How Millennials Get News • Hacker News Board

Re: How Millennials Get News

#31

Post by puranjay » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 11:17 AM UTC

brc wrote: post #13

The reverse of this is of course baby boomer generations who hate what the news has become (TV and Newspaper) yet slavishly consume it anyway, because of a lifetime habit. Whenever I see an older relative frothing about some stupid article in the newspaper, or some pointless piece on TV - I just say 'why not switch it off? Why buy the paper anyway?' I don't watch the news or read newspapers anymore, unless I happen t…

News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!"

In reality, you really don't need to know what's happening around the world. Seriously. 95% of the news you read does not impact you in any meaningful way. Most of it is negative (which is the very nature of news) and too little of it concerns you in your immediate surroundings.

So yeah. You don't need to news. At least not 90% of what passes for news these days.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#32

Post by frostmatthew » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 12:56 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #31

brc wrote: post #13

The reverse of this is of course baby boomer generations who hate what the news has become (TV and Newspaper) yet slavishly consume it anyway, because of a lifetime habit. Whenever I see an older relative frothing about some stupid article in the newspaper, or some pointless piece on TV - I just say 'why not switch it off? Why buy the paper anyway?' I don't watch the news or read newspapers anymore, unless I happen t…

News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!" In reality, you really don't need to know what's happening around the world. Seriously. 95% of the news you read does not impact you in any meaningful way. Most of it is negative (which is the very nature of news) and too little of it concerns you in your immediate surroundings. So yeah. You don't need to news. At least not 90…

> 95% of the news you read does not impact you in any meaningful way

Maybe the world is better when people care about what impacts other people, not just themselves.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#33

Post by e12e » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:04 PM UTC

johnny99 wrote: post #16

lazaroclapp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one thing to consider is that the "filter bubble" is relative, to a degree. We are talking about news, for a mainstream audience. So, the old fashioned alternative is perhaps reading a single physical newspaper, watching 1 or 2 tv news shows and perhaps listening to one radio station, all of similar political bent. Compared to that, the variance of view points among my Facebook friends is likely still higher, a…

Very much agree. When I was a kid I watched one (and only one) of the three network news channels, read The New York Times + the local paper, and that was about it--this was before the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, so talk radio hadn't yet metastasized. It was hard to get alternative opinions in either direction, even if you wanted to. Compared to that social media is a cornucopia/vomitorium of diversity. Alternat…

Managing to challenge ones preconceptions is always going to take work.

Also note that for someone getting their news from FOX News, the New York Times is a left-wing outlier. News is pretty terrible in Norway too, but I always feel like I'm in a sitcom whenever I visit the US/Canada. Where BBC and the Guardian appear as bastions against the establishment -- while they of course are very much mainstream.

On the other hand, I'm quite grateful to many of the Republican bloggers/commenters for offering their view on US politics -- it can be easy to forget that the US has a strong intellectual tradition, and while you'll find me agreeing with/quoting Chomsky or Klein more often than anyone on the other end -- there are quite a few voices on the right that have strong and interesting opinions on freedom, independence, commerce, curbing of federal powers etc.

Anyway, with HN being so dominated by the US in general, and Silicon Valley (including the part of SV that lives in NYC ;-) -- I find it can be quite a contrast to my other echo chambers...

I'm afraid I couldn't suggest anything similar that is more left leaning -- maybe https://zcomm.org/znet/ or http://monthlyreview.org/ (but I don't really follow either -- and they certainly can't compare in any meaningful way with hn).

Re: How Millennials Get News

#34

Post by coldpie » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:11 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #31

brc wrote: post #13

The reverse of this is of course baby boomer generations who hate what the news has become (TV and Newspaper) yet slavishly consume it anyway, because of a lifetime habit. Whenever I see an older relative frothing about some stupid article in the newspaper, or some pointless piece on TV - I just say 'why not switch it off? Why buy the paper anyway?' I don't watch the news or read newspapers anymore, unless I happen t…

News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!" In reality, you really don't need to know what's happening around the world. Seriously. 95% of the news you read does not impact you in any meaningful way. Most of it is negative (which is the very nature of news) and too little of it concerns you in your immediate surroundings. So yeah. You don't need to news. At least not 90…

> News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!"

Yeah. A couple years ago when I was about 24, I decided I "should be more informed" because that's what adults do, so I bought a year subscription to Minneapolis's major newspaper with the goal of reading it mostly every day. I did for a while, but quickly realised that I didn't give a shit about almost anything in the paper. And worse, the things I read made me actively depressed. You know what? I don't care about how the war in Iraq is going. I don't care what some dumb conservative politician had to say about my friends and family. I don't care what crazy shit Russia or North Korea are getting up to. I don't care how many people are dying in a genocide on the other side of the world.

I guess maybe that makes me a bad person or something, but boy am I happier and more productive not knowing it. I canceled that subscription and I'm never looking back. "Keeping up with the news" was one of the worst things I ever did.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#35

Post by mycroft-holmes » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:13 PM UTC

frostmatthew wrote: post #32

puranjay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!" In reality, you really don't need to know what's happening around the world. Seriously. 95% of the news you read does not impact you in any meaningful way. Most of it is negative (which is the very nature of news) and too little of it concerns you in your immediate surroundings. So yeah. You don't need to news. At least not 90…

> 95% of the news you read does not impact you in any meaningful way Maybe the world is better when people care about what impacts other people, not just themselves.

I don't think selfishness is what the parent commenter is referring to. A great example of "news" not impacting me in any meaningful way was a week or two ago when there was breaking news about two alpacas on the loose. Meanwhile, net neutrality passed with a 300+ page document the public wasn't allowed to see at the time.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#36

Post by e12e » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:17 PM UTC

ObviousScience wrote: post #23

codemac wrote: post #2

The one part I can't believe is that 86% of people think they're "Usually [seeing] diverse opinions through social media". The "filter bubble" is going to get worse and worse, it seems. Has anyone had any good experiences where a piece of information technology (forum, reddit, twitter, insta, etc) didn't encourage a filter bubble?

Off-topic: I've always wondered if you could make some sort of website with an anti-bubble. Probably in the style of Twitter, since you'd want to minimize reliance on outside content of dubious provenance, but possibly in the style of reddit with a system that instead of just linking, there'd be some kind of automatic reputation system for the websites linked to. (For the reddit example, think hybrid link and self-po…

Not sure how things are going over at wikinews, now -- but it is at least one project trying for locally sourced(ish) news:

https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page

I seem to recall it was practically defunct for a while, maybe while google news was in vogue/before it made (more of?) a point of showing "news fit for you". I suppose it might still show an interesting sampling, if opened in an incognito tab? (actually the Norwegian edition appears identical to me, logged in or not - so who knows?): https://news.google.com

Either way Google News insist on one choosing an "edition" -- would be more interesting if there was an "International English" edition IMNHO.

FWIW during the height of the #Occupy protests, I always found the various local/community web/fb pages more interesting than mainstream media. But it can be hard to sort through the deliberate and accidental mus-information when one hasn't got the ability to just walk down and talk to people there, to find out who's writing what, and get a sense of the why (I did eventually have the chance to visit and do that -- but travelling to another continent whenever something interesting is happening is obviously not a workable strategy. And I wouldn't exactly go hiking through Syria just to have a chat with people from all sides of the conflict...).

Re: How Millennials Get News

#37

Post by e12e » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 1:21 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #34

puranjay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!" In reality, you really don't need to know what's happening around the world. Seriously. 95% of the news you read does not impact you in any meaningful way. Most of it is negative (which is the very nature of news) and too little of it concerns you in your immediate surroundings. So yeah. You don't need to news. At least not 90…

> News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!" Yeah. A couple years ago when I was about 24, I decided I "should be more informed" because that's what adults do, so I bought a year subscription to Minneapolis's major newspaper with the goal of reading it mostly every day. I did for a while, but quickly realised that I didn't give a shit about almost anything in the paper…

> You know what? I don't care about how the war in Iraq is going.

Well, that's the problem with being informed. If you don't get off your ass and protest (or do something one way or the other) -- either cognitive dissonance will drive you towards being a less caring person ("My government is killing civilians with hellfire missiles without declaring a war and I do nothing - it must be ok, then") -- or it makes you depressed. Or both.

I think the happy balance is to accept that you can only do/care about so much: engage locally and do something meaningful -- work on one or two issues that have global implications -- and not let the fact that you can't right all wrongs (or support all rights) get you down.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#38

Post by asr » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 2:00 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #34

puranjay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!" In reality, you really don't need to know what's happening around the world. Seriously. 95% of the news you read does not impact you in any meaningful way. Most of it is negative (which is the very nature of news) and too little of it concerns you in your immediate surroundings. So yeah. You don't need to news. At least not 90…

> News has been able to sell itself with the dictum that you "have to know what's happening!" Yeah. A couple years ago when I was about 24, I decided I "should be more informed" because that's what adults do, so I bought a year subscription to Minneapolis's major newspaper with the goal of reading it mostly every day. I did for a while, but quickly realised that I didn't give a shit about almost anything in the paper…

I don't care about how the war in Iraq is going.... I don't care how many people are dying in a genocide on the other side of the world.

I am sure this is not quite how you mean it, but to me this comes across as saying "if it doesn't affect my life, or my friends, then who cares." You should care about things that don't directly impact your life -- partly because you can make a difference in these things, sometimes, if you get involved.

Time to get out of the shire and see the world, bilbo.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#39

Post by ttty » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 2:49 PM UTC

So they are worried that have lost the power to persuade people??

Why would I want to know about a hurricane the other part of the world? IMO 99% of the news are junk, but is my opinion. Imagine all the time you lost on being brain-washed.

Re: How Millennials Get News

#40

Post by RandallBrown » Wed, Mar 18, 2015, 3:00 PM UTC

rmason wrote: post #20

PebblesHD wrote: post #4

'Millenials don't read newspapers' - or, as I like to call it, 'Another article telling you what young people do sourced from every possible avenue other than asking young people'. Under 30s are the biggest readers of the local newspapers at my university, and the same can be said for my routing train travel and visits around the area. Young people are using an amazingly diverse selection of news sources that many ol…

I live outside a college town and I have also observed that virtually all the students read the college newspaper. In my travels I've witnessed the same thing at other schools. If young people aren't reading newspapers then where is the disconnect that happens when they graduate? One thing that I have observed is that campus newspapers are more focused on nighttime events which is not covered very well if at all by o…

College papers are distributed for free all over a college campus.

I don't know if I've seen a paper version of the Seattle Times in the 3 years I've lived here.

College papers tend to be much shorter and filled with hyper relevant news.