The Ever-present "Word of Mouth"

Nearly all college students have one attribute in common (besides being in college). That attribute is being sociable. We are young adults who are just beginning to be exposed to an infinite amount of new ideas, so naturally we discuss these ideas. This discussion of ideas helps to encourage the discussion of news. Since we already have a platform for conversation we begin to converse about a multitude of topics, one of which is news. So the one source of news that nearly everyone of us has is "word of mouth". We learn most of what we know about current events from hanging out with our peers and hearing stories about the goings on of the world. Although this may be true, the stories must have a source. So this must mean that there is at least a small group of our peers who do in fact search out news. They take the time to watch it, read it, and discuss it. This group is vital to the spread of news among us. They enable our conversations about current news to occur. Although this group is relatively small from what I can tell due to my limited knowledge, there is a large number of them in our class. I would say this is due to the fact that we are honors students. In general, I would see an honors student as more likely to be up to date on current events than a non-honors student.

I believe that Hedges would see this as a total negative. He would view the fact that we no longer can motivate ourselves to gather news as an example of the decline of society. Carr may have a similar view but in a less pessimistic way. I think he would see this trend as a contributor to the "water-skiing" reading approach we have developed.