The impact of social media in journalism
A small overview in the changes throughout modern times.
Social media is a force to be reckoned with. No one predicted the ravaging tempest that social media would and develop to transform itself in this day and age.
Do you remember when social media was in its humble beginnings and journalism was still dominated by the one-way communication method? Where newsrooms, producers, and editors provided what content was to be published and released and the audience was not much of a communicator as they are today.
Gone are those days, now we are looking to the future of journalism and where it has brought us now.
Now, we are ruled by the two-way communication technique where we communicate with our audience. We get input and feedback from our readers and listeners as well.
A great deal of this shift in journalism is thanks to social media. We have the versatility to report live and reach out to our audience at the exact time the content is being created. What a time to be alive is it not?
An intensive read on this massive change in how journalism operates is Anthony Adornato’s book Mobile and Social Media Journalism where he mentions this shift “Audiences are actively engaged with news on social media platforms and mobile devices, whether by posting photos from the scene of breaking news, tweeting with reporters about their stories, or sharing a news outlet with their circle of social media followers,” The game isn’t the same per say back like in the 1980s or 1990s or even further going back the decades.
An interesting interactive visual that has a bit of old journalism peeking through is Dress Up Time Princess. DUTP is a mobile game that launched this past summer in 2020.
One of their stories called Gotham Memoirs, which features an upcoming journalist named Elizabeth Colvin who is at the root of tackling the corruption set in the Prohibition era. Elizabeth, which is the player in the game, must use her journalist skills to tread the best she can in the perilous journey she is going through to expose the high ranking politicians that are involved with the Mafia in both alcohol and human trafficking.
In one of the major story endings, Elizabeth, the player, earns a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the human trafficking ring underneath the murky transactions of alcohol smuggling.
This mobile game shows the player little scenes where Elizabeth is in her day to day work routine which incorporates the one-way method in which journalism used to utilize in the past.
One of the scenes where the Gotham Times, the newspaper in the game gets bashed by readers. The infuriated people go to the building to lash out at the newspaper for the scandalous published article about Councilman Harris, the politician behind the alcohol and human trafficking before any conclusive evidence is found. At this point in the game, there were a few clues and speculations, but not much evidence was found.
This particular scene where advances in social media shows a change in regards to people interacting with the newspaper. People would go up to the location or telephone directly. Society nowadays go online on the spot to complain about what they do not like about certain articles, products, etc.
Another interesting tidbit about how the social media storm has impacted journalism. Twitter has revolutionized in how we receive and distribute news.
Often more than not, journalists go to the public for help in search for news and evidence. This tactic is known as crowdsourcing.
A solid example of crowdsourcing, is when people were stranded on the Carnival cruise ship when no journalist or photographer were able to obtain the inside scoop to inform the rest of society. The people that were afloat on the ship were providing daily coverage that news agencies were not able to receive to publish themselves.
Once this type of phenomenon blew up, newspapers everywhere were surfing along the new wave of news telling. Digital news or digital-only newspapers surfaced right along the tide. Some examples of digital-only newspapers are Vice and Huffington Post.
Right after the tsunami of social media change, news agencies everywhere started implementing mobile first rules to their staff to deliver content on social media first rather than on the website first.
This rift in news story telling generated a new direction for journalists to utilize their platforms to provide news in the quickest and most interactive manner possible.
An excellent example of a journalist using social media in a positive manner is to genuinely engage with their audience and also posting swiftly on every social media platform that they own to interact with the public everywhere.
A great utilization of this is to exclusively apply specific keywords to attract individuals interested in the exact topic that is being written about. This is one of the benefits that can be used to attract people in similar niches so they can spread the word about a journalist writing about related content.
This feat is achieved by using particular tags or hashtags depending on the website the journalist uses.
With the whirlwind shifts in journalism that have become an everyday reality for journalists everywhere. One can definitely wonder what other changes will be made in the future.
