In this age of abundance, mass media has been providing the society with plethoric and rampant information, as well as connecting ideas and uniting all sorts of entities in specialized platforms. The new or emerging media ecosystem; Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Online news, e-book, and etc., uses the internet as a platform and according to Naughton (2006), the new media is taking over the cyber world and replacing old media ecosystem, which is the broadcast model, whereby the audience is seen as passive and uncreative. Through the new media, instead of just consuming materials, internet users are able to interact with and respond to content as well as to other users, giving control of publishing to the masses.
Between blogging and conventional journalism, there is a parasitic/symbiotic relationship (Naughton, 2006). Established print journalists create their own weblogs to sit together with news and features, obscuring the distinction between journalism and blogging (Raynsford, 2003). As an example, www.malaysiakini.com breaks away from the conventional news writing by presenting stories with greater vibrancy and riddled with the opinions of the writers, allowing the sense of detachment between the writer and reader to vanish.
The new social media tools such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter have changed the roles of communication in a revolutionary way. Facebook’s spectacular growth and devoted users have caused an unprecedented social graph of the relationships, interactions, and histories of over 150 million people on the internet (Shih, 2009). As a Facebook member myself, I keep tabs on my family and friends, share pictures, music videos, links to other websites that interest me, and post shout-out as status to ask help from classmates on assignments. Another viral trend is Twitter, which allows millisecond news cycle and aids in the sourcing of news tips from journalists is also able to control news and information gathering by projects aiming to affect social change (Catone, 2008). For instance, the hashtag #iranelection was Twitter's most discussed topic for weeks and account @iran09 made thousands of tweets about where protests would be, as well as links to YouTube videos of demonstrations.
References
- Catone, J 2008, Twitter as a tool for social change, viewed 19 April 2010, < http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/10/21/twitter-as-a-tool-for-social-change/>.
- Naughton, J 2006, ‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem’, viewed 19 April 2010, <http://reuteursinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/discussion/blogging.html>.
- Raynsford, J 2003, Blogging: the new journalism?, viewed 19 April 2010, < http://www.journalism.co.uk/5/articles/5604.php>.
- Shih, C 2009, The facebook era: tapping online social networks to build better products, reach new audiences, and sell more stuff, viewed 19 April 2010, < http://books.google.com/books?id=tOEEbXGxFXEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=facebook+change+new+media+publishing&cd=1#v=snippet&q=social%20network&f=false>.
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