The Dangers of the “Two-Step”
Ever since the rise of social media, the landscape of news sharing and simply just the news itself has changed dramatically. The news cycle has essentially become 24/7, and we have access to more information than ever (whether that is good or bad for us is up for debate). Social media’s rise has given various people and organizations/companies the potential for large platforms, causing traditional news sites to often be seen as less important, and even in some extreme cases, untrusted. With this, we have seen the rise of the two-step theory, which suggests that people often look to opinion leaders to disperse their news, and not actual news sources themselves. This is an interesting phenomenon to examine, and it may have problematic implications.
In my experiences, I realized that I don’t tend to follow the two-step theory. I like to seek news from media sources that I have deemed reliable and trustworthy, and not individual people. On occasion I’ll read something that a celebrity I follow posts, but only if they aren’t the kind of person that constantly posts news as that typically means it must be important. But even then I will take the source into consideration if it’s not one I typically trust. I am incredibly wary of getting my news from a celebrity or influencer as opposed to the actual source. One celebrity/public figure/influencer can build such a following that they can just put out any kind of news, potentially of the fake variety, and their following will buy into it. This can and has led to many issues, with one example being Trump’s Twitter. Back when he was allowed on the platform, his word was essentially gospel to his followers, who would never question anything he said or made up on the platform, even if it was dangerously false. He was even able to turn his following against most media sources that actually told the truth and had the opportunity to incite violence. This kind of misinformation leads to a lot of danger for society, such as with election misinformation and COVID misinformation from this past year, which ended up needing to be given warning labels by social media sites themselves.
In terms of sharing news, I don’t necessarily share news either, as I feel that my friends’ feeds are inundated with it enough and if they actually want to see news, they’d actually seek it out. If I did, however, I would be sure to only share from proper, factual sources.
The two-step theory is important to keep in mind when determining where you get your news from. It’s perfectly fine to get it from trusted sources, but it can become a problem when one uses their platform and their following’s trust to build distrust in truthful media sources.
