News of the Knights: How Carleton First-Year Students Interact with the News and Social Media
Ethan Chen, Bjorn Holtey, Becca Riess, Cameron Velasquez, and Silas Zhao
The development of new technology has had a tremendous impact on how people take in news in our current world. These podcasts discuss information from a survey that attempted to determine how first-year Carleton students are getting their news.
Survey research data was collected from approximately 80 students in A&I courses at Carleton. The podcasts show how students consume news from traditional and social media sources and how students think about the reliability of news on social media.
Students reported spending significantly more time on social media than the news, but this social media usage can be problematic as social media becomes more intertwined with the news and politics. Over three-quarters of students did not consider news from social media to generally be reliable, but almost all students reported getting news from social media, and over a third said that they do so often.
How have we gotten to this point, and what can we do to combat misinformation in the modern era?