Off late we are seeing a new trend that mainstream media uses twitter to source stories and data . There are also media houses that have openly admitted that twitter gets you breaking news faster than them . So a layman asks , Will twitter replace mainstream news media ? Let us try and answer that question in this post .Will that really happen ? How has twitter changed the news game ?
The advent of twitter has caused many a ripple in the news scene . There are instances where Twitter users have actually provided real time updates of events that are happening as they unfold . There have been twitter trends that have become news headlines . There have also been instances of news reporters actually sourcing news from twitter . All these put together means two different things , the first is that twitter is a game changer for news delivery and sourcing . This is because of the real time and really precise nature of tweets . The validity of the local info that you can get on a event is also far higher on twitter and hence it is here as a force to reckon with . The second thing is that the media has often benefitted by sourcing from tweets or even quoting tweets to add value to their main stories . In fact all the Indian TV channels I know have twitter experts in house who use twitter to leverage this .
Look at what happens when an event unfolds .When an event unfolds , twitter is abuzz with huge amount of information on the event as it happens . It can be info from people who are actually at the venue shooting off updates as they happen , it can be subject experts from twitter commenting with value added points on what is enfolding . Both of these are worth their weight in gold for the mainstream media . This makes their deal complete and totally correct without bias . This is a definite kill and a win-win scenario .
But there is a flip side , there were days when twitter trends actually represented breaking stories . But off late trends are a mixture of news and sometimes obnoxious things that everyone wants to talk about like #3wordsaftersex #ThingsIwantback . So the point is that someone has to be actually going through , filtering and validating what you see on twitter and that is th onus that currently rests with the mainstream media .
Coming to the question , will twitter replace mainstream news media ? Well , I think that twitter definitely influences ,affects , feeds and helps mainstream media , but as far as I can see , it will remain just that , a supplement , a very powerful supplement but it will not replace contemporary mainstream media anytime soon .
Waiting for discussions through your comments .
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9 users responded in this post
IMO, twitter as a base application can overthrow the media. The new age media is giving us the News what they think we must know. But twitter as u say is the voice of the real people from ground 0.
But getting info from random tweets is not a easy job for all age group ppl. If there is an aggregator, that filter out the crap and churns out the digested info in readable format, that would be the media killer.
Exactly my thoughts Giri !
Hi Shakthi,
Nice article. Interestingly enough, I was a part of a similar mini-project (or pilot research, if you will) during my Academics. Our research group had singled out the Mumbai terror attacks of 26/11 as an incident and on the basis of that, we had tried to investigate the contribution of Twitter as against the mainstream media. Our research was basically intended to investigate whether Twitter replaces mainstream media or merely supports/supplements it? If yes, then for what kind of news…. and so on. We had basically conducted in-depth interviews with people from different segments, viz. journos (online/print), active bloggers, academicians and media consumers; and then aligned their responses against different units of analyses and categories of questions. It was an interesting study overall.
@Aditya
Just to add to this, we had come up with conclusions very similar to yours.
Interesting exercise , I am sure that the findings would agree with what I posted ! Keep reading my blog Aditya . Thank you
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A very informative & unique thought, I must admit! Twitter accompanies the mainstream media, no doubt about it. But when it comes to the competition between the main source & twitter; twitter is less strong to make an impact because till this day not many are onto the internet facility, some prefer the mainstream media source as easy & accessible. With respect to future statistical data, twitter may be in the lead when compared to other social networks but I don’t think it can topple the mainstream media sources!
What happened with RIP Johnny Depp reminds me the naiveness of Twitter..
Twitter is gr8 for “breaking news” but mainstream media is necessary to give a comprehensive view of news. Another way of looking at this is that Twitter suits “reporting” style of journalism and mainstream media (and also blogs) is crucial to serve an “op-ed” style of journalism. I have also learnt that Twitter Trends are not required to break news, instead news breaks because of the viral structure of relationships (I wish had learnt this a little earlier!).
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