It was interesting watching what happened in media usage when the recession hit hard. Initially old media such as Wall St. Journal re-emerged, almost as a need to seek a credible source in amongst the rumors.
On the new media frontier, Twitter was also chirping madly. Even corporates are using the channel to broadcast statements – well those which can be compressed into 140 characters.
The first challenge is in deciding whether new media is merely an evolution of new ways of communicating, or whether in fact, old media is being replaced with these new channels. To suggest anything other than online news channels have largely replaced print newspapers would be naive.
The second challenge lies in determining the credibility of each channel. Corporate websites are known for hype speak. Print media carries the personal filters of the news reporter. As do social media. Are we in fact moving back to peer to peer media instead of broadcast channels.
Just which media channel is most trustworthy. I have personally suffered from misinformation being published about me; not through any malicious intent, but just in the normal daily context of a reporter being too hasty to make false assumptions and draw incorrect conclusions.
With online social media the prevalent channel of the younger generations, does ones existence cease to exist if you don’t have a facebook page, share your personal photos on flikr and twitter three times an hour. Who has time to be bothered with all this? Well, it seems millions do. So rather than refuse to engage in these new media, the challenge is to find your comfort level in sharing your world with others.
The web is shaping world opinion, every second of the day. It is an invaluable source of free good press and a kill shot for bad press.
And of course there is the malicia….those who know the power of new media and have skill at crafting just the right sentence to condemn an individual or business without prior right of response.
But both individuals and companies have to be very wary about what is released into social chatrooms. A misleading statement by a single employee can have the wolves circling and result in multimillion dollar litigation.
Transparency has costs, can be dangerous. It can trigger a cascade of events that are difficult if not impossible to reverse.
Public humiliation to force someone into an action you desire is tantamount to blackmail.
The other concern is privacy. Telling someone something over the phone has a limited lifetime, unless it was recorded. However, put something online and it is there for life. I for one have no desire to have the world know what I am doing every second of the day – so there is no twittering from moi!
And then you have the marketing and PR propaganda on sites such as Youtube, Facebook, Craigs List and Wikipedia.
Most readers are wise to this, and intolerant. It breaches both the explicit and the implicit etiquette.
Trying to monitor all channels is becoming an onerous task. For many businesses, such media is becoming more about containment than sharing. With IP proxies and avatar profiles, tracking down the source of scandalous content is becoming increasingly difficult.
I personally have not purchased a print newspaper for over 10 years. I don’t like the smell of the ink, the black smears all over my white kitchen countertop and the stack of papers waiting for recycling day. But the biggest reason is that I find them mostly incredibly boring. It is the same black stories every day – murder, rape, pillage, disaster, scandal, child abuse….. At least online I can set my RSS Feeds to deliver the stories I want and start my day on a more positive note. And if something of business or personal worthiness comes about, there are plenty of sources online that I can access with one keyword search. Online I can expand my search sufficiently to make up my own mind, instead of being force fed someone elses.
Digital media is freedom. Long may it continue to prosper.