Social Media and it's effect on Journalism.

 Social media has allowed everyday citizens to become authors, editors, and publishers of news and information. Do you believe that social media has increased the quality of news and information or decreased it?

            News outlets in our day and age are on the cusp of tumultuous change and upheaval. More like a scene out of Titanic, this is attributed to changes in technology and lifestyle that have put trusted business models of the past out of the playbooks of the world’s largest news agencies.

            Traditionally, news outlets have always exclusively chosen what they want to report, produced it, and presented it to consumers who have always accepted this structure. Current day, we have technologies that have altered how we gather and interact with content creating a more user based model for acquiring news. We pick what news we would like to know, we also want to be able to provide feedback on content, and to also contribute content we create. Social media is in part to blame for this shift in lifestyle, allowing news to become more user oriented and in part more transparent, honest, and to a higher degree of accuracy than ever before.

            I believe social media has increased the quality of news and information as it allows information to be more subjectively examined and disseminated by a large audience of people. This audience can further expand on news topics with information that they have and to allow a more open and wide presentation of the information at hand. In my honest opinion, social media and technological advances have allowed people to more thoroughly check the information and validate the sources of a news story than ever before. With any average Googler being able to backwards search topics to separate the facts from the false, we live in an age where accountability and trust are not only earned but entrusted to the privileged. Also with the connection of news sources to social media outlets, important issues are better able to reach audiences and there can be real time feedback and a gauging of the “social thermometer” on hot-button issues of the day. This connectivity has allowed more first hand accounts of news stories generated by users across their networks and we are no longer reading the news but living these stories through our extended contacts on our social feeds.

            We are better able to connect to important issues and news stories thanks to social media. It has never been easier to choose the news we are interested in, search it, read it, watch it, share it, comment on it, and to create news content ourselves.