As the 2020s roar on, world events seem to pile up faster than people can process them, leaving people feeling perpetually behind the flurry of breaking news. While Canadians have been adjusted to the 24-hour news cycle for decades, it seems like coverage feels harder than before to keep up with.
Could it be that we’re genuinely living in an era that is dramatically shifting the world order, trickling into our national news-worthy dilemmas? Possibly. But many eras of instability before this have also had people feeling this way; the world was ending in 2016, 2008, 2001—this is not the first time people are saying “times are crazy”. Perhaps saying that the news is harder to keep up with is simply a naive argument from a young person.
There might be some truth to the statement that we are just in a period of great change, but I think more than one thing can be true at once. With the impact social media has on how we consume news, the distortion of coherent news timelines and established facts are also things to acknowledge.
There is no doubt that we certainly are living in an era widely perceived as producing more news-worthy items. Between one of the most turbulent American presidencies ever and the trade disputes it ignited here up north, Canadians have certainly had a lot to endure in their newsfeeds. Butjust as the times are different geopolitically, times are different in our technology as well. We are also living in an era where most people consume their news through very manipulative formats on the internet and social media.
Statistics Canada reported that the majority of young people (ages 15-34) reported getting news from social media (48 per cent) or the internet (37per cent), that social media number is up to 62 per cent if you tighten the ages to15-24.
In the growth of internet access, social media sites have turned out to become the figurative newsstand for about half of the young people who consume news media. While it can be said that accessibility to the news is growing (a good thing), the actual integrity and order of our information diets are decided by algorithms made by social media companies who capitalize on the consumers’ attention, not critical thinking.
The algorithms that these posts circulate through reward posts not by what is most accurate to the established facts of an event, but by what draws the most engagement. Through this, social media influencers and meme accounts have blended their non-journalistic posts and headlines in with the trustworthy sources that hold themselves to established editorial standards, and are held accountable when those standards are violated. This results in a news feed for social media users that feels like a barrage of competing headlines on different timelines—total incoherence.
Not every traditional newsroom is built the same; some prefer one source to another. But what makes traditional media reliable is its adherence to editorial standards. Not every influencer on social media can say the same thing.
It might be also worth it to mention that real strategies have been employed by administrations to distort the news diet of their constituents and neighbors. “Flooding the zone” was a tactic employed by Donald Trump’s former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, which involves an administration releasing a high volume of policy announcements, orders and statements to overwhelm journalist critics, and overall coverage on key topics. The results of this strategy have been observed in American media, and given the intimacy Canadian politics has with American policy, our zone might be getting flooded too.
Maybe there is some truth in the statement that the news is too hard to keep up with, But, to just sum it up to a general “more things are happening in the world” statement is naive, it avoids the reality that there are actual mechanisms working in the background that make the news cycle appear more disorienting.
Contributed Photo/ Sheryl Madakkai
