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Essay Topic: The Influence of Social Media on News Reporting

By:

Thi Bao Ngoc Nguyen

April 20, 2021

Word Count: 1815

Submitted to:

Professor Carolyn Meyer

In partial fulfilment for the requirement of

CMN216- Communication Revolutions

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The Influence of Social Media on News Reporting

In recent years, social media has become one of the most interactive channels of people

in the world. The rapid development of platforms creates new trends in the spread of

information. Each post also has a strong influence on the world as a whole. The interaction

between social media users created enormous power for social media platforms (Newman et al.,

2012). Thanks to the ability to high-speed spread, information disclosed by users on social

networks has a direct impact on the press, especially in the field of news reporting. Individuals

and organizations in the field of journalism changed to adapt to the development of social media.

Based on the above analysis, it can be seen that, in one way or another, social media is gradually

changing daily news reporting. So, this paper is to learn about social media and how it changes

news reporting in this digital age. The thesis statement is that social media engagement and

competition have positively impacted journalism's news reporting and benefits the public. This

paper includes three main points: the concepts of social media and news reporting; the role of

social media in news reporting; and the competition between social media and traditional media

in reporting news.

The concepts of social media and news reporting

In the journalism industry, traditional news reporting is often done based on collected

information through investigating and taking the news directly. That means, when journalists and

reporters want to report news, they need to be present, talk and interview individuals who

appeared at the scene (Soloski, 1989). Sometimes, reporters spend hours chasing events and

gathering information from a variety of sources to give audiences the truth. However, in the

current digital age, many believed that news reporting may change depending on the origin and
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nature of the information. Audiences' curiosity demands fast reporting speeds that cannot be met

by traditional news reporting.

To meet those needs, social media has been utilized to optimize the news reporting

process of reporters. The concept of social media was created a few decades ago with the advent

of the early internet and the Bulletin Board System. However, until the existence of the Web

Platform, technology tools could help users create content and distribute them over a common

connection. Today, social media are communication platforms with a variety of features for

connecting people (Edosomwan et al., 2011). It is possible to define social media as an

information system providing users/audiences with communication platforms such as personal

pages, forums, etc. Therefore, the spread of social media has a direct effect on news reporting in

the journalism industry.

The role of social media in news reporting

Every day, the increase in the number of users makes the influence of the social network

more and more influential in spreading news. The figures show that the number of social media

users increased from 2.86 million to 4.41 million in 2017 – 2025 (Statista, 2020). Social media

connects people all over the world, no matter who and where they are. Thanks to the instant

sharing feature, users can distribute news/information on social networks at any time. The more

users, the stronger the connection. Therefore, that makes social media a source of news for many

individuals and organizations, especially press organizations.

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Figure 1: Number of social network users in 2017-2025 (Statista, 2020)

Moreover, the speed of information dissemination on social networks promotes the

spread of breaking news for individuals and organizations. Social media can be defined as a

channel or tool for word of mouth in this digital age. Information and events mentioned on social

media can become a rich resource for individuals and organizations (Kapoor et al., 2017). When

a user distributes information, that news immediately becomes the topic of discussion on social

media. After assessing the authenticity and importance of the information being discussed,

individuals and news organizations can research and turn them into the news. In the past,

individuals, organizations, and reporters had difficulty keeping up with last-minute news; and

now they can access the news in the simplest way: log into Facebook or Twitter. As a result,

social media becomes the source for news reporting today.

At the same time, public opinion revolved around information shared on social networks

is also a remarkable thing when reporting the news. After observing the reaction of the online

community, the reporter can grasp social opinion and public perception trends. Thanks to that,

the next news reports on the right track, multidimensional and richer. News waves on social
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networks are created in the process of interaction between users, making information powerful

(Bergström & Jervelycke Belfrage, 2018). The combination of social media and the behavior of

public discussion changed news reporting. The reporters recognized the important role of the

public in actively participating in the communication process.

It can be said that every social media user is a source, and they can censor the

information they post. This is known as citizen journalism. The social media web platform gives

the public/readers the ability to open up their communication channels. Each user can act as a

gatekeeper when they have full discretion to decide what information to publish on their blog.

Media scholars officially call this phenomenon "citizen journalism." This phenomenon provides

more multi-dimensional information to the media (Ali & Fahmy, 2013). The fact that users

actively contributed to the discussion of hot social issues also influenced news reporting.

Discussions actively supported journalists in reporting real and essential news to the public.

The competition between social media and traditional media in reporting news

Besides interacting and stimulating each other, the press and social networks also

compete with each other to attract public attention and participation. In a competitive

relationship, both the press and social media strive to better serve the needs of the public. The

news reports have features such as topicality, openness, periodical, and multidimensional

function. Before the advent of social media, these were traits that were unique to news reporting

in the press industry (Vasterman, 2018). Today, however, the press is no longer the only source

and distribution of news for the everyday public. Social networking has become an environment

of rapidly supplying, spreading, and interacting with information. Thus, social media competes

with media reporting in many aspects such as current news, openness, multidimensional and

interactive.
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In news reporting, the press and social media all strive to reflect the fastest new events

happening in life. The press channels are known as quick, popular, and far-reaching sources of

information. Due to the flexibility and acumen of social networks in updating new information in

all aspects of people's lives, the press has faced pressure on information competition. Facebook,

Twitter, Google+ have become all too familiar to people all over the world. These social

networks attract billions of users and create an extremely large community with a dizzying speed

in spreading information. Even websites, a new type of journalism, are sometimes inferior to

social media in spreading information, at least from a time perspective. Press organizations with

a limited number of reporters cannot reach sources as everywhere compare to users on social

media (Vasterman, 2018). Therefore, in many cases, information about a new event appears on

social media before appearing in the press. This is because social media users are everywhere,

they can capture images and sounds of new events at any time and upload them to social media,

before journalists. Event detection and access. The pervasive speed of social networks has

created pressure to push the press to speed up the rate of news updates to assert the role of

providing official information.

Besides, social media is determined to be interoperable based on multi-dimensional news

than traditional newspapers because it is not dependent on any agency. Social media has the

strength of sharing and presenting emotions, so members can freely present their views. In a

certain sense, this makes information on social networks overcome personal barriers to become

multidimensional. In this competition, the press is both promoting openness, multidimensional,

and performing a navigation function to guide perceptions more relevant to online discussions.

This demonstrates the power of the press in the context of social media becoming increasingly

popular. Interoperability is one of the strengths of the media, especially online newspapers.
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However, online newspapers are also competed by social media in this strong point. Social

media will "die" if it stops interacting with the public, so any platform always knows how to

promote this strength (Dwivedi et al., 2016). Thanks to the interactive feature, netizens are free

to express their opinions and comment on issues that they care about. Each person has different

perspectives, creating a different flow of opinions. Honest users contributed fresh perspectives

on news. Therefore, social media is an important channel for journalists to also capture public

opinion trends.

Conclusion

In conclusion, social media influenced journalism and changed traditional news reporting

thanks to its spread of information, openness, and multidimensional nature. The interaction and

competition between social media and the press benefited the public in terms of reporting

information. The press and social media together created a more progressive news environment

compared to the time before social media appeared. engaging readers. Besides, the explosion of

social media brings not only challenges but also opportunities for the press. Social media forced

the press to change content and form to bring readers quality news. The scientific and

technological revolution will last a long time and the development of the press and social

networks will unpredictably change. But certainly, in the modern media ecosystem, the

interaction between media types is inevitable. No matter how social media evolve,

audiences/users/readers always benefit from the change in news reporting.

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References

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https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635212469906

Bergström, A., & Jervelycke Belfrage, M. (2018). News in Social Media. Digital

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Dwivedi et al., Y. (2016). Social Media: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. 15Th IFIP WG 6.11

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Statista. (2020). Number of Social Media Users 2025. Statista. Retrieved from

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Vasterman, P. (2018). From Media Hype to Twitter Storm. Amsterdam University Press.