Massive Impact of Social Media - Essay Example

The Iranian Elections aftermath in June 2009 provides the best example of the impact of social media. Social media thrives on self-generated content and this has been made easier by the rapid development in ICTs. Almost every person today has either a cell phone or a smartphone that they carry along ready to snap, or video tape anything internet that catches their eye and then later share it with their friend online either on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and many other social media platforms. Instagram is increasingly becoming popular and it has transformed every Tom Dick and Harry into a self-professed photo journalist. Diers addresses this issue more conclusively. The impact of social media in Journalism is real and cannot be ignored. Social media is a powerful tool and that is perhaps the reason why mainstream media has had no choice but to use the social media channels in their day to day journalism. Not only are these channels used as a way of interacting with their clients, but they are used as useful platforms for dissemination of live news and other important pieces of information. Self-reporting is increasingly becoming an acceptable phenomenon in journalism thanks to social networks. Some reputable companies like CNN have segments that allow users to share their reports with the entire globe. These reports could be photos they took of a developing story or even video clips they shot on the scene. Journalists have now come up with a system of incorporating stories from amateurs who add to the flavour of the stories by assisting in the research on the ground. This makes it easy for journalists to gather stories from places they might not manage to reach due to time or even budgetary constraints. The user friendly tools that have been added to the social media platforms as well as on the smart phones and the tablets have led to an explosion of the participation of users. As Fortunati (933) observes, the European journalists have benefited from the social media tools that have been added to make social media bookmarking easier. These tools have been made even easier to use thanks to the increased availability of internet the world over. Even though social media and other platforms like blogs are not replacing mainstream journalism, they have clearly opened a new front in journalism by opening up a new channel in communication. The greatest advantage of social media is the way breaking news can easily be communicated from the newsroom to millions of people irrespective of their global location. The traditional approach to Journalism has been challenged by the onset of digital media. It is no longer just enough to have a website where news items are posted but every media house now has a YouTube Channel, A Facebook page and a twitter account among many other digital media platforms upon which news items are shared. There is an increasing popularity of blogs as part of the journalism and popular media houses have accepted guest bloggers to share their thoughts and onions on the prevailing stories. This is a drift away from the initial blogging idea of where ideas, thoughts and opinions were shared on blogs from official staff of the respective media house. Today, anyone can post his story on these blogs and using the bookmarking tools, other users can keep sharing the story and the story might end up being viral. Social recommendation is another big impact that social media is having on journalism. Many times, opinions and surveys are done from the social media platforms and the most popular opinions are afterwards pursued by the media houses seeking to produce stories that are relevant and palatable to the common man. The making of news is therefore no longer a preserve of the news editors and reporters, but the general public has now been given access to the news room and allowed to give their contribution toward the making of news (Fortunati et al, 2003). Social media hashtags have opened up a whole new chapter in social media. It is common practice for media houses to use hashtags to categorise the developing stories and then users can keep following the hashtag to keep updates. There is often a very thin line between the personal account of the news reporters / anchors and the official accounts of their respective media houses. In the article titled “Internet in the Daily Life of Journalists: Explaining the use of the Internet by Work-Related Characteristics and Professional Opinions”, Hermans and Haenens (140) take a close look at the impact of these loose relationship as well as other factors that influence the personal use of social media for the individual journalists. One of the major influences that social media has had on journalists with respect to their profession is the way they gather information on developing stories. While going for a first-hand experience is always the best method, it is not always the most practical. A journalist that is already covering a story in a given town does not need to abandon ship just because another story has just erupted in another town. Social media can be his or her saviour in such a scenario. Information circulates online faster than it does on road. Journalists gain a lot from social media by the better relationships they build with their fans / friends. It is a proven fact that the easiest way to keep some one loyal is to keep him or her engaged. Social media provides a great avenue to keep users engaged around the clock with interesting updates and even breaking news. Journalists have appreciated the need for such relationships that would explain why almost every journalist spends a lot of his or her time on social media channels engaging with his or her followers. In the world of news, nothing stirs up more heated debates than politics. That is one of the reasons why blogs are important in journalism. Some social media platforms like twitter often have a limit on the number of words one can post. However, on a blog, there is absolutely no limit and one can voice his or her concerns as eloquently as is practically possible. This could be in the form of a guest blog or even in the comment section of another blog post. Kim’s article looks into the issue of blogging in detail and reveals how much opinions can easily be changed just via blogging (Kim 422). Apart from allowing users a chance to make their opinions, blogs avail a wonderful opportunity for journalist to communicate authentic news. Blogs take the news from the prime time bulleting and they make the news readily available to the user any time of the day and from any location on the globe as long as the user has access to internet. All media houses have incorporated sharing tools in the blogs they built which makes it easier for the readers of the blogs to share the information they have read with their friends and followers on their social media profiles. A blog post can therefore have a wider reach for a longer time than the prime time bulleting. Blogs are founded on the general principal that no one has monopoly of information or knowledge. While it is true that is the responsibility of the media house in question to gather, package and disseminate the news, it is also true that the journalists don’t always have the best information. There is always someone out there with a better clip, a better photo or even a better interpretation of the day’s events. Blogs will therefore provide the avenue for anonymous contributors to bring in their invaluable contribution by sharing their news in different forms of multimedia like audio recordings, video recordings, pictures and many others. As blogs continue to gain popularity, it is also becoming increasingly clear that the internet user will most likely believe anything he reads from a credible website. Even though most blogs allow for personal opinions to be shared by the contributors to the blogs, there are some users that might not objectively realize that the stand taken by the contributor is not necessarily that taken by the media house. This poses a serious challenge to blogging as a credible source of information. It is this shortcoming of blogging that has made many afraid of opening up their blogs to allow for guest blogging. Even in cases where guest blogging is allowed, the opinion articles have to be edited by some editors first before they are published on the official opinion pages or blogs. This helps to ensure that credibility is not lost by posting inflammatory or other types of explicit content that might be harmful to the readership. Blogs are increasing in popularity by the day probably due to the fact that the modern day internet user spends more time on social media than on anything else online. The question of whether blogs should be categorised as social media has elicited different views from different experts. Meraz (682) looks at the issue of blogging as a social media and also seeks to establish the relationship between traditional media and social media. Even though both traditional media and social media both achieve the same result of disseminating information, it is clear that they do this by totally different methods and approaches. Works cited Diers, A. R. “Reconceptualizing Mass Communication as Engagement: The Influence of Social Media.” 7 October 2011. Fortunati, L., Sarrica, M., OSullivan, J., Balcytiene, A., Harro-Loit, H., Macgregor, P., . . . Luca, F. D. “The Influence of the Internet on European Journalism.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 38.2 (2003): 928–963. Print Hermans, L., Vergeer, M., & DHaenens, L. “Internet in the Daily Life of Journalists: Explaining the use of the Internet by Work-Related Characteristics and Professional Opinions.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 23.8. (2009) 138–157. Print. Kim, D. “Interacting is believing? Examining bottom-Up credibility of blogs among politically interested Internet users.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 65.7 (2012): 422-435. Print Meraz, S. “Is There an Elite Hold? Traditional Media to Social Media Agenda Setting Influence in Blog Networks.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 54.4 (2009): 682-707. Print. Read More