Comments on: Can social media replace the news? (Short Blog Post)

By: JSun

JSun — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:08:25 +0000

Nice post! It’s so true that “it makes a difference who you’re friends with and the quality of information they’re exposed to”. Social media is such an efficient channel to distribute news. But personally, I think news posted by a friend without links to a legitimate news source will reduce its credibility, unless this friend has direct connections with the event/issue.

By: BRamona

BRamona — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 03:56:59 +0000

Hi Rachel. Do you know where there might be a follow-up on this experiment? It might be too soon after the fact to have feedback yet but it would be interesting to see some results.
I can see social media taking a place in delivering news, though not taking over. As the current news networks / newspapers already show, there’s always some bias in the mix but if I were traveling to, or simply interested in far-away parts of the world, I think it would be interesting to tap into a blog or similar to get a different view on the current events there.

By: Vivek Venkatramani

Vivek Venkatramani — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:28:17 +0000

This is a very interesting post. I agree with you Rachel, that I do get a lot of news from my friend’s posts on facebook and other social media sites. Whether I can see social media replacing the news? Not really, because even though I learn from my friend’s they might have got it from their friends and so on but still there would be this first person who originated the whole thing as in is the source for it.
Then again there is the issue of credibility of the source like you mention about whether the source is legitimate or not. Currently you trust what your friend posts because they usually have a link back to the news website associated with their post. If you totally eliminate the news provider, I personally don’t think that I will trust just a posting on facebook.