Social media is eating the news
Journalism could look very different in a couple of years
It’s a common journalist fear that social media may one day demolish traditional news websites. We’ve already seen Facebook become the most popular way for most young people to consume news.
But the CEO of Rappler, a news focused social network in the Philippines, isn’t worried. Maria Ressa sees real value in the power of the social network.
Rappler’s approach to news isn’t traditional. Its focus is on community engagement and the sharing of opinions. Rappler is a news site with one key difference: readers can choose to react to the story with one of seven emotions: happy, sad, angry, don’t care, inspired, afraid, amused, and annoyed. If there are many major circulating opinions it’s labelled ‘people are divided.’ It’s like Facebook’s newish reaction buttons, except it came first.
And, aware of the threat of bots taking over and recording thousands of false reactions, Rappler has built up a strong defence. It’s also a leader in journalism when it comes to cracking down on fake news and sock puppets, malignant algorithms and other bots.
“Social networks allow you to scale distribution,” says Ressa. “They say they don’t want to deal with content and yet they actually enable the distribution of so much content that a person now has so much coming at them they can’t figure out what’s real or not.”
Ressa says that Rappler’s business model is based on a combination of professional journalism, technology, and wisdom of the crowds.
Ressa believes if you can engage people through their emotions, you can change perspectives and create change.
