Will Evolving Forms of Journalism Be an Improvement Essay

Will Evolving Forms of Journalism Be an Improvement - Essay Example The growth of the Internet has had far reaching effects on almost all industries. In journalism, the internet has expanded the opportunities for individuals to generate content and disseminate it to potentially millions of users at a low cost. Participatory journalism takes two forms; civic journalism and independent journalism. The former is most suited to improve the field of journalism. In civic journalism, media outlets give their audience an avenue to comment and report on public matters concerning them. Social media provide a gathering place for a broad range of people to participate in a discourse on everyday issues. During the Arab Spring, Social media played a large role in informing the public and gathering support for civil disobedience efforts. While traditional media remained gagged by Arab governments, social media sites of both regional and international media were alive with thousands of user-generated reports. Even when Arab governments shut down internet access, citizens worked to provide alternative internet access. Alex Jones claims that the collapse or diminishing popularity of traditional news media has the potential to impact negatively on democracy (Alexander and Hanson 169). His argument is valid to some extent as the verification of news that traditional media offers ensure that the information provided to the public is free and fair to all parties and devoid of irregularities. However, throwing a blanket condemnation on participatory journalism ignores evidence that do not support Jones’s argument. Jones mistakenly believes that quality journalism is entirely responsible for democracy. In 19th Century America, while most newspapers openly favored particular parties, voter turnout was considerably higher than modern day America where journalism could be considered to be of a higher quality than in the past. The impact of social media on audience levels are seen in two approaches. The first approach is that through