Week 5: We’re All a Twitter!

(Laremy, 2010)

In the present fast-moving world of ours, speed is one of the key factor newsreaders demand for in news media. Online news has long been argued to be a more efficient source of news due to it being seemingly able to provide more updated news to its readers, whereas the mainstream print or broadcast news were only able to provide updates of information periodically. Today, with the rapidly increasing popularity of the various social media tools, online news have clearly advance to a new era; it is no longer provides just faster update of news, but rather, an almost immediate update of news.

Moreover, social media increases interaction between journalist and readers . Mainstream papers and online news websites may have allowed readers to air their views via forum pages or columns, however, only selected feedbacks are published and these published comments usually underwent moderations by the editors. Social media on the other hand, like Twitter for instance, allow comments to be instantly tweeted and shared to the world.

The power of social media comes from its speed of information transmission (Tapsall & Varley, 2006); nevertheless, the speed element is often a major peril too. Inaccurate information being released on these social media platforms often spread like wildfire instantly, and are difficult, or rather, impossible to retract.

Also, with the increasing popularity of social media, not only do newsreaders via social media increase rapidly in numbers, sources of information increase simultaneously. Citizen journalism is promoted with this free platform, in terms of both money and freedom, thereby signifying a major threat to the credibility of news available online (Hermida, 2010). Publishing news via social media platform clearly does not require professionalism of a journalist - it only requires an internet connected and social media account.

Advancement of communication and Internet technology thus has not only demanded journalist to equip themselves with knowledge of the different new media forms, readers have to also be social media savvy enough to source for the right and credible social media new sources for information.

Reference

Hermida, A. 2010, Rethinking the Role of the Journalist in the Participatory Age. http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/07/rethinking-the-role-of-the-journalist-in-the-participatory-age190.html. Sourced 03/09/10.

Laremy, L. 2010. Twitter Response. [Image] Available from: http https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-E4QseyhfXz0/TgCmWQUzsdI/AAAAAAAAA94/3us30bvXPHY/my%252520response.png [Accessed 29 May 2011].

Tapsall, S. & Varley, C. (2006). Journalism Theory in Practise. Oxford University Press, London.