This week’s reading is ‘Does Literacy Media Backfires?‘ by danah boyd.
Boyd mentioned that people are now trained to believe that the information on Google is legitimate but not that on Wikipedia and I do relate to this statement a lot. I do find myself searching on Google whenever I’ve got some questions. Theoretically, if you’re not feeling well and search for your light symptoms on Google, you’ll very likely to find that you probably have cancer. Many political fake news are often found on Google. And the worst is probably that Google will promote websites that fit your interests to you which makes what you truly want to know even harder to find. As a result, the trust for doctors are sharply declining in America.
The same situation can be found in China quite a lot. People (especially seniors) would be fooled by some advertisements claiming that their medicine, often a traditional family medicine, can cure severe sickness and they’d show interview clips of people talking about how amazing the effects of the medicine are. It looks like a big con to me but there are still people who tend to believe that. And for cosmetics, it is even funnier how those special effects in the advertisements can be seen legitimate results by some people. The amount of incorrect information and unreal or exaggerating techniques that the media utilizes trick people into buying their stuff are insane.
People these days often question the actuality of the information they receive because the sources are unclear. In my opinion, the situation is going to get worse before it gets better. The media will continue to be a hand that twists truths and people would be even suspicious about the correctness of the information they get. Unless there are websites or magazines or newspapers that guarantee to post or write about the truth and truth only.