What's the news? Oh, right, there's an election. How did I know that? Well, other than the fact that one cannot literally escape it, I read it on my phone while catching up on some of my news. I frequent a site called Reddit, a user based site where one some of the boards (called subreddits), users submit their news stories. Reddit also holds the honor of breaking many news stories, or even using their power of people to solve difficult cases. This gets me to my main point. I do not believe that the internet and social media are going to kill news, but it is killing news as we know it. Over the next few years, news programs on TV will become old news, thrown away for online sites that have the exact same news, just readily available at a time that is convenient to the reader or viewer. The growth of such websites as Reddit give the online community the ability to see news right as it's happening, not waiting till 6:00 pm or God forbid waiting till the next day until the paper comes out.
Facebook is also a valuable news source. With one click, I can gage where people are, how they feel, and what's going on in the world. I don't even have to look out my window these days. Why? Because I get my weather updates from Facebook. At least, to start. This is because there are themes. I heard about the shootings in Colorado first on Facebook (even while I was on vacation in Florida), Sandy first made herself known on Facebook, and any Juniata happenings make themselves present directly on my news feed. I know news nearly the moment it happens, long before the news sources have caught on. Even news teams are now using Social media sources to get their news to cover. It's a crazy new world of news we live in, it's a million times faster, and it's only going to get faster. But does this accessibility diminish the news we receive? Absolutely.
When seeing something on Facebook about a death in the family, or a death of a friend, it just doesn't seem that monumental to me. But as soon as my parents tell me over the phone about someone I know's passing, it hits hard. This difference is the only downside to news being delivered online. It just doesn't hold the weight it does. But what can we do? Seeing something in text is just so much easier than making a phone call, right? Right. And it makes us more willing to receive said news, because one can re-read it and make it their own (somebody can take a piece of text any way they want). So yes, it is bad, but there's no changing that, it's just human nature!
The ide that the internet is changing the way news travels and its impact on people is true. In my experience reading a text about some disaster is not nearly as powerful as being told over the television, in person, or even over the phone. I believe that the way news is changing is going to be closer to an encyclopedia of knowledge.
ReplyDelete