Increasingly, unbalanced news media today that foreground crises and emergencies is a crucial problem worldwide, potentially marginalized 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 simply consume news without validating the rightness of that information. Furthermore, the various online news platforms, emerging in the digital era, have caused intense competition for each business, where they only prioritize revenue rather than the quality of information. They often even create sensational crisis coverage merely to get driving clicks from the 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’s information is a negative effect of this case, a serious problem for the community at large. It 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 information.