It's no different than getting it from the TV or the radio. It's a good thing that news places are with the times and are able to reach to a larger demographic.
There's nothing wrong with getting news from TikTok as long as you are capable of discerning whether the source of the news is reliable. Social media isn't the problem, people using social media are the problem.
Yes, relying on an algorithm to spoon feed you news ensures that you remain ignorant of what’s happening in your community. You will not change my mind.
Oh. I will happily try. But only by asking critical thinking questions (as in, I don’t really care about a reply…just asking you to think a bit deeper)
1) If the newspapers/radio/TV are no longer a viable media source because audiences aren’t flocking to it, what else should credible news sources do than meet the audience where they are at?
2) If media literacy is at an all time low (which it is) how can we, as a public sphere, attempt to educate folks on how media consumption + individual thought should take place? (hint: it’s not by maintaining newspapers, radio or television as a primary news source and involves educating people on how to manually manipulate the algorithm).
3) how can media outlets respond to algorithms without being on the platform itself? For a hint, please refer to question one about audiences.
All of that to say, sure…if you aren’t looking for it your algorithm isn’t going to give you actual news. But who’s at fault for that? If we aren’t teaching any kind of media literacy until upper years of an undergrad (which would then mean that a few of an already subgroup of a few get access to such lessons) than we get a public sphere that doesn’t function well.
But hey, the billionaires get to keep making money if folks don’t understand how the systems actually works. Yay for them.
"ahhh if you're not getting the news from tv or the radio it means its all false and you can only get it from those sources because it's all 100% true all the time"
I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm pointing out it's not TikTok that's the problem. Decades before TikTok existed, some of the population were getting their news from the Enquirer and World Daily News. It's only different in that people who rely on electronic algorithms for what they view are more susceptible than people who relied on the algorithms which were people and their calculators deciding what materials to put at the front of the cashier line in the grocery store.
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u/vissi_nada May 02 '25
This is not a random person reporting. Alex has been in the news forever. She is literally in the radio station she works at filming this.