There is no longer a question of what social media is. It has invaded us and conquered our lives in many different ways. Unfortunately it looks like many are so deep into it they no longer see how they have already been transformed. Like the sheep following the shepherd.
It was coined social media for a reason – it is a form of public communication. It is also an article that has to embellish truth to garner attention.
A journalist has two separate tasks. The first is to dig deep to find as much facts as possible. Generally this isn’t as hard as before since Google came into the picture. On the flip side no doubt, there will always be people who will know more than you because of this – yet it does help for someone to put the pieces together and serve it on a silver platter.
The next step is to catch a reader’s attention. I did a short journalism course which explained how to write articles. The main idea I got from that is to start with the most interesting aspects first, then follow it up by the non-juicy details. Now unlike a book which has a fancy cover, an article needs to be interesting enough at the beginning to draw you to conclude it was any good. It also doesn’t help that our attention spans have dwindled with the passing time.
Now put social media into the mix and you have now nominated everyone as a budding journalist. People love to have as many likes as possible and so they put their best foot forward – only. What’s even worse with the short attention span, you will never get the details, just a short sentence, a picture or a video.
While an article needs to be fleshed out to have any credibility, social media doesn’t. It leaves you to imagine the facts of reality. Then you have that feeling like you “should” know this person because after all, he/she is your friend…