A Nanny state, that’s what they call the sociological phenomenon of being dependent on the State. From 4 years old, they teach you how it works at primary school.
‘‘Nanny can’t be ill, because if nanny gets ill, the children will start crying.”
Purpose of the state is to inform people the way they want, with information they approved, via the channels of mainstream media. This information should be trusted. Imagine, people would go and follow alternative news sources, do research, think for themselves and form their own opinion. They might even wake up, stand up from the crowd and spread their opinion into society. Nowadays, everyone with Instagram, Snapchat or a Youtube account can attract thousands of followers. Like these vloggers, alternative media spreads news on social media. The number of readers of traditional printed newspapers is decreasing, while news consumption across social media keeps rising.
Due to algorithms, they know everything, about everyone. This is a reason personalized marketing is easier to perform than ever before. So is the distribution of personalized news, via social media. Two days ago, this was one of the issues is an episode of ‘Nieuwsuur’, which made me write this blog.
More than half the crowd seems to use Facebook weekly to keep up with the news. Much of these news sources are not from the state, but are so-called alternative sources. Because the news articles that are shown to a person are based on customer information and personal preference, not everyone will get to read the same news. As an example, DutchTurks is a supplier of their own up-to-date news about Turkey, which has the opinion that the Dutch mainstream media is too much anti-Turkey. It is easy to choose channels to only follow news you want to hear about. To minimize this bias, I think it’s good to derive your information for multiple different sources to be able to form a neutral opinion. ‘All these different news sources cause a selective composition of news in the world that fits your interest, which can help to create a world of your own truth. If everyone will do this, there’s a threat of polarization, where groups of people with different opinions will oppose each other,’ (Nieuwsuur, 2016)
And this is not the way Nanny likes it. Do you?
Hi Katelijne,
It was interesting to read your blog. I did some further investigation and I would like to share it with you. A lot of people are familiar with Facebook and the different pages which you can like. Also vloggers, with different culture backgrounds, are a big thing on Facebook. As you described in your blog; DutchTurks is a supplier of their own up-to-date news about Turkey, which has the opinion that the Dutch mainstream media is too much anti-Turkey. Polarization is especially a matter for poor inner-city neighborhoods. Polarization in social waves may lead to increasing social conflicts, displacement of poorer residents to lower quality housing elsewhere and social polarization. They might have the feeling that they are not similar to others in the society. But did you also think about social polarization within, for example, DutchTurk media pages? For example the DutchTurkish vlogger. He said that he was insulted by other DutchTurkish men because he interrupted them.