The University Of Phoenix HUM/186: Media Influences On American Culture

Issues and Ethics in News and social media.

Ashley Dosch, The University of Phoenix HUM/186: Media Influences on American Culture Christine Nortz 3/4/24.

Issues and Ethics in News and social media Within the last decade, social media has quickly become the leading source of news and media for the majority of Americans. With the technological advancements that have been implemented, it is going to be extremely different for the average user to verify a source or topic. As the technologies increase the ease of creating believable content, the trust of the American people has been on a drastic decline. Since the first form of social media was created in 1997, there has been a steady decline in trust in mass media. As of 2016, the

I have heard some people refer to this as “click bait”. Social media has become the primary news source for millions of Americans. I am not convinced this is a good thing for us collectively due to the misinformation and how quickly a false narrative can spread.

There should be a certain ethical code that the media is held accountable to, especially for certain topics or genres. Factual information is what I seek specifically when I read about national health, political news, wars, and finance. While I agree with ethical standards in journalism, I do not think they should be applied in the same way to the entertainment side of the news.

Based on a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2021, it was found that nearly half of the respondents, specifically 48 percent, expressed their belief in the necessity of government regulation to combat the spread of fake news on the internet. I would say I am on the opposite side of that survey. There are too many individual contributors for the government to monitor and hold people accountable for what is on the internet. During my information-gathering process, I attempt to consult various sources and compare their perspectives to find similarities and differences. This can be a time-consuming task and one I do not think we should have to do with every piece of media that we