Twitter: The Credibility Of Social Media

Since 2010 the number of people who have seen their news on social media before anywhere else has doubled from 9% to 19% (In Changing News Landscape). More than 41 million people use Twitter making it one of the most popular social media sites. Twitter and Facebook have become our newest sources of news. Articles are posted by all news networks and based on which ones we are following we are able to get all the things they post on one screen. Because of this we are constantly connected to the internet and with that we are always aware of what is going on in the world. Every time you log on to Facebook or Twitter there are posts about current events littering your news feed, regardless of if you have liked the page on which they were originally

Over 85% of breaking news stories were shared over Twitter (Moon). However, the credibility of the news on social media sites has often come into question. News sources now refer to user comments when trying to get stories out, using a system coined “First tweet, then verify” (Bruno). While sometimes this system is effective because it spreads important information quickly other times incorrect information gets spread and it is hard to stop it once it has made it to social media. Hashtags are an important part of Twitter, they allow people to tweet an idea and attach a way for others to see their tweets who are interested in those ideas. These hashtags can begin to trend meaning many people on twitter are talking about them. When this happens everyone is able to see content that goes along with the hashtag. The problem with this is false information can spread even faster this way. Because of the change in how people get news, “old media has begun posting with hashtags as well” (In Changing News Landscape). This allows the speed at which information can be shared increase even more because people can search for specific topics and share what they would like.

Twitter has been referred to as “Microblogging” because users can post about whatever topic they want also long as it’s in 140 characters or less (Moon). By researching

In some instances this information can be exceedingly important especially when it is delivered at the right time, the problem, however, is when the information is not verified but has still been posted. If this were a perfect world it would be easy to have all information fact checked before it was posted and never have any errors escape the ruthless red pen of an editor. Using the centralized approach to social media as BBC does is seemingly the best solution but almost impossible, this is why using the decentralized approach to fact checking is the answer. As seen by the success of The Guardian, when the writers and readers work together to make a product of which they are all proud, the finished product is something great. It is important to note that social media is of course used for other things besides delivery of news and while I recommend that all of the information that gets shared is fact checked, some things would be ludicrous to confirm. By taking a decentralized approach to social media and reporting we would be able to have much more confidence in everything that we are reading. Essentially, I assert that if both social media users and those who look over social media were to work together and set ground rules for what things are appropriate to post when it comes to news, similar to those of The