About Social Media

Social Media’s Impact on Journalism

Social media has taken the world by storm, especially the news sector, which has had to adapt and reform in order to stay competitive and profitable. The ripple effect of social media has absorbed all previous influences that journalism covered, from politics and people’s daily lives to cultural borders. Whereas journalism allowed us to peek at global politics, social media has reduced the globe to a global village. Journalism today in this age of social media must revamp and invent itself and although it can be argued that already a lot of change has taken place, more must be done if journalism is turn out on top of all this at the end. This essay seeks to critically analyze journalism in this age of social media and point out what has gone wrong and what is the solution to the problem.

Transformation of the Journalism Industry

Journalism as we know it was built on the foundation of the morning paper and people sitting down at the appointed time to watch the news on television. Today the scene has been totally revamped with 24 hours News coverings and more so social media news. There exists a ground shift change in the industry, whereby a reporter in the old days was handed out a lead to a story to follow or went in search of the story themselves. Many stories today are received third hand and more to the point, form social media. A long period of unprecedented change has proven to have catastrophic results such as witnessed in the 2007 Global recession and the journalism industry knows this only too well if efforts to change and be competitive as seen in recent years prove the will and determination to do so. A frenzied search for sustainable journalism has seen every aspect of what entails journalism form production, to reception of news and even reporting. Falling advertising revenues, readerships, and audiences has seen the recent characterization of modern journalism (Franklin, 485). In the United States, the newspaper industry has been reduced to 60% of its size compared to a decade ago in relation to measurement of revenues. This development signifies a 40% reduction of the newspaper in a decade, if relevant and revolutionary changes are not undertaken, that means there is a high likelihood if no newspaper industry coming the end of the next decade.

The Impact of Mobile Phones and Social Media

The mobile phone has been a game changer in the dissemination of news more so the advent of touchscreen mobile phones and flat-rate subscriptions for mobile internet (Westlund, 7). Today, there is a wide array of opportunities that leave consumers spoiled for choice on not only access to information such as news, but also to being able of producing and sharing information by themselves. This development has led to people ignoring traditional sources of information such as newspapers. Newspapers have been dependent on charging for news content and advertisements as its business model which has now to be shared with social media marketing and subsequently, newspapers have had to be innovative in order to survive. The essence of the problem is that social media seems to gain a foothold more and more as time goes by raising the need for an urgent and innovative solution.

The Role of Social Media in Crisis Communication

Since the inception of journalism, every major crisis has been captured by Newspapers and in fact, the most major crisis marks some of the record sales that Newspapers have ever sold. People would eagerly wait for the next copy so as to abreast with current news, today, however, the instant upload of current news in social media negates the need for a newspaper as when it comes out, one is already up to speed. Crisis communication and the nature of urgency envisaged in such situations call for a platform that can send information quickly and timely (Jin et al, 75). This development means that the need for newspapers in terms of relating and subsequently helping in one way or another is out of the question. The advantage that has been observed in the use of social media in times of crisis is that the information spreads quickly to the masses and people who are nearby come in to help, saving lives and property.

The Benefits of Social Media Presence for Organizations

The opportunities are endless for an organization that has a social media presence and without question every organization that wants to grow and remain relevant must have a social media presence (Laroche et al, 77). First of all, a social media presence provides valuable customer insights such as customers relating what they want in a product, which accounts for future strategic plans. Social media also increases brand loyalty and awareness as customers have a one on one experience with the organization. Further, social advertisements provide an inexpensive way to run targeted advertisements with real-time results. Social media serves as a platform to provide rich customer experiences as most customers have a social media presence; they expect the organization to have a social media presence as well. Social media is also the perfect platform to find out what your competitors are doing so as to make the necessary strategic business decisions required to perform better than them. The best thing about social media is that an organization has the ability to share content easier and faster which means that any update, or mistake can be quickly sent and resolved respectively. The main disadvantage that can be attributed to having a social media presence is that it needs skillful and tactful organization with preferably a team, as social media presence needs a daily interaction and a strategic plan deployed from the beginning. Also what comes with having a social media presence is inappropriate behavior that includes harassment and bullying.

The Future of Journalism: Embracing Technology

Journalism faces a major threat with the ever-growing reach of social media but all is not lost. The best move for Journalism would be to take a radical approach and embrace technology as the most promising alternative to Journalism (Latar, 66). Data silos double in the amount of human data every forty months. This development means that the amount of human digital data available makes this age in the complexity of social systems an era of exponential growth. A new science known as “social physics” marks the dawn of the emergence of a new science. One advantage of the system is having an infinite understanding of human connections; it will be able to detect and identify new ecological and social changes and trends at the initial stage, which means that we would be able to anticipate risks to social stability and make appropriate changes. This development of early identification would be an invaluable journalistic tool. Robotic journalism is the future of journalism with the composition of Al algorithms that would be able to convert insights and facts retrieved from data silos into readable stories in a fraction of a second by employing data analytics. Robot editors have been deployed successfully by Google without them having human intervention that shows the success achieved in this line of research and the capabilities involved. A mobile robot article generator was also engineered by the Matsumoto’s group at the University of Tokyo in 2007 although major improvement and advancement needs to be infused in order to serve its full potential.

The Solution to the Journalism Challenge

Journalism today faces a hard time more than ever in its history as social media slowly but surely erodes its influence and takes over its sources of revenue. This development means that newspapers must take up a radical approach so as to have a unique angle to have relevance and influence. The ideas proposed through ”social physics” display an innovative and radical approach through technology that is unique and full of potential if executed properly. So I dare say that there exists a unique solution to the Journalism challenge and the answer lies in embracing technology.

Annotated Bibliography

Franklin, Bob. ”The Future of Journalism: In an age of digital media and economic uncertainty.” (2014): 481-499.

The future of journalism is at a threat given the new age of digital media that has grown in leaps and bounds posing an economic challenge for the industry. Every aspect of journalism has had to adapt and change from production, reception of news and even reporting. Even most startling is the pace of change that leaves specialists struggling to make their findings relevant in the society today. Social media has gone on to capture the minds of its users given the daily network observed in search sites more than traditional news sites and the influx of news witnessed in such sites has replaced the need for news from other sources. An observation of social media sites gave almost over 50% content of what was actually in newspapers further proving the rise of digital media as a source of information.

Jin, Yan, Brooke Fisher Liu, and Lucinda L. Austin. ”Examining the role of social media in effective crisis management: The effects of crisis origin, information form, and source on publics’ crisis responses.” Communication research 41.1 (2014): 74-94.

The entry of mass media saw a shift in the handling of crisis management especially those that impacted the nation as a whole. Every major crisis since then has been highlighted by the media and journalism to be precise but a recent outlook since the advent of social media has seen a significant change in crisis management. Today, when a crisis surfaces, the first place most likely to mention the incident is social media. This development has been especially helpful in far-flung places where otherwise incidents would have gone for a long period of time without any notice and thereby minimize damages and losses. Further, people have more and more resorted to social media to air their troubles and hardships and subsequently receiving advice from the general public on how to deal with the issue.

Laroche, Michel, Mohammad Reza Habibi, and Marie-Odile Richard. ”To be or not to be in social media: How brand loyalty is affected by social media?.” International Journal of Information Management 33.1 (2013): 76-82.

Businesses today have no option but to have a social media presence following the ever rising social media presence. Marketing departments are looking for ways to maximize and utilize social media to propagate their business goals. However, there is a challenge to the effects of social media given how a bad linkage or happening with a firm can lead to social media onslaught with devastating consequences. Furthermore, a social media presence means responding to even negative comments about the organization which if not handled carefully may lead to disastrous effects. However all is not lost since negative comments about a company can be used to improve the organization making it for the best. What more to consider is that social media users envelop all ages and therefore the issue of age difference does not come in to question.

Latar, Noam Lemelshtrich. ”The robot journalist in the age of social physics: the end of human journalism?.” The New World of Transitioned Media. Springer International Publishing, 2015. 65-80.

Social systems are having an exponential growth more now than ever recorded in history. The adaptive nature that journalism has had to take brings in to play social physics and the entry of intelligence software in to journalism. The use of computational journalism is not a new phenomenon and in fact computers have been used in the industry as far back as 1950s but mostly for retrieving data. The gains to be made from computational journalism are valid as can be seen from Google’s Robot editor that has no human intervention in the Google news service.

Westlund, Oscar. ”Mobile news: A review and model of journalism in an age of mobile media.” Digital Journalism 1.1 (2013): 6-26.

The commercial birth of touch screen- enabled mobile devices with the added advantage of flat-rate subscriptions for mobile internet has led to the advent of news-related content that rival traditional forms of news such as journalism. The fact that people have access to updated news at all times whatever the location has negated the need for traditional forms of news. Furthermore, technological devices used for dissemination of news also matters with traditional forms of journalism being overtaken by the mobile devices platform. The mobile phone today is compilation of technological devices that capture a user and more so in social media platforms. Although news can today be accessed through mobile platforms, social media still takes the large chunk of subscribers and therefore the platform for news dissemination.

Work Cited

Franklin, Bob. ”The Future of Journalism: In an age of digital media and economic uncertainty.” (2014): 481-499

Jin, Yan, Brooke Fisher Liu, and Lucinda L. Austin. “Examining the role of social media in effective crisis management: The effects of crisis origin, information form, and source on publics’ crisis responses.” Communication research 41.1 (2014): 74-94.

Laroche, Michel, Mohammad Reza Habibi, and Marie-Odile Richard. ”To be or not to be in social media: How brand loyalty is affected by social media?.” International Journal of Information Management 33.1 (2013): 76-82.

Latar, Noam Lemelshtrich. ”The robot journalist in the age of social physics: the end of human journalism?.” The New World of Transitioned Media. Springer International Publishing, 2015. 65-80.

Westlund, Oscar. ”Mobile news: A review and model of journalism in an age of mobile media.” Digital Journalism 1.1 (2013): 6-26