Week 6 - Journalism and its negotiation of the online, blogosphere and social media

Social media is running rampant amongst, errm, society these days. Made all the more accessible through a huge smartphone demographic around the world, social media has managed to find its way up to the top as a competitor to mainstream media outlets.

With journalism looking to embrace social media these days, it is clear that social media has a huge role to play in the future not just in allowing the common folk to become virtual farmers or mob bosses but also to contribute to journalism by being in the right place at the right time.

This photo, taken by Janis Krum back in January 2009, was the first documentation of the US Airways plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River on the 19th of January 2009. Posting it on Twitter through the photo-uploading service TwitPic (URL: http://twitpic.com/135xa), Krums' main intention was to notify his friends about this and about his attempt to go rescue the stricken passengers. But little did he know that this photo will end up being on the frontpage of many major newspapers and used on many television networks for its news programme.

The above-mentioned incident showcased one attribute that is probably the gamebreaker for social media to be around for a long, long time - speed. Journalists aren't superheroes or deities so the chances of them predicting a tragedy and being there to cover it is close to ziltch (then again, I don't think any of them will want to predict one anyway). As such, normal citizens like you and I can play a huge role in journalism by just being there, coincidentally or psychically.

Afterall, journalism is defined in the Merriam-Webster dicitonary as a form of writing that appeals to public interest.