Use of traditional news media by social media – Mehr News Agency | Iran and world’s news
Mehr news agency, Culture and Thought Group: Hanieh Chamani, a graduate student in social communication sciences at the University of Tehran, gave a note to Mehr News Agency entitled “The use of traditional media by traditional news media.”
Detailed text The following note:
The introduction of new media into the global network has created a new form and method of information distribution in the interaction between traditional media and new media, especially social networks. In this article, taken from the book “THE SOCIAL MEDIA INDUSTRIES”, we will deal with this issue.
Benefits of Social Media for Traditional Media:
1- Cooperation of citizens present on the scene with journalists (formation of citizen-journalist)
One of the great hopes for social media at the beginning was to create “citizen-journalists”. Blogs designed to give ordinary citizens the opportunity to share news during the London bombings and Hurricane Katrina, both of which occurred in 2005, enable the joint reporting of news reports between on-stage people and reporters and editors who are able to attend. They were not there, provided. In this way, it was especially useful for collecting photos and videos of the scene. The main problem for citizen-journalists is access to resources to properly cover an article (Rich, 2008). This is where the partnership between the citizen journalist and the professional journalist comes into play.
2- Taste measurement of the audience
Social media can also show which topics are important to the audience so that journalists can tailor their reporting programs. But journalists do not seem to welcome the idea, and to a large extent use social media and the web as a way to communicate one-way with little information from the audience.
3- Information transfer speed
On the other hand, a study of young adults found that they wanted urgency in obtaining information. In an interesting example of providing instant coverage and coverage when more traditional methods are not available, many Wilmington reporters use social media, even before the arrival of cameras and television facilities during Hurricane Hannah in 2008, to reach out to audiences and provide information. Used.
4- A way to increase viewers / readers
Facebook (2011) reports that it “has more than 800 million active users.” According to Socialbakers (2012), Facebook has 155,699,640 users in the United States. At the same time, the population of the United States is approximately 312 million. When the Nielsen rankings were reviewed in 2011, the highest audience received by a 60-minute news program on CBS was 13.1 million. In fact, only 4.2% of the population watched the news program with the highest score. About 50 percent of the US population is a Facebook user. It is clear that users enjoy using social media. News media also have the potential to create the same diverse but communicative community through the use of social media. Social media has the potential to make news coverage a more engaging and meaningful experience for the audience. Through interactivity, social media can be used to create a two-way conversation between the news organization and the audience. It can also be used to deliver news and visuals more quickly from one place to the masses.
The article you are reading is a summary of an article that analyzes the use of US national and local news sites, newspapers, and national television stations, assuming the many benefits of social media for using traditional news media. In this article, the content of 112 news sources, 46 newspapers and more than 59 TV stations were analyzed.
In this article, due to the maximum use of the studied media from the two platforms of Twitter and Facebook, these two platforms were examined more carefully.
According to the findings of this article, Twitter and Facebook are used globally and even more than any of the older and more reputable forms of Internet communication such as email distribution, RSS feeds or blogging.
Examining how traditional news media use social media, it seems that despite the potential of social media, these emerging media, to be used as an interactive platform for disseminating news and attracting audiences, traditional news media still mainly use social media as a delivery system. They use the news and ignore the social aspect of social media and do not use it properly.
Part of the appeal of social media is their ability to create and maintain two-way relationships between groups and individuals. In most cases, traditional news media do not use this topic. News media provides news content to the audience instead of using social media to create a conversation with the audience. This is especially true of national news media. National news media use social media almost exclusively to provide information to the audience rather than to communicate with that audience. Local media, although still predominantly using social media in one-way communication, are more diverse in their use.
A much better way to use social media is to play with its strengths. Because the audience is interested in using social media to create a conversation, news media should provide a good platform for shaping the conversation.
Most of the time, news media use social media, especially Twitter, to provide news instead of advertising to follow the news on their media. The problem with traditional media when using social media in this way is that they are effectively competing with themselves. If audiences can receive similar news via Facebook and Twitter, then why should they turn to the TV newspaper in the traditional way? Ideally, social media should increase the audience to use traditional news tracking methods.
Finally, it is important to note that if news organizations are to use social media, the social media links and links of these organizations should ideally be prominently displayed on the organization’s website so that the audience knows where and how to find that organization. . Although most news organizations have links to their Facebook and Twitter accounts on their websites, not all of the organizations surveyed in this article did. And it was difficult for a number of other organizations that displayed the links to find the links. If the audience is not aware of the presence of the news organization on social networks, this presence is not in the interest of the news organization.
Source: Book
THE SOCIAL MEDIA INDUSTRIES