Off late we are seeing a new trend that mainstream media uses twitter to source stories and data . There are also media houses that have openly admitted that twitter gets you breaking news faster than them . So a layman asks , Will twitter replace mainstream news media ? Let us try and answer that question in this post .Will that really happen ? How has twitter changed the news game ?
The advent of twitter has caused many a ripple in the news scene . There are instances where Twitter users have actually provided real time updates of events that are happening as they unfold . There have been twitter trends that have become news headlines . There have also been instances of news reporters actually sourcing news from twitter . All these put together means two different things , the first is that twitter is a game changer for news delivery and sourcing . This is because of the real time and really precise nature of tweets . The validity of the local info that you can get on a event is also far higher on twitter and hence it is here as a force to reckon with . The second thing is that the media has often benefitted by sourcing from tweets or even quoting tweets to add value to their main stories . In fact all the Indian TV channels I know have twitter experts in house who use twitter to leverage this .
Look at what happens when an event unfolds .When an event unfolds , twitter is abuzz with huge amount of information on the event as it happens . It can be info from people who are actually at the venue shooting off updates as they happen , it can be subject experts from twitter commenting with value added points on what is enfolding . Both of these are worth their weight in gold for the mainstream media . This makes their deal complete and totally correct without bias . This is a definite kill and a win-win scenario .
But there is a flip side , there were days when twitter trends actually represented breaking stories . But off late trends are a mixture of news and sometimes obnoxious things that everyone wants to talk about like #3wordsaftersex #ThingsIwantback . So the point is that someone has to be actually going through , filtering and validating what you see on twitter and that is th onus that currently rests with the mainstream media .
Coming to the question , will twitter replace mainstream news media ? Well , I think that twitter definitely influences ,affects , feeds and helps mainstream media , but as far as I can see , it will remain just that , a supplement , a very powerful supplement but it will not replace contemporary mainstream media anytime soon .
Waiting for discussions through your comments .
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