MEDIAWATCH: Skepticism of corporate mainstream media is healthy, believing everything you read on social media isn’t

Distrust of mainstream media didn’t emerge out of nowhere — it was built over decades of corporate capture, political spin and public disillusionment. The real danger now, however, is that millions have replaced institutional skepticism with total faith in algorithm-driven social media ecosystems built to monetise outrage and division.

There’s a reason Trump’s ‘fake news’ resonated.

Corporate media have lied to us for decades by promoting the interests of their corporate masters over the common good.

The very first editorial from the NZ Herald was calling on settlers to start war with Māori!

Media are pearl clutching now because they don’t have the clout at dinner parties any longer.

The problem is not that people were skeptical of corporate media, the problem is that they now believe social media.

The fourth estate is a critical institution for a functioning democracy, but if voters are fed conspiracy garbage, that democracy falls over.

So skepticism of corporate mainstream media is healthy, however believing everything you read on social media isn’t!

Big Tech profits from outrage, fear and division

Social Media is driven by psychologically manipulative algorithms that platform the most inflammatory commentary and manufacture vast amounts of disinformation and misinformation

It dangerously undermines social cohesion, drives hateful polarisation and undermines democracy, all while making the Tech Tzars even more obscenely wealthy.

The Big Tech Tsars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.

We are but meat bags secreting hormones addicted to dopamine rewards for fat, sugar, salt and sex in a cultural landscape of individualism über alles where we sing sweet secret lies to ourselves to make sense of a world around us that is frightening and in constant entropy.

The loneliness and alienation beneath the algorithm

Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetised by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalisation, financialisation, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.

So.

Skepticism of corporate mainstream media is healthy, believing everything you read on social media isn’t.