Angela Phillips is a Professor of Journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London. This long-read is based on her inaugural lecture, 'On bubbles and streams: news audiences in the era of social media', which was held on October 25th 2016 at Goldsmiths.
White House Correspondents Association President Jeff Mason speaks with the media at Trump Tower, Jan. 5, 2017. Credit: PA Images/Andrew Harnik.
We are told we are living in a “post truth” world in which fake news proliferates and the established news media, once a bastion of civil society and a pillar of democracy, has lost its influence. As we should expect, alarmist statements such as these, have one foot in fact and the other resting on a shifting foundation of clicks, likes and shares. Alarming headlines work better on social media but they also reduce complex ideas to a series of half understood slogans.
