Facebook and Twitter are good for reaching a wide audience and getting information out to users at a really fast pace. However, news reports on Facebook and Twitter are often uncomfirmed, which means they are not necessarily true and therefore making it an unreliable source. You often do not get to hear the full story, as facts or information can be mistakenly or deliberately left out. On the other hand, people often post news items on these social media sites to let family and friends know what is occurring in their country, it is not necessarily dense information. There are often news stories that don’t have all the information or facts are excluded. I would not recommend that people should log on to Facebook and Twitter to retrieve information or facts about news stories. However, I would recommend that people view their Facebook and Twitter pages to find out which topics or news stories are current. In this manner, Facebook and Twitter act as a spring board in which people often find out what is the hottest breaking news topic, then they can go to more reliable sources to retrieve the full news story.
The immediacy of Twitter and Facebook should not go unmentioned, as it is often minutes after an event has occurred, that people tweet or update their status on Facebook. Sometimes news stories will appear on Facebook and Twitter before appearing on trusted news sites, such as Scoop or on live television. I have had a personal experience, where I viewed the news about the tornado in Albany on Facebook, as I was on the site and people were updating their statuses. I then searched for “Tornado in Albany” in Google to check if it was in fact true and to gain more information on a trusted site.
With the positive element, immediacy on these social media sites, there must be a downfall. When searching for a news item on Twitter, it is difficult to retrieve information about events that have occurred in the past; thus making Twitter not an effective storage for news items.
Facebook and Twitter are user friendly, allowing people to easily post images, articles and opinions and update their status. This has both positive and negative impacts. The positive is that others can quickly gain access to these news stories. The negative, that people can easily create their own news stories with much opinion, where others may read stories that are often one sided. Facebook also gives people an opportunity to post their personal account of an event, with the reader receiving several different angles of the event or news story. To access a social media site is not costly, people can either view it from their mobile while they are on the go, or from their personal computer at home. This means that these sites are easily accessible for people to view anytime, anywhere.
The accessibility and user friendly nature of social media sites allows any citizen to be a news reporter. They may not be a trusted, reliable news reporter but social media sites enables everyone to deliver and report news, wherever they might be and whatever time of day.
The immediacy of Twitter and Facebook should not go unmentioned, as it is often minutes after an event has occurred, that people tweet or update their status on Facebook. Sometimes news stories will appear on Facebook and Twitter before appearing on trusted news sites, such as Scoop or on live television. I have had a personal experience, where I viewed the news about the tornado in Albany on Facebook, as I was on the site and people were updating their statuses. I then searched for “Tornado in Albany” in Google to check if it was in fact true and to gain more information on a trusted site.
With the positive element, immediacy on these social media sites, there must be a downfall. When searching for a news item on Twitter, it is difficult to retrieve information about events that have occurred in the past; thus making Twitter not an effective storage for news items.
Facebook and Twitter are user friendly, allowing people to easily post images, articles and opinions and update their status. This has both positive and negative impacts. The positive is that others can quickly gain access to these news stories. The negative, that people can easily create their own news stories with much opinion, where others may read stories that are often one sided. Facebook also gives people an opportunity to post their personal account of an event, with the reader receiving several different angles of the event or news story. To access a social media site is not costly, people can either view it from their mobile while they are on the go, or from their personal computer at home. This means that these sites are easily accessible for people to view anytime, anywhere.
The accessibility and user friendly nature of social media sites allows any citizen to be a news reporter. They may not be a trusted, reliable news reporter but social media sites enables everyone to deliver and report news, wherever they might be and whatever time of day.
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