Social media has allowed everyday citizens to become authors, editors, and publishers of news and information. Do you believe that social media has increased the quality of news and information or decreased it? Support your position using material discussed in class as well as additional facts that you are aware of concerning this issue.

My teacher Mr. Collis asked me in class to answer this question, so here's my thoughts on the subject.

Social media has greatly changed how old media gathers it's news. Before the time of camera phones and blogs, old media such as newspapers and news shows completely controlled what kind of news people got and how it was presented. This was mainly because of limitations in technology back then. Not only that, but it takes time for the news to be made public, whether to record on tape for television, or to edit and print on paper for newspapers. Now, anyone with a camera and a connection to the internet can report on any news that happens right in front of them. Not only that, but it can happen almost instantaneously compared to the several hour gap.

Also, there's the matter of the accuracy of the information. Back then, if there was a mistake in the information, there would be almost no way to fix it in time before it was brought out. The newspapers would have to print a retraction in the next issue, or the live news would state their mistakes on their next broadcast. By that point though, this misinformation would have spread very far and would be ingrained in the viewers' minds. With the rise of blogs and miniblogs however, any mistake that the poster has made about an event can simply be erased or otherwise edited out almost instantly before one could notice there even was a mistake. Heck, I could even do that to this post in case I spot any spelling errors afterwards!

Due to this rise in "citizen journalism" several news media outlets have taken advantage of this. One of the more notable examples out there is CNN and it's iReport website, where people can submit videos, photos and news reports directly to CNN to be posted on their website. Not only that, but any news posts that have been decided as urgent according to their moderators are then looked over for accuracy, and then actually integrated into their live news reports. Wikinews is a similar news-posting site run by the Wikimedia foundation that lets users post news on their website. However, they distinguish themselves over the others by actually handing out legitimate press passes to some of their more active and more accurate posters that let them enter events that are otherwise press-only affairs.

In conclusion, I believe that all this has allowed news to become more accurate and up-to-date, and therefore increase in quality.