Social media now main source of news in US, research suggests | Hacker News Reader

Social media now main source of news in US, research suggests

bbc.com

8 pointssaltysalt4 comments

From the article: According to the Reuters Institute

    (54%) get news from networks like Facebook, X and YouTube
    (50%) from TV 
    (48%) and news sites and apps

I was newspapers for 25y, news sites since.

Social media as "news" makes it really hard to talk to people online about things. It's never just "news" it's always some larger narrative that is weird.

Sometimes conversations start like you're in the middle of some other conversations with some nonsense narrative that I can't make heads or tails of, and their terminology is all arbitrary / random.

More than once I've had folks even on HN try to sell me that Trump & Co is some sort of proletarian taking power scenario ... wut?

Where do you even start with people when their first line is so weighted down by who knows what and if you ask you're assumed to be the enemy or something?

If a news item isn't textually embedded in a larger narrative then it's just embedded in the default narrative, which can easily be just as wrong, however "not weird". And it's not like it's neutral without any associated context, since even a simple factual report is loaded with attention bias.

Social media ... like HN ... provides a more diverse set of contexts to the news of the day. That's an improvement compared to giving the default context free reign. It might not feel like that, because it's not as pre-digested and you have to chew on it before swallowing or spitting.

I don't buy into that theory. If you're providing a narrative with your news there it is. If you're not then you didn't, whatever someone thinks otherwise is on them.

The news on social media carriers so much more narrative than anything else in my experience.

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