I am talking about the Kayne West Taylor Swift onstage incident, for anyone who does not know, Kayne stole the mic from miss Swift as the as she was in the process of doing her acceptance speech to slur that Beyonce deserved to win the award. Taylor looked like she was going to cry then her sound was cut off and she was ushered off stage.
Beyonce later gave Taylor her speech time to make an acceptance speech, but moving on, lets talk about how this news broke!
I logged onto Facebook and saw my friends updates about "Kanye is a jackass" (something President Obama later reinforced), "Beyonce is a class act" and "poor Taylor". I immediately knew something had happened at the MTV awards and wanted to know more. I turned to Perezhilton.com (the self proclaimed Queen of Gossip) however there was nothing posted on the story yet! I checked back for a few minutes and eventually turned to Twitter for instant updates and reactions from people around the world.
I later learned that it was a journalist who first broke the news on Twitter as his update. Check out this MSNBC article the Twitter age of journalism
This leads me into thinking about Habermas public sphere versus the private sphere, if the journalist was trying to update his friends "off the record" it sure didn't work out that way. Whatever we post on social media sites is public information, and never off the record. Our private identities are now rather public.
It is interesting that social media, which seems to erase all time and space divides still has different functions, some that make receiving news much quicker than others. It would have taken a few hours for this story to make it onto the evening news, it would likely have been on the same news stations website within the matter of hours. It could take 5 minutes for Perez Hilton to post a link on his blog, or I can receive live by the second updates on Twitter and Facebook.
If this is how people are receiving their news these days, in quick real time, public relations practitioners and journalists alike should be more focused on social media and understand it is here to stay! In the past when music videos first aired they threaten taking over radio, today both co-exist. Do you think social media and online is taking over traditional news forms, or will both continue to co-exist.
I pose the question, can mediums co-exist peacefully, of will one inevitably take over another? How do you get your news?
Where would the world be without social media??? To be honest, I'm not entirely sure! It seems to be the main form for obtaining information about basically anything, from news, to sports, weather, videos, etc. It has opened up so many opportunities for people to gather information and stay connected regardless of time or geographical location. I know being away from home (Canada) I am always on MSN Canada checking the local news in both Toronto and St. John's Newfoundland! I also stream local radio from home as well! I too ventured onto the internet to check out the VMA incident considering I wasn't able to watch it on TV either! I'm not sure if mediums will be able to co-exist peacefully but if print media was able to survive the introduction of broadcast media into the world, then I think it will survive social media as well. Newspapers have always been a reliable source of information and news, which I think will continue into the future! The question is, how reliable is Facebook and Twitter in comparison to newspapers??? What would you believe more, information from a newspaper or a tweet?
ReplyDeleteI think that social media is definetely replacing traditional forms of media in the way we receive our news. By the time something appears in print, or the next day's newspaper, its often old news. I agree about the journalists' comment, they know better than that, and likely he is aware that other journalists and like PR people follow his tweets so it definetely was not private!
ReplyDeleteI think the use of new media and social networking sites is quickly shifting the traditional news era. Right now anyone is a journalist and anyone can break the news. We realise we have got this power and use it quite effectively. I actually get most news on facebook from what is happening back home. Becuase media owners angle thier news too much on thier own individual interests, based on economy and politics, we are not getting real news from the mainstream media, I love news on social sites, it is unusual and uncensored.
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