The Impact of Social Media on Saudi Newsroom - Research Proposal Example

Specifically, the actual number of active Facebook users has reached 1.23 billion worldwide as of December 2013 with 1.74 million more active users as compared to the previous year (Sedghi, 2014). With 645,750,000 active registered users, Twitter’s active users have reached 115 million each month (Statistic Brain, 2014). Other kinds of social media platform which can also be utilized in the collection and dissemination of news information include blogs, ChatRoulette, Digg, Flickr, Foursquare, Google Groups, Google Wave, Groupon, Hi5, LinkedIn, MocoSpace, MySpace, Orkut, SecondLife, Seesmic, SCVNGR, Tweetdeck, Wiki’s, Windows Online, WordPress, Yelp, YouTube, and chat rooms like ICQ, Skype, and Yahoo Messenger  (Pedersen, 2013: 210; Funk, 2011: 8 – 9; Wankel, Marovich and Stanaityte, 2010: 8). (See Figure I – Facebook’s Monthly Active Monthly Users on page 3).
The globally available social media tools are useful in terms of making the general public more interactive and more demanding in terms of the quality of information they receive from various sources such as the media (Pedersen, 2013: 210). It could also mean that the constant increase in the number of social media users has created a huge impact on the way the newsrooms are being managed today. For instance, because of the availability of social media technology, a lot of modern journalists have moved away from the use of the old typewriters and the need to cut out old newspapers for their personal compilation purposes (Bakhurst, 2011). Using the social media tools that are available in most mobile phone gadgets, laptops, or other related mobile devices, news reports worldwide can now be readily available on a 24/7 basis (Sheller, 2014; Crowe, 2012: 49; Bakhurst, 2011).
The Arab world has no doubt experienced an awakening of free expression. The world has witnessed the rise of an independent social media platform and the increase of engagement of its citizens on the internet. These social networks educate, prepare, enliven, make groups, expand straightforwardness, and look to consider governments responsible.