New Media as a Tool for the News

New Media serves an important and interesting role in the whole enormous field of contemporary journalism.

An earnest example is the protests in Egypt: they were, in fact, originally started over Facebook. It was this newfangled social networking site that allowed for the revolution of a country to be organized and begun. This nascent revolution is still going on weeks later, and shows no signs of letting up soon until the protestors’ demands are met. In response to the protestors the Egyptian government shut off the internet. This only demonstrates the power these tools present a society, if used correctly. It is a whole new, uncharted form of power to the people: they can communicate at will.

Of course, the spread of news over the Internet through New Media is supplied and supported by the process of people sharing links. With the rise of New Media, one can share a news item with a buddy in an instant; it is a whole new way of communication.

The internet, as a whole, offers a forum for debate and discussion. News events can be talked about, analyzed, scrutinized, and admired. Of course, there will always be the assholes on the internet. But as New Media becomes a more and more respectable entity in respects to Journalism, the internet will only grow as an increasingly essential tool as a hotbed for debate. This type of discussion—where the whole world can talk—has never before been possible.

With this advent, there is now no excuse to not be aware of what is going on in the world around you. There has always been and will always be newsworthy events. A good number of these events would go unheard of. New Media changes that. It is a platform wherein one can talk about these sorts of events over the net and share them with others. In the world of reblogs and retweets, everything has a chance of being put out to an infinite amount of readers. We can even watch videos of news events that are happening live around the world. Such is the case with Egypt; there are many amateur videos that we can watch to help increase the world’s empathy levels.

There is no denying it: New Media is, in some way or another, the future of journalism. It also happens to be a very exciting future, promising a world more connected than ever before.