The Role of Social Media in News
Have social platforms impacted how society reads and values news and journalism?
Inpress is a new digital news platform. Like what you’re reading? come check out www.inpress.media for more info + a free $1 of reading material for supporting quality journalism!
For anyone reading this, digital social platforms play a part in your life, regardless of how much you like to admit it. Around 2.3 billion of us have some form of social networking presence, with a whooping 1.2 billion of those being concentrated on one network, Facebook, on a daily basis.
So how have these digital social societies born of the last decade changed how we access, interact, and value news and journalism? As one of the cornerstones of a healthy and democratic society, how does an industry started over four hundred years ago function when it’s integrated with the digitally connected, networked world?
In a lot of cases, not very well.
A brief history of networked news
After a few admirable early starters (the Brazilian newspaper Jornaldodia had a digital presence as early as 1987) the world saw newspapers adapted to personal screens in the mid 90’s. The move was seen at first to be a great and innovative way to broaden a mastheads reader base and public trust. The dotcom bubble grew and burst around a fledgling digital news industry that was just beginning to find out that their new weapon (the internet) was a double edged blade that was leading to a complete decimation of their primary source of revenue; advertising.
As all who are involved in the media industry know, print dollars were replaced by digital cents.
This change in advertising value also changed how we value news and journalism. With a cover price replaced by open digital access, our society quickly revalued news and journalism to correspond to what the free market priced it at — nothing.
Then along came social media. New. Interesting. Relatable. Game Changing.
Before social networks, people actively sought information out. Sure, you could just ‘surf the web’ looking for things that catch your eye, but every digital footprint was yours to create a new path with. You were active in your search for information.
Now, all you have to do is log in (or, let’s be real, open up your screen to an already open app) and you’re presented with a drip of digital information, ready for your passive consumption, without having to search at all.
The repercussions of these two trends are staggering. The change in digital advertising value was straightforward and fairly expected. Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance union chief executive Paul Murphy summed up the slaughter of newsrooms due to budgetary cuts at a parliamentary hearing into the future of journalism “Since 2011, more than 2500 journalist positions have been lost, probably more.”
Yet the far-reaching impact on the news and journalism industry is much more than the sum of growing workforce decimation and an influx of new mediums to contend with print and to grab profits. This, as with any industry hit hard by workforce losses, has resulted in quality being impacted by newsrooms being overstretched and understaffed. But throw social media into the mix, and you’re left with an industry that is downright unsustainable in the long term and actively harming readers to try to keep it’s head above water.
Social media and the news
Digital mastheads and social media had a good relationship at the start. Everyone was on Facebook, and so was the news. It was a way for publishers to reach their audience on a new platform and some thought it might even ‘fix’ the issue of lower ad revenue with billions of eyeballs reading and sharing news all in the same space. But the publisher’s pain continued. With the move to mobile, every website had to be optimised for smaller screens and load times had to be swift — a loading time of 3 seconds could lose you 50% of your readers in one pop.
To try and ease some pains of publishers — that’s what they say, at least — Facebook released Instant Articles in order to streamline publishing formats and branding,fix those optimisation issues, as well as greatly reduce load time. Which sounds excellent — until a publisher’s ad revenue drops due to restrictions by Facebook that inevitably lead to Facebook scoring a far larger piece of the advertising pie. Publisher’s were reaching more of their audience, but their traction became solely dependent on paid promotions thanks to a change in Facebook’s algorithm.
Algorithmic changes immediate after the introduction of Instant Articles punished a publisher whose posts led users away from the Facebook platform and onto a new url (with the publisher’s own advertising) by quashing the ‘organic reach’ (the amount of people who are fed an individual post without promotion money behind it) of said article. It was a basic carrot and stick manoeuvre albeit with a pretty sour tasting carrot after the drop in advertising revenue was realised by publishers. For all Facebook’s talk of supporting publishers and encouraging the sharing of news, it is still a company that cares first and foremost about it’s bottom line.
Facebook’s algorithm also changed how we access and interact with news and journalism. With no effort required to seek out fresh news, opinion, and analysis we became passive consumers who are fed constant information via an algorithm that has a single objective: to feed users exactly what they like to read, see and interact with, so that these users are encouraged to remain on the platform for as long as possible. When users remain, so does ad revenue.
This creates an echo chamber, wherein readers are shown only news and information that their previous activity on Facebook has suggested that they will engage with. And people engage with people like themselves. It’s the basics of humanity. We surround ourselves with people who share our views and then share articles that make us look good to our cohort. We share articles that shock us so our friends can be shocked and we can share in a feeling of outrage. We share strong, defiant, positive opinions that make as look like strong, defiant people. We share what we know and what we agree with. So that’s what Facebook gives us.
This social media echo chamber actively stops you from reading or viewing opinions that you don’t agree with, that you don’t engage with. And when 6 in 10 American adults get almost all of their news directly from social media, this creates a whole industry that doesn’t inform, challenge, debate. It reinforces, strengthens, divides.
Facebook is not only stripping more revenue from digital news, it’s shaping the digital news that reaches you in ways that are creating an ill-informed and divided society.
The answer to social media news?
So what options do publishers have of providing readers with economically sustainable news and journalism without ceding control over their publications or losing out in the abundance of content that is spewed into the digital space on a daily basis?
Well, not many.
Paywalls have risen with some mastheads to cover the waning budget of ad revenue with some benefit to the publishers. The New York Times has championed this model with over 2.2 million subscribers to their digital format (308,000 of those being added in Q1 of President Trumps administration). But is locking yourself into one viewpoint really the way to go? Not if you care about the second point of echo chamber news.
With every subscription gained by an outlet, it means another reader is paying for one editorial view far into the foreseeable future. It’s a value for money thing — you’re always going to return to the same masthead, the same angle and biases, if you’ve been locked into paying for it on a monthly basis. You don’t pay less if you read less and you’re hip pocket certainly doesn’t benefit from actively seeking out contrasting voices from different publications that may themselves have paywalls. In short, the echo chamber continues even off the network.
Let’s face it, that’s not a model fit for the digitally connected world.
Readers should absolutely be encouraged to pay for new — it’s worth it- but paying for news shouldn’t restrict the information you get and it certainly shouldn’t prevent you from seeking out contrasting opinions.
Only a model that allows fluidity of the source of information and the editorial angle with which it is presented should be used in this day and age. And this model needs to favour fact-based research, independent viewpoints, and transparency in a journalist’s editorial decisions.
What would a good model look like?
It would look like a publisher that takes journalist, columnists and experts from all sides of the political and social spectrum and publishes them together, all on the one platform.
It would look like editors who have a single objective — to represent the truth. All the truth.
And it would look like readers who have the right to access high quality, independent views that not only placate, but educate, and respect a journalist’s work enough to pay for it. To band together a contribute a tiny bit each, so that together they are contributing enough to make the industry sustainable.
That’s why we created InPress Media, to bring a news outlet to life that allows true diversity of opinion and tries to combat an industry dominated by the echo chambers of social media. And we want you to join us — because independence is worth it.
Inpress is a new digital news platform. Like what you’re reading? come check out www.inpress.media for more info + a free $1 of reading material for supporting quality journalism!
