SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE CHALLENGE OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
Need help with a related project topic or New topic? Send Us Your Topic
DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE PROJECT MATERIAL
SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE CHALLENGE OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
Chapter one
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
The Internet has provided both opportunities and challenges for the newspaper industry. The internet has enabled exciting new innovations in news generation and distribution, but it also poses a danger to traditional printed newspapers.
Print newspapers had been around for over a century when, in the 1930s, they reached their peak as the most widely read news media in the United States (Douglas 1999).
The Internet, on the other hand, took less than 15 years to claim that distinction, as the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism discovered that, for the first time, more people got their news from the Internet than from newspapers by the end of 2010. (Rosenstiel and Mitchell, 2011).
This significant shift in the news media environment raises new worries about the Internet’s impact on newsreaders, particularly their engagement with the news.
Some have accused online newspapers of just repurposing material from their print counterparts and presenting it in a traditional format, failing to capitalise on the Internet’s potential as newspapers transition from traditional printed pages to the realm of pixels and bytes. Jan Schaffer of the Pew Centre for Civic Journalism (2001) recommended doing this with a “far more interactive toolset” because news online allows for the creation of an entirely new form of delivering journalism.
The Internet’s interactivity is one of its distinguishing features as a medium. Newspapers can provide detailed reporting, whereas television can provide images and audio.
When these features are available online, customers are frequently challenged with technological limitations. Although these technical issues may be addressed in a few years, web journalism should still be able to offer something unique right now.
In today’s environment, media companies are attempting to determine whether online news is complementary or competitive to their operations (Dutta-Bergman, 2004), while journalists are learning how to operate across several platforms (Huang et al., 2003).
Newspapers have a long history of searching, gathering, analysing, and producing news in a one-way daily delivery structure, but the Internet may assist users make the reporting process more transparent by allowing site visitors to see, hear, or read the sources used by reporters (Hlongoane, n.d.).
Lowrey (1999, in Hlongoane, n.d.) stated that both journalists and consumers must develop new methods for digesting news online rather than viewing it as a modified form of print journalism in order for sites to fully exploit the online features that distinguish the Web. The internet allows for user interaction.
This is an advantage of using online publications. Because of its low entrance barrier, it allows publishers to earn new revenue streams from their main service, data collection and analysis. The medium’s interaction has grabbed many people’s curiosity, drawing them away from television and back to a primarily textual medium.
Newspapers are available on the internet in a variety of formats, including online newspapers (newspaper websites), e-papers, and even mobile applications (sometimes known as “apps”).
While e-paper gives us the sense of holding a real newspaper issue in our hands, complete with layout and design, online paper and news mobile applications offer more chances for participation.
Newspapers have evolved in terms of both content and appearance. Colour, graphics, blurbs, colourful headlines, attractive visual make-up, layout, and other patterns of written word presentation have all contributed to increased interactivity.
We are no more a “passive” consumer of “foreign” and “standardised news value-based” material; instead, we read about our own everyday worries, problems, events, and circumstances that we face.
The new format has enhanced reader interaction. In recent years, not only has the media changed, but so have consumers’ priorities, lives, wants, and tastes, driving the media to adapt.
We are reaching a new era of involvement, with the lines between consumer and producer becoming increasingly blurred. This is especially evident in the media, as publications are attempting to foster a more active contact with their readers than in the past.
Need help with a related project topic or New topic? Send Us Your Topic