With the emergence of new media, the news consumption is not the same as before when people waited for their morning papers or sat down at an appointed time for the night news on television. Today, everything can be done in just one click. According to Jennifer Alejandro (2010), there are a growing number of readers, viewers and listeners are going online for their news. Although the television, newspapers and radio are still here, but there is a growing competition from interactive online media.
The Impact of New Media Technology on Journalism
Old media such as publishing require a printing press and its circulation was limited to a fraction of a geographical location. On the other hand, broadcasting via radio and television rely on expensive equipment to transmit signals around a country, either regionally or globally. But, the advance development of technology today has open the access of a netizen to a platform that is global and free once he connects to the internet. Therefore, an individual may propose or explore new models of communication and coordination without needing to get anyone’s permission and an individual with a camera or a keyboard is now a non-profit of one and self-publishing is the norm.
Apart from that, the way the vast bulk of public and commercial media is changing is more crucial compared to the emergence of citizen journalism or the independent blogosphere. Together, both of them offer the opportunity to transform the news media into a more open, trustworthy and useful forum for information and debate. Hence, the news is becoming non-linear and open-sourced, and journalism will change and is changing.
News Media Outlet of the Future – Twitter?
According to four researchers, Haewoon Kwak, Changhyun Lee, Hosung Park and Sue Moon from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology’s Department of Computer Science, the role of the traditional news media is played by traditional news accounts on Twitter. Their finding shows that twitter news accounts are more powerful than traditional news media and the reasons include motivation and the form of news.
Some studies stated that different motives lead to different levels of attention and show that motivation to get information for personal or social use leads to a greater cognitive involvement. In the case of twitter, twitter users can actively choose and subscribe to their favourite news sources and the motivation to read tweets such for the purposes of gaining information or entertainment is stronger than just passing time.
According to some studies as well, soft news is more effective than traditional news for politically inattentive citizens. Therefore, both short message (tweet) and social interaction (retweet) among users put twitter ahead of other sources of news. Thus, twitter is said to be able to become an effective medium to disseminate political messages.
Hence, Kwak et al think that news accounts in twitter can have more power than traditional news media based on these two observations.
Figure: A retweet tree analysis of tweets during the Air France plane crash in July 2009.
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I agree on the part that journalism is changing parallely with the advent of technology. I believe people nowadays require things to be done quick in order to catch up with the pace of the world. Same goes to when people are reading newspaper or watching news. We want information to be reachable as fast as possible. Therefore, here comes Twitter and all sort of online media which enables information to reach us in a rapid speed. People do not need to wait for the newspaper next morning to know what happened last night because everything you can get it on the tip of your finger. I think that is what people prefer now.
ReplyDeletethanks for the comment, sherene. it is, nowadays most of us can get any kind of information by just one click. people do like things that are convenient to them without being constraint by time or venue.
DeleteAs we all know, traditional journalism in printed version is slowly affected by the online journalism, and that is why most of the news agencies start their online website to publish their news to compete with other online journalists. For example, daily newspaper such as The Star, Berita Harian and so forth. In my opinion, with a more and more advanced communication technology in these modern days, the online journalism will sure to replace the traditional journalism in the future, or probably 30 years later.
ReplyDeletethanks for the comment, amber. I not sure about online journalism going to replace the traditional journalism in the future. but for sure, with the advantages of the online journalism provided to its readers, there might by tendency of the readers to choose online journalism as their main source of being alert to current issues.
DeleteThanks for sharing. Undoubtedly, the traditional media has been impacted by new media. But, there is one thing to ponder, is the news source from new media is credible and valid? In virtual world, everyone can be journalist without proper training. This matter has decreased the value of news nowadays. For example, even the changes of eye colour was reported as a news. I started to wonder where is the value of news.
ReplyDeletethanks for the comment, apple. it is true that everyone can be journalist in this era of technology. therefore, instead of blindly digesting the online information, we should become a smart reader who able to criticize the information that we might think it is false as the online platform of journalism especially in the social media, we are able to leave a comment for what we read.
DeleteToday, new media forms an important part in people lives. The power of new media cannot be underestimated because it more transparent and engaging than traditional media. Therefore, I strongly agree with you existed of new media had a huge impacts on the traditional journalism.
ReplyDeletethanks for the comment, voon. it is true that new media is transparent for the moment. but, with the strong engagement of reader on new media, we might not able to assure that will it continue to be transparent in future as well.
DeleteThanks for sharing. I agree that the new media has more impacts toward society today. New media provided us faster access to all kind of the information we looking for.
ReplyDeletethanks for the comment, maria. i'm glad that new media has ease our job in accessing the information we need.
DeleteThanks for your sharing, Ainee^^
ReplyDeleteIn this era of technology, new media has become part of people's life. Many information can be spread on social media.
We do not know which one is real. Therefore, we need to value it depend on our wisdom.
Luckily, traditional journalists are not beaten by new media. In contrast, they use new media wisely. They try to make their writing into new media world. They write the correct news and lead the people to the correct information path.
thanks for the comment, cabbage. Yes, I agree with you. journalists have go with the flow by expanding their coverage of readers to the netizen, not only depending on the printed readers.
DeleteThanks for sharing Ai Nee.
ReplyDeleteNowadays, the people rely on new media such as Twitter and Facebook because the new media able to share the news and information and reach the reader in rapid speed. People no need to read the newspaper or watch the TV news to know what happened because they just need to log in new media and then can get the information.
Thanks for sharing. I prefer traditional media as I think it is more reliable. However, I use Internet every day. It is undeniable that I write news from new media more frequent that traditional media. New media is just too convenient for us to reach. But, I will always get the news from reliable sources.
ReplyDelete