On Thursday July 17th, the world was covered by a dark cloud of tragedy, war and grief.
The day began with news that a commercial airplane from Malaysia Airlines leaving Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, towards Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia was shot down while flying over a war zone on the east side of Ukraine, only miles away from the Russian border. 298 people, including 80 children, infants and AIDS researchers from 17 countries, including the USA, were killed when a missile shot the plane down.
Investigations are still just beginning to find out who shot the commercial aircraft down, which has been a difficult process since the area where the plane crashed is still an active war zone. While news of the crash were still coming out in the media, breaking news came that Israel began the invasion of Gaza by land against the Hamas. Some 100 Palestinians and also some Israeli civilians have already been killed. Thursday ended with no signs that these wars will have closure any time soon.
As college students, with so much already happening in our lives, it can be hard and overwhelming to see news about what is happening in our world. It can be tempting to simply turn off the TV or don’t ever check news websites because the amount of information of things happening abroad, which are sometimes not good things, can be hard to deal with.
Although I believe that we all need to turn off the news sometimes so we can focus on what we need to do here and now in college, we cannot shut down from the world all the time. As college students, we are becoming adults who are aware that there is more to the world than the backyards we grew up in. In an ever growing globalized world, every day college students are pushed towards leaving their comfort zones and learning about what is happening out there, even if it means talking about delicate subjects like wars, politics, health and cultures.
But with so much homework, assignments, extra-curricular activities and social life, how do we find time to be up to the news of what’s happening in the world? Here are some tips I’ve found to be helpful:
1. Social Medias. Social media can definitely be used for purposes other than sharing random statuses and food pictures (although those things are fun). A lot of the information I’ve found about these two major world events that took place on Thursday were through Facebook, Twitter, and even Instagram. Now, we really must be careful with social media because they are very personal outlets of information and opinions which are not always accurate and are heavily biased.
What I usually do first is checking trustworth social media sources like The New York Times, Huffington Post, Fox News, CNN, NBC, ABC and even our local news like the Tampa Bay Times. After that, I can try and find more personal opinions just to see what the average people are thinking about an event.
2. TV. Watching a TV news channel or show is probably the most obvious and easiest way to stay up to date with world news. The thing is, not all college students have a TV in their dorm.
If you’re one of them, there are other ways to get those TV news. You can watch some channels or at least some videos online, and you can also find a friend who has a TV or go to a place on campus or a restaurant nearby where they show news channels on TV.
3. International Sources. If you have the privilege of speaking more than one language, a great idea to stay up to international news is to check websites from different countries, and especially those that you speak the language. To get more information about the Malaysia flight, since I also speak Spanish, I checked some websites from Spain, since I wanted to get a European look to the event.
But even if you are not fluent enough in another language to understand a whole news piece, try to find a friend who speaks Spanish or German, for example, and ask them to explain to you what the news say. You can always use Google Translate, and although the translation is not the best, you can still probably have an idea of that country’s approach and point of view on an important subject.
For any one of us with a smartphone in hand, we can access news from all over the world in an instant. As difficult as it may be to be aware of the many tragedies and problems (but there is also really cool and good stuff out there!) that happen around our world, as college students getting ready to be an influence in that world, we need to know what happens beyond the borders of our campus. We can enjoy the silly status updates on Facebook, but once in a while let us not forget to check some international news as well as local news.
We are all humans living in the same world after all, so no event is actually too far from us.
Photo Sources:
http://time.com/3002007/pictures-of-the-week-15/ http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/18-social-media-marketing-tips/ http://www.ecigadvanced.com/blog/house-of-cards-frank-vaping/ http://infosthetics.com/archives/2008/11/obama_international_newspaper_h…