Losing Grip?

It is a commonly accepted fact that as the social media sphere grows, it must take some power away from the traditional news media. This phenomenon has occurred with any large-scale shift in the nature of media in our history. The printing press, radio, television and Internet all had significant effects on the forms of media which preceded it. If we argue that Web 2.0 functions essentially as an entire new iteration of the Internet, in which the flow of information is no longer top-down, but instead lateral and bottom up, then this comparison is apt.

One of the most important effects that media has is what is known as “agenda-setting”. Through agenda-setting, the purveyors of media are able to set the agenda, that is, push certain issues forward while playing down other issues which they want to be seen as less important. Through the selective promotion of certain news stories, the media provider is able to tell us not necessarily what to think, but certainly what it is we should be thinking about.

This is where social media once again serves to change things up. Though the research is uncommon, most research on gatekeeping and Web 2.0 tells us that it is as effective at agenda-setting as traditional media, but it often chooses to pursue items which are less easy to push to set the agenda.

An interesting sidenote to this is that the traditional media companies are jumping into the blogosphere with their own newsroom bloggers, attempting to steal some thunder from popular news blogs such as the Huffington Post.  These newsroom bloggers are interesting because they are skewed towards traditional media, and as a result, much of their online content is simply re-directing the reader towards the newspaper or tv company they work for, instead of towards diverse Internet sources.