Integrating Social Media into Mainstream News - Essay Example

The social media therefore cannot be replaced with the mainstream news in entirety due to the fact that the social media is still a great deal behind the mainstream news in terms of authenticity and genuineness of its content. This has been implicated time and again by the immense changes which have come about within the related ranks of technological growth and development. Even though the technology has markedly changed and for the better, there still are many apprehensions within the minds of the conservatives and thinkers of the society who believe that social media cannot and will never replace the traditional news methodologies and conventions which have been there for such a long period of time.

Hence one comes to the conclusion that the pitfalls are immensely driven in order to understand how the social media has lagged far behind in its race to achieve supremacy over the mainstream news. This is because the mainstream news takes into perspective many different conventions and routines which the social media does not really pay heed to2. The social media looks at delivering the message of the common man and woman on the ground where more personalization and customization of processes is undertaken.

The mainstream news is a collective mesh of all these angles and points of view where emphasis has remained on getting the job done through a pool of news reports, stories and events’ coverage. The social media has therefore been treated differently by distinctive sets of people. This is because they require that the news stories are propagated by renowned institutions and corporations which are more reliable and easily digestible by the audiences3. What is even more interesting is the observation that the social media does not really solve the quandaries that are related with the collective wisdom of the people rather it focuses on the individuals who hail within a singular group or faction for that matter.

The real world examples that could be quoted here comprise of individuals who have become famous for leaking news stories and reports over the Internet before the traditional mainstream news has even gotten a clue about the same. This is a very interesting observation that has been much quoted and discussed at length within the relevant circles and thus has been given significance by people from varied strata of life. Some of the more common examples include the live embedding of video, images and sounds over the Internet which is virally transmitted to people4.

This is markedly different from what is transferred over the traditional mainstream news where a great of control and influence is exerted by the news makers and news controllers. What is even more significant is how they exert this control to get their point of view across which is exponentially increased within the reigns of the social media phenomenon. Hence a great deal of positive and negative aspects come about when one speaks of the discussion as to whether integrating the social media into mainstream news would do any good.

What this would eventually mean is the fact that this integration shall result in perspectives that are result-oriented and which would do more good than harm in entirety5. How this discussion will be summed up is dependent on how problems need to be tackled which come up close and personal within the related spheres. The