My Media Consumption

Me and the Media

My media use is pretty widespread. I follow a lot of content from traditional mainstream media to the obscure content on some social media platforms. In this post I'll examine what the main ones I follow regularly are, and why I follow them. I'm very conscious of avoiding media or social "bubbles", and try to have an open mind to differing opinions. With that said, some of the media listed here I don't fully agree with or might not support any message they spread.

Mainstream Media

Out of mainstream media publications I mainly follow YLE (Finland's national public broadcaster) for my national news. I mainly follow the BBC and CNN for my international news, but occasionally read articles or watch video from other publications, like the New York Times, The Washington Post etc. I sometimes browse the websites of Aamulehti and Helsingin Sanomat, but not much. Some years back I used to browse websites for some of the Finnish tabloids, until I realized their news value is whatever is closest to zero without actually being zero, and are a complete waste of my time. That's pretty much it for what you would consider mainstream media I follow. I don't really watch TV (other than The World Cup and a TV show here and there), and go to the movies so little I can't really write anything worthwhile about that.

I think it's important to follow a variety of mainstream sources. I'd recommend reading even more than what I have listed here. In this day and age when "fake news" or general misinformation (malicious or ignorant) spreads like wildfire, it's important to have a more complete view of the news landscape. Unlike Trump tells you, CNN and other mainstream publications for that matter, are not fake news. Ironically, Trumps own supporters actually spread more fake news than anyone else. It doesn't hurt to be critical of any news source though. There have been countless cases where the mainstream media has gotten the story wrong. Usually you get good information from mainstream sources. Doesn't hurt to follow a few to make sure you are not stuck to one perspective, I think.

Independent Media

Most of my news or information in general I get from independent sources, mainly YouTube. I follow a left-leaning progressive news channel called "The Young Turks". I don't agree with everything on TYT (The Young Turks), but I usually find that they have good analysis and are pretty fair and open in their opinions. I find that a lot of news sources try hard to hide their bias, even though everyone has a bias, and you can't really escape that. The fact that TYT is not shy to be honest about their perspective is pretty refreshing to be honest. The channel is also very popular partly, I believe, for the reason I just discussed. People, especially young people, are tired of the fakeness of mainstream news and they would rather interact with real people.

Besides TYT, I follow some other news/informative channels like Vox, Tom Scott, Jimmy Dore and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. I also occasionally watch some other channels, even some of these listed here I view pretty infrequently. I recently found a nice channel called "Knowing Better" and have enjoyed the few videos I watched on there thus far.

Besides YouTube, I follow the news subreddits on reddit. Reddit is a good source for discussion, in my opinion, replacing the traditional forums of old. Reddit is generally left-leaning, but you can finds a subreddit supporting any kind of crazy politics or school of thought. Besides these two (and sometimes Twitter) I don't really get my news and information elsewhere.

Social Media

Now, onward to social media. My main social media is Twitch. I follow over a hundred channels on Twitch, of which dozens regularly. I'm a fan of games, so Twitch is a natural social media hub for me. I have been on Twitch since the early days of 2012/2013. I have followed a gaming subculture called "speedrunning" since maybe as early as 2006. Speedrunning found a home in the early days of game streaming. When I discovered Twitch, speedrunning was the first content I saw, and was hooked instantly. Speedrunning has since grown a lot. A bi-annual charity marathon full of speedruns called GDQ (Games Done Quick) raises millions of dollars and is watched by hundreds of thousands of people live on Twitch every year. I myself attended a similiar event in Sweden called ESA (European Speedrunner Assembly) in 2016.

I started playing Dota 2 in 2013. Dota 2 has a massive esports scene these days but back then it was much smaller. I started watching Dota 2 esports after something like six months of playing myself, just in time for the legendary The International 2013 tournament. Dota 2 esports has since been a regular thing in my media consumption diet. Twitch overall has been my replacement for TV, or probably more likely Netflix these days. I've never watched anything on Netflix (although I'd love to, had I the time) and haven't really watched much of the recent film and TV releases.

Besides Twitch and my love of speedrunning, I frequent reddit, YouTube (some entertainment and art channels too), Twitter, Discord (a gamer focused chat platform) and Facebook. Facebook I'd be willing to drop, but I found just visiting it as little as possible is well enough to keep its privacy invading annoyance out of my mind.

Conclusion

This is a summary (albeit a long one) of my media habits. I probably forgot something vital, but thats more a reflection of my media habits than anything else. I go here and there and somewhere and wait... I forgot where I was. Congratulations if you reached it this far in this text and hopefully you have found out something even vaguely interesting about me or the media I've listed here. In the future this blog will probably be mostly about me discussing recent news, which I hope will be more interesting of a read.