Every opinion is now news

The advent of the internet led to an explosion in data and information. The advent of social networks has led to an explosion of disseminated opinions. Dissemination of opinions in the past was the domain of news media. However, the growth of social networks has given individual opinions the same (potential) distribution capability as traditional news media.

Traditional media discovered long ago that negativity, pessimism and alarmism sell; positivity and optimism don’t make the news. Online media and blogs have realized that the same negative attributes that sell news get them maximum visitors or hits. The rapid proliferation of blogs and online media has therefore led to a heightened sense of gloom. We seem to now believe that every molehill is a mountain and almost every situation is insurmountable.