Social media has allowed everyday citizens to become authors, editors, and publishers of news and information. Do you believe that social media has increased the quality of news and information or decreased it?

The world of news has changed in the last decade.  News sources such as fox or any other major broadcast stations have major biases when it comes to the news.  The reason for this is they have their own agenda and reputation to look out for.   This led to many poorly reported major stories or stories being featured that had no truth to them.  In the last decade we have seen the rise of the Internet and with it the rise of the blog/vlog as well as “news” sites.  Some of these sources provide a more truthful outlook on situations and some are just as biased as the major broadcasters.  An example of one such site that has risen among the airheads is TMZ.  This site is all about actors and scandals and with the Internet have made a fortune off of it.  There is however some good reports that have come from it.  YouTube has sprung up countless people reporting stories they have found on the Internet.  My personal favourite is SXEPhil and his channel as well as “sourcefed” offers different view on a lot of issues. 

The world of news has come along way from the past when nobody new what was going on overseas aside from what the media would tell us.  Now we have soldiers taking videos and people finding stories.  The free flow of information has become far greater in the wake and in some ways it is quite scary.  Pages like wikileaks who realised government documents to the public are a very dangerous step forward.  Sites like these can threaten security of a nation but they also give some control to the people as they can see what their government has failed to share with them.  One great example is a page on wikileaks stating that Canada is considered by America to be there slave and does what they want.  This sparked a lot of controversy and ended with and apology in 2011. 

Overall social media has changed the way a lot of younger generations get their news.  In some ways their information is more accurate then what there parents would get.  This said it would only be this way if the individual keeps an open mind and doesn’t believe everything they hear or read without first looking into sources.  Any good you tuber, news site source their material and this makes it easy to read exactly were they have gotten their news.

                                                                                                                                      Mark Hammond