I have to laugh sometimes at news media web design.
The current front page of The Guardian, for instance, is filled with a whole whack of stories about human greed, indifference to suffering, and outright cruelty... and then there's one hanger-on in the bottom right corner, which 100% doesn't belong but was put there to try to "offset" the bleakness of the rest. 🙃
@MLClark I had to check -- and I got the US version because I am in the US, and it's different for me. And I'm not "allowed" by my browser to switch to the UK or Canada version (or else I just don't know how to do it right.)
Which may be one reason why many Americans are often not as knowledgeable about international news as they maybe should be.
Oh wow, yes, that's a huge difference. Still, your version has its bottom-right-corner "lighter news" offset, too!
I often wonder about that US difference, because a much more hawkish nationalism radiates from many US user accounts here - and yet, if US folks are fed international pages like the one you shared, it's easy to see how world events are being framed primarily as assaults on local elections / democracy: all roads leading back to "how does this affect ME", in other words.
I have to really fight to see international versions of news on sites like BBC and others. Drives me crazy. BBC in particular, because you get the tiniest glimpse of what is there for Brits before it flips to a US-focused page.
We live in deep info silos, eh?
All the more reason that we have to tread carefully with one another. Even here on CoSo, many folks get their news credulously from a few sources that whip them into a fervour, and they might not realize there are other facets to the issue, or possible tones to the discourse.
A lot of our fury with one another, in times of great crisis, then really comes down to fury that we're not all reading the same news the same way at the same time.
It's very hard to break out of algorithm-driven information silos, unfortunately. Even if you are making an effort to. The thing I appreciate most about this site is that while there is a little natural siloing simply due to time zones and activity timing patterns, no one is force-feeding us specific content for increased engagement metrics.
Outrage sells, and sells big.
@misterfive @MLClark
I am SO GRATEFUL for this site and not being force-fed or algorithimized.
(That's a word now. 😁 I don't care what spell check thinks.)
@MLClark I didn't realize what a big difference it was. I thought it was pretty much the same country-to-country, but clearly it is not! 😳