notes on a news cycle

“We never look as similar as we do when we compete with each other over explanations for violence, in the comments sections of the blogosphere’s blame game. I haven’t wanted to go out there again. Easier to stay inside Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and get my news links from people who think like me. But if Girard is right that sameness, rather than difference, is where violence comes from, this may be part of the problem in the first place. The internet now fabricates for us too small and homogeneous a town” -Kristin Dombek’s Notes on A News Cycle for N+1 Magazine

When the shooting of Arizona Congresswomen Gabi Giffords was first reported in the news, it dominate all other issues. In a state of the shock, the news media immediately began to try to find a “root cause” for this random act of violence. Dombek’s piece for N+1 magazine represents one of the most sophisticated takes on the media’s subsequent “blame game”. As Patterson noted in his article The News Media: An Effective Political Actor?, journalists “must create a new version of reality every 24 hours, giving the journalist little time to reflect back or think ahead” (445). Yet, as this article shows, magazines typically provide a space for more reflection and in-depth research (Just, Common Knowledge). Dombek’s article tries to analyze the role of new and social media in the creation of an attitude of “sameness”. Because sites like Facebook and Twitter allow you to control who you “follow”, you are essentially becoming your own news producer. While these sites also gives us constant access to 24 hours of news and they might be creating a system where people have little time to reflect on alternative opinions and a need for causation. Dombek concludes the article by pointing out that some things cannot be explained and instead just “invades us from the outside”, and that we need to understand a whole story before jumping into a viral internet frenzy.