LIC AAO Model Paper 6
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Directions (121-130):
Read the following passage carefully and answer the given questions. Certain words/phrases have been given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. Traditionalmedia, if it’s going to survive, must be credible. Credibility is an incredibly serious issue for news organizations. Do survey your audience's views of your role; write about all the cases you handle in a year; go out and talk to the public at schools,colleges, town halls and community centres; use social media, especially Twitter, to publicize what you do; and write better, more entertaining columns. Don’t be dull!”
When a rumour goes viral, should the newspaper spend its expertise to debunk therumour? What to do with motives being attributed for not covering something — something which happened only in the cyberspace and not in reality ? Is it possible to offer an explanation for every trending topic and explore whether each claim is true orfalse? In two stark instances — the attacks on students from Northeast India and the claims following the Boston Marathon bombing — digital platforms played an inflammatory role.
The recent research on the impact of the Internet is revealing. Theinitial euphoria about the empowering potential of the digital platforms has given way to a more sober reasoning. Andrew Keen’s book. The Internet Is Not the Answer , questions some of the assumptions of the early digital evangelists. He wrote: “Theerror that evangelists make is to assume that the Internet’s open, decentralised technology naturally translates into a less hierarchical or unequal society. But rather than more openness and the destruction of hierarchies, an unregulated network societyis breaking the old centre, compounding economic and cultural inequality. and creating a digital generation of masters of the universe. This new power may be rooted in a borderless network, but it still translates into massive wealth and power for a tinyhandful of companies and individuals."
It is worth reading the meticulous study of Craig Silverman titled “Lies, damn lies and viral content", for the Columbia Journalism School’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism. His research reveals how news organisationsthat are meant to play a critical role in the dissemination of quality, and accurate information in society are challenged with the onslaught of hoaxes, misinformation, and other forms of inaccurate content that flow constantly over digital platforms
He talks about a vicious-yet- familiar cycle: “A claim makes its way to social media or elsewhere online. One or a few news sites choose to repeat it. Some employ headlines that declare the claim to be true to encourage sharing and clicks, whileothers use hedging language such as “reportedly." Once given a stamp of credibility by the press, the claim is now primed for 1 other news sites to follow-on and j repeat it, pointing back to the earlier sites. Eventually its point of origin isobscured by a mass of interlinked news articles, few (if any) of which add reporting or context for the reader."
With in minutes or hours, according to Mr. Silverman, a claim can morph from a lone tweet or badly sourced report to a story repeatedby dozens of news websites, generating tens of thousands of shares. He contends that once a certain critical mass is met, repetition has a powerful effect on belief. The rumour becomes true for readers simply by virtue of its ubiquity. The empiricalevidence marshalled by Mr. Silverman stands testimony to his contention
However, the problem lies in his prescription for news organisations that maintain higher standards for the content they aggregate and publish. He says that these organisations don’t jump on viral content : and emerging news — but, generally, nor do they make a concerted effort to debunk or correct falsehoods or questionable claims. He wants credible news organisations to “move to occupy the middle ground between mindlesspropagation and wordless restraint.” He laments that there are few journalists dedicated to checking, adding value to, and, when necessary, debunking viral content and emerging news.
Is it possible for trustworthy media organisations to havededicated journalists to handle the veracity of viral content ? Does the present economic model permit allocation of resources to debunking false news that emanate from social media? Can the counter-offensive work in the case of rumours and propaganda? Will the act of debunking restore truth and validate facts or will it be subjected to malicious interpretation ? As an ombudsman in-charge of corrections in the print and the web platforms of this newspaper, I have witnessed a number of cases wherereaders remember the original mistake but seldom recollect corrections. In this media ecology, can the onus of tackling misinformation from cyberspace squarely be placed on legacy media ?
ENGLISH LANGUAGE (with Special emphasis on Grammar, Vocabulary and Comprehension)
Directions (121-130):
Read the following passage carefully and answer the given questions. Certain words/phrases have been given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. Traditionalmedia, if it’s going to survive, must be credible. Credibility is an incredibly serious issue for news organizations. Do survey your audience's views of your role; write about all the cases you handle in a year; go out and talk to the public at schools,colleges, town halls and community centres; use social media, especially Twitter, to publicize what you do; and write better, more entertaining columns. Don’t be dull!”
When a rumour goes viral, should the newspaper spend its expertise to debunk therumour? What to do with motives being attributed for not covering something — something which happened only in the cyberspace and not in reality ? Is it possible to offer an explanation for every trending topic and explore whether each claim is true orfalse? In two stark instances — the attacks on students from Northeast India and the claims following the Boston Marathon bombing — digital platforms played an inflammatory role.
The recent research on the impact of the Internet is revealing. Theinitial euphoria about the empowering potential of the digital platforms has given way to a more sober reasoning. Andrew Keen’s book. The Internet Is Not the Answer , questions some of the assumptions of the early digital evangelists. He wrote: “Theerror that evangelists make is to assume that the Internet’s open, decentralised technology naturally translates into a less hierarchical or unequal society. But rather than more openness and the destruction of hierarchies, an unregulated network societyis breaking the old centre, compounding economic and cultural inequality. and creating a digital generation of masters of the universe. This new power may be rooted in a borderless network, but it still translates into massive wealth and power for a tinyhandful of companies and individuals."
It is worth reading the meticulous study of Craig Silverman titled “Lies, damn lies and viral content", for the Columbia Journalism School’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism. His research reveals how news organisationsthat are meant to play a critical role in the dissemination of quality, and accurate information in society are challenged with the onslaught of hoaxes, misinformation, and other forms of inaccurate content that flow constantly over digital platforms
He talks about a vicious-yet- familiar cycle: “A claim makes its way to social media or elsewhere online. One or a few news sites choose to repeat it. Some employ headlines that declare the claim to be true to encourage sharing and clicks, whileothers use hedging language such as “reportedly." Once given a stamp of credibility by the press, the claim is now primed for 1 other news sites to follow-on and j repeat it, pointing back to the earlier sites. Eventually its point of origin isobscured by a mass of interlinked news articles, few (if any) of which add reporting or context for the reader."
With in minutes or hours, according to Mr. Silverman, a claim can morph from a lone tweet or badly sourced report to a story repeatedby dozens of news websites, generating tens of thousands of shares. He contends that once a certain critical mass is met, repetition has a powerful effect on belief. The rumour becomes true for readers simply by virtue of its ubiquity. The empiricalevidence marshalled by Mr. Silverman stands testimony to his contention
However, the problem lies in his prescription for news organisations that maintain higher standards for the content they aggregate and publish. He says that these organisations don’t jump on viral content : and emerging news — but, generally, nor do they make a concerted effort to debunk or correct falsehoods or questionable claims. He wants credible news organisations to “move to occupy the middle ground between mindlesspropagation and wordless restraint.” He laments that there are few journalists dedicated to checking, adding value to, and, when necessary, debunking viral content and emerging news.
Is it possible for trustworthy media organisations to havededicated journalists to handle the veracity of viral content ? Does the present economic model permit allocation of resources to debunking false news that emanate from social media? Can the counter-offensive work in the case of rumours and propaganda? Will the act of debunking restore truth and validate facts or will it be subjected to malicious interpretation ? As an ombudsman in-charge of corrections in the print and the web platforms of this newspaper, I have witnessed a number of cases wherereaders remember the original mistake but seldom recollect corrections. In this media ecology, can the onus of tackling misinformation from cyberspace squarely be placed on legacy media ?
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Question : 122
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