4th post

In this last blog post, we will be discussing the medias effect on the election, and the trust in the news today. In the 2016 presidential election, there was a lot of back and forth about "fake news" which was news that was reported and ended up being outrageously false. Each news channel has a more liberal/conservative opinion, which will highlight more positives of a candidate or a law based on what the news believes. So what exactly were Clinton and Trump's voters watching during the election?



In this graph above it shows what all voters, trump voters, and Clinton voters news sources during the election. Fox news was the most news watched in the "all voters" and "trump voters" category. Which is not surprising, since Fox news leans more conservative Trump voters would be more satisfied with what they would hear from Fox. Fox news would in a sense paint Trump and Republicans a lot nicer than a liberal channel like CNN. Just like CNN  painting Trump as not a good candidate, Fox did the same with Clinton. Since CNN is a liberal-leaning news source democrats would be more inclined to watch that news. 


An obvious trend in the data is that CNN and Fox is the top two media sources used. Meaning that the people of America believe that out of all another media sources those two are the most trustworthy to get their news from. I believe that these are being looked at the most because of the stories they put out. For instance, if that stories they put out are eye-catching than more people will be inclined to read them. So for me, this does not mean that they are necessarily the most trustworthy sources, but rather the most entertaining sources.

Another trend that I have noticed is that Facebook is the 3rd most visited media for information. Facebook is a place to post their thoughts and feelings, but it is also a place where you can get updated about what is going on in our world. This is the only social media on the list, which I find interesting, I think the reason for this is because of the high percentage of adults that use facebook. Facebook is known to have a crowd of older people compared to a social media platform called Instagram which is known for having Millenials and Gen Z users. It is not super specific on if people look at their Facebook timeline, and get their news, or if they follow news pages. If they just look at what their friend is reposting this has a huge bias. Depending on that person's views they will share things that they find correct. For instance, someone who is a democrat is not going to share the news that highlights the GOP and that they're doing amazing, they would most likely do the opposite.