Is social media making mainstream media sources obsolete?

Many of you by now will have heard about the plane crash at San Francisco Airport this past Saturday. Our prayers and sympathies go out to the families of the two young girls who died as well as the 49 people inured in the crash and resulting fire. As tragic as this event was, something very interesting happened in the way people found out about it. The major news stations such as FOX and CNN did not pick up the story until about 20 minutes after the crash had happened. In comparison Twitter and other social media sources exploded with pictures and video of event within minutes of the crash.

We live in a constant state of being connected to the world around us. Nearly all of us have a phone by now capable of taking and uploading pictures/video to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. This makes us capable of not just seeing events take place, but instantly sharing what we are seeing with the entire world. In fact, many times (including with this event) mainstream media such as CNN will quote tweets and posts by people that are on scene during events. This raises the question then, what is the purpose of the traditional sources of news and media? Do these other sources take the place of the way we traditionally get our news?

Well, yes and no. In a sense it does because the traditional sources will no longer be our main source of “breaking news” because most people will already know that something happened from their social platforms. Now that being said it can be quite difficult to decipher fact from fiction when it comes to places like Twitter and Facebook, for instance after the San Francisco crash it was spread throughout Twitter that the plane flipped over on its back which was untrue. This is where the news stations have to come in and help sort through the flood of information coming in and report the facts of the situation as they learn and confirm them. The faster we receive information the harder it is to determine if it is actual fact or not. So we need both the instant response of social media and then more delayed traditional methods to examine and analyze the information to present the whole story in a factual and understandable way.

As technology progresses the world has to adapt to new ways of doing things and as information is becoming available faster and faster we are going to have to find new ways of processing and distributing that information. I doubt social media will take over the News industry but there is no question that mainstream media will need to adapt to it and use it as a resource as social media continues to become more and more expansive.

More information about the Flight 214 crash can be found below:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/07/08/boeing-777-crashes-at-san-francisco-international-airport/

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/08/us/asiana-airlines-crash

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/doomed_jet_bounce_burn_NkoWcBmmvWXK0Vd5QEh3GP

http://abcnews.go.com/US/san-francisco-plane-crash-pilot-43-hours-flying/story?id=19598352