A Cyclical News Process

Source: http://www.schools.com/
imagesvr_ce/200/social-media-news.gif

We’ve examined how technology has changed the work of communicators, but now let’s look at the affect that technology has had on society’s expectations of mass media and culture.

In the past, mass media would be the first to break news stories.  Audiences would depend on reporters to provide them with the important information.  However, technology has introduced the ability for ordinary citizens to share news stories that they see happening around them.  Audiences can use social media to talk about a house fire or school committee meeting, no longer having to wait for the information to be available on the 5 o’clock news or in the next morning’s newspaper.

By the time a story is assigned to the reporter, the story in some form or 
       another is already out there in the social media universe.  The reporter now 
       has to take that into consideration and find some angle to the story that is 
       not yet being talked about.  (Alejandro, 2010, pg. 9)  

The linear process of news is no longer applicable with today’s technology.  Instead, the process is cyclical, where news may break on social media, reporters observe what audiences are talking about, and then the reporters investigate more about the news to report back to the audience with new information.  “The modern communicator needs to know how to engage.  How to have conversations.  How to share and curate and credit” (Reid, 2012, para. 6).  By interacting with audiences about news stories, communicators can discover what the audience wants to know more about.  Let’s go back to the school committee meeting example.  Audiences might report on social what they learned when attending the meeting or maybe the school system reported the news on social media.  What the media should then do is uncover new information for the same audience.  They need to go beyond just reporting the facts from the meeting to uncover why the topics discussed are important in the first place, or why certain members feel one way or another about a topic.  Audiences can discover some of this information themselves but the mass media must now look to see how they can add value to what audiences already know.

Source: http://debraaskanase.arrowrootmedia.com/wp-content/
uploads/2012/02/Social-media-and-the-news-cycle.png

Next up:  How technology enables society to demand information to be available 24/7.

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References: 

Alejandro, J.  (2010).  Journalism in the age of social media.  University of Oxford.  Retrieved from https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Journalism%20in%20the%20Age%20of%20Social%20Media.pdf.

Reid, B.  (2012, May 4).  The 10 skills modern communicators have (or need to get).  WCG.  Retrieved from http://blog.wcgworld.com/2012/05/the-10-skills-modern-communicators-have-or-need-to-get.