Featured blog: Exploring media abroad

Today, media dominates the public domain, now more than ever before. In this digital age, with platforms like Facebook and Twitter, news outlets are able to garner thousands of views and comments on any given article. This also means that at any given time numerous articles exist on any single topic in any given subject area. The problem is then how do we, as readers, sort through and understand the seemingly endless array of news available? For starters, we must read and sort through the sources critically. We need to be aware of politics influencing our news and the bias in reading news sources from our home countries as opposed to those abroad. Finally, we need to be aware of our own perceptions and opinions that affect the way we understand and interpret news.This column, “Critical International Media Perspectives,” seeks to focus on a single subject per post in order to sort through the plethora of news sources available on that topic. Although we will sort through these sources to present a well-informed article, our own bias still exists due to the nature of this opinion column. Therefore, our articles will be presented from several different angles and will clearly let you, the reader, know where we stand on the issues.We hope to include a range of media stories covering anything from culture to current events. We will try to provide a platform for our readers to comment on these current events and for readers to get a bigger picture of what is really going on in the world.