Friday, March 28, 2008

Young People Are Interested ... But Are They Informed?

NO DOUBT, this year's election cycle has garnered a lot of excitement from the younger generations.

Younger voters have been voting in primaries at higher rates than in the past, across the country.

Still, very few young people actually read the news, watch broadcast news or read online sites that have great depth. Rather, the New York Times reports, young people are using social networking tools like facebook, myspace and YouTube to send along individual stories.

Is this a good thing? Can people really become deeply informed by reading the handful of stories that become viral in cyberspace? Are they getting comprehensive information?

Can we get enough information just through word of mouth?

Now, each of the candidates have pages in myspace and facebook, and they all drop videos onto YouTube. By bypassing traditional media - sending messages directly to the audience rather than have messages filtered by the media, are the candidates setting the agenda?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

If canidates control what is out there they can better portray themselves in a more positive light and if this is the only way people get an idea of their views and ideas than negative sides of each canidate however major or minor tend to be ignored which could lead to uninformed and faulty decisions. Thus creates more biased propaganda than that of the media which is saying alot.

Ariela Rose said...

I think the candidates are just targeting the places that they know young voters will be looking. Since more and more young people are especially interested in this election the candidates want to target them using the fastest, easiest ways possible. However, reading all information about candidates; both through traditional media and new mediums would obviously be the best way to get to know them.

Ariela Rose said...

I think the candidates are just targeting the places that they know young voters will be looking. Since more and more young people are especially interested in this election the candidates want to target them using the fastest, easiest ways possible. However, reading all information about candidates; both through traditional media and new mediums would obviously be the best way to get to know them.

Anonymous said...

Candidates aren't stupid.
They know college kids are probably spending more time on facebook then CNN, more time watching videos on Youtube than watching Fox News. They want to speak directly to the young audience and doing so via facebook, youtube and myspace are great ways. It would be great if kids watched these TV programs all the time or read the paper -- but the truth is that they don't.

Geo said...

You just broke my heart.

- George (the teacher who thinks everyone should read the paper and watch the news)

Anonymous said...

I think its smart for candidates to post you tube clips, pages on facebook, etc. They know that they can reach the majority that way. I do think that it is dangerous to the majority in the end, because most of these kids are not getting fully informed on the issues.