We have heard much in recent years about people increasingly getting their news from less conventional sources--and amid this, much about the evolution of media.
The aspect of this that interests me most at the moment is the attitude toward
reading rather than
watching the news.
I personally prefer to read my news--because it is easier and quicker to take an initial survey of a piece of text in systematic fashion (or as they say in composition courses, "preview" it), figure out in advance what it has to offer and whether it is worth my time, go straight to the material that seems most likely to be relevant, go back over the rest of the text if I decide it warrants a fuller examination that may extend to a proper read through, etc., than to do these things with a video, with this all the more the case if watching the video
at all requires me to first sit through an obnoxious, three-times-as-loud piece of advertising. In fact, if I click on a link in a news aggregator or elsewhere expecting an article and am instead led to a video my usual response is to simply not bother with the item and go on looking until I find an article.
Apparently
this is the norm. But it seems that it is
less the norm with younger groups, who incline more toward video.
It seems worth asking why that is the case. Is it that, perhaps, they have become more adroit than their elders at extracting useful information from video? Or is it that they are just that much more averse to reading--find it so much a pain that they will just sit through a video instead if the opportunity is available? (And, perhaps, that because they are less experienced and less willing and poorer readers, that they lack the kind of "close reading" skills that enable many to find reading rather than watching more efficient?)
What are your thoughts on that,
readers?
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