This question seeks to understand how the citizen journalist uses the social media to its advantage and how it has affected the traditional media positively or negatively. It is also seeks to understand ways and means the traditional media can adopt to meet the challenges posed to them by the social media.
In an attempt to answer the question we must understand some of the terminologies used. Social media is made up of two words. Social and Media. Social is an informal social gathering, especially one organized by the members of a particular club or group whiles media is communication channels through which news, entertainment, education, data, or messages are disseminated. Media is also an instrument or tool of communication. Social media is simply therefore a social instrument for communication. It also refers to tools for connecting with others and sharing information and a new platform for interacting with others. Citizen journalist is a public citizen "playing an active role in the process of witnessing, collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information. Simply put, citizen journalist is when a private individual do essentially what professional reporters do- report information. some of their other names include public, participatory, democratic, street journalism. Traditional media can be referred to as old media. They are the old means of communication and expression that have existed since before the advent of the new medium of the internet. Traditional media refers to the old and usually archaic way of disseminating information involving only one way communication.
Social media, is a virtual community with a wide membership and spontaneous access. As little as 10 years ago, when you talked about "media" there were really only three possible things being discussed: television, print (newspapers and magazines), and radio. Nowadays, we use that "media" definition in a much broader, looser context, and things that would have never been considered "media" in the past are at the forefront of how we consume information.
Mayfield (2008;5 ), defined social media as a group of new kinds of online media which are founded on openness, participation, conversation, community, and connectedness. Mayfield identified six kinds of social media including social networks. ie;( myspace, facebook, blogs, wikis, podcast, forums, content communities like flickr, youtube and microblogs such as twitter).
Social media has brought about quite a number changes in how news is produced, distributed and even consumed. It is imperative to understand what the distinctions are between social media and the traditional news media to understand the impact that the social media has had on the traditional media. Social media makes use of internet technology which is easily accessible to the masses. Unlike the traditional media which requires expensive and sophisticated technology, social media is a platform that is easily accessible and does not require heavy investment. The accessibility is not only due to the lack of central control of the internet which enables the masses not to be only present but also contribute to the information based on the social media. This gives the minority groups access and a platform to express them. The impact of the social media on traditional media is both positive and negative like the double- edge sword. Is it fair to compare new media and old media, two sources that differ in their focus? This study looks at the level of attention given to technology, foreign events, and politics via traditional media and three social media platforms, Twitter, YouTube and blogs. Traditional media sources do not concentrate their stories in one area; they spread their coverage relatively equally. Furthermore, traditional media and new media rarely share the same top story.
The ever- increasing popularity of social media owning to the popularisation of the internet as well as the universal access to mobile phones and handheld devices has seen social media being used for news production by ordinary people. It has given the common person the voice and the opportunity to also contribute to news production which was once at the preserve of a few privileged individuals (professional journalists).The traditional media sees this as a threat and have reconsidered by giving the audience an opportunity to also participate in content production. As a result , some scholars have been quick to suggest that social media are a threat to journalism.
.jpg)
For example, in the daily graphic in Ghana makes use of cartoons to address certain serious political issues. This makes the news though serious, interesting too at the same time.
Advertising is also one area where the traditional media feels threatened. The major source of finance for the legacy media is indisputably advertisement. It now seems that all these advertisers are all shifting gradually unto the new media, and if care is not taken this will become a technical knock-out for the traditional media. To avert this, they should shift more of their advertisement unto their websites, LinkedIn, and even twitter where a great number of people subscribe to.
.jpg)
To conclude, it is fair to say that as much as the tradition media is threatened by the activities of the new media, it has also employed some of the features of the social media to help keep up the dynamism of the new media, hence not being left too far behind..
References:
Nic Newman, September, 2009: - The rise of new media and its impact on mainstream journalism.
John Kelly- 2009, Red Kayaks and Hidden Gold: The rise, challenges and value of citizen journalism.
Barbara Eber-Schmid- What is new media? – New Media Institute,
http://www.newmedia.org/what-is-new-media.html
sheba-naturalhealings.blogspot.com
marysaikum.wordpress.com
miimie05.blogspot.com
http://elliotkemetse.blogspot.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment