Mainstream media have served up to the American public a mixed view of how information technology influences society, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
Over the past year, messages about the promise of technology making life easier and awe about new gadgets have competed in the news with worries about privacy, child predators, shrinking attention spans and danger behind the wheel.
The most prevalent message about the influence of technology is positive – the idea that is makes life easier and more productive.
Chomping close at its heels, though, is the sense that the convenience has risk, to privacy and children, themes that gobbled up almost a fifth of media coverage.
These themes form part of the findings of the study that examined 437 tech-related stories that appeared across 52 different news outlets.
The biggest single story during the year, taking 1 in 10 story slots, involved the hazardous practice of texting while driving, dwarfing coverage of broadband access and Google’s controversial plans with Verizon that some claim compromises net neutrality.
If you weren’t reading about texting while driving, though, chances are you were focused on Apple, with both the iPhone and the iPad launches saturating American’s favourite press. Apple’s coverage throughout the year dominated second-place getter Google.
Social media, by comparison to its mainstream press, reflected a different set of attitudes.
Social media sites, bloggers, twitters and citizen journalists were far more focussed on technological advancements, the businesses behind those developments and court cases that might upset technological progress.
Apple was again dominant in Social Media, narrowly ahead of Google. Twitter and Facebook took third and fourth places respectively. Microsoft, the former giant, fell into fifth place, well behind the others, attracting a fifth of Apple’s coverage and half of Twitter’s.
Learn more at PC Mag or check out the deeper coverage at Journalism.Org
