It’s the little things that change when a holiday season comes around. Clothes, decorations, advertisements, and the digital world. This Halloween, I realized more how the internet and different programs tailor toward the seasons. Advertisements on the sides of my windows fashioned pumpkins and other Halloween-related symbols. On my front page of Spotify I found a Halloween playlist ready to go for the special holiday. Facebook photos from all my friends and family around the world showed a great variety of costumes and festivities. Google, of course, had its ritual holiday home page variation. Buzzfeed tackled some hilarious Halloween themes, and I’m sure billions of Snapchats and Vines were zapping around the air featuring costumes, candies and parties.

The digital world has its ways of reflecting society. Whether it reflects trending debates, relevant current events or simply just the holiday in season at the moment, media spits out exactly what people are talking about. It’s interesting to think how whoever-is-behind-media-sites makes these decisions. How much of it is generated from the public? How much of it is decided to be relevant before people even care about it? I know that the day after Thanksgiving is over and the radio starts playing Christmas songs and the stores all start to advertise Christmas sales, it’s not coming 100% from consumers. It’s mostly pre-decided to be relevant for us.

But can I also apply this to aspects other than radio and advertising? News sites, to an extent that varies from site to site, decide what is important by putting different articles and different pictures in more prominent places than others. To another extent, publicity is generated from the public, but what we see on the internet comes from a mix of these two influences: the people who are in charge of the sites and us.