The Challenge for Consumers
Lesson 1:6
Embedded Files
Now we get to the present day -- where the Internet is a prevalent force in our everyday lives. While we now have a proliferation of information sources at our fingertips, it has created a number of challenges to the News Consumer -- the basis of our next key lesson --
There are Four major challenges for the modern consumer of Information:
There are Four major challenges for the modern consumer of Information:
Challenge 1: Information Overload
Challenge 1: Information Overload
Challenge 2: Speed vs. Accuracy
Challenge 2: Speed vs. Accuracy
Challenge 3: The Blurring of the Lines
Challenge 3: The Blurring of the Lines
Challenge 4: Confronting and Overcoming Our Own Biases
Challenge 4: Confronting and Overcoming Our Own Biases
Challenge 1: Information Overload
Challenge 1: Information Overload
How do we find the truth when everyday we're faced with an information tsunami?
The average American sees and hears over 100,000 words per day outside of work, according to the Global Information Industry Center at U.S.C.
In a recent study of internet users published by Statista, more than 41.6 million messages were exchanged via mobile devices in a single minute, including emails, texts, and social media posts.
When looking at various social media users, various studies find that on average, users scroll through more than 250 links to information per day on various platforms.
With all of this information, other research indicates that this type of information overload can make people feel anxious and powerless.
Consider what’s happening now with COVID-19, various pockets of unrest in large cities, and the constant stream of new information that comes across our screens everyday, both at work and at home (or in a strange melding of both).
How in this world do we actually focus on and find information that is reliable that can help us make decisions?
This course arose from that question and another: With so much information flying around, how do we fight the temptation to just go completely passive and learn only what gets pushed on us by social media?
Challenge 2: Speed vs. Accuracy
Challenge 2: Speed vs. Accuracy
In addition with all of the information that we attempt to keep up with every day, consumers are also faced with the implications of being able to transmit information to many people very quickly through multiple platforms.
Even before the invention of the telegraph, the rush to be the first to get news to consumers has made the risk of making mistakes even bigger. In addition, “virality” can quickly spin a story that winds up being a mistake into a huge problem, with consumers choosing to take up and act on the error quickly, far before a correction makes it out to the public.
We’ll talk more about how to be aware of these mistakes and resist the urge to act on every “breaking news” story in later lessons, but we quickly review this here in the context of the challenges for news consumers.
A particularly apt example of this that we continue to use in our course comes from 2013, during the manhunt for the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing.
The push to broadcast an "exclusive" report from CNN's John King wound up, upon inspection to be wrong, and was skewered in this clip from Jon Stewart's tenure on the Daily Show (Note: some words are bleeped).
Daily Show Stewart CNN Boston Bombing Wrong Suspect.mp4Page updated
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