How Social Media is Today’s New News
In today’s society and with today’s technology, news can be produced by anyone. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, allow us to have access to all things breaking news at our fingertips. Literally. With that being said, it is important to keep in mind that not everything we read online is verified or accurate, or even true at all. This article will help gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between journalism and the public.
According to a recent Forbes article, “50 percent of Internet users surveyed said that they hear about the latest news via social media before ever hearing about it on a news station”. However, it also mentioned how a majority of people when scrolling, just read the headline or title of the article instead of reading the whole thing. This can lead to a lot of misunderstanding and confusion as it encourages jumping to conclusions.
With the rise of social media, a lot of news outlets have turned to Twitter to create accounts to be able to reach their online audience. Whether they are tweeting about the local news, the world news, the weather, celebrities, politics, sports, or anything in between, Twitter has become the new form of the morning newspaper.
Not only local news channels, but world news outlets, such as CNN, also use Twitter to reach a broader audience. CNN’s 56 million followers have free, online access just a click away to all breaking news that is occurring all over the world. However, CNN has many competitors such as ABC, Washington Post, NBC, and CBS to name a few. Each news outlet has a different point of view or opposing statements that can make reading different news articles confusing. Everyone has their own opinions but noticing what is fake news and was is legit, can be near impossible.
Professional sports teams have also taken to Twitter to keep their followers and fans updated daily.
Celebrities utilize social media often to be able to communicate to their fans in a personal way. They can keep people updated on their lives via photos, stories, videos, and messages. There are also many celebrity ‘news’ accounts that keep up on all things pop culture such as celebrity drama, beauty, fashion, music, etc. For example, E! News Rundown, with host, Erin Lim, falls into the parody category because although the items produced are in the style of news, it is humorous and her narration is in the form of social commentary.
Another example is when Justin Bieber took it to Instagram to announce his engagement, to Hailey Baldwin. Since his account is verified that it is actually him, we know that we can trust his account to give us authentic updates. As you can see, nearly 14 million people liked this photo, and probably double that at least scrolled past it. News travels quicker on any social media platform compared to television or print media.
Along with YouTube, Facebook is a very popular, if not the most popular, social media platform for news. Facebook gives people the ability to like and share posts and videos to their page that they find influential, entertaining, or important, essentially giving our social media friends the control of what we see and don’t see.
In conclusion, it is obvious that social media has become the new, quick and easy way to receive our daily dose of news and entertainment. There are many different platforms to chose from, and even more accounts in those platforms, making it easy to read the news but difficult to know the truth. Having all this information in the palm of our hands is great and efficient, however, it is still important to check the accuracy of the content to make sure that is is valid.
