തിങ്കളാഴ്‌ച, സെപ്റ്റംബർ 30, 2019

Journalism in Internet Era


How do you think the Internet is changing journalism in your home country? 



Yes, there are lot of changes happened in the field of journalism in our country because of the internet is play a great role in exchanging news and ideas. The Internet has turned the world of journalism utterly upside down. It has drastically changed how journalism is now accessed and shared. Well written stories are hard to come by these days and it’s largely down to the impact the internet is having on this dying art. You can forget about reporters, readers, features, tabloids and broadsheets because nowadays it’s all about online ‘dumbed-down’ articles, news feeds, timelines, search engines and page/site views.
Social media and social networks change the way news is generated and accessed. They influence media in three dimensions: as a tool for journalists to create content, as a tool to distribute and impart information, and as a tool to seek, receive and access information. The exercise of these fundamental rights by journalists and citizens also relies on unhindered access to the Internet. Internet Access as a human right Access to and the use of the Internet and all its services – including social media and social networks – is widely considered a human right in the 21st century.
As the Internet increasingly becomes an indispensable tool for all citizens to receive, seek and impart information across borders, access to the Internet becomes closely linked to the basic human right to freedom of expression and, therefore constitutes a human right in itself. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression in a recent report stated that “the framework of international human rights law remains relevant today and equally applicable to new communication technologies such as the Internet.

           Social media and social networks form ever newer ways to communicate, many of which we could not have imagined just a few years ago, and many to come that we cannot envision today. They make use of innovative technologies and combine them with already existing features to form Internet services which can be used by journalists and citizens alike. Facebook, Twitter & Co. make it easier than ever before to share information, impart and receive news or comment on and discuss ideas and developments.

Social media substantially change the way of communicating among organizations, communities, as well as individuals and can take on many different forms, including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, micro-blogging, wikis, podcasts, photographs or pictures, videos, rating, social bookmarking and social networking.8 Whereas this definition sees social networking as a part of social media, the distinction between social media and social networks in reality is blurred. Microblogging services such as Twitter serve both as personal networking tools and at the same time as a platform to disseminate news – or even undertake journalistic research. Social networks such as Facebook or Google+ are used for individual communication, but more and more also for institutional communication, news distribution, research through crowd sourcing and many more purposes, including many still to be developed.

Social media and social networks as tools for journalists Social networks and social media at the same time offer a great tool for journalists for research and as a source for stories. Twitter, Facebook or YouTube offer coverage by other journalists and normal citizens of many events, including events to which there is limited access for journalists, e.g. for safety, financial or other reasons. The use of Web 2.0 tools for this form of research – or ‘crowdsourcing’ – is still underdeveloped and journalists need to develop skills to check and verify sources in order to guarantee reliable and accurate information.

Recent cases demonstrated a considerable lack of fact checking of social media sources by journalists. Awareness should be raised and tools for journalist training in the use of social media and social networks should be developed. Social networks and social media also enable journalists to collaborate with fellow journalists or citizens (mass collaboration) on the Internet, for examples in wikis or other tools of online collaboration, or through commenting on articles, fact checking and making use of the “wisdom of the crowd.” Accountability is an issue, though when it comes to anonymous wikis and professional journalism ethics should be further developed in this field

 Do you think blogging sites represent a step forward or a step backward from traditional forms of journalism, and why? 



Citizen journalism beyond seeking information online or simply swapping stories and commenting on them via e-mail, Internet users also contribute to the creation of news, comment about it or disseminate news via social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. They have done at least one of the following: comment on a news story (25 percent); post a link on a social networking site (17 percent); tag content (11 percent), create their own original news material or opinion piece (9 percent), or tweet about news (3 percent). Among those who get news online, 75 percent get news forwarded through e-mail or posts on social networking sites and 52 percent share links to news with others via those means. Blogging, vlogging, posting videos, aggregating news, sharing articles online and syndicating content are some of the forms of journalism that the innovative technology of Web 2.0 allows for.



Bloggers widened the scope of classical journalism and added the new form of “blogging” or “citizen journalism” to the media landscape. Now, social media and social networks add even another dimension. The term social media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. They can be defined as a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of the so-called Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.

There is some controversy over the term citizen journalism, because many professional journalists believe that only a trained journalist can understand the rigors and ethics involved in reporting the news. And conversely, there are many trained journalists who practice what might be considered citizen journalism by 13 Glaser, Mark (2006) Your Guide to Citizen Journalism. In: , 27. September 2006. Christian Möller 29 writing their own blogs or commentary online outside of the traditional journalism hierarchy.”14

There is pretty big differences in how we write, depending on whether it’s for a traditional media outlet or for the blog. I have a more conversational voice on the blog — I think of any given post as being part of a much broader conversation between bloggers and between me and my readers. Nearly all of my posts are reactions to something elsewhere online, and I try to be as generous as I can with links. I’m also not one of those bloggers who likes breaking news: often I’ll actually wait for the news to be broken elsewhere before weighing in with my view, since it can be dangerous to mix subjective opinions into the reporting of hard facts.



Traditional media outlets, by contrast, generally have an incomprehensible love affair with Microsoft Word — a piece of software I loathe and try to use as little as possible. It’s generally more difficult to insert links, especially when I’m dealing with people who edit for print first and who then just put that edited copy up online. The pieces have to be much more self-contained, and you have to be much more careful about assuming any kind of expertise on the part of your readers: if they’re reading your stuff on paper, then it’s much harder for them to Google anything they don’t understand.
The upside of traditional media is that you generally put a lot more time and effort into reporting, editing, and illustrating stories. They go through many iterations before being published, and nearly every iteration makes them better. What you lose in quantity, you often make up in quality.