RRU in the media: Jaigris Hodson on our new media landscape

A new report from the Canadian Digital Media Research Network found that online influencers reached more people than news outlets or politicians during the most recent federal election in Canada.  

With shifting perspectives on trustworthy information sources, especially among young Canadians, experts and journalists are asking what our future media landscape will look like. Jaigris Hodson, Canada Research Chair for Digital Misinformation, Polarization and Anti-Social Media, weighed in on the discussion with CBC’s Just Asking.  

Here is an excerpt from their discussion:  

“I want to give a shout out to my grad student Iman Kassam, who did a great master’s thesis looking at why and how young people consume news and what they trust. Her work found that people want a voice that is close to the story.”  

“So, young people don’t want a ‘view from nowhere’ anymore. They told us that they’re really interested in seeing people who are on the ground. So, sometimes it's that authenticity, that person that is really close to the story. Other times it may be if there’s a more famous influencer...People want to hear something from somebody who they feel close to. And there’s something called a parasocial relationship, which is this pseudo-one-sided friendship that we can feel like we have with some of the influencers that talk to us all the time, that we engage with all the time.  

That parasocial relationship makes it feel like this is somebody who we trust; this is somebody in our social circle. So that can also draw people to consume news from influencers.”  

Listen to the full CBC interview.  

Image by Gorodenkoff from Adobe Stock.