Social Networking Sites (ch 15)

   Chapter 15 has a section of the chapter about media that focuses on how social networking sites have created another new form of news dissemination on the internet. Sites like Facebook and Twitter have not only become popular areas for the average person to share their political commentary, but have also become direct news sources for millions all over the world as well. It doesn't matter what channel you turn on, local news or network news, I can guarantee you that the anchors will mention to the viewers to follow their channel's Twitter or Facebook account. 

     In order to keep up with the changing times of technology, it has become important for these stations to create accounts on these user friendly sites to stay relevant to the viewers. Since the beginnings of journalism, the competition between papers or news stations has always been "first on the scene", "first with the story" or "exclusive with the story". Because of social networking, the time between news coverage and news breaking has been reduced to seconds, making it more clear to who truly is the first with the breaking news.

    Additionally, as the book mentioned, many politicians and even the White House itself have created profiles on the popular social networking site, Twitter. With politicians getting on the internet, it allows for them to give constituents the feel of more of a personal connection. Additionally, in cases of controversy, Twitter accounts can be the place for PR damage control or in reverse can be the reason for the controversy in the first place. Allowing figures to have almost direct communication with the people has critics worried “that a growing reliance on social networking sites will weaken the media’s role as a filter, educator, and watchdog.” Which may be negative for media outlets, but for the people it can result with less censored, hand-picked, and biased news delivery.

         Twitter has also become instrumental in allowing people to post their political opinions, or even form their political opinions at that. Searching a trending topic such as #StateOfTheUnion or during the elections #RNC or #DNC can allow others to take a peek of  how their online peers feel about a certain issue or political event.

         The book mentions that social networking has also been useful in elections for expressing support and that in the 2008 election when then presidential candidate Barack Obama was able to establish Facebook pages with millions of fans each. In the 2012 election this continued to hold true, where Facebook was used to advertise when the President was coming to speak, fundraisers, and to spread information at high volumes in rapid amounts of time.