 This column first appeared in the October 6, 2019 edition of The Vindicator:
According to a new study, Americans have serious trust issues. Whether it’s government or social media, it’s now customary to treat everything we read and hear with skepticism. We’re also increasingly pessimistic about the ability of social media to deliver credible news. There are solutions to these trust issues, but before we put faith in social media again, we need to understand the root of our suspicions. First, most of us don’t know how to fix the social-media-news credibility-delivery problem. A report from the Pew Research Center published last week found that most Americans were unsure how social media could improve the quality of news delivered on our feeds. Facebook and other platforms have been grappling with the “quality” issue since long before November 2016. We just needed a big event like a Presidential election to expose the problems with using social media to get all of our news. It’s also no surprise that we’re a bit cynical about the recent efforts of Facebook and others to deliver news from unbiased sources... Read the rest of this column in The Vindicator at https://www.vindy.com/life/lifestyles/2019/10/always-be-suspicious-of-social-media-news/ Comments are closed.
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AuthorDr. Adam C. Earnheardt is professor and chair of the department of communication at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, OH, USA. He researches and writes about communication and relationships, parenting and sports. He writes a weekly column for The Vindicator newspaper on social media and society. CategoriesArchives
February 2019
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