This assignment began by reading 5 articles about the different factors that affect how people get their news. Next, I had to complete my 5-day news diary. Following this, I had to make a discussion board post, summarizing where I got my news for my diary, how this compared to the research summaries, and whether I fit the profiles for my age, education level, and gender.
From the articles, I learned a bunch of things factors that influence how people get news. The first article describes how older people are more likely to get news in newspapers. Print-only readers are also less likely to have gone to college and have lower incomes. The second article touches on how millennials are much more likely to get their news on Facebook instead of TV, whereas baby boomers are the opposite.
The third article talks about ways to retrieve online news, such as how the most common method is through a news organization website, followed by social media. Women who get news online are more likely to get it from social media than males are. The fourth article discusses social media news increases in US adults, especially in older, nonwhite and less educated Americans, and discusses the breakdown of who gets information from each site. The last article discusses how American use of online news is closing in on use of TV news.
In my own news diary, the majority of my news was found online. More specifically, 9 out of my 10 pieces of news, or 90%, were found online. My only piece of news I learned offline was through a phone call from a friend.
For age, education level, and gender, I generally fit my profile. For age, nearly every article summary detailed how younger people reported higher levels of finding their news online, which is directly the case for me. For education level, one article says that people who find their news online are more likely to have been to college. I am in college, and almost all of my news was found online. For gender, one article talks about how women are more likely to find online news from social media and men from a news organization website. I fit with this because most of my news was found through news organization websites.
Reflecting on this assignment, it allowed me to reflect on my own news experiences. I know that I get a lot of information online, but it was the overwhelming majority of news on my news diary, and more than I expected. It made me realize how often I am on the internet, including news websites, social media, and more, and how they all showcase so much different information. Maybe I will try to get more news in other formats in the future, such as through other people, to expand my horizons.
Not only did it allow me to reflect on my own news experiences, but it also allowed me to receive a lot of information about the news experiences of others. Reading all of those reports allowed me to compare my own experiences to other people, to see if I fit the typical person of my gender, education level, age, and more. This was interesting because I honestly did not know what to expect from others. Seeing that I generally fit my prototype was somewhat reassuring.
The combination of learning about myself and the general public was interesting and valuable. Usually, in an assignment, it would be focused on one or the other, but it was cool to combine them. It allowed me to compare and contrast different categories, which gave me some critical thinking practice.
Even though some of the statistics were predictable, some I really did not know about, so it was still a learning experience for me. If these statistics were calculated again in a few years, I would be interested to see the results. I would guess that the percentage of all people who get their news on the internet would continue to increase, and start to dominate other forms of news!
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