What Is Journalism’s Place in Social Media? Do we still need journalists in the age of social media? Are journalists in danger of becoming irrelevant because of the rise of social media?
A survey
named The Social Media Impact (#SMING14) conducted by ING featured an international group of PR practitioners and
journalists showing the passing of the crown
from traditional media to social media and the impact it has on journalist. The
one agenda that come out of the event was that, Journalists widely use social
media posts despite having doubts about their reliability. At the same time PR
professionals believe that news is becoming less reliable as journalists do
less fact-checking.
Social
media is about networking and communicating through text, video, blogs, and
pictures, status updates on sites such as Tumblr, Instagram Facebook, Myspace,
LinkedIn or microblogs such as Twitter.
(video
link) about social media
Wikipedia stated Social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content."
A journalism
major might be thinking twice about their career path perusing that Degree or
diploma. In fear that social media fueled by the internet will cut them out
like what Napster/mp3s did to CDs and what has happened to video stores because
of Netflix. It reach the point were by Oxford University held social media convention
tackling the issue (link)
But where
does PR stand in this beef? It has become the norm were PR is the thin line
between fact and fiction seen as the Morpheus of The Matrix that is the media,
be it spinning, controlling, limiting access and protecting clients at the
expense of the truth. It’s at a point where Journalism loves to hate PR, to the
point where PR is being objectified to a secrecy bill towards Whistle-blowers
and journalists.
The issue
is further dwelled into by Julia Hobsbawm though
many ‘ you know who” will argue that it
has been sugar coated in favour of the former. websites
such as 10000words.net and
savethemedia.com are essential in educating and understanding social media sites and the ways in which journalists
could work off What’s you take, is is journalism coming to end? comment .
