Are people more or less informed today than they were before? Ten years ago, I was not cool enough to know any 21 year olds, or even know what they knew. I don’t think my parents would have liked that very much. So in a sense, I am not sure how to accurately determine if people were more or less informed about current events years ago than they are today. With news or anything in general, there are so many factors that affect and determine if/why/how someone cares for the right reasons.
Even though it has not been exactly 10 years but quite close, let’s talk about 9/11. I was an 8th grader in Ms. Caccavo’s earth science class. After that day, my city was never the same again. Do you remember where you were? September 11th changed the way Americans looked at each other, the time when we pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America at baseball games, the lives of those entering/in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Coast Guard, and the Marine Corps, and the check-in procedure when I’m visiting someone in Chicago or Paris.
In Natalie Fenton’s “News in a Digital Age”, she discussed three significant aspects of news in a digital age – increased globalization in news, increased concentration of ownership, and transformation of technology. I agree that these aspects have changed the way news and current events are shared. There is a plethora of news covering the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, and every natural disaster owned by media conglomerates and anyone with a digital camera who shared them on YouTube, WikiLeaks, Twitter, and CNN. I would also argue that many of the changes and progression of American and international media has to do with post-9/11 sentiment simply because so much of today is the result of this past.
With that being said, I bring about two questions.
Even if there is more exposure and coverage of current world events, could this also mean that there is just as much, if not more, hidden from us? And lastly, even if there is more exposure and coverage of current world events, who is to say that more people care about what is going on now than before?
People who care will inform themselves. And like I said, there are so many embedded and complex factors (race, nationality, religion, gender, experience, socio-economic background, education, personality, attitude, etc.) that determine how much someone will care enough to inform himself or herself.
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