Michael Afocx

Professor Jessica Morton

UWRT 1102-035
April/21/2016
Clash of the Medias
Does the source of where people get their new swaying their opinion to one side, whether
it be the newspaper, TV news, or social media? What I want to pick out is how we can better
ourselves by trying to become more informed before making irrational decisions that could have
irreversible consequences. This topic has a big pull on todays people because people want to be
kept in the loop and most usually believe the first thing they hear. Throughout this essay I will
examine: the different types of new networks, the way the human mind plays a role in memory
and emotions, what role social media plays, how children are being effected, and look at a case
where people have misinterpreted a certain situation.
When some of us watch the morning news on TV or our phones, theres a high
probability that we are trying to get the weather for the day. Along with the weather most local
stations will have local stories as well as more major stories. Looking at local stations, a lot of
events that dont tie directly to the area arent covered immediately with variations to the
severity. However, if you are looking through a newspaper or youre looking up news online you
could get a completely different message depending on the network and how important the story
is. We have all heard that some news networks have been controversially claimed as being more
liberal or conservative than other networks. This is true, but this should also indicate that you
should either find a network that is on the opposite side of the scale than the one you watch and

compare the two or find a network closest to the middle as possible. When we can make a
proper decision we can feel more confident and not lead others astray and save a lot of ignorant
controversy.
A specific article that broke down what political view people stood on when observing a
certain news network involves the Pew Research Centers studies. This helped put news
networks into perspective when dealing with how conservative or liberal they are. A new report
from the Pew Research Center breaks down the news consumption habits of Americans (Engel).
This done by the Pew Research Center they helped pin point where each network fell on the
political scale based on the viewers political view. What this indicates is how much more
extreme these networks are between each other. While analyzing the data presented I had my
own biases as to which network would be the most level-headed like BBC for example, which to
my surprise slid toward the more liberal viewers. However the Rush Limbaugh Show and
ORiley Factor were drastically conservative as expected. So when networks look to keep views
theyll start to filter out news they feel is more important to their political party. What I mean by
this is that Rush Limbaugh will continue a more conservative route.
As we go into the nit and grit of the internet we see it has the good, bad, ugly, and of
course the ads. We need to find ways to pick out how we can decide from fact and fiction. Now
you could obviously view a major news network, but even there you would find slight biases as
stated above. To get reliable information especially dealing with crime I would look at crime
reports (https://aspe.hhs.gov/legacy-page/uniform-crime-reports-ucr-144611) depending on how
recent or heavily publicized this site is youll receive the most reliable and up to date data. A
major pro about this site is due to the fact that this is where all the police reports go and these are
all public information.

Okay now that we have gone over a bit about how news networks and which way they
tend to lean towards on a certain political side when conveying their coverage. Lets switch gears
to an area where people can go on for endless hours about pointless news or blowing up major
news to a ridiculous level. We know people can get a lot of news coverage from online through
places like Yahoo News which was listed on the Pew Research Center chart. This is not exactly
the news I talking about. The use of social media as a source of news such as Facebook and
Twitter can skew peoples opinions. What I have seen repeatedly would be only snippets of
some certain violent act or some weird protest that was only created to counter another protest.
My concern with social media is that these social outlets are being widely abused and people
blurt out whatever they want because they are in the comforts of their own homes. As Foxman
advocated in his article about how we are losing control and there is an epidemic of Internet
hate (Foxman). Now you are probably thinking people have the right to free speech, but there
are always those who abuse these rights and it turns from being freedom of speech to: racism,
sexism, homophobia, etc. We are in an extremely delicate time where we want no one to be hurt
in anyway, but that is honestly impossible, not everyone can get their way. There are
compromises to advocate opinions/grievances in a civil manner that doesnt cause an uproar and
people can obviously see this. One key moment would be how people found the reason to
constant bicker over the status of the Confederate flag and right gay marriage in the US at the
same time. These two blew completely out of proportion which led to a lot of internet memes,
hate messages, and nonsense that followed.
Now when we were talking about how people should approach way of communicating
they dont know there are children that could get access to anything dealing with social media
these days from comments, music, photos, and even videos. Cyberbullying is a topic that has

aroused from young children using sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Now today children can
access more serious material without parental locks on these social media sites and parents cant
be on them 24/7 with everything pointing to these sites. Now discussing some of these videos
or photos that show graphic violence could tempt children to reenact these videos. An article by
Bostic advocates that to exhibit antisocial behavior, ranging from imitative violent behavior
with toys to criminal violence, acceptance of violent behavior, increased feelings of hostility, and
desensitization toward violent behavior. (Bostic). These videos that have fighting or worse
violence impacts the youth more as the possibilities above were options for adolescence to
experience. Now will this be true for all of course not, to counter this; if a child was being
bullied or made an outcast and saw these violent videos constantly they could adopt these
methods as a form of attention.
These violent images have also affect older adults or those who have experience
traumatic experiences whenever these photos of something graphical is shown it could trigger
PTSD warnings in certain people whether its a war vet seeing a video of gun fire. In a study
done by Dr. Pam Ramsden he found that during videos which, included the 9/11 Twin Tower
attacks, school shootings and suicide bombingsAnalysis indicated that 22 per cent of
participants were significantly affected by the media events. This high percentage of adults
who had signs of PTSD from these videos show that not only are kids at risk, but adults as well.
A major reason for this could be due to the fact the mean age of the group was 37. If this was
true then they have a good memory of the 9/11 attack and could have children in school, which
shows why the increase of paranoia is present. Due to this study we can see that there are some
sites like Worldstarhiphop that could not only negatively influence children, but depending on

the content could trigger something in adults mind. This could make children misbehave and
have adults have panic attacks if the video is severe enough.
These videos can drastically affect the mind as we saw up above, but there is a lot of
information on the web ads especially. Nonetheless when we study or do work we tend to get
distracted a lot easier. As Im writing this paper I can see my phone with music playing a specific
song and the distraction when a text message comes in or when I look at different research
articles how Im tempted to look at Facebook or YouTube. We can see ourselves getting
distracted very easily when we are given all these different options to choose from. Thankfully
our brains have learned to adapt to the way of computers believe it or not. Weve known for a
while that we can remember groups of numbers rather than the whole row of number; take for
example a phone (704) 867-5309 vs. 7048675309. The separation of numbers into groups makes
it easier for us to remember them and the same can be done on the computer with shortcuts. For
example we dont remember the URL for our Facebook or your favorite YouTube video; we
star/bookmark the site or go to the main site and use the search bar. We remember these
shortcuts so we dont overload our minds. In a Columbia University study by the researchers
the researchers gave the subjects a question and five computer folders, telling them where the
answer was saved in. It turned out that the subjects were better at remembering the folder
location than the answer itself. (SimplyZesty). This shows how we can adapt to group things
together to make it much easier for us to find out the solution.
When taking into account that our emotions are the powerhouse that drive us most every
day and when we have a strong opinion about a certain situation we could careless on the toes we
step on. There can be misinterpretations on both sides we might not have all the information and
this was something that was discussed during the Ebola pandemic that happened a couple

years ago. The slightest cough could make you self-diagnose yourself with this disease. This
was not true there was a confirmed case of Ebola in New York, I remember a false report in the
Duke area. Duke Regional Hospital resulted in a false alarm related to the familys concern
about a potential Ebola exposure (DukeToday). The outbreak was real in fact a serious event in
West Africa and that has been in the works to be kept contained.
The presence of these false accusations are not a crime, but should just be looked through
thoroughly before people freak completely out. Not only do people freak-out about their health
they also have to keep their voice not being heard. The only place for most people to get their
opinion out is through a site like either Facebook or Twitter. We just have to keep a better eye on
what we say to prevent from escalating the situation any further or at the risk of hurting the
children who have as just as much maneuverability online if not more than the average adult.
There are many checks a person can go through to make sure they have the right information
anything with .gov is a more reliable site to visit, which is why I put up that Uniform crime
report site.

Biboliography
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Foxman, Abraham H. "Social Media: The Next Frontier in the Battle Against Online Hate."
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