Social Media Bias Analysis

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Although social media is very common in this day and age, especially amidst youth activists, a large portion of the population still does not receive its information in the form of social media, but from other forms of old media like newspapers and news programs. Examples include CNN Breaking News and Fox News, which happen to be on opposite sides of the political spectrum, with Fox News being more conservative and CNN Breaking News being more liberal. Fox News is a conservative program that supports the Trump administration, thus supporting a majority of everything it does, while the more liberal CNN tends to critique the administration’s actions. Biases of the media outlets dictate the viewer demographics it has.
For example, a liberal …show more content…
The media, depending on its own biases, portrays news in either positive or negative light, which then translates into the ways consumers view and react to the events. Rushfield mentions how the media “instead of calming the crowd” chooses to “stroke [its] flames” (Rushfield 419), meaning that media holds a certain power over consumers in that they are able to control the ways consumers are initially introduced to things. Rushfield describes the power of the internet as a force to be reckoned with because of its ability to cause the immediate “frenzy of the mob” (Rushfield 419) if it chooses to. The media, if it chooses to, can introduce an event nonchalantly as something that is unimportant in the lives of everyday Americans, or can introduce something as a big deal that will have an impact on everyone’s life. This power is important because once put into perspective, consumers are able to realize the power media holds over them. Media influences consumers and exhibits a predisposed idea of how events should be processed. It is when consumers realize the power media holds over them, that they are able to truly look past the influences and think for …show more content…
Media has the power to reach a broad level of people and while platforms such as Facebook or news outlets are good at informing users, they also tend to create divisions between people. Social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter, while they do not have a specific target audience, divide people because of the advanced nature of their interfaces. The sites take past consumer habits and tailor what viewers see based on what they liked before. While this was created for consumers to have a more pleasurable experience on the website, it also creates barriers because those who are unaware of certain beliefs or events are not able to see the perspective of others. Grassroots accounts are tailored to the specific likes of the consumer, thus will not show them anything the computer processor believes he or she will not like. Similar to “birds of a feather stick together” (Boyd 411) mentioned in Boyd’s article, when people are on social media they connect with people and things that are like them, and not radically different than what they are. The fault however, is not on the site, but the functioning of computer processors and their inability to know the exact specifics of what consumers like and do and do not want to see. It is possible that people
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