When I did a Google search for wearing masks in public, very little of it was true journalism. In fact, very little of the results that I found were true journalism. Most of the results were health organizations discussing the benefits of wearing a mask and/or the consequences of not wearing one.

 

Many of the results seemed to be “journalism” but were actually articles advocating for masks. These articles explained why you should wear masks, why they are important, the science behind why they work, etc. I had to go through multiple pages of results until I found actual journalism articles about masks, rather than articles advocating for them.

 

I didn’t find a substantial amount of information in my search results about how social networks play a role in the discussion, but from what I have seen on my own social network feeds, they play a large part in people discussing their opinions on the topic and providing their personal input. A large part of the social network’s role in the discussion is to allow people to discuss the public policies regarding masks. Much of the conversation on social networks isn’t so much about how or whether masks work, but whether or not the public should be required by law to wear them.

 

It wasn’t until I filtered my search to “news” that I found true journalism articles discussing the topic. Similar to social networks, these search results revolved more around the public policies regarding masks rather than the benefits of wearing one. The search results included things such as certain cities or states ending or extending their public mask mandate, whereas I didn’t find this kind of information in my initial unfiltered search about masks.

 

Upon using the directed search through an online news database, I found articles that brought more factors into the discussion than what I found in my previous searches. These factors included things such as race, history, and politics. The tone of these articles were much more straightforward and included much less advocacy for masks. Rather, these articles discussed what the current policy in the given region is, what factors play into the decision going forward, included more cited statistics about the COVID-19 numbers are/were, and discussed what the legal consequences were/are going to be for people who are not wearing one. It was also interesting to note that the database search also included more information about the mask policies in other countries is as well, whereas the other searches largely focused on local policies in the U.S.

 

Overall, as I narrowed my search from unfiltered, to “news”, to a news database search, I found much more reliable, less biased, statistic and policy-based news information. Going forward, this is definitely something to keep in mind when researching hot-button topics likes wearing masks in public. It was fascinating to see the progression from articles that appeared to be journalism (but were actually just advocacy) to articles that were true journalism.