Selective Democracy (April 4th)

  The more we use the internet, the more we become selective about what we choose to see while surfing the internet.  Along these lines, we use internet to acquire our news.  The internet can be a helpful source of news, however because of the selective nature of the internet, we are able to choose what we see or don't see.  So how is this a problem?  Why is it a problem for people to see only what they want to see?  Well it's a problem for our global awareness.  If we selectively absorb news, we will only learn information that we choose to learn from.  It is important to get all of our 'servings' of news.  Using the example of 'servings' refers to looking at news consumption like food consumption.  Of course we don't want to eat our vegetables (refering to news we don't want to watch) we still have too.  News is just like food in the sense that you need a balanced diet.  If we only wish to receive news form celebrities then our minds and social awareness will diminish.  However, if we watch a balanced diet of news, we will understand more about the world around us and the important issues.   Also the information we tend to read is not only relevant to what we want to hear... it tells us what we want to hear.  It is dangerous because you may never see both sides of the story if you refuse to read both sides.  This is a problem because extremists will only read up on stories that fortify their arguments.  All in all, selective news watching/reading is dangerous because it malnourished our brains and fosters ethnocentric views because of lack of exposure from anything we don't want to see.