Journalism and the new world of social media

THE subject of communication has been with humankind for centuries. Its nature and content, especially communication in its most professional form, journalism, depends largely on the society and time in question and stretches to the quality of communication journalists are able to project to the society and help individuals make better, informed decisions. Historically, when the ActaDiurna, argued to be the earliest known journalistic product, was first circulated in 59 BCE ancient Rome, it may have not been predicted that the work of the Journalist would go from just hounding news sheets to a more technically driven system of Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press and into the New World of challenges and opportunities. Over the years, the world has witnessed robust changes that have affected and effected tweaks in the social, political, economic and cultural life and organisation of human society with communication and the practice of journalism not being left out.

With the advent of Information Communications Technologies, the breakthroughs in Silicon Valley that birthed the internet as well as the proliferation of its services, journalism has had to face the reckoning of how to continue to maintain its traditional and rigid precepts and values in the face of the onslaught of the capacity of virtually everyone with a smartphone to upload and spread information. This has made the concept of news to become challenged as it is perhaps difficult to call every item on the internet news because it is uploaded and transmitted by an internet user. And there is the other side with most of the people also not waiting for the traditional sources of news for information as they increasingly come to rely on the internet and its disparate users for news and information. The coming of the internet on the cusp of the invention of the cable and its domination in the 1980s and afterwards, crystalising in the emergence of the social media, significantly opened up more options for media consumers than ever before. People could watch anything at the click of a button, bypass commercials, and record programs of interest.

The resulting saturation, or inundation of information as well its access thereby relieves consumers of being formerly mere passive players in the information chain, to becoming important stakeholders in gathering, processing and dissemination of these information. Hence, there is no gain saying the fact that the emergence of new media has  profoundly affected the quality and rapidity of the journalism profession. Social media and the internet have contributed by providing news from different resources in the quickest way. Previously, news which was restricted to limited stories, hourly broadcast and morning newspapers is now available on a single mouse click. Level of interactivity has contributed by providing an ease of access to both producers and audience, and by developing a relation with source where news is published. This significant impact has made the role of journalist which previously includes collecting information, providing responses to the feedback, and promoting their work to see a significant shift.

The implication of this shift has been such that it is breeding and raising questions about the practice of journalism especially when we see that virtually everybody and anybody could disseminate information through the social media with this birthing the concept and phenomenon of citizen journalist. Only that traditional journalism is not just about dissemination of information as this has to be carried out within an ethical framework developed over time to ensure that the dissemination of information is to the benefit and not to the destruction of the society. This is why journalism is also about special and critical training, in specialised institutions and through apprenticeship, to internalise the ethics of carrying out the profession and this obviously would be lacking in getting everybody to pretend to be a journalist through the social media. Little wonder that the world is now saddled with the problem of mis-information and disinformation even as the issue of fake news has taken centre stage all around the world.

For instance, the first few months of 2020, came with replete information and news reports about the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) which were rapidly published and shared on social media and social networking sites. However, what is more than meets the eye are unlimited evidence about whether and how the social media infodemic has spread panic and affected the mental health of social media users. And reporting on the recent EndSars protests in Nigeria, one of the traditional outlets – Aljazeera -had observed that, “Young activists protesting against police brutality used online platforms to raise awareness and coordinate protests, as well as connected with volunteers and spread their message globally.” This is apparently true given the widespread of information that had traveled across borders within short periods of time– thanks to social media. Yet, what one chooses to consider may be the series of attendant misinformation that had floated across leading sites like Twitter especially at that time. This once again brings to bare the concern not just with the quality generation of content, but also its due  management, sorting and dissemination by untrained participants who have access to them.

In effect, the practice of journalism today has to grapple with the role and influence of new media especially in relation to how to accommodate the demands of and on the internet without neglecting or sacrificing the professional ethics of the journalist. Perhaps relying on the technological determinism theory, as developed by Innis (1950) McLuhan (1964) and Defluer and Ball Rockeach (1982) would be relevant in recognising the importance of the new situation in which consumers are currently receiving information in a different, more convenient, faster and more accessible way. And this would mean that practitioners and the rest of the society would have to continuously come up with new frameworks to deal with the contradictions of how to subscribe to and maintain the credible ethics of journalism in the face of the persisting gnawing of the erosion of the ethics because of the immediacy and absence of gatekeeping provided by the social media. This is the new, interesting challenge facing journalism.

• Illah writes from Lokoja, Kogi State, Nigeria.

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