My Top 5 News Sources

TV News: Watching television news is a pretty traditional way of accessing news and for a while was the fastest way of accessing news stories. One special thing about watching news on the television is access to breaking news, and having news anchors on the scene of any current event and be able to see the scene live. Some positives about watching television news is that it is quick to digest and there is typically fast information, as all you have to do is listen and watch graphics and many channels share info the same way.

Google: Google is a news outlet used every day by millions of people, and the attraction to it comes from the fact that it is a search engine. With one search you can see the same story from hundreds of different news outlets to gain all perspectives of the same story. One negative about it is that while you have loads of information right in front of you, its important to take time and read through the accuracy of information and the trustworthiness of some websites, which takes time.

Instagram: Instagram became incredibly popular for accessing news during the COVID-19 Pandemic, as it was a way to quickly release and digest information and news stories. Even now, Instagram is popular to releasing and sharing news articles, especially when it comes to politics, people can repost news stories and even post their own. While this seems positive for the general public, its a lot more accessible to the general public in terms of who can post, share, and repost when compared to Google and TV News, where a person posting most likely needs some level of qualifications.

TikTok: Similarly to Instagram, TikTok offers news in a quick and easy to digest form of media, often quick videos or slides. While this can be beneficial to viewers so they can learn and educate themselves quickly instead of for example reading a full news article, its also created for “clickbait”.  Additionally, similar to Instagram, it also runs off of an algorithm based on the user, so it can very quickly become very polarized.

X (Formally known as Twitter): X is another social media platform, but differs slightly from Instagram and TikTok as people typically don’t create well thought out planned slideshows sharing news that you typically see on other social media platforms. X is significantly more fast paced and post typically consist of 2-3 sentences of breaking news and a significant amount of replies and retweets. Additionally, any user of X has the ability to post and reply, so it makes information less credible and easier for people to put purely opinion on the feed.