What is it?
Dissemination of information has taken a new turn in order to appeal to a younger audience, based mostly on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. The media startups usually do this by condensing news stories into short videos, usually about 25-120 seconds in length with easy to read chunks of information.
The success can be attributed to taping into the short attention span of social media users and provide a brief moment of shock which in turn rakes in likes, comments and shares. A prime example of this is 'Now This', who has an audience of youngsters and young adults (under 35) and attracts approximately4 million interactions (Likes, comments etc) a month.
Why can this be a problem?
Getting an audience like that can have a severe impact in areas like Politics. There is a recurring problem world wide of a lack of voting from youngsters. Media pages such as 'Now This' changed the game however, by posting hype videos they managed to get 4 BILLION interactions during the last US election. Undoubtedly, influencing the elections and pushing the younger generation to vote.
Now, you might ask why this is a bad thing. The problem here is with FAKE and FALSE information. It only takes basic video editing skills in order to create a short informative video, which carries the risk of changing ones opinion for good.
Going back to 'Now This', their videos have been replicated numerous times with false information and has been viewed by millions. The problem does not stop there however. 'Now This' have their own agenda and seem to be leaning to the left.
With an audience so young, it becomes less difficult to accept the fact that their political views can be severely obscured by these types of companies who push their own views to the masses, directly influencing the political environment.
So...
The question then remains whether this is good or bad. From the one hand, political interaction from the younger age is a benefit to society, yet it is questionable whether this interaction should be spawned from this new age media outlets which ultimately skew the perception and views of the younger generation.