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How many times have we been victimized by publicity stunts and media hoaxes? Have you ever wondered how easily it is to get “under the spell” of a fascinating story whose sole purpose is to raise eyebrows according to a marketing plan?

The reason I’m asking these questions is the recent #balloonboy incident that made it through the headlines of every major American news organization and the travesty of a particular Greek news morning show. Should we just examine the ethos of those who created these disturbances? Don’t we have our own share of responsibility as the audience?

In the current media landscape, we certainly enjoy the notion that we are the crowd formerly known as the audience. We create and share valuable content. We set trends. We contribute to social causes and lobby for policies. We elevate values and shatter reputations. We consume products and services and post online our reviews. Businesses and administrations pamper us by taking into account our opinions and implementing some of our suggestions. We mobilize people in favor of social justice, equality and human rights. We inspire the future adults. We provide accurate and constant updates on current affairs. And, of course, we take pleasure in all the attention we get.

We have changed the game, yet sometimes when it comes to the next big trending topic, our judgment is clouded. We hurry to re-produce the latest news without researching, while we retain our scrutiny regarding legitimate online –short lived- campaigns [ex. #beatcancer]. We are supposed to be media-savvy and quick fact-checkers.  Thus, why hoaxes still surprise us? Are we still immature or scammers have simply outpaced us?

Maybe we still haven’t discovered an efficient way to control our daily information overload. No matter how many tools we as users have in our disposal to select the information that suits our needs and interests, we continue to be prone in excessive media consumption; therefore we scratch only the surface of the information we receive and remain indifferent for its source and intentions.

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Tags: Advocacy Organizations, Human rights, Human Rights and Liberties, Information overload, Knowledge Management, Mass media, Media, Social justice

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 1:28 am and is filed under Culture, English, Media. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.