Week Five

The topic of fake news is a very timely one and a very interesting one to delve into. Most that use the term are more likely describing news items that they do not like or reports that show them in a negative way. This is not fake news. Something else that has become popular is propaganda. It also used to be called yellow journalism. It is usually more concerned with grabbing attention than having much content or with any kind of real research. It is bad journalism and it is considered unethical by most that call themselves journalists.

Another interesting topic is what shows up on our social media feeds and how it gets there. Facebook has been under a lot of scrutiny for the algorithms they use. Other sites are guilty of the kind of personalization that they think users want. As Eli Pariser points out in his TED talk Beware the filter bubbles, “this moves us very quickly toward a world in which the Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see.” We may be uncomfortable seeing posts about gun control or the most recent mass shooting but we all need to have these kinds of discussions if anything is going to change. Change is never comfortable, it is never easy. The comparison Eli makes to eating is awesome “instead of a balanced information diet, you can end up surrounded by information junk food.” We don’t always want to make those healthy choices, but we need to. It is the same thing with the content we are seeing on our news feeds and in our Google searches.