Fake News and Quick Media

As Judy Wajcman discussed in the first chapter of her book Pressed For Time, it is common for contemporary media to portray society as accelerating, in technological production, communication, and the pace of life. Nowhere is this more present then when discussing millennials and social media.

Recent events, especially after the recent presidential election, have brought the phenomena of “fake news” into the spot light. This modern situation is a product of the same technological and social aspects that Judy observes. Communicative technologies have experienced extreme time compression over the past few decades, so people from far flung edges of the world can not only talk to each other, but share media, pictures, and videos easily and quickly. Due to this news is spread on social media platforms faster than it can be created, leading to sensationalized forms of current events and, in extreme cases, completely falsified stories and statistics. This is a product of both the societal pressure for actors in social networks to share scandalous articles, as well as the capitalistic pressures on media outlets to produce news quickly and use shocking and divisive language.

This among other things have grown out of the ever accelerating technologies of the modern era.