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Mar
27
Young people and the news
Posted by Vera Haller on Mar 27, 2008 under: blogs, newspapers, online news, politics
That the younger generation seeks out its news from different sources is hardly new, but The New York Times today takes it a step further. An article states that young consumers are spreaders of news, especially in the realm of politics. Here’s an excerpt:
“According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well - sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter - reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com - with a social one.”
The article underscores the fact that the ease with which the Internet allows the transfer of information is leading people to get to their news in non-traditional ways.
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One Response to “Young people and the news”
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I think this is definitely true, though I don’t know that it applies to me. Whenever I see the links to ’send this article to a friend’, I don’t bother. I’d feel like I’m sending spam. Also, I do tell people what I’ve heard, but only if it’s something that is NOT a big story, since the odds are they probably haven’t heard about it yet then. And since the NYT article is about young voters, it narrows down the younger generation a lot, because I think we have a voter interest problem in our country right now. To say voters are active in spreading the news to each other seems a bit meaningless to me. Voters (who we know are relatively politically active) represent a minority, so to say that they spread the news is not really surprising or noteworthy.