The Quality of News and Information in the Social Media Era

After reviewing the notes and articles for this week’s assignment, I am still left undecided whether the quality of news and information in the social media era has increased or decreased.

What I do know and agree with is Richard Gordon in his article Social Media: The Ground Shifts (http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=101883) is that the biggest mistake made by the traditional media outlets was viewing the web as another one way medium for information and news.  I think this is what is and will further be the deterioration of traditional media outlets monopolization on said information and news.   People are spending more of their time online and traditional media outlets have felt that pinch in virtually every medium that they controlled in the past with loss of dollars namely in advertising revenue due to loss of viewers or readership (as demonstrated in page 2 of lecture notes for this week).  The social media age has brought a power for us to control in part the information we would like to receive and for some, impart information or news or opinions of their own to a wider audience than they would have ever been able to reach in the past, giving us all the opportunity to effectively publish what we deem newsworthy or interesting.  I am a news junkie, but my problem with this new age of citizen journalism has many fronts. 

First, with traditional outlets, there was most definitely a political bias of ownership that did shine through in the reporting and editorial segments of the relaying of information.  This would be evident in reading say the Toronto Sun and Toronto Star reporting on the same political event, each having a different interpretation of the events and their meaning.  I know where each newspaper stands in their political views and would be able to find some common ground to make the reported event make sense to me.  This gets lost in the wider scope of citizen journalism as many voices have different viewpoints (which is good), but the angle or bias is now the unknown and it makes the process difficult for me to fully understand the true meaning of what is being reported.  The concept of the directory Journalisted if it can become wider in its scope may help to alleviate this unknown by providing a more in depth profile behind the people that are providing me the coverage.

The second aspect that I have issues with is with news being directed by the masses more and more, we will lose a more rounded coverage of global events as I find that nowadays people are more localized.  Where we live in our sheltered lives and really ignore many of the issues until something comes along that may immediately affect us.  What is going on all over the world can be interconnected with what is going on here and I feel that can be lost.  Citizen journalism can also be limited as they lack the resources to fully cover events that are transpiring as was documented in the video Citizen Journalism: From Pamphlet to Blog (Watch Citizen Journalism: From Pamphlet to Blog | Project Documentary Episodes | Videos | Blip).  On the other side, citizen journalism worked well for John Tobin (working with Steve Garfield) to get himself known to voters, demonstrating the power of social media to get your message out.  In the video “Citizen Journalism and the Democratisation of News Coverage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBIKbMSXWfE) Brett Solomon shows several examples of how social media can shape the news and even predict elections based on Facebook groups for contenders.  So these issues can be found and may be more informative as it is presented by citizens that live amongst the problems that they are reporting on.  The information may be more subjective, but sometimes the scope of the coverage does get lost in objectivity from a journalist that does not have the ability to fully understand what they are conveying.

The third and final facet to my dilemma of deciphering whether social media has improved or decreased the quality of news and information is pointed at all forms of journalism, the issue of media sensationalism to garner viewers or readers.  The facts sometimes get lost in the presentation as ownership (especially with traditional media outlets) looks at the bottom line to dictate how and what news gets relayed.  I particularly take issue with Justin Bieber breaking up with Selena Gomez (or insert some other frivolous entertainment gossip flavour of the day) taking precedence over the mounting tension with Syria and the surrounding area in relation to mounting pressure on both sides by global governments for example.  This is pandering to the masses that sells the news but in my opinion weakens the quality of news and our awareness of what is really going on in the world.  This will become more evident with Social Media I fear as the younger generations that are driving this new digital age are less concerned with real news and more with pop culture tidbits.  This in combination with our ever increasing short attention span makes yesterdays problems not even a blip on today’s radar.  Issues don’t go away but the collective attention has grown tired of the story, so everybody moves on to the next big thing. 

So in closing, maybe what I am trying to say is that for a news junkie like myself, social media will provide avenues that will increase the quality of news and information, but for many in the greater population, it may decrease their quality of information as they seek only what interests them and grow less concerned with other news and information that could provide them with a more in depth view of their world today and tomorrow.