The Social Media News Makeover

by Dan Korvas
SEO Specialist

In the past month, a revolution has been taking place that has almost completely flown under the radar. I'm not going to get into political views and who is right or wrong here, but this is one of the first glaring examples as to how the future of news will be distributed. This all has to do with the presidential race in a Middle East country last month how social media has been the leading source of any and all news updates that have been following this story.

In the past month, unless you are actively seeking news out regarding this story, you will be hard pressed to get any solid information from any of the MSM outlets regarding the Iran elections. That is quite shocking really, when you consider the scope of this story and how it has basically been swept under the rug by most television networks (well, not completely ignored, but rather not given the airtime that something of this magnitude deserves). In times like these, especially where the freedom of the press has been all but squashed, we see how the voice of the people who are engulfed in the situation are actually the main source of newsworthy reporting. I never thought I would say this, but Twitter has been the best source of information in regards to the reporting of this story. While this is not only a massive shift in how the news is being reported, this is free advertising that the folks at Twitter could only have dreamed of. And now they are the center stage for nearly all of the first-hand accounts of what is going on there, which is a heck of a lot more interesting than tweets by your favorite celebrity about what they just had for lunch.

While we are grateful that this new form of news updates is upon us, we still need to take caution. Why, you ask? Because just like anything else on the internet, you still need to have credible sources. The internet allows us to be anonymous, which is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it gives us the ability to speak our mind without fear of reprisal. However, the anonymity also makes us doubt who is actually spreading this information. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to differentiate between who is reporting a story and who is merely trying to push their own agenda. Hopefully, as we continue to move toward a social media/social news media model, there will be a new level of integrity that this generation of reporters can adhere to.