Reading through a large number of posts from the last blog assignment, I found two different sides of this. The side I'm on is the "word of mouth" side. Over half the people I read get their news for the most part form friends and family and Facebook. Much like I do, they don't read too many publications, and prefer to have their friends filter through and find the meaningful stuff. The other side is the people who DO read articles. Most of these people read online sources, but some do read paper sources. Most people use online newspapers or magazines, such as The New York Times website, or television websites, such as CNN. These tend to present their information the same way as their own media, but in a structure that fits searching the web. I don't have a problem with this model; I just don't like these sites as news sources usually.
I would like to add that in the time since my last post, I did find a new source of news: reddit.com. Reddit is known for being a way to find memes (not so much a source for new ones; that would be 4chan). However, it does often have links to news sources to interesting topics. If other people (who like what reddit usually does) likes it, they "upvote" it which brings it to more people's attention. The really good news articles bubble to the top, and I'll usually read them. Horray :)
While I don't really care what Hedges or Sullivan or Carr would say on this, I do know that this would mostly just enforce their preconceptions. People are stubborn with their beliefs and faiths usually, so something like this, being interpreted in different ways, would enforce each of their beliefs. Hedges might say that this split between the class is the split between the literate and the illiterate America, Carr might say that this is due to the internet's influence on our attention, and Lunsford might say that it's just us soaking in different writing styles. Is any of them right? I don't care.
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