Over time, the way in which we consume news has changed. In the past, we would have relied on receiving our news from papers, the radio, letters, telegrams and even the cinema. The advent of web 1.0 meant we could then read our newspapers online but this has progressed even further with developments in the internet and the evolution into web 2.0. Now, as well as simply consuming our news online through the newspapers websites, we can be the be the ones that spread the news, break the news and even make the news thanks to the help of social networking sights such as Facebook and Twitter.
Social networking has undoubtedly played a key role in the change of the distribution and consumption of news. Site’s such as Twitter and Facebook allow us, as well as well established newspapers such as The Guardian and The Times who have profiles on both of these websites, to draw the attention of our ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ to particular stories that we are personally interested in or feel needs to be heard or in the case of the reputable news providers, any breaking news story or articles in their paper on that day. Twitter’s impact on the way we consume news is evident when we look at the reaction to a story published by the Daily Mail following the death of Stephen Gatley. High profile celebrities such as Stephen Fry and Darren Brown used their profile pages to express contempt for the article and by doing so drew attention to a larger crowd then just Daily Mail readers. Social networking would support the claim that ‘everything has changed’ in one sense because it can be used to spread information at a rate that would have been impossible with the use of more traditional forms of media. This is also true of the instance when Twitter was used by protestors in Iran following the elections. All forms of media were banned from entering the country, but through Twitter, the people who were involved in what was happening in Iran were able to draw attention to the story through the use of Twitter. It was the only form of communicating they had with the rest of the world and at it’s peak 200,000 tweets were being sent in an hour. This meant that anyone, anywhere in the world could know what was happening, not just those directly involved. Whilst this is endurably a good thing, what it also means is that we are in danger of limiting the genre of news that we consume because sites such as Facebook and Twitter are likely to lead us only to the stuff that we are interested in as these are the only web pages that we will open.
This is also the problem we consider that because of 2.0 we now consume our news through apps on mobile phones and i-pads. These apps are likely to be very specialised, for example the Sky Sports News app will only give information on sport and not any other news stories. Whilst apps like this allow us to perhaps find out more specific details about the area that we are reading about, as they only have to concentrate on one area, it still means that we are possibly narrowing the variety of news we consume.
Apps and social networking sites, however, do mean that we are constantly up to date with any developments in news stories. In the past, we would have relied on newspapers to give us information once a day. By the time consumers would have read that article, there may have already been developments in that story and instantly the news is out of date. Web 2.0 means that we can access up to date news stories all the time and in this instance ‘everything has changed’. As consumers we now demand that our news is as up to date as it can possibly be. This was something that many felt was a failure of the iPad, as the stories did not seem to be the latest news stories.
As a result of the evolution of the internet, we are also able to interact with news. On newspaper websites there is the chance for readers to comment on the article they have just read and the use of blogs means that any one can express an opinion on a news story. Before web 2.0, there is no way that the opinion of so many people could have the chance to be heard by so many.
Overall the main difference that web 2.0 seems to have made to our consumption of news is that we are able to access information a lot quicker. In the case of Stephen Gatley’s death, because the news stories had been spread on the social networking site Twitter, there was more then 1,000 complaints by 7 pm of the same day the story was published. Without the internet it is doubtful that there would have been as many complaints in this short a period of time. This seems to be the biggest change that web 2.0 has given the news. Whilst this suggests that ‘everything has changed’ and in this instance for the better, the developments are also somewhat a detriment to the consumption of news. It means that now we only read the stories we want to read, whilst in the past where the only source of consumption would have been on a radio or a TV news bulletin, we would have had to have listened to all of the newsgroups
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