Because I'm Bad, I'm Bad
Reading Sunstein's article got me thinking, I have purposely been trying to do exactly what he fears-- filtering out news about which I don’t care to hear.
For months I've been trying to figure out how I can filter OUT news about the Michael Jackson trial. But everywhere I turn it's there...cable and network news, newspapers, magazines, entertainment TV, late-night TV, Internet news sites, conversations at bars...I can't escape it! Here I am trying to put myself in an MJ-free bubble, but I can’t. So I’m not really buying Sunstein’s argument that personalization is limiting my exposure to any topic.
The Internet provides the most powerful public forum we’ve ever seen. Sure my generation might not pick up the New York Times print edition and randomly read an article about France rejecting the E.U. Constitution. Our world is so flat that we’ll hear about it from a friend we chat with online who lives in France when we ask, “What’s up?”
Just because the Internet has made it easier to group ourselves by interests, doesn’t mean that differing points of view will be filtered out. We live in a world that is so connected, we can’t escape some topics…ask the person in France who’s American friend emails them updates of the Michael Jackson trial.
For months I've been trying to figure out how I can filter OUT news about the Michael Jackson trial. But everywhere I turn it's there...cable and network news, newspapers, magazines, entertainment TV, late-night TV, Internet news sites, conversations at bars...I can't escape it! Here I am trying to put myself in an MJ-free bubble, but I can’t. So I’m not really buying Sunstein’s argument that personalization is limiting my exposure to any topic.
The Internet provides the most powerful public forum we’ve ever seen. Sure my generation might not pick up the New York Times print edition and randomly read an article about France rejecting the E.U. Constitution. Our world is so flat that we’ll hear about it from a friend we chat with online who lives in France when we ask, “What’s up?”
Just because the Internet has made it easier to group ourselves by interests, doesn’t mean that differing points of view will be filtered out. We live in a world that is so connected, we can’t escape some topics…ask the person in France who’s American friend emails them updates of the Michael Jackson trial.
1 Comments:
I, too, have been desperately trying to find ways to filter out Michael Jackson. I'm waiting for Google News to allow users to omit stories that contain key words, but it hasn't happened yet.
In fact, I suspect that news consumers who read mainstream online publications are exposed to more stories they don't actively seek out because news sites put links to stories from every major section on their home page, but newspapers and magazines separate stores by section. I never read the sports page, but because CNN puts sports headlines on their front page, I know about the woman who finished 4th in the Indy 500 this weekend. If I got all my news from the Washington Post, I doubt I ever would have read about her.
By NM Dem, at 3:17 PM
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