Fast and instant.

Source: http://i.usatoday.net/news/gallery/2011/n110311-tsunami/n110311-aerial-pg-horizontal.jpg

With the new technology available now, news and social interaction can travel almost in an instant. Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are easily accessed using smartphones such as the iPhone and Blackberry. People can receive updates from all around the world with a few clicks and this especially became useful during the earthquake and tsunami disaster happened in Japan.

In an article written by Dorian Benkoil titled ‘How Social Media,Internet Changed Experience of Japan’, he described how he could receive information, live images and videos on the Japan earthquake immediately just with the use of new technologies and social networking sites. Thanks to that he never felt more connected than he ever had before (Benkoil 2011).

So how did all this happen? It is due to the new form of journalism that evolved from traditional journalism. Journalists now are using modern tools to broadcast news. Journalists can find experts of a certain field without actually meeting them in person, through the internet (Pavlik 1997). For example, if a journalist is not able to be in Japan to get the statistics on the amount of casualties that happened or the rate of the earthquake and tsunami, they could always go to news websites or websites that belong to scientists who happens to be investigating the earthquake to get the updates.

But even if Twitter is so fast and brief in giving updates on certain events, some of the updates are not necessarily true or could just be rumors. Updates presented on Twitter are not credible and there are no links there to prove its credibility (Rosen 2011). So a journalist still has to do some research to verify the statements provided in Twitter and social networking websites such as Facebook unless there is a link provided there already to prove its credibility.

References

• Benkoil, D 2011, ‘How Social Media, Internet Changed Experience of Japan,’ Public Broadcasting Service 15 March, viewed on 12 June 2011, http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/03/how-social-media-internet-changed-experience-of-japan-disaster-074.html .
• Pavlik, J 1999, ‘New Media and News: Implications for the Future of Journalism,’ New Media & Society, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 54-59, viewed on 12 June 2011, http://nms.sagepub.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/content/1/1/54.full.pdf+html .
• Rosen, J 2011, ‘The “Twitter Can’t Topple Dictators” Article,’ Press Think 13 February, viewed on 12 June 2011, http://pressthink.org/2011/02/the-twitter-cant-topple-dictators-article/ .