Of course it’s not an explicit expectation, but the news cycle is dominated by a mix of 24/7 news and daily summaries. It’s rare that I see weekly, bi-weekly, monthly summaries. I’m thinking, is there really that much that can happen in a day and that warrants our attention? Most news are clickbait focused on the negative, making us feel depressed and feeds our negative emotions. I wouldn’t be surprised if the news actively contributes to the mental health crisis.
At the same time I think it can be of importance to have some understanding on what’s going on in one’s local area, one’s country and in the world. For me I think a weekly summary would be good balance, but those are weirdly hard to find. What are your thoughts?
You are 100% correct, negative news has a greater impact on people than positive: https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71516.pdf
Media sites know this, and use it to drive engagement:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01538-4
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/social-media-facebook-twitter-politics-b1870628.html
And so, negative headlines are getting worse: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0276367
But negative news is addictive and psychologically damaging: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-we-worry/202009/the-psychological-impact-negative-news
So it’s important to try and stay positive:
https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/benefits-of-good-news
If you want a break from the constant negativity, here are some sites that report specifically on positive news:
Remember, realistic optimism is important and, unlike what some might have you believe, is not the same as blissful ignorance or ‘burying your head in the sand’: https://www.learning-mind.com/realistic-optimism-blind-positivity/
https://www.centreforoptimism.com/realisticoptimism
And doesn’t mean you must stay uninformed on current affairs: https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/how-to-stop-doom-scrolling
https://goodable.co/blog/tips-for-balancing-positive-and-negative-news/
Some world news summaries can be found here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-37067259
https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week
Good comment, saving the good news sources
I definitely don’t. Better for my mental health.
I don’t think it’s a social expectation. It’s more of an outcome of the interaction between the current societal system and technology. There are likely several systems we can develop and implement to reduce the overwhelming amount of info we need to consume on a regular basis, but as with any social system, changing things takes power away from the ones in power.
On a good note, one reason your expected to be updated on news is that you have a say in the political system. If you didn’t have any power in the political system, then not only would you not be expected to stay updated on news, but you would be prevented from it.
The elites want us to be tired all the time. It’s how they won the battle for the internet.
it’s how they won’t the battle for the internet
It’s how they won all status quo benefits to them. They also know status quo changes and why they put so much energy, effort, influence and time into continuing to try to make things worse so the likelihood of large-scale change decreases.
However, at a certain point, history shows people will revolt. The question is when, and how much of the horrific foundation that has been laid with people used to it can be ripped up before our short attention slams turn back to other interests?
The problem with that reasoning is everyone is waiting for someone else to start the revolution
I didn’t advocate for a slow response, history shows people just like to boil like frogs as were very adaptable, for good and bad. Id love it if swift, collective action were our norm.
Most aren’t expected to, unless it’s your job like Kimmel, SNL, Stewart, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, etc
It’s just easier to find new content reading material than today’s market in fiction which is disappointingly awful of late.
That’s an illusion. Believe it or not if you ignore the “news” it goes away. Most “news” isn’t worth your time anyway and will just make you feel helpless. The best way to get the news is to be selective with what you consume. E.g. once in a while listen to the BBC news report on the radio, sub to independent journalists (channel 5 w\ Andrew Callahan, Caspian report. YT). If there’s an issue you actually care about that you heard from the news, do what you can and not what you can’t.
That’s an illusion. Believe it or not if you ignore the “news” it goes away.
Some news are irrelevent, I do agree with that.
But not all are.
Example:
“Hurricane is on its way to [Your Area]” probably shouldn’t be ignored.
I think you’re just describing market forces. Good recaps are harder to write. You’re describing cheap news. If we want proper news, we need to subsidize it.
I don’t think we are. I mean in the old times, newspapers used to be published once a day. And you’d have the evening news on TV. And it kind of aligns with daily rituals. You can read it with your morning ciffee, or grab it on your way to work…
These days you can read news whenever you want. And they’re there almost immediately. Plus a lot of people use social media to share news articles. So it doesn’t really follow any cycle.
Speaking more generally, people like to stay in the loop. Things are most interesting when they just happened, not 20 days later… And attention works in a strange way in the age if the internet anyways… You’re always available, or someplace else. Notifications pop up all day. And we check our phone like 200 times a day to check on arbitrary things.
I’d say read a magazine, if you want bi-weekly or monthly updates. The articles in there are more nuanced and interesting anyways. And magazines are a thing and kind of made for that.
Whose expectations? Who says we have to pay them any mind?Unless their name is on the deed, or they pay me wages, I don’t much care what they expect.
I know someone who only learned Biden had dropped out upon seeing his name was not on the (mail-in) ballot. I was a little jealous.
I follow current events, but I strive to filter out politics beyond the very top level headlines.
For the entire time I’ve been alive, we have been a supply-side economics country. Which means that rather than companies creating products based upon the needs of the people and selling them, much or perhaps most of the economy is oriented toward making you want (largely) unnecessary things that companies have created.
The news media serves this economic structure in a few different ways:
- It notifies you of new products – essentially acting as the marketing arm of the companies – to keep the economy humming along and people consuming things.
- It wants you to consume its main, likely unnecessary product (i.e. 24/7, up-to-the-second news) in order to both assist the above goal of having you consume that marketing, and because it itself is a supply-side economic product.
- It relays at every possible opportunity the message that not keeping up with the news will result in you missing out on important things, or might result in potential disaster.
It is often the news organizations themselves – and the people who act as boosters for them either unintentionally or intentionally – that pretend that you have some personal responsibility to consume every bit of news about every flatulent (be it government, celebrity, or corporate) that opened their mouth today.
We’re social creatures. We need things to talk about so we seek out info on shared interests. “The news” has the added benefit of feeding into a self belief about being civic minded person.
I think it’s ok to have an area of study be a hobby, but if you want to be an activist find something you can actually engage in. If you can’t create real value on the thing. Swing a hammer, shovel, paint, move goods, create program, or one degree away helping coordinate people actually doing that, don’t worry about it. It’s a time suck, and we all have better things to actually do.
The news is full of time sucks like that. Just worrying things you have no responsibility or possible action to deal with. It’s worth occasionally glances to see if there is an interesting hobby you want to pick up or if there a cause you want to engage in, but if your good there I wouldn’t bother.
You’re expected to keep your head in the sand, work for a fraction of the value of your labor until you die, too late for you to realize your life has been stolen.
People who want to know what the fuck is happening around them have to read the news and learn about the world in order to do that.
I get my news from people on TikTok that do it every week as a round up instead of the shitty corporate owned 24/7 kind.
Mostly seeing what laws are/will take away my ability to exist as a person and all rights associated with it.
Don’t want to be sent to slavery, err they call it prison now right?
Basically getting the upper hand in case I’m not allowed to go to certain places or exist in certain spaces.
More of a survival thing then anything else really.
You think TikTok is better than mainstream media for news?
From experience it is, mainstream Media always is about media and attention and money and control.
TikTok have people who are just people who are reporting what there finding for news to inform others, not for money, not fo views, but because they genuinely want to inform people.
It’s hard to do that on American platforms because anything they don’t like they censored heavily. Yes TikTok does too but not that extent
Mainstream media also has those people. Real journalists do exist.
Mainstream media is more accountable in a lot of ways. There’s absolutely less misinformation on mainstream media. All the facts they publish are true. The same can’t be said for social media.
Social media can be less filtered, for good or bad. It can also just seem less filtered while there’s absolutely a filter deciding what gets promoted to you. Look at Elon’s recent moves on X, for example.
As long as you understand the nuance, it can be fine. Especially if you’re using mainstream media to verify facts from social media.
Here’s my idea of how we should keep ahead of news, in doing this I have made an algorithm for me that goes across media platforms which allows me to spend less time digesting media and having more go across my eyes and more high quality.
https://blog.machinations.space/independent-media-consumption/
Why are we expected to keep up with the news on a daily basis?
If it is not faster? What’s the lifespan of any buzz news, nowadays? 15, 30 minutes? 1h?
That being said, we may be expected to do that and many people may even be willing to do it, aka gobbing news all day long, but we’re not supposed to do that. At least, not if we want
to have some understanding on what’s going on in one’s local area, one’s country and in the world.
Understanding takes times (to read more, to hear various point of views) and effort (to conciliate those various view points we hear/read, and to try to understand it (aka make up our own personal opinion) instead of merely reacting emotionally to it.
Time and efforts are two things media certainly don’t want us to practice because it will cost them a lot of money and probably, for a majority of them, their job too. Because:
- Readers/listeners/viewers that are used to do efforts on their own (instead of being spoon-fed) will also expect better quality news (instead of the actual trash that’s falsely labelled as news) in order to be satisfied. It happens that better content does cost more money to produce than trash content (it requires more work, more time and smarter people, none of those being free or AI-replaceable).
- In depth understanding of better content also requires more time to understand it. Which mean people will consume less news articles/videos/whatever and that news outlets will sell less ads.
Too bad, those medias and the army of people working there need to sell as many ads as they can in order to pay for their salaries, they need us to be as stupid as we can be so we will swallow whatever cheap turd they can produce without even blinking an eye. We may even ask for more.
It’s all about choice.
Our choice as individuals, to waste our time on such shit content or to spend it on better content, and our choice as a society, deciding what we value more between a better education and information (which takes a lot of work, takes time, and cost more) or being raised as braindead morons that will happily clap hands everytime they’re fed whatever the latest buzz-turd is so dumb that even the stupidest AI can write it in mere seconds?
Most news are clickbait focused on the negative, making us feel depressed and feeds our negative emotions. I wouldn’t be surprised if the news actively contributes to the mental health crisis.
Most news can also not be that. It’s a choice. Not an easy choice, but a choice nonetheless.
The news I read (I have quit watching TV in the early 00s when I realized what a trash can it was morphing into) are not like that, or barely are. But it does cost me money and time to make them not be clickbait trash. Which is sad since many people can’t afford one or the other, if not both. While other people simply don’t want to be bothered.
What are your thoughts?
There are still great news papers out there, and websites, coming from all political ‘trends’… Which incidentally is another of our serious weaknesses, one that is also over-exploited by trash media: our allergy to anything that would not perfectly reflect our ‘values’, aka if a news outlet is not blue, red, green, grey, pink, whatever our ‘color’ is then it’s worthless. It is not. But, here again, realizing that there a re great news outlet even in the ‘facing camp’ will take time and efforts (to read them and to spot the few that aren’t trash).
