personal media use

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School

University of Iowa *

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1601

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Political Science

Date

Oct 30, 2023

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docx

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Nikhita Reddibathuni Personal Media Use Throughout multiple generations, the way the public consumes news about politics and government has changed throughout the decades. We went from getting news stories from newspapers and radio stations to social media apps and the internet. I’ve seen the change from physical news to digital news in real time because it’s what I grew up with. The older I grew, I noticed a drastic change in the methods that I used to get my political and governmental news since getting my news through the internet or social media applications were just becoming more convenient for me and if any breaking news did happen that was getting reported, I would know about it in the blink of an eye because of the nature of how fast news can spread, especially fake news. This concept of fake news spreading more rapidly than regular news is brought up in Shanto Iyengar’s Book Media Politics: A Citizen’s Guide and because of this, I was forced to reflect upon my social media habits based upon my assessment of how I critically seek for news about politics and government and the knowledge that I seek from those outlets. The social media platforms that I use regularly are Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok. I quite frequently go on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok daily, and scientifically I average around 2 hours for social media apps and around 22 hours weekly. I typically engage with the entertainment side of social media, and sometimes a mix of news content will be sprinkled along with it. I tend to not post a lot on social media, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t post. It just means that I don’t post very frequently. Social media does impact my daily living and interactions because in a way it’s made me more introverted because I would rather have the comfort of online entertainment than the interactions of real people. When I was a kid, social media was

non-existent and all my interactions came from my childhood friends, so it has been interesting to see the shift from daily living with and without social media. In recent years with the presidential elections, especially with the 2016 and 2020 elections, I was able to see in real-time just how much of an impact social media had when it came to electing officials to government offices. Shanto Iyengar discusses how fake news spreads faster than regular news because people need a good news article to get fixated on. After all, it’s more entertaining. Iyengar also goes into a deep dive into how social media affects the outcomes of presidential elections. After all, it can have a big impact on supporters because people take after the people they look up to and start mimicking their beliefs in a way. There is also the topic of adversarial journalism, which is a type of journalism that tries to expose corruption and abuse of power within politics to the public using hostile methods. This has a huge impact on politics because it forces political figures to be held accountable for their actions and the public deserves to know about their indecencies, the downside of this is that it can cause candidates to be overcautious of statements they put out to the media, which in turn end up being very vague and leads to less transparency and authenticity of their campaigns. I’ve seen this happen in real life because with all the different smearing campaigns that came out during the presidential elections, it was hard to distinguish if the information they were advertising was true or not because there was no regulation in terms of false info because we have the right to free speech which in turn includes the right to spread misinformation. In turn, I think social media has had a huge impact on all our lives especially when it comes to political campaigns and elections. It’s made everyone closer and makes it easier for people to form new connections online, but also, it’s also slowly making people more introverted and not wanting to form real-life social connections because it’s more convenient to talk over the

phone. When it comes to getting news stories, it has made getting the news more accessible to everyone because it’s just on your phone and not something you have to hunt for. I was able to reflect on my own experiences with social media and the news and I was able to see the impact it’s had on my life, in both good and bad ways.

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