The Future of Journalism
Social media and journalism can go hand in hand when utilized and subjected to protocols which ensure accurate news distribution. However, it becomes an adherent issue when news entities are not the sole gatekeepers of the information, so it doesn’t permit only real news to be relevant but all news whether it is fake or not. Misinformation and heightened competition to be first is the underlying issue when it comes to news platforms going digital and acclimating to social media. Another disadvantage comes when journalists must balance their professionalism and personal lives via social media. It is imperative that journalists never reveal bias within their content and broadcast their humanity at the same time.
As discussed in Journalist Anthony Ardornato’s textbook, “Mobile and Social Journalism”, “…each new technology has affected how and where people get their news as well as how journalists do their jobs. Fast-forward to the present day. Social media and mobile devices are the latest technologies shaping the field, and they have reached this position in a relatively short amount of time, considering the first iPhone was released in 2007 and Twitter was launched in 2006. Never before in such a short amount of time has a new technology had such a dramatic impact on so many facets of communications”. This presents that it is ideal and necessary for journalists to fulfill their duty of maintaining social involvement in order to maintain public trust and interactivity with content distributed within this technological era. Going forward social media and journalism are to only advance and intertwine more fluidly than they have ever before. Its important for journalist to adhere to these normality’s in order to keep up with how the public chooses to receive their news and with technological devices of the time.
A great example of a news organization being interactive on a social platform would be The New York Times via Instagram. The NYT posts interactive stories on their Instagram and engage with their viewers with polls and interesting current events. NYT also has preset stories in their account profile to brand their entity of being the “one stop shop” for news. On top of having their stories highlighting their brand, they create multiple posts per day which reflect current news events and detailed captions about the specific event. NYT also allows viewers to post their personal comments on their page in order to engage with the news at hand. This is the normality for news entities across the nation due to the advancements that are made possible throughout time.
