Brady Humphrey, Staff Writer

News travels fast on the internet. Articles can be spread countless times in a mere matter of minutes. People flock to social media both to read these stories and to express their thoughts, regardless of what the subject is.

Ryan Humphrey, a junior at UC, says that he uses Twitter for news updates more than any other social media, specifically the “moments” section.

“I think it’s so much faster than all the others,” Humphrey said. “All the information is laid out right there in front of you. Plus, since other people’s reactions to a story are always short and concise due to the character limit, you can see a lot of posts very quickly.”

Humphrey brought up the recent death of Mac Miller, the rapper who passed unexpectedly last week at the age of 26.

“I saw that Twitter moment not even thirty seconds after it was first posted,” Humphrey said. “Within two minutes, I had read the TMZ story and dozens and dozens of posts of people expressing their shock and sadness.”

Katie Curtacci, a junior, says she uses Facebook for a majority of her news updates due to the fact that she follows more news sources there than on any other site.

“I look at Twitter and Instagram as a more social place to see my friends’ posts and look at Facebook for more ‘adult’ posts,” Curtacci said. “I’m more likely to click links there than follow a link from Twitter.”

Curtacci believes that people’s opinions seem more honest when they’re not trying to express all their thoughts on a particular subject into a 280 character tweet.

Mary Elizabeth Boswell, a senior, says she uses various sites for her news stories, with those sites being Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr.

“I’m on all those sites anyway so it’s convenient, and I use them all for different types of news,” Boswell said. “Facebook and Twitter tend to have more political stuff, Tumblr has information about events all around the world and Instagram is good for following celebrity-related updates.”

Boswell notes that some of these sources are biased, but at the same time, when you’re reading opinion after opinion on any given subject, you’re bound to see differing views from what your own thoughts are.

While using social media sites can be a convenient way to obtain information, not everyone uses it for their news. Alana Wielgosz, a senior, is one such person.

“I just don’t really follow any news pages or profiles on social media, and I don’t use the ‘moments’ tab on Twitter,” Wielgosz said.

Wielgosz says she prefers to see the news directly from the source, as her family always has the news on at dinner time.

“I don’t exactly seek out the news. If I do see a news article, it’s most likely on Facebook and only because I follow my local news station and their posts just happen to pop up in my feed,” Wielgosz said. “Occasionally I’ll see an article one of my friends have re-posted or shared, but again, I only see it because it showed up there.”