How Social Media is Taking Over the News Industry

This article is about how social media is quickly becoming the most popular source for people to find their news. It shows an infographic about how social media has changed over the years as far as relaying news to people, it gives a chart of where social media places against the other news outlets in terms of where people get their news, and it tells a few top news stories that people have first heard about through social media.

The downside to using social media to get your news is it's not alway correct information. The article says that "some 50% of news consumers have received “breaking news” via social media, only to find out later it was erroneously reported." The article got their information from an online education portal schools.com.


I am by no means surprised that social media is taking over the news industry. I, for one, get my news from sites such as Twitter. When I first heard about the Osama killing, I saw it on Twitter, but before I believed it, I went to the television and watched the news to see if it was true. The article says that television is still the number one source and that is the reason why. People know that news on the television is true. Social media is growing at an amazingly fast pace and it will continue to grow in the future and I wouldn't be surprised if it surpassed television for the number one news source.

Travon Martin Petition Gains Millions

This article revolves around the Travon Martin case. About a week and a half after his death, his parents started a petition on change.org and it soon became the fastest growing petition in change.org history with 2.1 million signatures to date. The site has over 100,000 petitions on it. The petition called for the prosecution of George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Martin on February 26, 2012.

Social media users didn't seem to learn about the case for a few weeks, #travon became a trending topic on twitter 3 weeks after his death.“The overwhelming public outcry has not only brought some comfort to Trayvon’s family, but has prompted action at all levels of justice,” Jackie Mahendra, Change.org director of storytelling told Mashable. “People truly are finding their voice through social media and channeling their anger into action.”

This article teaches people just how important social media can be. Without social media, the Travon Martin case would have probably just been a story on the local news for a day or two and then disappeared, but because of social media, it has become known nationwide. People are not only finding out about the case, but they are expressing their opinions and feelings toward everything surrounding the case. The problem with the media in the case however is that people are hearing so many different stories revolving around the case and no one can seem to figure out what to believe anymore. The hope that comes out of social media being such a huge things in society is that Zimmerman will get what he deserves and Travon's parents as well as everyone else will feel like justice was served.  

Twitter in the Classroom

This article is about shy students feeling more comfortable tweeting questions to their teachers rather than raising their hand in class and how Twitter can be incorporated in the classroom. The article  states that some students are too shy to raise their hand in class and those students feel more comfortable using Twitter to tweet questions to their teachers about assignments or further instructions, etc.

The article came from a study from Southern Cross University in which they tested Twitter in the classroom. Students would tweet the teacher and the tweets would go directly to them in the form of a PowerPoint. Like most Internet sites, Twitter can be a distraction and they cited that fact as on of the obstacles they would face by incorporating Twitter in to the classroom.

While Twitter is a great source of media to get certain information from, I don’t believe it will ever be a viable tool in the classroom. From personal experience, Twitter serves as more of a distraction for random information than it does for anything helpful, especially pertaining to the classroom.

Say a student has a question about the topic they are currently discussing in the classroom but they are too shy to ask it in front of the class so they tweet about it. A major problem with this is the fact that the teacher won’t be on Twitter at that exact moment because she will, of course, be teaching. The teacher probably wouldn’t get on Twitter until the class is over with or even until the school day is over with, and by then the question won’t even be relevant anymore. Perhaps it could be a good tool when a student has a question about homework or a project or something, but that’s what e-mail is for. All in all, while Twitter is a great new social media outlet for news and other information, it has no place in the classroom, at least in its current form.