A new
Gallup poll indicates Americans’ trust of mass media has returned to its
previous all-time low of 40 percent. Why the drop? Gallup offers this possible
explanation: “As
the media expand into new domains of news reporting via social media networks
and new mobile technology, Americans may be growing disenchanted with what they
consider ‘mainstream’ news as they seek out their own personal veins of getting
information.”
Although
Gallup doesn’t identify any of those outside-the-mainstream veins, one of them
certainly is blogs. According to an infographic posted on Social
Media Today, 23 percent of time on the Internet is spent on blogs, and 77
percent of Internet users read blogs. As noted in the infographic, news blogs
now are rivals to mainstream media outlets. Technology — in this case, blogs —
has made mass media more democratic. “Instead of a limited number of
‘trusted’ and ‘objective’ news sources, like the familiar network anchors, we
now have an almost limitless number of outlets on the Internet and TV. In fact,
anyone can publish a blog or tweet,” Rory
O’Connor, director of the Digital Resource Center at Stony Brook University’s
Center for News Literacy, wrote in a New
York Times blog post. Blogging has allowed anyone with computer access to
become a storyteller and to bypass traditional mass media, with trust being put
in the hands in more and more people outside the “mainstream.”
Sources
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