‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study
I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media."Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself. Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line commenting on events, it's helping to shape what becomes a story.I think a lot of it is probably a symptom of trimmed budgets and the 24hr news cycle — social media is in easy reach and available at whatever point you're writing your article.Unfortunately, I don't think we can roll back on the constant need for more 'breaking news', but would be interesting if a newspaper were to take an editorial stance that it won't quote/embed any tweets or social posts in their articles.