Anya Yang (10) | Staff Reporter
Scroll through any form of social media, and eventually, the algorithm will direct you to a post regarding current events. Usually, the content of these posts varies: from a celebrity’s upcoming wedding, or the state of foreign affairs in Canada, these messages are not limited in their scope of coverage nor the amount of people they reach.
However, the unreliable accounts dedicated to spreading misinformation and fake news aren’t limited in their scope of coverage either.
Written journalism in the Western world has only come into existence over the last few centuries. Only 500 years ago, we were handwriting new sheets, and only 300 years have passed since printing presses were used to mass-produce newspapers. Then, at the dawn of the 21st century, online journalism started to take over the world.
Suddenly, everyone with access to technology could learn about events and news all over the world at the click of a button. Simultaneously, as people reached information quicker than ever, some serious concerns were raised about fake news and unreliable news sources.
If the purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with information to navigate and survive society, to shed light on the dark, and to bring truth to the people, then wouldn’t social media shred and twist the truth through a broken telephone-like game with the vast amount of different people and anonymous sources? It would kill journalism, and therefore social media and journalism wouldn’t be able to coexist.
However, this notion is false. Although social media can help spread fake news, and newsworthiness and clickbait titles bring more money than the truth, social media cannot kill journalism. Journalism won’t just coexist alongside social media: social media is a platform for journalism to become more reliable and allow more perspectives in the news, allowing it to better bring truth and provide information to citizens.
Social media has a unique way to reach people quickly. Unlike 20 years ago, people do not receive news of the latest events in the form of traditional paper-based newspapers, but rather a quick glance at Instagram or Facebook with their morning coffee. Newspapers must rely on social media in order to make money and promote their articles. Criticism of journalism and social media coexisting typically believes that journalists have a need to write about certain topics or come up with misleading titles in order for more people to click on their articles to gain more revenue.
However, exaggerated titles and fake news have always been in existence, ever since newspapers were invented. These attract buyers who are more likely to be interested in the article, leading to more revenue for the newspaper. Although social media exacerbates this problem even further, social media also often allows others to comment on news and articles, giving them a public voice to denounce the fake facts and point out mistakes within paper, something traditional journalism does not allow. This not only allows journalism to coexist alongside social media, but rather social media can be used as a tool to provide more reliability and trust in journalistic news.
Expanding on this point, the utilization of social media allows journalism to show more different voices within articles. Social media has allowed whistleblowers and other citizen-turned-journalists to report on various events and experiences in their daily lives. In traditional journalism, journalists relied on street interviews and did not allow them to reach many people all at once. Social media broadens the scope of perspectives covered in journalism because people are stepping up to report what they think, giving new opportunities for stories and important information to be shared with the general public.
Social media also allows regular people a voice to call out misleading information being fed to the public. Journalistic articles are tightly controlled by editors and writers alike, they often tend to be biased towards the views of the writers and the newspaper and do not cover other perspectives or viewpoints. Social media uses ‘crowdsourcing’, allowing anyone to inform the public and engage in journalism, as well as broadening the spectrum of news reporting. This allows the public to better understand the issues of the society they live in and a more thorough understanding of the truth, which is the purpose of journalism.
Journalism will always exist. People will never stop depending on others to tell them the latest new events, fashion, and trends. Social media is a platform for citizens to express their opinions, inform others of the truth of their society, and reveal the truth: the goal of journalism itself.