Analytics Pictures

Podcast - Clickbait

Antigua Travel

#Helpful

Print is dead. We’ve been hearing this for years, but the newspaper industry is putting up a good fight. Not many are surprised by the fact that the print newspaper industry is in structural decline. Similar to the 6’oclock evening news, why wait until the end of your day to receive your news? We can use the internet to access news 24 hours a day, this way you get your daily dose of news whenever and wherever you like.

Besides the obvious convenience of digital journalism, we can also receive more information than ever before. Whenever you read an article or news piece online, there are dozens of relating links on the page, just a click away.           

#Hashtags are nothing new. But this year, I’ve stopped hash-tagging #LikeForLike and learned how I can use hashtags to further my career as a journalist.

Hashtags help journalists find people posting about topics they are reporting on. This is especially helpful during the interview process. Whenever you attach a hashtag to a tweet, Facebook post or even Instagram photo, it is immediately indexed by the social network and searchable by other users. People with shared interests will use regular hashtags to help others find related tweets.

For example, my hometown has been hit with 2 winter snow storms in the past 48 hours. If I was looking to talk to people affected by these storms, I would go on twitter and look up the hashtag #NLWeather.

Hashtags have the potential to be extremely valuable, when used the right way. Over hash-tagging can distract users from the main message of the post, and can also make the post look like spam.

Remember - Less is more!

THE IMPORTANCE OF CITIZEN JOURNALISM

The purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with honest information which they will use to make the best decisions about their lives, society, and their governments. If citizens are also able to help provide this kind of information, why not let them get involved?

The first person on the scene of a breaking newsworthy event in most cases, is an ordinary citizen. Citizen journalism has grown immensely over the past decade, mostly because of technological developments.

The September 11^th 2001 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda on the United States. Many believe this is where the rise of citizen journalism began, and the digital age. Before 9/11 social media didn’t exist, shooting and uploading a video was left up to the professionals. Not every person was walking around with a cell phone in their pocket, but a select few people did have access to camera phones and disposable cameras on that day.

These days many news organizations have platforms available to the public where they can upload their content. One of these platforms is CNN's iReport, which is a citizen journalism initiative that allows people from around the globe to contribute pictures and video of breaking news stories.

With an iPhone in every hand for nearly a decade now, anybody can be a journalist. But now publication is more instant than ever. Just last summer Diamond Reynolds livestreamed the aftermath of her boyfriend being shot by a police officer on Facebook.

This is a case of citizen journalism that made us view Reynolds situation from a perspective that we would have never seen through mainstream media. 

With blogging, Youtube and social media, citizen journalism is more popular than ever. But since most of these individuals are not getting paid, they have less of a commitment than mainstream media. 

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU SEE

“Fake news” and “alternative facts” thrive in the social media era we are living in today. The amount of false information that is spread on the web is astonishing. Fortunately, there are many reliable fact-checking websites helping us solve this growing problem.

Perhaps one of the most prominent fake news stories of 2016 was a hoax claiming that former president Barack Obama signed an executive order banning the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. It was published by ABCNews.com.co, and gained so much attention because it is a fake site made to look like ABC News.

From a young age the phrase “don’t believe everything you hear” was planted into my head. As years went on, and technology advanced, “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” became the newest mantra. I made sure to live by this, mostly because I don’t enjoy being embarrassed, but more importantly, because I don’t enjoy being wrong. Little did I know, the next mantra to be planted in my head would be "don't believe everything you see."

I can still pinpoint the moment I realized I would have to start questioning everything I saw on the internet. I was in middle school and I shared a photo of a giant dog who was walking alongside a pony, which I thought was completely amazing (and still do). I was proud of my discovery, until a fellow classmate commented “obviously, this isn’t real.” It stung my ego for a quick second, and then I immediately took the photo down before anybody else chimed in.

Nowadays, not only do we have to question what we read on the web, but also the images we see. It is getting harder and harder to distinguish between fact and fiction. I have always felt that images and videos serve as the most honest evidence of experiences and events we have not witnessed with our own eyes. But 2016 opened my eyes to a whole new world of fake images. 

I’ll admit, there are plenty of fake photos that I have found entertaining in the past few years, especially concerning the latest U.S election.

Fake photo showing former U.S President Barack Obama touching
 First Lady Melania Trump's backside on the day of Donald Trump's inauguration. 

Although some photos are humorous, others can quickly cause harm to unexpected people. The New York Times disclosed an unbelievable story about Cameron Harris, a college graduate with an interest in politics, and a need for cash. Harris published this photo with the headline reading: “BREAKING: ‘Tens of thousands’ of fraudulent Clinton votes found in Ohio warehouse.” Harris edited the photograph slightly, hoping to make it more difficult for any suspicious users to find the original photograph. 

On the surface, this doesn't look like such a harmful photo. But when we dig a little deeper we realize this photo alone could have sabotaged the U.S election. It would have not only destroyed Hilary Clinton's credibility, but also the credibility of the man in the photograph. 

As I mentioned earlier, there are many fact-checking websites, but now, we have image search engines as well. TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exists, or to find higher resolution versions.  

In a world full of fake news and photo's, we should take every measure possible to ensure we are distributing honest and important news.