News Media & Modernization

Introduction

There is no doubt that traditional news outlets have been impacted by the Internet, social media, and smartphones. Traditional news outlets now have to compete with independent bloggers and social media websites. Recent studies have provided insights on how the popularity of blogs, social media, and other user-generated content venues have impacted the way in which news is consumed and reported.

The advances in Internet and information technologies in the last ten years have brought about a structural change in the way information is aggregated, transformed, and then disseminated. Most people of the older generation prefer to get their news the old-fashioned way i.e., from newspapers and magazines. The younger generation, on the other hand, logs on to online sources for their information needs. There is genuine concern that as the older generation moves on, the old media will also gradually disappear.

The rise of the new media has put the old (print) media establishment on the defensive. The new is not displacing the old, however; rather, it is transforming the old by forcing it to accept transparency, responsiveness and efficiency. Increased competition is making the old media to pull up its socks and provide the additional value demanded by a free market where the number of players has multiplied.

Since this small thesis will focus on news media and modernization, we are going to discuss about how the popularity of social media and other generated content venues have impacted the way in which news is consumed and distributed.

Social Media and News Consumption

Online news consumers receive and send news through social media tools such as Twitter, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and search engines. These tools elevate the public from news receivers to news contributors. According to Picard (2009), social media tools provide an easy, affordable way for members of the public to take part in discussions with larger groups of people and draw attention to issues and topics that traditional news media might have overlooked. Social media tools offer users the opportunity to express themselves and to connect with persons of like mind or interests.

Hermida (2010) claims that social media tools created new modes of organizing knowledge that rely on large, loosely organized groups of people working together electronically. Hermida also suggests that social media enables millions of people to communicate instantly, allowing them to share and discuss events that he asserts leads to an expression of collective intelligence.

Socialization of the News

Park (1940) noted that the function of news is to orient man and society in an actual world. Past research has found that news use enables participation by providing mobilizing information (Lemert, 1992), triggering discussions among people's networks (Shah et al., 2005), and allowing people to reflect upon issues (Eveland, 2004). Java et al. (2007) conducted studies that looked at the motivation of online new consumers, concluding that social media fulfills a need for a fast mode of communication that ‘‘lowers users’ requirement of time and thought investment for content generation’’ (Java et al., 2007, p. 2). In their analysis of user intentions, they found that people use Twitter for four reasons: daily chatter, conversation, sharing information and reporting news.

The advent of social media has helped the news become a social experience in fresh ways for consumers. People use their social networks and social networking technology to filter, assess, and react to news. Some of Internet users have customized their home page to include news from their favorite source or topics.

News consumption is a socially-engaging and socially-driven activity, especially online (Leach, 2009). Leach (2009) claims that a great strength of the Internet is its ability to encourage the formation of community while giving voice to anyone digitally connected. In journalism, recognizing diversity and inviting feedback adds depth and human interest. Those who are overlooked in mainstream media coverage, including people espousing unpopular causes, can use the Internet to gather and share information and use it to stitch online communities together.

To a great extent, people’s experience of news is becoming a shared social experience as people swap links in emails, post news stories on their social networking site feeds, highlight news stories in their tweets, and haggle over the meaning of events in discussion threads. The ascent of mobile connectivity via smartphones has turned newsgathering and news awareness into an anytime, anywhere affair for a segment of avid news watchers.

Users who get news online specifically get news from news organizations and individual journalists they follow in the social networking space. In other words, they have friended or become a fan of a journalist or news organization and they catch up on news through this relatively new channel of news dissemination. Internet users have the option to get news from friends, journalists or news organizations they follow on social networking websites.

Traditional News Embracing Social Media

Twitter is now used as a collaborative research tool by editors and journalists working on stories and blogs, both for ideas and to provide evidence for all branches of news including breaking, foreign, entertainment, and others (Ahmad, 2010). In 2009 Twitter and other social media emerged as powerful tools for disseminating information and mobilizing citizens such as evading the censors in Iran and communicating from the earthquake disaster zone in Haiti. The majority of Internet users now use some kind of social media, including Twitter, blogging and networking sites. Leach (2009) claims that when journalists were banished or silenced by the Iranian government after the post-election protests in Iran, news organizations and Web sites relied on showing random snippets of video, text messages or tweets sent from people witnessing the protests on the streets of Tehran.

Studies have suggested that bloggers play the roles of commentators, fact checkers, event shapers, and even grass-root reporters for the news media. Moreover, Bui and Ma (2009) assert that blog content is not only consumed by the public but also by media professionals who want to quickly react to cues from bloggers in order to create more news for the traditional media.

Report : Indonesia

Indonesia has emerged as the country with the highest dependence on mobile Internet access in Southeast Asia, with almost half of all citizens surfing the web via their smartphones, a Nielsen report says.

The percentage of Indonesian citizens using their mobile phones to access the Internet far surpasses those in other countries in the Southeast Asia region, with the next two highest being Thailand with 36 percent and Singapore with 35 percent.

Who's Online

According to MarkPlus Insight Netizen Survey 2014

The survey reveals that Indonesia now has 74.6 million Internet users, a 22 percent increase from last year’s 61.1 million. That number will pass 100 million in 2015.

The study also counts “netizen penetration”, wherein a netizen is defined as someone who spends at least three hours online per day. Indonesia now has 31.7 million of them this year, an increase from 24.2 million people last year. The study notes that the netizen penetration rate increased by a meager three percent.

Almost half of the netizens in Indonesia are aged below 30, while people above 45 years of age make up 16.7 percent of netizens in the country. Most netizens access the web via smartphones (86 percent) and spend between IDR 50,000 ($5) and IDR 100,000 ($10) every month for internet access.

Digital Media is Taking Over the Traditional Business

Based on MarkPlus Insight Netizen Survey 2014

The survey reveals a significant shift of attention from the traditional media to the online world. Only 55.3 percent of netizens have read print newspapers in the last six months. 98 percent of respondents have accessed TV and Internet in the last six months, but when it comes to the main source of information, the Internet gets the win as shown in the graph above.

Of course, the respondents here are netizens – people who spend a lot of time online – so this result doesn’t represent the whole Indonesian populace.

When it comes to the most searched information on the net, Indonesia’s power web-users mostly search for news (54.2 percent), entertainment (16.3 percent), film (10.2 percent), sports (8.7 percent), and music (8.5 percent). Political news (7.4 percent), soap operas (6.0 percent), celebrity news (5.5 percent), gossip (5.2 percent), and educational material (5.0 percent) make up the rest of top searches.

Conclusion

New media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and smartphones have enabled news consumers to be informed in real time about major events and topics of interest. People depend on family members, close friends, and those who are part of their digital networks to act as reporters, alerting them when something they feel is important has happened or is happening.

Social media websites allow individuals to easily take part in discussions with their friends, family, and larger networks. With the help of social media tools, the Internet is fast changing the way people consume their news. The study determined that individuals are primarily motivated to share news stories with their social networks because they wanted to stay connected with others and to maintain relationships. Those who share news articles through social media enjoy doing so to discuss current events and trending topics with people in their social networks. In particular, young adults depend on their network of friends guide them to news articles. There is concern that this could lead to a fragmentation from mainstream news as news stories and issues that draw the most attention from social media websites are substantially different from traditional news outlets.

References

Ahmad, A. (2010). Is Twitter a Useful Tool for Journalists?. Journal of Media Practice, 11(2), 145-155.

Bui, C., & Ma, Y. (2009). Centrality of News Article in the Blogosphere. Conference Papers – International Communication Association, 1-35.

Eveland, W. P. (2004). The Effect of Political Discussion in Producing Informed Citizens: The Roles of Information, Motivation, and Elaboration. Political Communication, 21(2), 177-193.

Hermida, A. (2010). Twittering the News. Journalism Practice, 4(3), 297-308.

Java, A., Song, X., Finin, T., & Tseng, B. (2007). Why we Twitter: Understanding microblogging usage and communities. In: Proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA- KDD 2007 workshop on Web mining and social network analysis. New York: ACM Press, 56-65.

Leach, J. (2009). Creating Ethical Bridges from Journalism to Digital News. Nieman Reports, 63(3), 42-44.

Lemert, J. B. (1992). Public opinion, the press, and public policy. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

Park, R. E. (1940). News as a Form of Knowledge: A Chapter in the Sociology of Knowledge. The American Journal of Sociology, 45(3), 669.

Picard, R. (2009). Blogs, Tweets, Social Media, and the News Business. Nieman Reports, 63(3), 10-12.

Shah, D. V., Cho, J., Eveland, W. P., & Kwak, N. (2005). Information and Expression in a Digital Age. Communication Research, 32(10), 531-565.