Social Medi A New Haven For Discussion, Free Speech, And Breeding Ground For New Ideas

They allow for certain conversation to stay in a certain realm of the Internet. The exigency for stopping police brutality has been high the last few years. In some cases, people have made hash tags such as, “#BlackLivesMatter” and “#AllLivesMatter”. Through these hash tags the audience can recognize the rhetorical discourse, because it pertains to a specific event and/or issue they are interested in. The constraints then come from their personal opinions about the situation, which can very as their inartistic proofs.

In the study, each source was ranked based on the political leanings of its audience. As a result, it ranked sources such as Buzzfeed more liberal than average while it ranked sources such as the Rush Limbaugh Show more conservative than average. However, none of the sources earned a perfectly neutral ranking (Wormald). The correlation between news sources and their audience’s political leanings becomes interesting when compared to the type of content each news source produces. Rush Limbaugh, for example, is infamous for his conservative rhetoric, whereas Buzzfeed is known for its lighthearted quizzes and comical representation of liberal politics. This reveals something about our perception of truth: biased sources allow individuals to ‘select’ the truth. When conflicting information is pushed to the side, it becomes nonexistent. Subsequently, the sum of partial truths interpreted by an individual becomes a whole truth in their mind, especially when partial truths are reinforced by mainstream media sources such as Buzzfeed or the Rush Limbaugh Show. This is harmful because, as Lewis implied, the entire truth is lost in this process and mutual understanding becomes harder to

People continue to use this hashtag to convey their message. Social media has helped a lot of people be aware of this movement. As more people know about this movement, the use of this hashtag will continue to increase.

In fact “ nearly 4 in 10 people have taken steps to block or minimize the political content they see from other users.” This shows that people modify what things they see on social media and proves that political opinions have become much more popular to share on a personal profile. The shocking thing is that “overall 20% of social media users said they have modified their stance on a political issue because of material they saw on social media and 17% say social media has helped change their views about a specific candidate.” Pew Research Center goes on to say that people who have changed their political views on an issue stated that social media pointed their views in a more negative direction. This is important to acknowledge because knowing that the ideas that changed people’s mind on how they thought about a specific candidate were negative can lead to the assumption that the news they were reading could have been fake. Since these numbers are so low it can be hard to argue that the news people receive on social media is considerable enough to influence people’s opinions

Robert J. Samuelson’s essay, “Picking Sides for the News,” details the problem of citizens only hearing the news that they want to hear through statistics. Samuelson begins his essay by giving the reader the opinion of Americans in regards to news being reported. He goes on to say that Americans are increasingly choosing to listen to news based on “partisanship,” meaning conservatives listen to Republican news and liberals listen to Democratic news. Samuelson highlights the fact that most Americans are starting to not believe what they hear in the news, partisan growth resulting because of the distrust. Samuelson concludes his essay by describing why the reader should care. He believes the reader should care because the media’s bias’ are shaping

In America the two party system has thrived and as a result people will choose to be either Republican or Democrat without following every idea their respective parties, while I'm not saying that all people don't follow the entire platform most do. In the article Most Voters Aren't Stupid, the author states "Essentially, citizens are constantly exposed to political information... but because most people generally pay little attention to politics, they internalize the information relatively uncritically, filling their minds with partially consistent ideas"(Corley, 2012). People will take their information and pick out the aspect that follow their subscribed party. It would be difficult for Americans to stop following biased outlets because

Often times people utilize certain sources and watch certain news channels because these viewers can relate to the views on these sources. It can make one believe that his/her perspective is correct simply because that is what the new source is providing. Viewers watch news sources that share the same opinions as their own, because these viewers are just as bias as the sources; these viewers favor one side, as do the news sources. John Stossel, a Fox News reporter discusses the book “Bias” with author Bernie Goldberg, an ex CBS News reporter. John expected for ABC to read the book and disagree with Bernie on the ABC news channel (Goldberg and Stossel). However, these people were proud of not reading the book and gave it no attention. Even if one does not agree with a certain viewpoint, it is very important to hear the different perspectives because it allows the viewer to see and hear other people’s opinion. Because most news sources do not include all sides, it becomes difficult for an individual to

Social media has given the human race an unprecedented amount of access to news and information. However, the validity and vetting of this information is often questionable at best. The emergence of websites such as Breitbart, Occupy Democrats, and TheBlaze have given way to a constant stream of partisan

In America today, most people have their own political views. Some are legitimate, and some are the cause of one main problem: media bias. Certain media outlets are promoting biased political views on television, the internet, and social media. People that watch and read these biased media sources are constantly believing more and more of the false information that they are presenting. Media bias and fake news in the United States is a major contributing factor to many citizens’ political views, especially as a result of news outlets that promote a liberal agenda.

After watching the Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubble” he explains how we get trapped in a “filter bubble” but not getting exposed to the information that could widen our worldview. He also goes on to talk about how we are not in unity like we think because we live in our own personal bubbles through or on the internet, but we do not get to pick what all goes into our bubble. I agree with that but the people to blame is the ones who withholds the information we need to challenge us and the things that get edited out. Even though our bubbles consist of who we are and what we do, it’s not fair because we have no control over what gets put into our bubbles or what get left out. The ESPN article also ties in with the filter bubble as well.

Sunstein argues that an echo-chamber effect results when people receive news from various media outlets. Sunstein asserts that, when a person gets their news from a medium which embraces similar ideological viewpoints, this person’s beliefs not only harden, but become situated on more extreme ends of the political spectrum. Three-stage academic studies conducted over the past three decades have found that balanced presentations of news, which carefully examine both sides to an argument, are more likely to increase polarization, rather than to reduce it. This is due to “biased assimilation”, where a person credits the information which supports their original view and dismisses information which opposes it. This also explains why it is difficult to force out false rumors and factual errors, since corrections can be self-defeating, leading people to having a firmer commitment to their erroneous beliefs. However, Sunstein argues, surprising validators can be used to allow people to reconsider information from a source they find credible. Sunstein concludes with arguing that what matters most is not what is being said, but who is saying

Although the 2016 presidential election was over one month ago, many people still can’t believe the surprise result. Behind being upset about the result, some populations start to think the role of social media during the election. They aware the power of social media is very strong. But at the same time, only a few of them realize that they live in filter bubbles.

These liberal or conservative bubbles, as they’re called, are formed when a consumer reads or watches news from a single perspective that only reinforces his or her political views. Wallace explained that these could seriously hinder a person’s ability to effectively evaluate a person or

In conclusion, when the internet was created it was at seen as a way to finally stop gatekeepers who withheld vital information, such as the Church or the Associated Press. However, overtime “filter bubbles” have developed on online media platforms. These filter bubbles have become the new gatekeepers of information because they dictate the content a user receives based on what the internet believes they want. These filter bubbles exist in many different forms from suggested videos on YouTube, to recommended trends on Twitter, to endorsed products on Amazon. These sites are popular, and used frequently, which makes it clear that a large portion of the content our society consumes is heavily tailored. This can negatively affect society because

Previously I discussed how and why polarization is created, further, I will be discussing to what extent are we experiencing polarization currently and what effect does polarization have in the United States. John Duca introduced the idea of media fragmentation which is the concept of increasing the number of platforms that media is available on and more access to media. In, "New Media and the Polarization of American Political Discourse" Matthew Baum analyzes the use of the internet as a news source and its effect on political polarization. The data presented shows that both left and right news sources skew their stories in their favors while bipartisan sources are more likely to cover critical stories of each given political party.