{"id":1954,"date":"2010-06-30T22:05:31","date_gmt":"2010-07-01T03:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/?p=1954"},"modified":"2010-06-30T22:05:31","modified_gmt":"2010-07-01T03:05:31","slug":"media-overload","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/2010\/06\/30\/media-overload\/","title":{"rendered":"Media overload"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone, presumably who knows who I am because of Defiance, Ohio asked me what I thought a good strategy to stay informed and conscious about what’s happening in the world without being inundated with biased or incorrect information. This question was strangely aligned with things I had been thinking about and speakers and readings in my How 21st Century Media Work<\/em> class at Medill.<\/p>\n

Here’s my answer:<\/p>\n

I’ve been doing some reading lately that has made me think about issues
\nconnected to your question. Jack Fuller, a long-time Chicago journalist
\nrecently wrote a book called “What is Happening to News: The Information
\nth Explosion and the Crisis in Journalism.” He makes two assertions
\nthat really helped me make sense of the current media moment. First, we
\nlive in a world where we have a ton of information and technology to
\npush that information at us in a relentless stream. This, Fuller says,
\ncreates a consistent response in the human brain – it puts us in a state
\nof emotional excitement that makes us respond more to emotional information.<\/p>\n

As people who create information (news organizations, advertisers,
\nmusicians) have to compete with more information, they try to leverage
\nthe way our brains work by creating information that we will respond
\nemotionally to and thus pay attention over all the other noise. The
\nheated debates between pundits (or wingnuts) on cable news are a good
\nexample of this.<\/p>\n

Fuller’s second contention is that we live in a time where people are
\nless trusting of authority (whether it is information from the
\nmainstream media, the government, academics, experts, etc). This, he
\nsays, is a huge shift from the generation that came of age during WWII
\nwho saw a structured, hierarchical society as a feature that helped win
\nthe war. This observation was really important to me because it made me
\nrethink the idea that progressives were necessarily exceptional in our
\nquestioning of authority. We may just be guided within a larger dynamic
\nof skepticism. Certainly there is as much skepticism on the right as
\nthere is among progressives. The main difference is who those groups
\ndefine as the authorities to be questioned.<\/p>\n

So far, I haven’t really answered your question, but I think Fuller’s
\ntwo points are important for how I now think about news and information
\nin the world. Before I finally get down to an answer, I want to talk
\nabout what motivates me to seek out information. A big part of that is
\nthe idea of radicalism in the Ella Baker sense of the term:
\nunderstanding and addressing the social condition at its root. To get
\nto this understanding or action, it takes a lot of inquiry, questioning
\nand dialog, part of which can happen through media.<\/p>\n

– From what you wrote, it sounds like knowing what’s happening in the
\nworld and using that information to get a sense of injustice or paths to
\njustice is important to you. Obviously, consuming information and
\ntalking to people about that information is a big part of that process.
\nHowever, many issues are complicated and nuanced and information
\nproviders don’t always do a good job of capturing the things they report
\nwith depth or nuance. Still, I think its important to interact with
\ninformation in a critical but not necessarily adversarial way (which is
\nhard given what I mentioned earlier about a lot of information being
\npresented in a way that has high emotional impact – in many cases that
\nmeans in an adversarial way).<\/p>\n

As a journalism student I realized how easy it is to insert bias,
\ninaccuracy, narrowness, or prejudice into a story, not because the
\nreporter or news outlet is evil or wants to be manipulative but because
\nof other factors. Maybe the journalist’s experience (or lack of
\nexperience) keeps her from asking all the questions about a story or
\nseeking a full range of sources? Maybe sources aren’t willing to talk
\nto the journalist because of their perceptions about the media or the
\njournalist (warranted or not). Perhaps there just isn’t time, space or
\nresources to fully explore the story. In any case, I think both media
\nproducers and others interacting with media and information are best
\nserved by trying to get a complete picture. Instead of asking “is this
\nright or wrong”, it might be more productive to ask, “what doesn’t make
\nsense?”, “what questions aren’t answered?” or “how might the
\nwriter\/publication’s experience mediate what I’m reading\/seeing\/hearing?”<\/p>\n

Besides providing nformation, another thing that information providers
\ndo is to frame issues. They define what the “sides” are to a debate (or
\nwhether there’s a debate at all) and what the “left”, “right” and
\n“center” of an issue are. Given the perceived need to make information
\nhave emotional weight, I think its really easy for information providers
\nto pick voices and framings that are loud and provocative but aren’t
\nnecessarily the most productive or relevant. I think people interacting
\nwith information shouldn’t just assume the framings we’re provided. One
\nof the best techniques I’ve been taught as a student reporter is to ask
\nsources, “what person\/perspective who is on a different side of the
\nissue do you most respect?” rather than just picking the most outspoken
\nvoices. If reporters aren’t doing this, then those interacting with the
\nmedia need to.<\/p>\n

Finally, as much as I feel like a “fuck the news” mentality isn’t very
\nproductive and is sort of the same as prescribing to the idea that
\n“ignorance is bliss”, I think it’s a mentality that’s completely
\nunderstandable. However, I think it’s important to separate concerns
\nabout the accuracy, depth and nuance of information from feelings of
\nbeing overwhelmed by information. As I’ve mentioned a lot already, much
\nof the information that we interact with today is designed to illicit an
\nemotional response, in many cases, one that borders on stress. This can
\nbe really, really overwhelming. There was a great episode of a Boston
\nRadio show called “The Theory of Everything” that I heard once that I
\ncan no longer find but maybe you can where the producer talked about
\nbeing overwhelmed by trying to stay informed about the Iraq war. I
\nthink it’s okay to take breaks from media and to accept that there are
\nlimitations to how much information we can synthesize both rationally
\nand emotionally. Failing to do so can hurt our ability to use
\ninformation constructively as much as complete ignorance can.<\/p>\n

The short answer, as best I can say for myself is this: consume
\ninformation in an emotionally sustainable way, ask critical but not
\nnecessarily adversarial questions and seek out additional information
\nthat helps answer your questions.<\/p>\n

Photo by martinhoward<\/a><\/strong> via Flickr<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone, presumably who knows who I am because of Defiance, Ohio asked me what I thought a good strategy to stay informed and conscious about what’s happening in the world without being inundated with biased or incorrect information. This question was strangely aligned with things I had been thinking about and speakers and readings in… Continue reading Media overload<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[20493,257,30],"class_list":["post-1954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bias","tag-culture","tag-media","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wnIz-vw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1955,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1954\/revisions\/1955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}