My online news consumption varies as I do not try to actively seek it out daily. Most of the time I get my news while scrolling through social media sites not intentionally looking for it but occasionally appearing on my phone. However, I like to follow news on the national and local levels and will follow certain stories if they pique my interest. One of the biggest stories I like to follow on the national level tends to do with NASA and anything to do with space. I love seeing the photos coming from their recent telescope floating out in space and seeing all these different planets, stars, and galaxies they are discovering. On the other hand, the only option I have for local news from my hometown of Beaver Dam is a website called The Daily Dodge. I never personally use this website; however, my friends will send me articles they see that I would take an interest in. Sadly, most of the articles have to do with people we knew from high school getting arrested or public figures in our area that died. Dodge county isn’t big enough to have actual news stations and reporters so The Daily Dodge is our main source at finding news stories going on around the county unless it’s a big enough story to make it on Madison or Milwaukee. One story I can think of that made headlines around Wisconsin is when we had someone building bombs in his apartment and he ended up blowing himself up. I remember seeing multiple news stations showing up and doing live coverages and even having ariel coverage of the apartment as they burned down the apartment complex.
Whether it be local, national, or international news I get most of my information from social media platforms like Instagram reels or Tik Tok. The typical way I receive my news is through user generated content like videos and slideshows, while some of the videos would be from individual content creators’ others would be from actual news stations that have invested in social media platforms. A few examples I can think of is CNN, The Washington Post, The Daily Mail, ABC, and many other news stations on a local and global scale. I don’t follow any specific news media since I like to see different perspectives of certain topics, however I believe the short form video content is the most convenient way to receive my news since I feel it would be bad for my mental state if I spent more time stressing about all the issues currently going on right now. Tik Tok and Instagram also allow anyone and everyone to leave comments on their videos and depending on the topic can be a very toxic and hostile area. Especially with current topics like the political campaigns, the Israel-Gaza conflict, the Hamas-Yemen conflict, and many other controversial topics it almost feels like a crime to have an opinion on one of these topics. This causes me to not comment on any video and keep my opinion to myself because it’s not worth the headache of being bombarded by people who cant handle other people having a different opinion than them. This gets even worse when the video turns out to have misleading information so unless I have all the most accurate information possible I try not to have an opinion on certain topics.