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How the advent of the internet has transformed news consumption for one individual, allowing for greater volume and diversity of sources, as well as new modalities for accessing and sharing news. The author discusses their personal news consumption habits, from local to international sources, and the tools they use to access and engage with news content.
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[student name deleted] CSC442B Fall 2008 The Internet and American Life Paper One News at the Speed of the Internet According to legend, news of the defeat of the Persian forces by the Athenians in 490 B.C. at the Battle of Marathon took several hours to reach Athens. The messenger carrying this news ran 25 miles and then promptly died upon giving his important news.(1) In contrast, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37:46 AM ET during the terrorist attacks upon the United States on September 11, 2001 (2). CNN had a live report from the scene at 9:42 AM ET (3), a mere 5 minutes after the event. Before the Internet, news was a one-way medium with limited formats and sources. After slightly more than 15 years after the popular advent of the Internet, news is now bi-directional, multi-modal and comes from a variety of sources. This change in the fundamentals of news reporting has significantly impacted my life by satisfying my personal need for frequent and varied information about local and world events. I will explain how the Internet has allowed me to fundamentally change the way in which I consume news. From a young age, I was always voracious consumer of news from many mediums including television, radio, newspapers and magazines. In addition, I am an early Internet technology adopter and I publish my own blog. I will explain the sources of information from which I receive information, the tools that I use to receive it, the frequency with which I do so and my ability to publicly comment upon and analyze this news. The volume and diversity of news sources on the Internet has permitted me to keep up-to-date on almost any area or aspect of the world that I wish. In general, I have always kept informed on events happening in multiple realms ranging from local/regional events to sports to international news. Before the rise of the Internet, I received local news once a day from the regional newspaper and in the evening from the nightly news. These forms of news consumption do have a visceral appeal – a sort of comforting washing over of information. From Victoria Riggen’s post to the CSC442 Paper One discussion forum, many people including her are content to consume news on television only and would miss it if it were gone (4). Victoria references a Pew Research Center for People and the Press report stating that “Nearly seven-in-ten (69%) say they would miss these broadcasts a lot if they were no longer available." (5) On the other hand, I have gladly abandoned almost all television-based news. Based upon this report, I would be considered a “Net-Newser” in the vernacular of the report. This is evidenced by my particular appetite for national and political news, political blogs and the fact that I read more news as the day continues. For local news, I access the Orlando Sentinel newspaper website and WFTV website, one of the local television stations in Central Florida. At an even more local level, our community of East Orlando has a local interest newspaper titled the East Orlando Sun. This weekly online newspaper is a valuable resource for me to find out about my community. In fact, I place equal or more trust in local online sources than printed one and my viewpoint seems to be a trend on the Internet as a whole. According to a Pew Research Center for People and the Press from 2007, 32% of primarily Internet news consumers have an unfavorable opinion of local TV news as compared to only 22% for primarily newspaper and 16% for primarily TV users.(6) Another change in the sources of my news consumption is the ability to access sources that I previously would not have been able to access. Two such sources are the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Mail in the UK. The Wall Street Journal’s opinion page publishes a daily blog called “The Best of the Web” written by James Taranto. I became a regular reader of this blog during the 2004 elections and have read it almost daily since then. This column and the paper as a whole is very important to my ability to stay informed, but I would likely not subscribe to the physical paper at $99 per year fee.
I have always been fascinated with news and pop culture from the UK. Evidently, I am not the only one. According to the TimesOnline website, the “two largest “quality” newspaper websites in terms of users, have more American than British readers.” (7) Of these British newspapers, my favorite is the Daily Mail, which was first published in 1896 and is now the second-largest UK newspaper in terms of circulation. (8) On a given day, articles on the Daily Mail will range from serious subjects such as “Nationalised Northern Rock twice as likely to repossess homes as other lenders” (9) to the sensational “Trim-again Angelina Jolie tells U.S. TV viewers that she is already planning baby No.7”. (10) This newspaper has given me a frequent insight into a society with which I am somewhat obsessed and would know much less about otherwise. Truthfully, this observation applies to most of my regular news sources. They allow me to stay informed in ways that would not be possible without them. The varied sources of news on the Internet are not the only way in which my consumption has changed. Beyond moving from the printed newspaper and television to the computer, I take in news in a variety of digital modalities. The most obvious mode is the traditional website to which I visit when I have the desire to get informed at that moment. This was my primary means of news consumption for the first ten years or so of the Internet. In recent years, I have moved beyond this mode and now receive news and information via online videos, email news subscriptions and RSS feeds. My varied news consumption habits are not unique. According to the article “Consuming Online News: Purposive News Seeking Mode and Types of Users”, understanding behavior like mine is challenging because “scholars have not articulated any useful theoretical framework for understanding the news seeking behavior of online audience”. (11) I receive emails from three news sources on a daily basis, including the Best of the Web blog that I previously mentioned. In addition, I subscribe to the Strategic Forecasting Geopolitical Diary and the PatriotPost blog. Neither of these sources was being published before the advent of the Internet and would surely not be freely and frequently published on paper. RSS feeds have made the largest impact upon my news consumption habits. RSS is an acronym that has been assigned several meanings including “Really Simple Syndication” and “Rich Site Summary” (12), neither of which is in popular usage currently. At its most simple, RSS is a mechanism for pushing news information using XML. I currently subscribe to 44 RSS news feeds ranging from Galactica Sitrep (13), a feed about the show Battlestar Galactica, to Fox News (14) and even the feed for our CSC442B class. (15) I view these feeds using the Google Reader web-based RSS feed aggregator. Google Reader has allowed me to scan, bookmark and share the news that read in a very easy manner. On many days, I will never visit a news website and will just read scan my RSS feed updates. This has allowed me to focus my time upon the news that I care most about. An interesting twist on my news access is physical location. I do not have an Internet-capable mobile phone; however, I have used our Nintendo Wii to view news sites from the comfort of my couch. The Wii has a downloadable Opera web browser that works very well. The ability to view websites and read news from the comfort of my couch had an unexpected effect upon me. I took my time and read what was presented in more detail. Apparently, I am not the only one who has made this observation. In the article “News on the Wii? Sure, why not”, Caroline McCarthy noted this feature. (16) I never directly commented upon the news before doing so on the Internet. Many websites provide an analog to the old “letters to the editor” column from newspapers. In her post on the CSC442B Paper One forum, Christine Korkowski noted that her father submits his comments in this way. (17) Using the Internet, I now have the ability to share my opinions, and in a much more powerful way than a simple letter to the editor. Before this capability, I was compelled to share my discoveries with primarily uninterested individuals such as my wife or co-workers.
“the unexamined life is not worth living.” (24) By consuming, analyzing and publishing news about this world, I genuinely feel that I am analyzing myself and my place in this world. Life is short, as I have become painfully aware now that I approach my 40th^ birthday. I want my life to be worth living. References
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