Essay on Influence of the News on People’s Perspectives

Currently, a large population across the world with ever-changing and evolving technology can access and lead all sorts of news and information, whether positive or negative, through social media. Today all the people than ever before have the advantage of quickly accessing the news, whether political or all other information. In addition to known traditional media outlets, including radio, newspapers, and television, the news ubiquity on the internet and especially within social media offers possibilities of exposing news to many people whether they seek it actively out or not. People get updated throughout the week on the latest news and developments whenever they are without much struggle. The received information can be either negative, positive, or neutral, though most news coverage involves essential valance topics. The consumed news may shape and change our attitudes and perspectives on the way we behave and think. Numerous researches and studies suggest that the information we consume can shape used negatively, especially from our fundamental perceptions of the risk to the content of our dreams. The news may shape us more negatively; however, it is a better influence if we know and realize how to fortify ourselves and wisely choose, watch, read, and listen.

Falsehoods and conspiracy on televisions, radios, newspapers and social media could critically impact individual people, especially with multiple misinformation that is essentially taught to fight. For this case, such bias can be held responsible since the news is no longer exciting and entertaining to many people. With the current Covid-19 pandemic, since last year February 2020, citizens were forced to remain in their homes and spend more time there than they were used to before. Therefore while staying at home, watch on screens looking at the current updates on the pandemic has increased tremendously, and Americans, on average, spend more time, approximately eleven hours, watching the news. Different people across the globe have begun getting information or news more than usual. With this, people were negatively affected by the mass media misinformation (Witze pg. 5). For numerous decades, scientists and other researchers have cognized that the public usually tends to consistently have a dark outlook, that time when it comes to their countries’ economic prospects.

Any news lover who has always been following news highlights from newspapers and televisions from one century ago can tell how much news has been primarily negative and sometimes too discouraging to people. Currently, there are numerous and thousands of papers, TV channels and sites in our lovely societies, numerous American cognize how news usually distort their personal views on their world, feeding them with global scandals, filling their minds with crime fears, instead of fundamental issues they are promoting the celebrity politics. This tends to whip up fears on those things that, at the most part, never occur. Such continued exposure to negative information may impact our moods, general happiness, and state of mind.

Additionally, from election fraud lies to falsehoods of anti-vaccine and conspiracy theory, through democracy, misinformation is rising. This is dangerous to many people. For example, numerous people are swallowing hydroxychloroquine, hoping that this drug will protect and guard them against Covid-19, and this was spread even with no relevant evidence that it aids. This is bad information and has been spread to people through social media across the globe. Some other people even went ahead to refuse the face mask-wearing, contrary to the public health evidence (Natasha & Verboon pg. 89). In Los Angles, in January, the site for mass vaccination was disrupted by the mass protestors blocking thousands of people from life-saving shots.

Numerous experimental studies have significantly proved the critical and significant relationship between the emotional state and negative and intense news, leading to increased anxiety, sadness, stress, and worries. Similarly, flooding of the false and fake news, social media, and misinformation on the fake news is another thing affecting our societies. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the fake news volume has recently multiplied, affecting people negatively regarding their perceptions and attitudes. With Covid-19, everyone’s third eye on the bad effects and dangers on our health, though many people believe in every information, they view social media through the internet, and the Covid-19 pandemic had revealed clearly that false and fake news could kill.

Furthermore, to detect, counter, and resist the flood of false and fake news; currently, scientists have been challenged to work day and night intensively in their research focusing on the people who cannot differentiate between accurate information and fake news. This is because few people can identify and recognize false from the authentic and legit news. Additionally, the same scientists struggle and work harder to stem the misinformation tide threatening to drown our society. The false news sheer volume, usually flooding across entire social media, with some bit of basic checking for damming it, is taking toll enormously on primary institutions’ trust. In a poll conducted in December for one thousand, one hundred and fifteen United States adults by research firm Ipsos in collaboration with NPR, 83% said they were more concerned about spreading false and fake information (David pg. 125). Consequently, fewer adults than half were in a position to identify as false conspiracy theories concerning pedophilic worshipers of Satan endeavoring to control the media and politics.

Moreover, people are not accessing or getting information and news only from the journals and broadcasting channels, by can get it from the other people accessing the social media. A point to note is that, nowadays, through various channels to increase their rating, those news channels use shocking stories and sensationalism to expand their audience, thus satisfying their subjective thinkers. The press needs to be neutral and hence hold entire public figures to the same standard, but as evident, it has been significantly based (Zaria pg. 512). The press has emphasized the young generation that is always careless about politics, and media is seen focusing on entertainment than politics.

Historically, the press has been classified into three primary stages according to American journalist and writer Walter Lippmann: publication as the government denomination, publication as the political parties’ privilege, and finally, independent publications supported by the advertisers and readers. Recently, many Americans and especially those under forty years, do not like the truth. Those in power and Politicians usually know that majority of the hate reality and want to hear what will always please, entertain and console them as they tend to believe popular and famous people and especially essential politicians are nice and good people to believe in. Still, the majority of them are bad people. Therefore, many people want to be lied to and hence do not like the truth. This, therefore, will give room for false and fake information to flood the people (Sabine et al., pg. 72). Today, Journalism currently seems to be very biased, spreading fake news that some people want to hear since they are pleasing and entertaining them and especially politicians as they pay for the information to be delivered in the same way. To provide authentic and legit news, journalists need to work tirelessly and put enormous efforts while working behind the scenes to provide legit and authentic news. Social media seen to be a structured field meant to please some individuals and is entire of false and fake news and misleading scams, although some good journalists still exist.

Moreover, Scientists have heavily been learning more about how and why people usually fall for false information and what people can do about this information. Some of the essential characteristics of social media posts tend to spread misinformation, as shown by some new findings. More studies suggest that false and bad claims may be countered by delivering accurate and relevant information to the news consumers, usually at the right time, and nudging all people to ensure they pay attention to the accuracy of the information they are looking for. Some of such approaches can involve some small and fundamental behavior changes that add up some significant bulwarks and more so against the onslaught of false and fake news. Additionally, some people tend to share misinformation unwittingly on the internet, especially on social media pages and other platforms, because they find such information exciting or surprising. The additional method can be the methods or mode through which the fake news or misinformation is delivered, whether through video, audio, or text (Amy et al., pg. 20). The most credible and considered method is the video, and this is according to the research study carried by an expert on messaging psychology, Shyam Sundar, at Penn State. For instance, one way to fifth the spread of the misinformation can be a quick response by the social companies to the user complaints on the spread of the fake news when misinformation is spread through video and even texts. Other efforts can be put on media literacy to educate people on how this information can be highly deceptive through the video.

Numerous problems come with fake news, and one of the main insidious problems with them is how easily it lodges in our brains itself and how difficult it is to dislodge it after it gets into our minds. Fake news tends to stick into our minds more than genuine and authentic communication does. Forgetting fake news is very difficult for people as they keep remembering them as some find it more interesting. We are deluged with information constantly, and our minds usually use cognitive shortcuts to figure out what to let go of and what to retain. This comes from the science and communication expert Sara Yao. Our information is often aligned with that value we hold, making us accept such information (Stephen & Lewis pg. 22). This means that people usually get that information that tends to align continually to what they already believe in, and further in self-reinforcing bubbles, they insult them.

Additionally, American people who usually rely on the news from social media are less knowledgeable and engendered. This is because they are likely to obtain fewer facts about a given situation or events like politics and Coronavirus, hence hearing numerous unproven claims from social media. In myriad ways, the landscape of information has changed dramatically due to the rise of social media. This includes how various Americans can keep with many current events, among the most common and used pathways for getting political news by young people in social media. Form a Pew new research Analysis Center of Survey, done in 2019 October and 2020 in June, found that those people relying on the political news from social media stand far apart from those other news consumers in numerous ways. For instance, the United States adults are less likely to follow major latest news stories like an outbreak of the Coronavirus and the presidential 2020 election than the other news consumers (Yonghwan pg. 971). Americans use platforms like apps or websites, local, social media, cable and print, network TV, or radio, and this was discovered from the Pathways project.

From the last of late, 18% of the United States adults claim that they usually use social media to receive updates on the election and political news. People who use social media as the pathway to get political information are the young people, most likely to have lower education levels, mostly not the white people compared to those who use other platforms. Overall, this group pays less attention to the essential news than those who rely on the different platforms or pathways. Thus, most American people who use social media platforms for the news are less knowledgeable and aware about a broad range of issues and events in the news, and thus more likely to have heard unproven or false news than the other Americans (Sabine pg. 69). A good example is an exposure to the current conspiracy theory claiming that some influential people planned Covid-19 intentionally, which gained significant attention with conspiracy videos that spread on social media. The majority of the United States adults who receive their news from social media, about 26%, said they heard about the conspiracy video a lot. About 81% heard something little about the same information as those on the other platforms for their real political news.

It is essential to utilize a broad perspective on the effects of the media to comprehend and understand the extensive range of influence that the media exert. However, when individuals think in their lives every day thinks about the effects of the media, they are essentially reducing the thinking to numerous negative things, usually happening to other people as they watch too much false and lousy content. A good example is where multiple people believe that media violence exposure leads to aggression, bad language contributes to coarse expressions in our populations, and following media stories having sexual depictions can contribute to risky and disgusting sexual behaviors. Such beliefs continually in public opinions polls are showing up (Sage pg. 35). This type of research and public opinion is so dominant that many people came to think of the effects of the media primary being negative behaviors usually showing up immediately after that exposure to specific media messages. This perspective is essential as it starts thinking about media effects, especially when moving to a broader perspective. When thinking about the conceptualization of the media effects, there is a need to focus on the key elements and issues of timing, duration, change, valence, intention, level, direct and indirect, and manifestation. The effects of the media influence are the things occurring as a whole or part of the media influence. They can immediately occur during the media message exposure or even after a long time has been taken since separate directions took place. Media effects can occur at an individual level or macro level. On a personal level, it affects the particular person, and on the macro-level, it is an aggregate effect and affects the public, society, medical industries, or institutions.

Work Cited

Cushion, Stephen, and Justin Lewis, Eds. The rise of 24-hour news television: Global perspectives. Peter Lang, 2010.

Gorvett, Zaria. “How the News Changes the Way We Think and Behave.” BBC Future, 12 May. 2020, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200512-how-the-news-changes-the-way-we-think-and-behave.

Hoog, Natasha, and, peter, Verboon. “Is the News Making us Unhappy? The Influence of Daily

News Exposure on the Emotional States.”, British Journal of Psychology, May 2020,https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.12389

Kim, Yonghwan. “The contribution of social network sites to exposure to political difference: The relationships among SNSs, online political messaging, and exposure to cross-cutting perspectives.” Computers in Human Behavior 27.2 (2011): 971-977.

Mindich, T.Z., David. Tune Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don’t Follow the News. Oxford University ed., 2005.

Mitchell, Amy, et al. “Americans Who Mainly Get Their News on Social Media are Less Engaged, Less Knowledgeable.” Pew Research Center, 2020. https://www.journalism.org/2020/07/30/americans-who-mainly-get-their-news-on-social-media-are-less-engaged-less-knowledgeable/

Sage, publications Chap 3.https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-assets/45690_book_item_45690.pdf

Trepte, Sabine, et al. “Good News! How Reading Valenced News Articles Influences Positive Distinctiveness and Learning from News.” Journal of Media Psychology, pp. 66-78 http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=744e6517-8236-4f79-81cc-c3f203ba0eb2%40sessionmgr4008

Witze, Alexandra.“The Battle Against Fake News.” Science News, 5 May 2021,https://www.sciencenews.org/article/fake-news-misinformation-covid-vaccines-conspiracy.