some may argue that people are already stuck in stress from school and work places, they need some “boring” news and non-sense articles to spice up their lives, and to take them out from the great stress. True, but as news reporters and news journalists, it is their jobs to publish the truth and newsworthy events. It is entertainment reporters’ job to finish this type of jobs. Some people love to read boring things to kill time and release stress, but definitely there are people in the world want to see the newsworthy news about what’s going on around the world. People have different demands, that’s why there are such diversity jobs. Some are writing about things to release stress, while others are writing about things that need people to pay attention and take actions.

Fake News

Besides getting junk information, the information that people got from online might not always be true. As mentioned, since media is kind of the only way we could consume information, the media is also blocking the information, which means that people don’t really have a way to double check the reliability and credibility of the news they saw online besides going back online. The blocking in information made the fake news “flourish” in nowadays society. I have a personal example of it. I am now running my own media page specifically about equestrian in China. It is pretty influential in equestrian industry, especially about western cowboy style of riding. In 2018, a girl went to a barrel race in Brazil. It was called “barrel racing world cup”, but in fact it was only a local competition. The girl got the fastest time for one day out of six days. She didn’t get the champion because her overall score was low. But when she came back, the equestrian organization that she belonged to crowned her as “world champion”, and “first world champion in Asia”. The organization is a small one with only about 50 people in active. In order to seek for more members, they asked me to write an article about her “world champion” story. Even I belonged to the same organization as she does, I refused to write about the “world champion”, instead, I mentioned in my article that she got the fastest time for a single go-run. The organization seemed not that happy with my behavior, and treated me differently from then. Since it was only a small competition in Brazil, if I published the news of the girl winning “world champion”, viewers in China would just simply believe it without doubting, or, if they doubted at it, there’s no other ways to double check the reliability of the news besides searching for the news online in Chinese. However, all the news articles that published in China would be what the organization asked reporters to write about, which is that she is the “world champion”. From then, the fake news of “world champion” would just flourish. As mentioned, the organization is relative a small one, and it seeks for relative small amount and non-rushing benefits. However, what if it is a huge company, who really need some money or popularity to save themselves from dying? I would argue that the fake news would grow in a unbelievable way. According to Ordway, researches suggests that 23 percent of U.S. adults shared fake news, knowingly or unknowingly, with friends and others (Ordway). By sharing, more and more people could see the fake news, and then believe and spread it without even doubting at it, and that may creates the phenomena of fake news occupying the society and may cause social panic.

Misleading Information

Besides fake news, fake information and misleading is also a big part of negative effecting of media in everyday lives. Live broadcast industry would be an great example, which is an industry that came out recently generated by media and technology. In the live broadcasting industry, people are not being their true selves, instead, they are being who the audiences what them to be, a successful business man, or a young, sexy lady. An example would be a famous Chinese vlogger, known as a young “cute goddess” unmasking herself during a live stream, and showed up as a 58-year-old women (Butter). Faking faces would be only the tip of the iceberg. Live streamer are faking their faces, their identities, their family background and so on in order to attract followers and money. Even more seriously, some people blindly follow some ridiculous challenges or tips on Tik Tok to attract followers. For instance, a 15-year-old girl reportedly died after doing ‘Benadryl Challenge’ that popped up recently on Tik Tok. Some people, especially teenagers do not have the ability to recognize what can and cannot do. As in the “Benadryl Challenge” case, the teenage girl does not know that the famous challenge that people around her are doing is actually harmful for health. She got the fake information and misleading of that consuming excessive amount of benadryl is harmless, therefore, she tried it. Fake information and misleading takes away her life!

However

However, there’s another voice. Some people would say that fake news and information is actually in oneself. People should take responsible for themselves, they need to have the ability to judge whether to believe it or not. However, as mentioned, some teenage and elders really do not have the ability and consciousness to judge the information. Lying and report fake news is not a correct thing. How could we blame the one who believe the information online rather than blame the person who created the fake information. However, have to mention that people who believe in the fake news may go online and double check the information they used to doubt at, however, the fake news is flourishing the website, which makes them believe that the fake news is true and eliminate their doubts at it. We really should cut the fake news from its origins, instead of asking everyone to pay attention to the information they get even though they should do.

Conclusion

Even with the development of media and technology, people could live more convenience life, and have more access to all types of information, we still need to pay attention to the negative effects that media has brought to us, which are the overwhelming in information especially junk information, and the popularizing of fake news and misleading information in our everyday lives. The only thing that we could do to prevent to to be spectacle about things we read, always do some more researches in important cases, and do not spread the information before confirming it.

Works Cited

Butter, Gavin. “Fans Could Sue Over that ‘Young’ Vlogger who Turned out to be a 58-year -old Woman,” Vice, August 6, 2019. https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kx8yb/fans-could-sue-young-chinese-vlogger-58-year-old-woman-livestream. Accessed July 12, 2021.

Curley, Bob. “ ‘Benadryl Challenge’ on Tik Tok is Dangerous, Experts Say,” Healthline, September 24, 2020. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/benadryl-challenge-on-tiktok-is-dangerous-experts-say#:~:text=In%20August%2C%20a%2015-year-old%20reportedly%20died%20after%20doing,Chloe%20Marie%20Phillips%20of%20Blanchard%2C%20Oklahoma%2C%20blamed%20. Accessed July 12, 2021.

Herzog, Katie. “The Media’s Obsession with Greta Thunberg Is a Problem.” The Stranger, September 26, 2019. https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/09/26/41507644/the-medias-obsession-with-greta-thunberg-is-a-problem. Accessed July 12, 2021.

Martin, Christopher R. No Longer Newsworthy. Cornell University Press, 2019.

Ordway, Denise-Marie. “Fake News and the Spread of Misinformation: A Research Roudnup”, Journalist’s Resource, September 1, 2017. https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/internet/fake-news-conspiracy-theories-journalism-research/. Accessed July 12, 2021.

People’s Republic of Desire. Directed by Hao Wu, Torch Films, 2018.

Robinson, James.“The Audience in the Mind’s Eye: How Journalists Imagine Their Readers.” Academic Commons, 1 Jan. 1970, academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/d8-drvj-wj06. Accessed July 12, 2021.

Warnock, Caroline. “YouTuber Kills Pregnant Girlfriend on Live Stream After Abusing Her: Police.” Heavy.com, 4 Dec. 2020, heavy.com/news/stas-reeflay-valentina-grigoryeva-youtube/. Accessed July 12, 2021.