Increasingly, unbalanced news media today, which foreground crises and emergencies, are a crucial problem worldwide, potentially marginalizing positive developments. It seems to me that there are two leading causes for this case and several effects on society, which we will discuss in this essay.
The main factor is the development of digital technology, such as social media, which can make disseminating information easy for all age groups. But the social media applications do not have a great filtering feature for the information. Consequently, many people, specifically the younger generation, may be exposed to news without truthful information. Furthermore, the emergence of various online news platforms has led to intense competition among media businesses, where they only prioritize revenue rather than information quality. They also often create sensational crisis coverage merely to drive clicks from users.
The influence of this issue on the general public can be quite severe. Firstly, increasing misinformation is a vital phenomenon in society, in which the misleading headline has led to incorrect information, especially for people who only read the news title. In many cases, media platforms have created a news header as if it were an emergency problem, but the fact is that this issue is a simple situation. Secondly, exposure to the hoax news is a serious effect of this problem for the community at large. This can trigger panic, conflicts, and social division. Even worse, this phenomenon is potentially repetitive due to the impact of social media algorithms, showing similar content based on user preferences.
Overall, we see that developed digital technology is the main origin of the problems and that the effects on society at large are disinformation and even exposure to fake news.