Dawn Wentzell

How social media affects my news consumption

Posted on August 10th, 2008 in current events

This isn’t an article about how I’ve abandoned traditional media for YouTube or Digg. In fact, I realized today that I use a hybrid of both.

When I first turned my computer on this morning, I had not yet heard about the propane explosion in Toronto.

As is my usual routine when I first go online, I opened my Google Homepage to my News tab. I noticed on both the headlines feeds from The Star and the Globe and Mail that there had been an explosion over night, but had no idea as to the severity of it – as is the trouble with text links. So, I didn’t through to the article.

I then usually scan my reddit and Digg feeds for anything interesting. The third headline on reddit this morning was a link about the explosion, which took me to a YouTube video that someone had recorded of the explosion and large mushroom cloud.

After that, I went back to the article on The Star for a few more details. However, I didn’t know how recent that article was, and wanted up-to-the-minute updates, and turned to my tv. From one of the comments on the article, I knew that CBC News World was not showing news, but the Olympics instead, so I chose to watch CP24.

I had never really realized it before, but I sort of use social media to gauge how important a news item might be, and turn back to traditional media for the details.