Before social media, there was the Internet. It was simple – there were no barriers to entry as to having your voice heard, and that saw the rise of citizen journalism. People also increasingly sought the Internet as a new source of news, since they could gain access to real-time information on the go. It was unlike before, whereby you had to wait till morning for the papers to be delivered – now turning on your computer easily brings you real time news there and then.
The way news corporations were to function had to be altered and modified, but they found no problems adapting. They recognized the threat of citizen journalism, but they also understood how the web worked. On the Internet, there is a large amount of information competing for visibility. CNN.com then started its Citizen Journalist site, where citizens were able to send in and share their photos and stories. It was a win-win situation for both – citizen journalists got to have their stories heard and seen, with CNN continuing to establish itself as the ultimate source of news. They also function actively on their websites, running breaking news stories and updating it every minute of the day.
Then came social media. Twitter, for one, functioned as a personal news feed to people. People started to get news from the people they followed – their friends, family, and colleagues. And news corporations had barely any control over how information was so easily distributed and shared from any source. People’s followers tended to be their peers, and thus lived near them and shared similar lifestyles. Naturally, this resulted in them receiving the kind of news which offered a kind of currency – to the point of customization – which news corporations had difficulties matching up to. Even though news corporations reacted by establishing their presence on twitter, they would merely be one of the many sources of news an individual was exposed to on their Twitter timelines.
Next, Twitter’s unique “retweet” function allowed news to get viral. It could be an innocent tweet by someone who happened to witness a car accident and snapped a photo. Her followers, who then saw the photo, started to retweet her tweet and news about this incident would spread rapidly. This poses a threat to news corporations like CNN, who brand themselves as a news channel which works around the clock to provide the latest news, and is the source of “breaking news”. Now, with any random tweet being able to present a “breaking news” story, CNN has to step up on their vigilance to capture potential information that may end up as a piece of breaking news. And the biggest problem – CNN has to balance between being able to present the latest news and protect their reputation of credibility at the same time. How can CNN beat Twitter users, located all around the world, to not just breaking news, but credible ones?
Finally, tweets are free to represent a diversity of opinions, which news corporations are not able to at times. As mentioned in class, news corporations face dilemmas such as having to please their audiences and their sponsors. The problem of self censorship also occurs, especially when they operate in countries with strict media regulations. Operating as a commercial entity, they are sometimes restricted from presenting news objectively or even diverse opinions, whereas the tweets going around on twitter are not.
My stand is that social media is the manifestation of the Internet at its most powerful point. It represents power to the people, and power to (previously) fragmented mediums. This is so as nformation gets viral and messages can also be disseminated quickly. News corporations, on the other hand, are threatened from their position as the source of breaking news. While attempting to keep their position, have to ensure their credibility – which is definitely not an easy task.
