With today's hectic lifestyle in which people want to have things done in a hurry and want everything, such as news, right away, social media has become a dominate source for information. The problem is : by using social media, the news is done by the people (not trained journalists) for the people. That being said, could the news articles say one thing, when really another happened? Or even worse, could the news articles be completely fabricated? Does social media increase or decrease the quality of news that is available to us? I believe that even though social media has increased the quality to some extent, but there is also some serious effects that have decreased the quality of the news.
In the world of social media, news can come from a variety of sources. These sources can be found almost anywhere, from credible websites to blogs to tweets. According to a study done by the Pew Research Centre's Project for Excellence in Journalism, "Major news portals — like Yahoo News, Google News, AOL, and Topix — are the most commonly used online news sources, beating out the web sites of major news outlets like CNN, CBS, and the New York Times." and they also say that "About 71% of internet users, or 53% of all American adults, get their news online; that number has been relatively steady in recent years." (McGee, 2010) This goes to show you that a lot of people use the internet for their news.
The quality of the news from the internet is a debatable topic. One perspective is that people who post news articles online, especially from independent sources, such as blogger or twitter, would make up stories to get more views on their page. This has happened more than once with ridiculous stories such as "Lion mutilates 42 midgets in Cambodian ring fight" (Gallagher, 2009). This story was clearly made up, but because it looked authentic it was picked up by several high profile blog posts and eventually even the New York Times printed an article on it. Which proves that it does not matter where you get your information, there is still the possibility it may be tainted, as this story showed up in both print and online.
Social media allows us even more opportunities to get the news, now instead of having to wait for the paper we can get it online, from a computer or even a phone, almost instantanously. We can also get news from all over the world and get access to some news stories the paper does not want to print. One theory is that because bad news (sex, deaths, violence) sells, the papers print alot more of these stories then good things that may have happened in he community to boost sales. Since online websites do not have to worry about profits they can portray all different kinds of stories including the good. The problem with the news online is that the story could have made up points, or could be completely fake. with the growing number of these happening worldwide I would say that, even though social media makes it easier to access and view the news, it has decreased the quality.
Gallagher, D. (2009, May 4). 7 clearly fake news stories that fooled the mainstream media. Retrieved from http://www.cracked.com/article_17318_7-clearly-fake-news-stories-that-fooled-mainstream-media_p2.html
McGee, M. (2010, March 15). Google, yahoo & portals are top online news sources: study. Retrieved from http://searchengineland.com/google-yahoo-portals-are-top-online-news-sources-38041
McAuliffe, W. (2010, February 12). Bad news sells, is social media changing this?. Retrieved from http://www.liberatemedia.com/blog/bad-news-sells-is-social-media-changing-this/
