How Does Social Media Affect The Way Journalists Gather Information?

News organizations that report on stories in a fair, balanced and ethical manner are essential to the functionality of this nation. A citizen’s ability to make well-informed decisions hinges on a news organization’s ability to relay the most accurate information regarding the state of the nation, the changing condition of communities, and adjustments in the government. Journalism is no longer a one-sided conversation. Journalism is an interactive process that allows for readers and viewers to create a dialogue with journalists by utilizing mediums such as social networking sites and comment sections. Audiences have a say in what stories get reported and how news stories are presented to the masses. When news organizations fail to cover all

Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives--or exerted such broad influence over our thoughts--as the Internet does today.

Most everyone has some form of social media. Whether it be Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram people have a way of communicating and getting news from all around the world. Unfortunately, this news is not always correct or trustworthy. Many people are not attuned to reading long articles or papers and just want the short story. Social media readily gives them shortened and condensed stories one after the other. Therefore, “traditional media has to adapt to the audience’s new

There is nothing more potent than an idea. Presently, broadcasting an idea has never been easier and a large audience never so reachable. The Internet represents the most efficient means of mass communication – a place where information is readily available and millions can be reached with the click of a button. The incalculable enormity and accessibility of the Internet means that we are constantly bombarded with messages and ideas that are often misleading and incomplete.

A new form of journalism based on new media is changing the core of news production and consumption. Rebelling against the news models of the past as news migrates onto an online platform. News values are changing even in the ABC and other conventional news outlets. These changes are a response to the external factors that impact the news industry as it evolves into a new era of technological adaption. Although the meaning of news itself is changing, of equal

Books, magazines, and newspapers can’t compete with the instant access of information on the web. To adjust to the demands of society, all these “paper” industries are assimilating into the internet. The internet isn’t just absorbing information on paper, but other technologies as well. Carr writes, “It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV […] when the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image [...] and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed”

With all of the new platforms of media, our world is evolving faster than ever. New technology allows us to have fast and easy access to breaking news. The challenging task for journalists

The digital era has brought traditional journalism to the edge, forcing the industry to update its means in order to sustain the constant commercial pressure it is put under.

As society has progressed into the twenty-first century it is evident that humanity is becoming strongly reliant on technology, especially the internet in which people now use instantaneously on a daily basis, from diagnosing diseases to finding answers, information and gossip within moments of it occurring. Wikipedia is “a free, collaborative, multilingual internet encyclopedia. Wikipedia evolves without the supervision of a pre-selected expert

We are increasingly consolidating our information sources, forcing the Internet to be “our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV” (Carr).

This research has been conducted due to the fact that some researchers have claimed that “journalism is dying” whilst others have argued that “journalism is not dying but is simply evolving” (Blatchford: 2014). This has been a much contested debate triggered by the decline of news circulation from traditional news sources i.e. newspapers, television and radio together with the technological advances of the internet and social media (Cub Reporters: 2010). This has raised many questions and firstly, this dissertation will assess whether the rise of social media has led to the decline of news circulation from traditional news sources. Secondly, this paper will look at what the advantages and disadvantages of using social media as a news distributor are for professional journalists and the general public. Lastly, this study aims to investigate

Internet is a global network that connects millions of computers together and allows people to communicate and share information with each other in an effective and easy way. It has become the most widely used means of communications of recent times. “The number of U.S. homes with one or more personal computers increased by 16% (in 1995) to about 38 million households, up from 33 million in 1994 and 25 million in 1993” (Fox 9). “Along with that staggering stat, the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science has reported that 95% of the public has access to the Internet” (“Free Essay”). Internet is filled with a lot of information on almost every topic in the world and anyone

The overview of the subject matter is that the big worry is that quality will decline Journalists are employed to check their facts and they get checked in turn by editors who question the reliability of their sources; we trust the paper’s brand not the individual journalist. Social media could be reliable, but how would we know? This is equally true then it comes to bias. But the fact of the matter is journalism is more credible and if we lose credibility in the information we get everything could fall for speculation. The authors’ thesis is we should not stand for the decline of journalism as a profession but support our right to have valuable information

Joan Cornell notes that the Internet democratizes the journalism which was in the hand of the few people (2003). The Internet makes the public access to information; at the same time, it creates the public to be journalists, opening blogs to put something new around on the Internet. Many news websites like The Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC allows some personification. The journalism nowadays is facing challenges not only from media and technology convergence, but also from audience they serve (Bowman and Willis 2003). For example, in MSNBC’s my MSN part, one can post news by yourself. While the audience are participating in the process of journalism with the aid of the Internet, it cannot be neglected by mainstream media.

To wholly have a grasp on how this new founded approach to journalism has changed alongside technology—as well as understanding the dangers such openness brings forth—one has to understand what exactly those changes are. Primarily, those that are writing for the sake of offering information have, whether willingly or not, fed into the usage of social media as it has become a centralized method of distribution that is relatively inescapable with the current times. As such those framing the news for the masses find an authentic avenue to stay in contact via social media that has benefits ranging from, “its extraordinary newsgathering potential; its potential as a new tool to engage the audience; and as a way of distributing our news” (Eltringham, 2012), all of which are deeply different from the presentation of reporting that occurred during earlier eras. Days of strongly structured instances of journalism that could not travel with such speed have been replaced as, “social media has trashed many of the foundations on