Social Media and News: One and the Same
Social media is the new news norm.
As social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook have become the new norm in socializing with virtual friends, they have also become the main platform that many people use to keep up with current events. But why do we choose to use social media instead of watching news broadcasts on TV?
This trend is popular with millennials, who may find that it is more convenient to check the news on social media, but it may also be the amount of news that is thrown at social media users on their feed. While on social media, it is impossible to avoid news, whether we like it or not. But who gets the most news on social media, and where do they find it?
According to the study conducted by the Pew Research Agency, more women receive news on social media sites, but shockingly people from the ages of 30 to 49 receive the most news from social media sites, not those 18 to 29 years of age.
If you have any social media account and looked at it during election season, you know that news about either candidate was prominent no matter the platform you viewed. With this craze was the emergence of fake news and those who believed that no matter the source if it aligned with their beliefs it was worth sharing. While eliminating the ethics that journalism has built by requiring all stories to be fact checked, fake news can be produced faster and therefore the quantity of false information continues growing, leading readers to believe that fiction is relevant to current issues.
But why do we rely on social media for our news when we know that there is so much fake news out there? Most news organizations post online before their papers print, making our receival of news more efficient and more immediate. With the ever-growing number of news “sources” out there, it is more important than ever that users fact check articles they read in addition to reading multiple articles to get the whole story rather than one perspective.
Social media’s role in how we receive news may also be altering the way that journalists are writing. Since news organizations are writing for their online audiences as well as those who buy their print versions, they must be able to accommodate for both. Many articles that are shared on social media are short, accommodating for the shorter attention span that consumers have when online.
Personally, if I click on an article and it is long then I tend not to read it and instead go back to scrolling through my feed. This may be due to the fact that I am usually on social media to escape what is going on around me and to relax from whatever stress I encountered that day. Therefore, I am not usually in the mood to read long articles that require my full attention to understand. But I am not the only one. This can be proven with the fact that Snapchat’s “Discover” page has multiple news sources, but the articles found on these sites are usually fairly short compared to what would be seen as an average length article.
