01 - Defining News - Isaiah Calvert

     


    The actual definition of news in the dictionary is: News received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events.  I think that is a perfect way to describe what news is, but I would like to go into that a little bit more. Everyone's definition of news is different, maybe not the actual definition, but at least what information people consider news. So, in terms of what news actually is, I would say it varies from person to person because one person might see some information and not consider it to be news, while another person can see the same thing and think it's not news at all. Does that cause it to not be news anymore? No, but it does mean that It is not news to a group of individuals, which will be the case for all information. Some people just wont find it interesting or noteworthy. 



    News can come in so many various forms and it's interesting to look at the ways people have gotten it throughout history. Before printing was invented the only way people could receive news was word of mouth whether that be gossip, or a town announcer. Then once the printing press got invented news was available foe everyone which was the biggest leap in all of news history. Then once the radio got invented that was a way to broadcast news to an even larger audience than the newspaper was able to, and of course very shortly after that the TV got invented and we started moving into the modern age of news. And now the latest step in the history of the news is the internet, and social media. It is now easier than ever to access news just minutes or sometimes even seconds after it happens, which can be a blessing and a curse. 



    Because news is more available now than it ever has been before and because legitimately anyone can post "news," we live in a time of widespread misinformation. There is some really interesting information about the effects of misinformation on the (National Institute of Health Website) such as. "news classified as misinformation garners increased attention, gauged by the number of social media 'likes” a post receives.". "Axios, an American news website, reported that between 2021 and 2022 there was a 50% drop in social-media interactions with news articles, an 18% drop in unique visits to the five top news sites, and a 19% drop in cable news prime-time viewing". These are some interesting facts because they show that misinformation works; it gets more attention because they are often made for that exact reason, creating headlines so crazy that you have to look at them. And also a little bit of the opposite is true too, it has caused a dramatic decrease in interaction with actual news because people have lost interest in trying to decipher what is real and what is fake. 


    So, to wrap it up, I would say that my definition of news is new information that an individual person finds interesting or noteworthy. News is so widespread and accessible today that some things that are considered news now wouldn't have been before it was so available. So while we live in the golden age of news and information, it is more important now than ever to look out for fake news or misinformation because it is even more prominent than real news now, and it is causing actual news as an institution to be degraded, which is very unfortunate. 






    

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