A: Multiple times a day, try to keep up with the national US news.
Q: Where do you tend to get your news from?
A: The frontpage of Reddit is one area. I tend to also visit my local city's subreddit. There's also Google Snapshot that pushes articles to me based on whatever their algorithm is.
Q: How do you confirm the validity of the articles that you look at?
A: I tend to avoid any sensationalist headlines. Also if the article has too much authorship biases that are tossed into the language I tend to click off of it as well.
Q: How about for issues that aren't cut and dry facts but there's room for interpretation, how do you then decide what is and isn't valid?
A: At that point I tend to look at the sources, mainly looking for primary sources. On-the-ground reporting and local interviews are really valuable and give insight to what people that are directly affected by what's occurring think is important. Direct photo and video sources are very helpful for this as well.
Q: So the more primary and direct the source is or the more sources that contribute to a story, the more likely you are to trust the article?
A: Yea, I feel like not having enough varied sources skews narratives too easily. Also the prevalence of video recording nowadays makes it easy to have full context of what is occurring directly as stories emerge, so it's hard to dispute the direct evidence that is recorded.
Q: When you do have multiple articles linked within a single article, do you tend to go deeper into the individual sources that are cited?
A: Yeah, I'll dive into the sources to see the voracity of the claims and whether or not the article is exaggerating anything. I also follow articles that might be follow-ups to other previous articles to get a full context of an ongoing story. I often find that I can get primary source footage and information by going through this method as well.
Q: What is it about Reddit that you like in the way that the news is handled?
A: I like the community curated nature of the content that gets pushed, even though often times what gets pushed to the top is a bit sensationalized. At the very least I get an understanding of what issues are important to people, that way I can get a pulse of what popular opinion is. I'm sure that this opinion is biased by the demographic of people that tend to use Reddit, though. That demographic being younger adult men such as myself.
Q: What aspects of that experience do you think could be improved upon?
A: I think that getting an idea of what the makeup of the community is would help to understand what kind of bias that things are coming from. Knowing some rough demographic information about age and potentially political leaning can help me prepare myself for the potential bias that I might have to sift through. I also feel like often times the other side of the story is missing, regardless of how correct that other side is.
Q: Going into COVID news more specifically, is that something that you're keeping an eye on?
A: Yeah initially I was really keeping up with everything when things first started coming out a year and a half ago. Then I kind of fell off the wagon when the rates started flattening and it seemed like we were reaching the end of things. Now I'm back on top of the news because of the delta variant that's being passed around.
Q: What's your motivation for learning about COVID?
A: It's mostly been a survival thing. Nowadays I'm looking out for the efficacy of the vaccine that I took and how that interacts with the delta variant. I'm also on the lookout for any other COVID variants that might be springing out and what the origins of everything is, as well as the relative strength of these variants.
Q: How does this knowledge effect the way that you operate daily?
A: At first, when we didn't think it was too big a deal, I didn't wear a mask. I also listened to the CDC when they said that they needed to preserve masks for medical staff. Once the mandates and CDC guidance said that citizens should wear their masks, then I started wearing it to make sure to protect people. After I got vaccinated, I started wearing masks less. Then the delta variant hit, and now I'm back to fully masking.
Q: Rather than your behavior, how about your attitude? Do you feel unsafe when you go out?
A: Honestly, I don't feel that unsafe but I'm not too sure exactly why. I guess it's a certain level of resignation and fatigue. My attitude towards COVID at this point is: "If I get it, I get it." Especially since I'm vaccinated.
Q: How about around the start of the pandemic, was there any fear going into the pandemic?
A: Yeah, since there were no vaccines and my work requires me to be on-site, I started making contingency plans in the case that I did catch COVID. It gave me a bit of anxiety to think about whether or not I need to rent out a hotel for two weeks if I were to catch COVID to prevent my family from getting sick with it as well.
Q: Do you think your shift in attitude has changed moreso because of that feeling of resignation or because gaining knowledge about COVID has made you feel more safe?
A: I'd definitely say the latter. The more I learned about COVID the more I learned what I need to do to keep me and my family from getting it. Vaccinations were also a concern because I was somewhat hesitant about getting it because of how quickly they were produced and authorized. As I learned more about the vaccines and what the CDC and Fauci had to say about it, as well as the lack of any serious side-effects that were reported after a month of the vaccines being available to the public, my worries were eased and I went ahead and got vaccinated myself.
Q: So now that you've gotten vaccinated, you feel less worried than before?
A: Definitely, yes. I'd say that prior to getting vaccinated, I pretty much never went out if I could help it.
Q: Is there anything else that you do to account for COVID when you head out?
A: I'm not exactly the most touchy person, so I haven't changed too much whenever I do go out. I guess it was pretty easy to adjust to things given my lifestyle. Being on lockdown did make me realize that I do go out more often than I thought I did, though.
