Having grown up, consuming ‘news’ in the digital and mobile age, Tina Doncheva examines life in the age of total media immersion. What is ‘news’ today and how do twenty-somethings find, watch, listen to and read it in an era of always-on information-saturation?
‘Did you watch the news last night? The Republican Convention in Milwaukee was streamed on so many channels, I was scrolling on and on and somehow there was only Trump on TV.
I felt as if I have broken the remote control.’ – ‘I didn’t really come across that yesterday. I saw the stories of CNN and Time but I skipped through them – I didn’t really feel the urge to drain myself.’
Similar talks have often been conducted in recent times, comparing and intermingling different mediatic organs.
Their impact can be deduced from the way people make use of the services provided.
But how did this variety of different sources come about?
It was only in 1967 when the British BBC2 became the first European broadcaster to introduce colour TV and now we are talking about influencers on Instagram (both words did not even have their place in the dictionaries back in the 60s).
Over the last few decades we have witnessed the most rapid scientific and technological breakthrough in the human history, leading us straight to where we are now – the digital era.
From newspapers to the Internet: The evolution of media and the rise of ubiquitous information
The Times, BBC, TikTok, Facebook, CNN, the Guardian, YouTube – there are so many of them and yet it seems as if they are not evenly used by society.
Why is that?
They are all media after all. A medium is a source through which one can disseminate and, conversely, obtain information. This inevitably involves communication – the conditio sine qua non of humanity itself.
No media, no communication and consequently no social systems. Media determine what we know about the world, they shape our perception of ourselves and the ones around us and they are a fundamental part of our human existence.
The end of traditional television: A new era of entertainment begins
As the 21st century progresses through its different phases (now called trends), we are witnessing a vital shift in the media consumption. This is partly because of the rapid pace of technology innovation.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban at eight on Channel 4 – kids around the TV, popcorns and the fireplace as the background of the typical idyllic Friday night with the family. Unfortunately, though a picture of idyll also a history now.
More modern streaming services offering myriad of movies to choose from are now what one would connect with ‘movie nights’.
You can easily switch the language, turn subtitles on, arrange the brightness and whatnot. A blessing and a curse at the same time (also known as the torment of choice).
The social media news revolution
It is not only the streaming services that are changing, but also media outlets. For instance, many people nowadays determine their major source of information to be Facebook.
But wait – Facebook was this platform you can connect with friends and colleagues, post pictures from the weekend and (most importantly) stay up-to-date with the latest gossips around the neighbourhood.
Suddenly the website once used for uploading videos of your dog’s last birthday has become a major player in the dissemination of news.
What is, however, interesting to think about is the essence of the news found on Facebook.
Other social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and X also have become an intrinsic part of the spread of information. Still one should think about the meaning of the word ‘news’ when touching upon the promulgation of knowledge through social media.
Beyond the headlines: A new understanding of news
For an event to be called news, there are certain factors that need to be involved. By way of illustration, an occurrence gains importance by reaching a certain limit of frequency. There are also other criteria such as negativity, unpredictability, and continuity.
Despite such standards being normally abided by journalists in traditional media outlets, it is not necessarily what one would see on social media.
Still if a celebrity such as Kylie Jenner posts a picture with a new hair colour, a 14 year old girl could say it is ‘the news of the week’. Therefore, as the means of communication and dissemination change, so does the concept of the news.
Typically, the orthodox perception of the news would be related to politics, economy or inflation whereas a more modern approach involving a shift in the importance of certain circumstances could be associated with more minor affairs in the every-day life of a celebrity.
It is, however, not so much a new denotation of the news as it is a new connotation that has come about particularly among the younger unit of the population.
This phenomenon is the result of a specific domino effect that has started with the invasion of scores of new electronic devices on the market. The great quantity of new electronics led to an increase in the demand for more content and a surge in media consumption.
Consequently, the phenomenon of mediatisation began to take root which was followed by the digitalisation. This whole process of switching from tertiary to quaternary media formats triggered the blurring of boundaries between different media and the content they present.
Social media platforms playing news outlets: The cost of connectivity
The culmination of all this is the division of the society roughly based on the different generations. It is well known that TikTok is chiefly used by younger groups and according to the Digital News Report 2024 by Reuters, there have been more people (mainly 18 to 24 year-olds) using it for news in the last year.
Most of the time, however, when looking at news sources on TikTok by creators, one would not find the typical coherent broadcast of news. Instead the language and the amount of information is reduced to simplicity, presenting only snippets from the actual events.
On the one hand this new way of broadcasting might be because of the ineptitude of the creators to duly present information due to their lack of journalistic background.
On the other hand, the simplification of the news on TikTok might be attributed to the target audience.
It is true that people with high need for cognition usually adhere to traditional media outlets though not necessarily neglecting more contemporary sources of information. Therefore, as its audience is mainly constituted by people lacking tertiary education, TikTok primarily only outlines important events without really delving more deeply into the specifics.
Meanwhile, though showing a decline in its usage as news source in recent years, Facebook is still a leader among other social media for the spread of information. This platform is also known for being popular among journalists and traditional news brands which puts forward the correlation between credibility through established brands and the users’ interest.
Information at our fingertips: Has technology made us smarter or duller?
What is, nevertheless, crucial for the examination of social media platforms as a key news sources in the 21st century is the discussion of how society itself has changed.
Presumably there would have been a significantly smaller proportion of people showing preference to short news videos 20 years ago than now.
What is even more, while short-form videos are gaining on popularity among the younger generation, usually the older generation sticks to traditional news brands.
It is not a secret that our lives have become much easier in the last 10 to 20 years – staying connected with the rest of the world all the time wherever you go is the height of human achievements so far.
Today everything you need is in the tiny device in your pocket – from finding the nearest vegan restaurant to booking your plane ticket to Australia.
And if you ask somebody about the feeling of putting their hand in their pockets and not finding their phones there, they would describe the experience almost as a heart attack, as if the phone has become part of their bodies.
That being the case, we don’t usually put that much effort in what used to be described as chores.
This could partly be the reason why so many people today would choose the fastest and easiest way to do anything – including staying up-to-date with what is happening around the world.
The skimming generation as the outcome of the modern world
There are, however, also other explanations for the evolution of our interaction with media. The deteriorating political and economic situation in many countries, the complication of international relations, wars and the dread of their expansion, the innocent victims of Gaza, the famine in Sudan, the gang war in Haiti, the radicalisation and polarisation of the society in leading economic powers, the global warming – the list could go on for at least three pages and it would probably not be complete to note down all of the disorder in the world these days.
A phenomenon called cognitive dissonance in the precommunicative phase of media usage triggers the avoidance of specific content that does not align with the user’s thoughts and feelings.
Another phenomenon dealing with the choice of media is analysed in the uses and gratification theory expounding on people’s usage of media according to their demands.
If we take these approaches into consideration and apply them on the current psychological state of the society as a response to the world affairs, we could uncover consternation at the nucleus of people’s evasion of a diligent perusal of the news.
It is, however, necessary to be aware of the world events to a certain extend – that is when social media such as TikTok and Instagram come into the picture.
By offering scraps of information, these platforms fulfil consumer’s (subconscious) need for only a limited amount of knowledge.
Nonetheless, the dependence on social media for the dissemination of information could also shudder social order. Although media in general do not have a direct influence on people’s opinion, they do control what we think about.
Therefore, no matter how scarce, the information can still be powerful.
Media habits pass down – family matters
Another reason for the high interest in ‘social media news’ particularly by Gen Z might simply be the time they grew up in. Usually news consumption by adults can be drawn back to their childhood and the way their family used to acquire information on a daily basis. Hence if the parents used to read the newspaper every morning during breakfast, the probability for the child to read the newspaper in the morning when they grow up increases. What this tells us is that as Gen Z went through adolescence from 2010 to 2020, the way media was consumed at home inevitably left its footprint in their lives today. According to the Global Web Index they spend an average of two hours and 43 minutes a day on social media, which can be drawn back to the tendencies in the 2010s and the emergence of most of the platforms typically used today.
Because of the great gain on popularity of social media, the penetration of news in this new publishing format was inevitable. Therefore, in the average of 2 hours and 43 minutes mentioned above, the confrontation with reports bearing a resemblance to traditional journalistic records is almost always guaranteed.
The modern-day town square for news
As a response to this tendency, legacy media created accounts on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X trying to fight their new rivals – the influencers.
Political figures also started to operate on social media as a means of keeping in touch with the younger audience. This has immediately caused the exclusion of conventional gatekeeping practices through the direct connection with the audience.
The importance of these platforms went as far as politicians announcing major affairs in live videos with the help of intermediaries – for instance Ron DeSantis’ disclosure of his intent to run for president on X while being live with Elon Musk or the more recent live video of Musk and the former president of the United States Donald Trump.
Is paper dead? The future of books and magazines in the digital age
Apart from news other channels of communication have also underwent a major shift in the last two decades.
Books for example are no longer thick but simply texts that are long to scroll on the iPad.
And when touching upon the physical aspect of media one cannot fail to mention the newspapers and magazines that are no longer the thingamajigs you used to find every day in front of the house door but a bunch of pixels you see at eight in the morning in your notification bar.
No longer flipping pages, only endless scrolling – as one might label enlightenment in 2024.
The information age, evolved
With the advancement of AI and the tendency towards bots replacing both journalists and influencers alike, we might come to witness further remarkable changes in the dissemination of information in the next few decades.
There are already talks about virtual experiences in the creator economy so why not also witnessing important political events firsthand through simulated productions instead of watching the news every evening at eight on the TV. This would allow for the independent opinion of the audience and unfiltered impression of the circumstances.
In such a case, however, there would be even more profound debate on mis- and disinformation and a further exacerbation of the ethical discourse on lack of human touch in the circulation of news.
In addition to that, there might be ways of immediately turning the storyline of a book into a digital reality, rendering the experience of a whole new world, which is now only an academic discussion in narratology and literary studies.
This could potentially open up the gates for a new literary gender, maybe partly resembling literature by way of unique and individual choice of the sequence of events.
The roadblocks to progress: Why a better tomorrow seems so far away
Although there are phenomenal opportunities for the humanity to make use of the innovation and progress in science and technology, one should not make any precipitous prognoses about the future.
While we are discussing the replacement of humans by technology, flabbergasted by the pace of the digital age, humanity is far from reaching a realistic utopia judging from its current state.
Free press is still fought for in many countries, authoritarian tendencies seem to mushroom in some corners of the globe, and freedom of speech is still not recognised particularly in the Islamic world.
Therefore, there are many other issues that need to be dealt with before we reach the point of implementing all our knowledge and capabilities to create a brighter future for the generations that are to come.
Author: Tina Doncheva
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