Social media has changed the pace news has been delivered. With platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, a news article and be shared almost instantly by just sharing links on these social networking websites.
Source: Phan Thao Blog
For example, I woke up one morning and found the #prayforjapan hashtag trending on Twitter which immediately grab my attention. After clicking on the hashtag, it lead me to the devastating news of Japan being hit by earthquake and tsunami. Links to news websites and pictures where shared by many regarding the incident and I found in so much information in just a few minutes.
Al-Jassem (2010) states that social media makes a strong influence on all groups of society which brings individuals who share a common interest together as well as helping the community to act. The news of Japan's disaster was known to people around the world within an hour with live tweets and Facebook. People around the world was deeply sympathetic with the disaster and aid organizations such as Red Cross have used social media to help collect funds for disaster victims (Blackburn 2011).
Social media today has improved accessibility of instant information for people around the world and it has become a primary platform for people to get information and news. Social media has certainly broke the rules of traditional journalism where social media is a real-time content of breaking information to its mass audience (Solis 2010). But as we race towards the immediacy of news in social media, is does the news have credibility (Newsroom Magazine 2010)? According to a survey of perception by journalists, 84% of them believe that information in social media is much less reliable than traditional media due to the lack of-checking, verification and reporting standards (Solis 2010).
Besides the credibility and accuracy issues in social media, there are also advantages of social media. Schriver (1997, p. 375) implies that effective navigation of a complex document especially online is needed to guide readers to the order how information is read. Social media uses easy navigation to help readers to be directed to the links and images immediately and reading the whole article without distraction. Whereas, traditional newspapers sometimes direct readers to another page to read to rest of the article makes it difficult to navigate and sometimes getting distracted by other headlines which caused readers to sometimes forget to read the remaining article. Also unlike traditional media which is text heavy, social media uses multimodal texts (Walsh 2006, p.24) that enhances the readers ability of processing of information by integrating the text, images and graphics.
References
1. Al-Jassem, D 2010, Social media key to positive change, Arab News, 16 December, viewed 12 June 2011, <http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article216506.ece>.
2. Blackburn, B 2011, Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: Social Media Spreads News, Raises Relief Funds, ABC News, 11 March, viewed 12 June 2011, <http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/japan-earthquake-tsunami-drive-social-media-dialogue/story?id=13117677>.
3. Newsroom Magazine 2010, Immediacy in Journalism - Enemy of Accuracy, viewed 12 June 2011, <http://newsroom-magazine.com/2010/opinion/essays/immediacy-in-journalism-enemy-of-accuracy/>.
4. Shriver, K 1997, 'Chapter 6: The interplay of words and pictures', Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Publication, New York, p. 361-441.
5. Solis, B 2010, The Information Divide: The Socialization of News, viewed 12 June 2011, <http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php?q=SMC/173658>.
6. Walsh, M 2006, 'The 'textual shift': Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Australia, vol. 29, p. 24-37.
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