It has been a long time since I updated this blog. This past September I enrolled back into college to complete my bachelor's degree. It is actually quite ironic since I was enrolled in college when I originally started posting to this blog. I'm currently taking a Social Media course and am just about to wrap it up for the term.
I just finished reading the article, Twitter: Microphone for the masses? which poses the question, has Twitter replaced the traditional news outlets. Those of you that connect with me regularly online know that I am a relatively lazy Twitter user. I tend to use Twitter only during certain situations: 1) Something pretty exciting is going on in the world and I want to see what others are saying and join in 2) I'm bored - because really, besides Pinterest, what is a better time suck than Twitter? 3) Someone has mentioned, messaged or followed me and I've been notified by the app on my phone.
This article suggests that there may be some people that use social media like Twitter to get their news. To a point, I think they may be on to something. Thinking back to the last breaking news you heard about, where did you hear it? The chances are pretty high that you saw it on your Twitter timeline or Facebook newsfeed. One reason that Twitter is so popular with sharing timely information is the use of the #hashtag feature. It is an amazing way to group and analyze what exactly is trending. This feature allows you to access public tweets like a catalog, organized by topics.
I don't agree completely that Twitter or other social media has completely replaced news outlets but I don't discount the idea. The news outlets are smart enough to see what is going on and are out there on Twitter posting right beside the average Joes making sure that factual data is being shared. The biggest concern are those "average Joe journalists" sharing skewed information that has not been fact-checked or verified. I think this will be the biggest downfall for anyone using social media for 100% of their news.
Tell me what you think, check out a copy of this article here: http://www.bowdoin.edu/faculty/d/dmurthy/pdf/twitter-microphone-for-the-masses-dhiraj-murthy.pdf
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