The Age of [Dis]Information
Roozbeh Bozorgmanesh
PR Marketing Specialist at American Income Life Insurance Company
Before the midst of 2000s, where the social media blossomed or "revolution", we used to trust our local newspapers and TV programs. Only those who believed in conspiracy theory were avoiding the mainstream media, which made them look like fools to the main body of people listening, watching or reading the common media.
One of the positive (or negative) aspect of internet has been the developers who are always looking for content providers to used their media and compose. It started as writing blogs and then micro blogs and info-graphics. No matter how crappy your grammar is, as long as you are producing contents with audience, you are welcome to broadcast your message. Whether it is a funny video of monkeys attacking a tourist in YouTube, a long scientific article in Elsevier or a short video of a lady influencer applying makeup on Instagram, the website demand you to share your (in)valuable opinion/experience to others.
Considering the incremental effects of viral videos/influencer/etc. and unlimited channels of broadcasting made the mainstream media in a defensive position. Although it is called "information era" but truth to be told finding the sheer truth is more and more difficult every day. Even the websites that are named to be unbiased like fact checking platforms are unfair. If you're in media industry, or enthusiastic in politics , you know you cannot limit yourself to a few sources. Truth to be told every medium has its own bias today. The myth of unbiased media is dead long time ago. Finding the difference between a political commentator and a television reporter is unmanageable.
On the positive side, reach (number of people receiving your message) and simplicity (by just "going live") are the two great aspect of this revolution. It has not been long since we needed choppers and cameramen to have clear image of the traffic which can be replaced by drone cameras these days.
Conclusively, not only we have too many news outlets which can and (many of them) are unreliable, our older news outlets are also miscarrying their prophecy. This malfunctioning of the news broadcasting and the opinion sharing are blended into one thing that every day fewer people rely on the older media (TV, radio and maybe newspapers). In order to compete with the opinion sharing platforms, the broadcasting media turned into giant political propaganda bugles. As long as the mainstream media think it can/should compete with information era's media (micro blogs, twitter, Facebook, etc.), they will stay unfair and imbalanced.
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