The use of social media platforms is the most popular method to spread the word in the modern era. Nowadays people are constantly plugged into the web or an app on some form of technology. I will not deny that I am guilty of this, and as an aspiring photojournalist I find the constant news updates helpful in staying in touch with what is happening worldwide. People have all the information they could want at their fingertips, and the media uses this to their advantage.
Different social media platforms target different audiences depending on the form in which the information is released, be that text, video, audio or image. Instagram is used to release videos and photographs onto the web, and journalists find it a vital app for the distribution of news and information to the public, as the modern public have become used to interesting images that will capture their attention and basically tell the story without having to read much of anything. Everyone is in such a rush to know things first that being able to quickly scroll through a few photos and not long paragraphs of text is so much more convenient when on-the-go. This is a major contributon to the downfall of newspapers, as your phone is so much smaller to carry around with you everyday, and just makes everything that bit more accessible. The videos on Instagram can only be up to 30 seconds long, but with cropping and splicing technologies, even the longest of news stories can be made brief. Instagram has millions of users, meaning that each news company has a wide audience to inform daily. But this also means that often users may have been informed of news via other Instagram users prior to the news companies knowledge of the event. This is due to how connected the public are, and rather than view something through their own eyes, it is viewed through a camera lens on their phone to be instantly uploaded, shared and viewed by millions. Unfortunately this may also lead to the end of minor news companies as well.
Twitter uses a combination of text, video, audio and images to circulate information, with most MPs and celebrities having an account, everyone can find out anything about anyone. Most major news companies have an account which is used as an outlet to update people on news worldwide in brief yet captivating paragraphs, often accompanied by an image or short video. This ensures that people will continue to follow them and their accounts activities as they are known to be a reliable source for brief yet interesting information. It has become almost like a competition, to see who has the most likes and followers, and sadly this has made the actual content of posts seem less important, with people constantly checking to see if their posts are popular.
Facebook can be used to post pretty much any form of social media, yet it seems less popular with the younger generation in regards to the news as there is no limit on the amount of text, or the length of a video that can be posted. This means people are required to spend more time browsing and thus don't find out as much as they want. This is probably why Twitter and Instagram are more popular in terms of the distribution of news, as well as Facebook being a more social platform than Twitter and Instagram, and a better way to stay connected to family and friends.
Personally I find a news app called Quartz to be a reliable and efficient way to keep updated with the world's news as, in keeping with the younger generation, it sends news updates via text. Whilst being brief, it doesn't cut out any important information, and uses images and GIFs to support its text. Every time something new happens, you get a notification from the app letting you know that more news has been sent to you.
Social media platforms are extremely useful in being instantly updated of news worldwide, but it also means that people aren't experiencing these events for themselves. The media uses the internet to distribute information quickly and efficiently, and this is an improvement on having to wait 2 weeks or longer for photographic film to be developed and sent to the newspapers before the image can even be seen, as it means that people can know about events even as they are happening, instead of weeks later. The advancement in technology also introduced the possibility of a wider variety of media forms, from videos to GIFs, to images. I think it's safe to say that people are a lot more knowledgeable about worldwide events in the 21st century than they were in the past, and the continuation of the use of social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram by news companies will ensure that they remain so.
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