Prompted by a question asked to me by Kashif Ahmad on twitter:
I responded with:
The term “Journalism” is a well defined term. Due to “social media” everyone thinks they are a journalist.
Journalism is [Merriam-Webster] : Writing characterized by a direct presentation of facts or description of events without an attempt at interpretation.
Journalism is a diverse field with varying degrees of reporting such as: journalism by field [medical, business, political, education, art], and journalism by genre [broadcast, photo, combat, investigative, citizen, documentary.]
Social media is [Merriam-Webster] : forms of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content.
Examples of social media are: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, Vimeo, and WordPress.
Journalism and social media are clearly two different matters of concern.
Social Media can be utilized to propel journalism via technology through public relations and networking. Due to technology, information is able to reach the world in seconds, including all of the people one is connected to, as well as all of the people that share ones information and whom they are connected to.
For example, if I were sent trusted, educational, newsworthy information; my network is designed to reach every online network in mere seconds. That is employing social media in regards to public relations and networking. That is not journalism.
Social Media involves utilizing technology to reach an audience in order to make any information public. Social Media is what most of us use everyday.
Journalism is reporting, writing, and broadcasting information that is informative and factual to the public for a specific purpose.
The difference between the two depends solely on the information that is being shared. Is it educational, researched, factual, informative and necessary for the public to know about? Or is it a picture of you at your cousins birthday party?
While there is nothing wrong with either forms of utilizing social media, there is a distinct line between referring to oneself as a “social journalist” simply due to accessing and being published by the means of social media.
In order to be “journalistic”, writing in a blog, having an article accepted by a newspaper and sharing information online must be comparable to research, speaking to people involved [recording, broadcasting, writing] and reading about a single subject matter in order to educate the public in an objective fashion, as well as yourself.
There is nothing in this article that is my opinion. It is researched fact, informative and educational. That is a form of journalism.
Anything faltering from the above is simply expression or opinion.
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When we consider content curation, such as Storify stories, then it seems to fall somewhere in between journalism and social media. However, curated stories have become a common practice at many news organizations.
Exactly my point: content.
Well done, excellent and thanks too
Thank you Kashif, you asked a very essential question. I am most grateful.
As a journalist who also does some PR support work, let me first say you bring up several good points.
It galls me when I see rumor, often pushed by social media, and, unfortunately, picked up and published too often by “legitimate press” as fact. This happened recently when an Obama fundraiser was held in France on 4th of July. It was a fundraiser by a pro-Obama group, but someone tweeted that Obama would be there rather than in this country on the 4th. Many far right-wing press posted this as fact, without confirming anything. Obama was here talking to vets on that day.
I am sure there are similar examples on the left as well.
Basic rule of journalism: “If your mother tells you she loves you, confirm it with two sources.”
However, there is some evidence that social media did a better job of getting out the word earlier than traditional press on uprising in Egypt a year ago (Forbes had a recent article on this, and I was at a social media presentation that used different sources that said same thing Forbes did a month earlier).
So if social media is used as the channel for distribution, but the basic rules of journalism are followed, fine. But one has to consider the source. Is it “Joe on the street” and three of his drinking buddies, or is it a couple of professionals who have some credibility that are providing and confirming the facts.
Where I live, medium-sized town in Canada, most reporting consists of quoting press releases. In the case of crime stories, journalists will add color by quoting the facebook pages of victims or perps. It’s very rare to see investigative pieces or deep human interest stories. No wonder people are confused about the difference between journalists and social media!
I lament the incursion of social media into “proper” journalism as much as anyone, but the industry itself has declined so far that I think at this point we would be better off trying to improve people’s blogging and twittering standards than trying to ward them off our turf.
You have summed it up quite well. The next to last sentence says it all but is ignored by a large numgber of “Journalists” today who should best be called commentators.
Bill Fredonia 62-64, former radio TV News Man (a Journalist as opposed to commentator.)
Bill Croghan CPBE WBØKSW Chief Engineer, KOMP/KXPT/KENO/KBAD/KWWN/KWID Lotus Broadcasting, Las Vegas, NV