Page 34 - C:\Users\hp\Documents\Flip PDF Professional\2020 research project final report\

Having been bombarded with news, inevitably, day in day out, we asked our

respondents, “How affected they are by such biases in the media platform?” In

addition, “How much are they influenced by the ideas and perspectives this news

is trying to bring across?” To our surprise, about 84.7% of them responded ‘No

Change’ (46.2%) or ‘A Little Change’ (38.5%). This goes to show that the media has

its limitations in influencing the minds of its readers. Moreover, one of our

participants reasoned that, “I did some research and found out that this was fake

news.” When confronted with seemingly dubious information, he double-checked

the information with other, more reliable, sites to verify. The presence of other

news outlets allow rooms for comparison and verification of information, and as

such, weed out the proposed skewed information and prevent them from taking

roots in the readers’ minds.

In addition, when there has been a repetitive pattern in which the news articles are

being reported, a few of our participants were able to pick it up and identify the

bias-ness behind the publications of such new articles, “It was people talking bad

about each other's race.” In this case, our respondents noticed that too much

limelight, then necessary, is

being unduly given to a specific race in a demeaning and dehumanizing manner.

One participant noticed the pattern in the news broadcasted by CNN and stated

that, “Some news on CNN reflects extremist racism towards racial minorities.” Such

consistent, negative portrayal of a particular race eventually unveiled the bias-ness

behind the articles that were being published by the source.

Furthermore, even though their mindset has not been, or only to a limited extent,

altered, some were still aroused with strong emotions upon browsing through such

twisted articles, “It provokes anger which is highly unnecessary, (because of) using

(such) biased opinions and perspectives.” People who are well-aware of the biases

33