One of the most loaded questions facing just about everything today is the idea of critics and reviews. There have been many successful critical campaigns and many more not so successful ones. With a constantly shifting landscape on how the consumer interacts with marketing and other consumers, the intent of the thing can easily be lost or clouded by consumer disagreement. For this, we will visit the ideas behind journalism, online opinions, influencers, and audience-driven discussion without bias and connect how we as the audience can encourage media literacy and engage with others of varying opinions.  

Journalism has had shaky grounds with reviews of all kinds. This can be due to the bias of the source, any sort of financial agreement between a reviewer/source and the thing being reviewed, or in recent years the media has put the issue of bad audience reviews as ‘review bombing’, but what even is a ‘review bomb’? According to Merriam-Webster (n.d.) the definition of review bombing(s) is the flooding of a website with usually negative reviews (as of a product or business). This term was added to the dictionary in 2023 but has had uses as far back as 2008. Even looking into media representation of the term itself is plagued in bias as to why this so-called ‘review bomb’ happens, generally placing a long list of buzzwords and isms to attempt to discredit these reviews and turn this into yet another ‘us versus them’ driven narrative. After searching for a list of things that IMDb claimed were the most ‘review bombed’ movies and TV shows, the list contains too many different examples to really nail down anything solid. IMDb then puts a list of scores from Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic showing the breakdown of the critics' score weighted into the overall score, and then showing the audience score by itself which has some major differences in percentage. Big budget movies and TV are scoring upwards of 80% or higher only with the critics being added but falls off the map when only audience score is shown. This can create discourse between journalism and a general audience, and further sows distrust when it comes to vilifying the audience and making strong accusations against the character of said reviewers. For that purpose and being a filmmaker amongst other filmmakers who have stepped away from corporate media reviews, this one is not shocking. Bias should not take over for opinion on the product, which seems to be pushed more than not.  

When we look at things like influencers and online driven opinions, this is just following the trend of how marketing can reach the consumer. More people are online presently than ever, and the influencer market has gained incredible amounts of traction due to the popularity of applications like TikTok, X, Instagram, etc., increasing. Influencers and other online driven opinions are also subject to the bias depending on who is paying the individual for said review, which can also impact audience trust. Overall, this has allowed many people, places, and things to be discovered when used correctly and positively but of course has also been subject to the negative reviews or even the newer trend of influencers or people claiming to be influencers using a small business to get free things and not generating any return. Audience based scores are incredibly helpful when it comes to product reviews from a marketing and business standpoint, which is why generating actual customers to give reviews is ultimately the goal of having an influencer or other social media-based campaign to net actual customers. Despite the drawbacks of social media and that whole sphere, it is one of the better tools we have to reach an incredible number of people around the globe. Other review-based platforms specifically for audience scores are popping up as well, which allows the audience to get around any sort of corporate media bias.  

Ultimately, we can conclude that there is no right or wrong way to have reviews be bias free or not subject to any sort of shady business. This also comes down to our own ability to be media literate and see things we may disagree with and scroll on. There will never be a perfect thing, there will never be full agreement on a thing, that is the truth of being in the arts and creating over most other fields and customer interactions. The person in the driver's seat who is putting forth a review interprets everything differently than the next person. This can lead to almost a paradox that reviews and the like are unnecessary and hold no value, while also necessary and holding value. The phrase “take it with a grain of salt” would be the parting wisdom that will be left here after engaging with this article. 

 

Meriam-Webster (n.d.). Review Bombing. In Merriam-Webster dictionary. Retrieved June 30, 2026, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/review%20bombing