Trusting the Untrustworthy

Social media has taken the world by storm. Can we all agree on that? Everywhere you look people are on their phones engaging in an online community, immersed in a world of constant notifications. Our feeds are updated 24/7 with the latest news from Kim Kardasian divorcing Kanye West to Cardinal Pell being freed from jail and who could forget about when Tik Tokker Bryce Hall cheated on Addison Rae!

Do we ever take a moment to question who is responsible for our news? Or if the information we are reading is even true? Can we trust the news? In this week's lecture I was confronted with the realisation that that is simply not the case. As viewers we have little control over what we are faced with on social media and that is scary thought.  

I am Ella and I am addicted to facebook. Facebook is the platform that I use to communicate with my family but it is also where I receive my news. I am currently following 9News on facebook, and I am faced with latest news updates. 9NEWS is just one news outlet that is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, making Murdoch one of the most powerful figures in the media. Rupert Murdoch has the power to filter through his own opinions and beliefs into our viewing. For example, his portrayal of women in the media was questioned by late prime minister Kevin Rudd when comparing Julia Gillard’s upcoming presidency in 9 News to Helen Clark’s in New Zealand. Murdoch expressed an unusual amount of focus on Gillard’s gender, appearance and personal life in comparison to other male uprising prime ministers. How do you think this portrayal of Julia Gillard in the news influenced viewers' opinions? This is just one example highlighting the effect that ownership has on our news. 

Facebook was launched in 2004 and is currently owned by Mark Zuckerberg. Since it was founded, Facebook has grown at an exponential pace, “it has surpassed 1.7 billion total users and over 1.1 billion daily active users. Given this reach, Facebook has become the largest platform for news in the world.”(Constine 2016) Facebook has become a key component in many movements such as The Black Lives Matter movement, where millions of users used their facebook platform to spread awareness about racism, following the death of George Floyd. During the first COVID-19 lockdown, Facebook allowed people to remain connected with one another, and updated with latest restrictions. A study in Nature: Human Behaviour, and has found, “Facebook to be the referrer site for untrustworthy news sources over 15% of the time. By contrast, Facebook referred users to authoritative news sites only 6% of the time.” (Travers, 2021) Facebook came under attack in 2018 when 87 million peoples personal information was leaked to Cambridge Analyitica to build psychological profiles for Trump’s 2016 election. This completely went against facebook’s terms and condition of not selling it’s users information. To what extent did this influence the election outcome? And it makes me question, should we be reading our terms and conditions more? I don’t know about you but I can say with confidence that I’ve never read any terms and conditions and just mindlessly accepted. 

So, think again next time you read something. Challenge it, and you might surprise yourself.

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References 

Carlson, M 2018, ‘Facebook in the News: Social media, journalism, and public responsibility following the 2016 Trending Topics controversy’, Digital journalism, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 4–20.