Social media: Can't stop it, so make it the new way forward!

There is no way you can stop social media forcing its way into our profession. It’s here now and it’s staying, and I don’t particularly feel it’s a bad thing.

Social media sites have ridiculous amounts of users. Millions. When you put the rest of your journalistic training in place (think SEO optimisation), you have the potential to reach numbers beyond that of the population of your country.

Journalists don’t just write anymore. They aren’t the nameless, faceless person behind a story in the paper. Increasingly, journalists are becoming a brand, a personality type figure within society. Posetti says “journalists are being re-cast as individual reporter-brands” (2013, p. 89) and this is coming about because of constant engagement with social media platforms.

This is different to how we have operated before. Some may think it is bad, others good. There isn’t much we can do about it. Since the birth of our race we have been putting foot in front of the other and changing the way we live. In with the new, out with the old. I think journalists will continue to gain personality and prominence in this new media atmosphere.

Social media doesn’t only offer a new and exciting platform for the journalists, the news itself is changing form. Posetti outlines the benefits that micro-blogging sites like Twitter are having, as “challenging the notions of objectivity through the convergence of personal and professional lives; propelling the mainstreaming of ‘open journalism’ models, which promote collaborative research and reportage; and even upending established verification processes” (2013, p. 88).

Sites like Twitter get a bad rap when something untruthful unfolds through its channels. Like I mentioned in my debate during class however, it is the result of poor reporting, not the site that is to blame. Journalist and social media specialist, Neil Varcoe, details some of the solutions presented during a conference on ways to stop misinformation through Twitter, “One conference goer swaggered brassily to the microphone and declared: “Don’t tweet unless you have something to say.” This was accompanied by silence, then another elegant solution: “Don’t report rumour or speculation.” (Varcoe, 2013).

 I think we need to remember the benefits that Posetti outlines and remember that we need to harness the power of social media in the journalism industry. Once we invented paper we stopped carving into rocks.