Bridget's J. Technology Post

Social networking sites have slowly worked their way into the journalistic culture. What I want from them is simple. Merely, use the networking sites to get the information to the people who otherwise wouldn’t see what is going on in the world. The sites are so accessible that most, if not all, average people are linked into them. When the traditional media does not have the footage or the live feed, normal citizens can easily share what they have through their own sites. This is where it gets tricky. Journalism seems to be less reliable when it is controlled totally by the general population. If people start to rely exclusively on things like twitter, credibility can be lost. It is a lot easier for mistakes in the news to be made, and for false information to be displayed. That false information is then often brought back into the more legitimate news, like in newspapers and on television. What I think is best about the networking sites are their speed and access. For example, twitter can reach millions – but because it is so user-based, it is often inaccurate. No matter what happens, social networking sites are going to be huge journalistic environments in the future. They are already growing; their capabilities will grow as well. It is unfair to completely cut them out of the journalistic market, but we still need to be careful to supply news through traditional means.