Written by Tiffany Eason, Graduate Student of the Master’s program in International Communication, St. John’s University.
Viktor Lidholt quit his job at Google-Silicon Valley to do something he was more passionate about — challenging mainstream media and changing the way people receive news. On October 4th 2017, Viktor introduced his news site, Newsvoice, to a class of St. John’s University International Communications Master’s students.
With Millennials turning to Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets for news, Viktor had something else to offer. He shared a new way to consume news by moving the power over the news to readers and not corporations.
Viktor expounded upon his exciting idea to shape and share facts by engaging diverse audiences in his war against fake news, hate news and discussions that are not…news. Rather than reading articles and sharing them on social media without knowing if the information is credible or not, we can participate by fact checking the articles and voting on content that is most relevant and accurate by the end-users.
Newsvoice is a practical way for me to get in the habit of fact checking before publishing as an entry-level Communications professional.
Viktor pointed out that the challenges of mainstream media are the spread of fake news and the erosion of trust and credibility between sources. He took it further by providing tips and hints on how to identify a fake news article through headlines and the details of the article. He explained that certain companies are dedicated to creating compelling stories to keep users on their sites. The issue is that the stories aren’t true and ultimately makes a journalist’s job more difficult in getting the correct stories out.
Finally, as we become more aware of problems in media we can change the direction our news is going through active mediation. We can collaboratively work towards pulling extreme power from companies and share it amongst each other for important and accurate news.
For more information visit newsvoice.com.
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