It comes to no surprise that most of my peers today no longer seek news updates from newspapers. The first thing that we normally do in the morning after waking up; open our laptop/ PC/ smart phone to check on social networking sites for any interesting updates. Inevitably, social media has become part of our daily lives. Personally, my daily social interaction is inseparable from Facebook and Twitter. The two social networking sites are on constant check throughout the day to keep myself updated with the latest happenings around.
New media, as defined by Chun and Keenan (2006), is “an interactive medium or form of distribution as independent as the information it relayed.” The difference between new media and old or traditional media lies on the presentation of the content it presents, in which new media has it all digitized. Digitality, interactivity, hypertextuality, dispersal and virtuality are the qualities of new media (Lister et al 2003).
Today, we live in a globalized world with new media as a major part of it. Aligned with the earlier statement, Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) mentioned that most documents today incorporate a mixture of text, images and other graphic or sound elements. In today’s era of globalization, we can use various modes of communication to deliver messages to others. Walsh (2006) added that readers utilize their senses; sight, hearing, tactile, kinaesthetic in interpreting multimodal texts.
It came to realization of how powerful social media in disseminating information when the recent Tsunami disaster hit Japan earlier this year. Within few hours of the occurrence, news about the destruction spread like a wildfire on various social networking sites (Benkoil 2011). Twitter users all across the globe filled the timeline of the micro-blogging site by sharing reports, concerns and prayers through their tweets. The hash tags used in Tsunami-related tweets such as, #prayforjapan, #Tsunami, Sendai, NHK World, Tokyo Disneyland became Trending Topics on Twitter for several consequent days since the disaster occurrence (Magnier 2011).
Social media has indeed allowed people all over the world to access immediate news updates about the disaster. With all the interactive contents provided; raw pictures and footages of the affected victims and places, social media brought more depth in reporting that brings the audience’s experience to a whole new level.
In Malaysian context, most major newspapers have embarked on social media as well. Take The Star as an example. Aside from the print version, the Malaysia’s number 1 English newspaper has an online site (http://thestar.com.my) that is constantly updated with latest news reports along with interactive pictures and video clips. The Star has a twitter account (twitter.com/staronline) for those mobile users who would like to access their news conveniently from their smart phones.
References:
Benkoil, D 2011, How Social Media, Internet Changed Experience of Japan Disaster, Media Shift, viewed 8th June 2011, <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/03/how-social-media-internet-changed-experience-of-japan-disaster-074.html>
Chun, WHK and Keenan, T 2006, New Media Old Media: A History and Theory Reader, Routledge, London.
Kress, G and van Leeuwen, T 2006, ‘The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication’, Reading Images,pg.16-44.
Lister, M, Dovey, J, Giddings, S, Grant, I and Kelly, K 2003, New Media: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, London.
Magnier, M 2011, Twitter response to Japan earthquake, tsunami is fast widespread, Los Angeles Times, viewed 8thJune 2011, <http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/11/world/la-fg-japan-quake-twitter-20110312>
Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, pg.24-37.
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