JUST READ THE DAMN NEWS
Art by Sara McConnell
We’ve all been there. You’re engaging with a few duds from your intro-level sociology or political science class, discussing pressing contemporary issues—neoliberalism, systemic anti-trans legislation, welfare, the works. Spaces like these are reserved for thoughtful discussion based on informative rhetoric, right? Wrong.
When discussing the implications of the ongoing Iran war, Emily, a blonde wholesale distributor heiress from Westchester County cites a pink-and-blue-template @mattxiv Instagram infographic. Seamus, the resident intellectual of the Delta Upsilon brotherhood, reflects on the scrupulous documentarianism of Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan.
You, a career-obsessed journalist and “wellinformed” braggart, wince at what will soon become a humiliating 30-point current event presentation, where you will soon reduce the wartime slaughter of over a thousand people to a five-word, all-lowercase melodramatic Instagram caption.
The culture of political discourse in the age of social media thrives on misinformative, visceral alternatives to news media. Whether it's evident in our elders' obsession with AI slop Facebook reposts or neo-tabloid Instagram pages who make thousands in advertising dollars by posting aesthetically pleasing, information-devoid infographics—it’s clear we’ve lost the integrity of well-informed journalism.
At this point, it’d be cliche to say it's a problem that “everyone gets their news from social media.” But it’s not even that—it’s the fact that nobody is truly consuming news at all. A culture of disawareness and classist convenience has kept us in a landscape of saturated news in the form of short-form and summarized, pointed social media content to shape our understanding of the world.
We’re all guilty. It’s a tale as old as time—touting you read an article when you actually read a lukewarm opinion
t’s a phenomenon easily explained by Jennifer Stromer Galley, a professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies who studies social media algorithms and engagement. Monitoring the use of social media by political candidates, SuperPACs and other ideologically-persuasive bodies, Galley has conducted several studies analyzing how users engage with politicallycharged content.
In a 2021 study, Galley found that users that discuss politics on social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram were marginally more likely to spread misinformation. It’s a concept described as the misinformation paradox: where attempts to “better inform” with others ends up spreading even more falsehoods. The paradox is twofold—short-form social media content that summarizes big issues makes room for misleading interpretation, and media consumers naturally fill in the gaps when they don’t have all the information.
It’s the dual responsibility of both content creators and media consumers to undermine these gaps. While everyone should constantly engage in critical thinking and deliberation when they read a headline, watch a TikTok or see the AI-generated blue search at the top of a comments section, it is also critical that short-form content pushes their readers to read full articles.
This shift towards bite-sized information through social media is emblematic of a change within our culture. Technological advancements over the past 10-15 years have created the advent of algorithmic and personalized news feeds— tailored to keep us engaged and on the platform. The content that is favored on these platforms tend to be brief, consumable and reactionary. With this strategy in mind for news organizations and political influencers to stay alive, journalistic integrity could risk getting lost in the process.
The fragmentation and commodification of our news cycles didn’t start with social media. Cable news and talk radio in the ‘90s and 2000s saw the potential of the news not just as a tool, but as a product. Rush Limbaugh, CNN’s Crossfire and Fox News capitalized on the captivating stories of their time, and presented it as a performance rather than a public service announcement. They made it a loud, polarizing crucial daily viewing, that was frankly hard to look away from.
This notion of news as entertainment has been carried into the age of social media. Non-legacy media creators have become only more popular as more people flock to these platforms. Creators like Nick Fuentes and Hasan Abi thrive on political theater, reactionary issues and controversy, which gather clicks and revenue towards their content. Now, the real problem that begins to emerge with social media platforms being a one-stop-shop of entertainment, social connection and news, is how to differentiate what’s real nuanced news worth consuming, and what’s not.
Greg Munno, a journalism professor at SU, has many theories as to why this information problem is happening and how we got here.
When the internet first emerged as a tool for news, there was genuine optimism that the democratization of news was going to be a net positive, however Munno isn’t quite sure this is the case.
[Social media] was going to bring us all closer together and was going to solve all our problems. We have shown decidedly that that's not what's happened," Munno said.
What emerged instead was something more tribal. Rather than broadening perspectives, our feeds began reinforcing them. Munno argues that the media landscape stopped trying to inform different sides of the political spectrum entirely. "So much media now isn't even really talking about democratic positions to a democratic audience," Munno said. "It's reinforcing the otherness of the conservatives. And of course, vice versa."
Munno also shares the concern that this otherness in the social media era has become a point of entertainment.
These algorithms thrive on that,” Munno said. “Social media thrives off of division and thrives off of the politics of intense emotions and feelings—you layer Trump on top of that and you have someone who almost doesn't want us to take what he's saying seriously. It's a performance of emotion."
Reading the news just looks better. Being able to field questions and have answers about a particular current event or ongoing issue is all the more dignified, and could even make you excited to learn more about something you haven’t looked into before. Don’t humiliate yourself—or get ratioed—just because you thought “neoliberal” meant cool, new, sexy leftist