When everything comes to an end…
As the semester ends, so does the seminar “Inside the News Media”. Looking back at the past four months, there is a lot I would like to reflect on. Let’s talk about social media first. I have always been aware of the fact that as soon as I talk or text about a certain product — which I might even have googled before — Facebook provides advertisement that presents that very product. I have always noticed these kinds of ads right away.
However, I have never really thought about how or why they got there. I did not know that social media platforms, as for example Facebook, use mathematical algorithms in order to place specific advertisement individually. That really made me google things more carefully.
In addition to that, I — once more — realized that social media play an extremely important role when it comes to spreading news. People of all ages use Facebook. Not as many people daily buy newspapers. This might be one of the reasons why, by now, a lot of newspapers have their own sites on Facebook. By sharing their online articles on social media platforms, they reach people of all ages, nationally as well as internationally. The distribution of news has never been any faster.
This aspect, however, also makes me question the future existence of printed newspapers.
Does literally EVERYTHING come to an end or will printed newspapers eternally exist?
To be honest, I do not know how to answer this question. I guess, though, that people twenty years ago did not think either that, computers, smartphones and tablets would, one day, play that big of a role in the context of the distribution of news. But now, they do. So, why deny the fact that these kinds of media might as well overpower print media completely? Not least because our generation is already called “the digital natives”….
