Exploring the impacts of journalism online

In the past decade and a half, social media platforms, these varying from social networks like Facebook, to image sharing networks like Instagram, to video platforms like YouTube, took off. These platforms, when entering the culture, changed the way that people not only talked to one another, but how they behaved, and mainly, how they shared information.

At first, social media was only used by individuals, or by companies to advertise, while old media looked at these platforms with suspicion. One must only look at the way TV personalities looked at YouTube only a decade ago, between 2009 and 2011, and compare it to the past two years, and how British and American personalities have made their own YouTube channels.

However, with regards to news and social media, what has happened is the opposite. Quite a few sites had their own websites by the mid 2000s, and even in Malta, the big three English Newspapers (these being the Times of Malta, the Independent, and MaltaToday) had their own website by 2010.

Furthermore, when looking at social media, specifically Facebook, we can see that news organisations like MaltaToday have started using Facebook live to broadcast events as they happen. This is in contrast to the start of the decade, when, if one wanted to know what happened through a reputable source, they would have to either check a site for information, that would have, by that point, happened possibly an hour or so ago.

With this, it must be noted that while newspapers have started using social media a lot more, be it for stories to write about, or to record something live, or to research certain stories, they are doing so in a balanced manner. While most short articles, these mainly concerning accidents, arrests or minor events are uploaded online, these are kept out of the newspaper.

What is done instead is put stories of medium importance on both, to capture both the online audience and the newspaper audience.Important stories, or long stories, these being editorials, or recaps of major events, are kept to newspapers, this being so people will still get the newspaper, even if they follow the same newspaper online. However, a notable exception however, is breaking news, this news is always put online, for obvious reasons, this being that online news is instantaneous. The reason for this is audience retention. The sooner a news site releases an article in comparison to when the story actually occurs, the more likely it is that people will view their article instead of another news site's.

Another thing impossible on traditional print is video, a decade ago, only TV studios were able to show videos of events occurring, while newspapers were only limited to pictures. With the advent of video-sharing however, videos started playing an important role in news, with videos being able to build up even a short article. Furthermore, videos have allowed these news sites to be able to create their own versions of the old television breaking news broadcasts.

Many positives have come out of adopting social media to be used by news sites, these mainly being the ability to write shorter, more varied articles, as they are no longer constrained by the newspaper's size or the editor's exact choices, furthermore, the advent of live video sharing has given many news sites the ability to show important events in the moments, these being, for example, the shut in of reporters in Castille only a month ago, or of the numerous protests that have happened in Valletta in the past two months.

However, with positives, come also negatives, and these are mainly the fact that online media is far more close to the audience, this meaning that while before, when writing an article you might have received a few angry letters, on social media, one must only look at the comments under live videos of the aforementioned protests, or of articles containing a topic which is political, to see what is being referred to. These comments, while completely ignored in newsrooms, have however worsened public discourse between different groups of people.

Lastly, when looking at an overall view of the situation, it must be noted that the way social media has affected news stations has been, for the most part, for the better, and the adaptation of different platforms into these news rooms has not only improved the quality of articles, but also the way the audience is able to read such articles.