Traditional media is dead! Long live social media!
by Fred on 07/01/08 at 12:29 pm
1 comment
I noticed an interesting thing on Friday. Biz-Community wrote that the crisis in Kenya is being more accurately monitored via bloggers than the traditional media. These brave souls are updating sites with video taken from their mobile phones.
In an ominous time for press freedom, I think this is a promising sign.
The reason why is that I believe, in most cases, the truth will eventually out, and social media is the ether in which the message can travel a lot faster.
This is not a South African or an African scenario, but a worldwide one. Traditional channels are facing growing difficulties, and it’s providing the impetus for the humble blogger to flourish.
Consider the following:
- In Russia, President Putin is cracking down on traditional media
- In China, there are little animated police characters appearing on banned sites (is it just me, or is that seriously creepy!).
- In the USA there are growing fears that the media is being excessively manipulated by big business and government
- With the shuffle of seats in government back home in SA, there have been whispers of a media clampdown. It seems the press’ recent scathing reception to our new leadership has ruffled some feathers.
Despite all these dark clouds, the sound of social media’s bark is starting to deepen. Blogging platforms are becoming recognised as able sources of content. Blogs are breaking the big news faster than the big news sites. This happened in the past year, and, I expect, will continue to happen with growing frequency.
So, what does this mean?
Are we going to see a gradual erosion of the big news platforms? Will the majority of people prefer their news from aggregators of trusted content from smaller sources?
Who knows? Perhaps, just perhaps, even Ideate will become the leading content provider for business news in South Africa, then Africa…then the world. (MWAHAHAHAHAAAA).
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. He runs a web marketing company called World Wide Creative and loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. View more articles by Fred.
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Andrew
Jan 7th, 2008
Great observation Fred. I had the same thoughts when I watched Jacob Zuma’s interview after winning the ANC election. He mentioned government control over print media (they already control most of TV and radio news), and I just laughed. You’re 10 years too late buddy! Like most other twenty and thirty-somethings, I’ve never subscribed to a newspaper. I buy the Sunday Times for my dad when he comes to visit. I don’t trust news that is generated by a single reporter, and is edited by someone who has shareholders and the government to answer to. I do trust a story that rises to the top of Google News because thousands of sites link it, or a theme that I see a lot of bloggers talking about and verifying via first-hand video footage and pictures.
And that, Mr Zuma, is going to be a tad harder to moderate.