“Social media, including discussion boards, online community groups, and social network sites (SNSs), create unique opportunities for the discursive construction of hybridized cultures” (McEwan & Sobre-Denton, 2011).
Back in the 1960s Marshall McLuhan hypothesize that in the future, society will move toward a global village just by using electronic media which helps get rid of the boundaries (Hanson,2013). Not only people can easily see and participate but also have the privilege of wire network, in what is happening in the opposite side of the world. Social Media has the power to gather social information and people can contact each other without having to hustle for physical contact, (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007). Moreover, it also has the power to form relationships and build online communities. The rise of social media has changed large amount of people’s lives, as well as helped with corporations, industries and obviously news media.
Virtual Cosmopolitanism is something from social media site to Internet discussion boards and cyber sphere in which it “creates unique opportunities for the discursive construction hybridized cultures” (McEwan & Sobre-Denton, 2011). The emphasis on social media has created a third culture, people across the world can gather information, create virtual reality and build up new social systems. It’s totally different from the traditional way, to produce the information and let people buy it for reading and looking at it. In today’s world, people are looking for easier ways to read, give opinions and spread content, this resulted in the birth of a democratic movement of journalism. What important now is the transparency, honesty and allowing freedom of speech to the person who can’t voice out (Harper,2010).
In the old times, News were reported on television, newspaper or radio. It has drastically changed in this digital age; news agencies are finding other ways to distribute news and change the habits of the people, because users tend to go for online platforms and are always on their digital devices, the profit of newspaper is obviously declining, maybe only old people still goes for traditional newspaper as they lack knowledge or are not interested to be on social media all the time. News agencies nowadays take advantages of social networking by setting up their own site and an option for reading e-version of their newspaper.
News streaming is another big thing, people highly use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. It helps in spreading the information in a very high speed, by reporting the news instantly. Facebook Live recording is a great example to explain what I am trying to say here. Moreover, It’s much less time consuming and requires a lot less words, as we don’t need to depend on the fixed television program time sessions, and producing publications with computer software anymore. To add more to this, hot topics and concerns of people matter more to journalists nowadays, so they use social media to research and gather the audience’s views directly. According to the international survey by Dutch firm ING in 2014, it found that 3 in 5 journalists agree with the statement that “On social media I am less bound by Journalist rules than in traditional media”
In this generation of digital usage being so popular, Virtual cosmopolitanism provides individual with space for networking. Individuals who are cosmopolitan keeps up with the news and know about the situations from time to time, which helps build empathy and different culture acceptance.
Signing Out,
Khan Sultana Nazish
References:
Harper, R. A. (2010). The Social Media Revolution: Exploring the Impact on Journalism and News Media Organizations. Inqiries Journal, Vol.2, No.3. Retrieved form: http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/202/the-social-media-revolution-exploring-the-impact-on-journalism-and-news-media-organizations
Hanson, R. E. (January 3, 2013). Mass Communication: Living in a Media World (4th Ed.). CQ Press.
McEwan B, Sobré-Denton MS (2011) Virtual third cultures: social media, cultural capital, and the creation of cultural spaces. Intercultural New Media Forum: Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 4: 252–258.
SAM KIRKLAND, S. (2014). Survey: Journalists tend to publish first, check facts later. [online] Poynter. Available at: https://www.poynter.org/news/survey-journalists-tend-publish-first-check-facts-later [Accessed 27 Nov. 2017].
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