Muhammed Saleem over at the Blog Herald says that socially-driven news is a better model for disseminating news than mainstream news sources like CNN, MSNBC, etc. He is careful to make a distinction between breaking news and disseminating it. When I first read his post, I disagreed with him almost completely, but after some clarification and further thought, he’s right — to a degree.
There is definitely room to use social networks as a way to disseminate news, as long as the news they’re spreading emanates from a reliable and verifiable source. Word of mouth has always been a powerful tool, but anyone who has played the child’s game of “Telephone” knows that the relay points are not always reliable. One Digg headline, for example, referred to Ted Haggard as “Bush’s Spiritual Advisor”, which is patently untrue. The problem with the social networking model is that if someone repeats it often enough, rumor becomes fact. I’m no Bush fan, but I shudder to think of how many people really believe that Haggard was that close to him after viewing that particular and popular Digg headline.
Here’s the other problem with using social networks as the ‘microphone’ to spread news: Bias. A story like the Ted Haggard story can spread like wildfire, while other much more significant but less inflammatory stories are buried. When relying on social networks to determine what is news or worthy of attention, there is a built-in bias toward the sensational, the tabloid-esque aspects of human existence at the expense of other much more significant and long-reaching issues of the day. Using Ted Haggard as an example again, the fact that a prominent minister was outed as a closet gay really isn’t news. It became news because it was used as a way to highlight the hypocrisy of the fundamentalist Christian anti-gay activism in politics and it was useful as an illustration of that hypocrisy, but that’s where its usefulness begins and ends.
Every social network that I visited had the Ted Haggard story as a front-page story for three straight days, while other news that was far more important was neglected and languishing three or four pages back three days before an election.
Social networking is definitely a piece of the news picture, but it is neither “better” nor “worse” than mainstream news. Taken as a package with mainstream news and a large dose of discernment on the part of the news consumer, it certainly enhances the news experience, just as a healthy debate inside the “letters to the editor” section of the newspaper has in the past. I don’t think it’s a “better” way to disseminate news. It’s just another way to do it.
What do you think?
Technorati Tags: digg, netscape, socially driven news, crowdsourcing, Blog Herald
