With the development and widespread use of communication technologies and the internet, social media becomes an extremely influential source of information. For example, the events of the Arab Spring (2010-2012) were largely stimulated by social media since some participants in protests had high levels of Internet usage, which allowed them to share information, organize demonstrations, and raise public awareness (Rane and Salem 99). In addition, almost every organization creates accounts on social media to reach its target audience and spread information rapidly. In this connection, this paper aims to explore the potential of social media to replace traditional media, focusing on the perceptions of users, information credibility, journalists’ behaviors, and access to media. Social media is now being used to spread news, which has resulted in challenges in founded news organizations; the need for traditional media sources is currently being assessed.
Growth in the presence of social media today has changed how journalists behave and the means of accessing information. Many organizations shift to an online environment as it provides them with various marketing opportunities. Companies become closer to customers by offering them to share their opinions about products and services through Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. The social media landscape allows learning more about brands and their mission, which leads to greater customer loyalty. It is mentioned that $1.54 billion was invested in supporting the presentation of organizations in social media, and this number was expected to triple by 2013 (Bruhn et al. 771). In 2019, this investment increased by $17 billion, and the expenditures will only grow in the future (Shin et al. 282)
Online journalism, it became a dominant direction of digital media, which delivers easily accessible and free information. It should be emphasized that the way customers read news changes, and the environment in which they are created tend to be different. Journalists increasingly use social media to express their opinions, which promotes discussions of various topics. One more issue that attracts viewers is the ability to return to the previously mentioned topics, thus ensuring that newsreaders remain engaged (Laor and Galily 7). Also, feedback from people, which is provided through comments or direct interaction, motivates journalists to continue their work in public awareness increase.
The downside of online posts is the key disadvantage of digital media as such promotional work does not pass any trustworthiness standards. Compared to traditional media that governments and businesses mainly control, online media raises concerns about how people can trust it. However, even though the quality of data is not yet currently guaranteed, it is possible to expect that social media sources would improve in the future.
In addition, the advancements of 21st-century technology made it possible to access a wide variety of information by clicking only several buttons on one’s computer or smartphone. People get used to receiving the information they need quickly, which seems to be convenient and easy. Compared to traditional media which requires buying a magazine or watching TV, social media offers more comfortable options. The reading times become shorter as online resources provide brief news, understanding the desires of customers. All this leads to the growing consumption of online news instead of traditional media. It is reported that 68% of Americans get some of their news on social media in 2018 (Shu et al. 182). A characteristic feature of social media is that users compose networks to share their interests or learn about some issues, creating certain environments and movements.
Quick access to information is achieved at the expense of its reliability. The concept of fake news comprises some diverse phenomena in the media environment, such as fake texts and photo recordings. Fake accounts are artificially created at the customers’ request, “likes,” and posting approving comments can be noted (Shu et al. 183). Considering news journalism as a journalistic genre, one can confidently state that fake news is extensively present. Nevertheless, some measures are already taken to increase the reliability of online news. Facebook decided to involve journalists in resolving the problem (Shu et al. 186). The company will work with newsrooms and organize a campaign to distinguish between real and fake news.
Social media tools like Twitter and Facebook and the current technology are rapidly changing, and many organizations, including the news media, are unable to keep up with its pace. In the traditional world, news organizations focused on simply delivering information, but the methods now are transforming. The audience of the current world expects that the availability of information is not enough. They want to choose what to read, and most of them expect a chance to add content and opinions (Bergström and Belfrage 593). The social media revolution is the birth of democracy that stresses important factors of journalism, including transparency and honesty. Media channels state how social media seriously impact news organizations and their way of operation.
News organizations are now forced to make use of social media for them to retain their audiences and also so that they keep fetching funds for supporting themselves. Research reveals that the current audience lost confidence in news organizations; they do not believe that they aim to report accurate, neutral news, especially in politics, the way they used to do some time back (Shin et al. 280). Survey also reveals that youngsters resent using traditional media and that people need a change in terms of newspapers that requires payment before accessing print magazines online. In the contemporary world, people require a communication affair that was not available in traditional news organizations; there was a shift from one-way communication. This shift aims at assisting journalists to effectively perform their responsibilities. Social media has also empowered individuals to voice their concerns to the world and has forced established news media to change irrespective of whether the industry desires the change or not. The problem with social media is that bloggers have a habit of reporting their interests instead of what is required; this has a possibility of bad investigative journalism.
The importance of Facebook and Twitter as social media tools is greatly increasing due to the ability of people to create their applications. The tools have enabled journalists and the public to communicate occurrences faster than in the past despite the possibility of some errors. In reporting serious events occurring using social media tools, there may be an absence of many witnesses reporting as required since there is fear that the people will be thought to have participated in the events. Making use of social media tools requires first assessing ethical implications. News organizations have to come up with ethical guidelines for the workforce and web participants. News organizations are required to shift toward progressively using mobile devices and reporters to be autonomous instead of being connected to exact news organizations for long. From all this, it is evident that social media is replacing traditional sources in this current world.
The audience today still needs the use of traditional media sources because of some reasons. Traditional sources like newspapers are well known for reporting breaking news and exposing historic proportions. The readers, therefore, require this source to get access to this information since, many times, it is not available on social media for various reasons, including its sensitivity and lack of discovery. Television remains the main news source in the current world, even though youths categorize the internet as more necessary than television. The younger generation has no patience, so they opt for speedy information over the internet. Those who are patient tend to get full, reliable, and well-elaborated information from the television (McGrew et al. 4). This justifies the need for traditional news sources in the current world. The reason for television remaining to be a dominant source is that those who publish the news are known to the people. Traditional news sources also comprise influential people who are keen to admit their mistakes to protect their public image and reputation.
Local news organizations reveal that many people still use traditional sources and do not bother themselves to gather information online; newspapers have been proven to remain the common media channel. This clearly explains the need for traditional news sources; doing away with them will mean that many people are inconvenienced (Aruguete 37). Putting into consideration the needs and interests of these people, traditional sources have to remain operational. Even though they are faced with more challenges, they should admit that they still have their loyal audience and, therefore, should focus on how they can best meet their needs.
It can be concluded that social media provides such benefits as rapid and convenient access to information, creating networks, interacting with others, and promoting public awareness. However, compared to traditional media, it lacks reliability and credibility, while an overabundance of fake news becomes a striking feature of digital media. Social media is an important tool in creating social networks as journalists can communicate and collaborate with the audience. The community can be built through social engagement and facilitates a two-way form of communication; this has been the main reason people prefer using social media regularly. Traditional media sources should incorporate their operations with social media for them to remain effective. Social media will continually alter the way journalists collect and relay news, but the traditional ways will still be needed for verification of facts. Professional journalists of the future will have to disseminate truth; Twitter is known for displaying current happenings.
References
Aruguete, Natalia. “The agenda setting hypothesis in the new media environment.” Comunicación y sociedad, vol. 28, 2017, pp. 35-58.
Bergström, Annika, and Maria Jervelycke Belfrage. “News in social media: Incidental consumption and the role of opinion leaders.” Digital Journalism, vol.6, no. 5, 2018, pp. 583-598.
Bruhn, Manfred et al. “Are Social Media Replacing Traditional Media in Terms of Brand Equity Creation?: MRN”, Management Research Review, vol. 35, no. 9, 2012, pp. 770-790.
Laor, Tal, and Yair Galily. “Offline VS Online: Attitude and Behavior of Journalists in Social Media Era”, Technology in Society, vol. 61, 2020, pp. 1-9.
McGrew, Sarah, et al. “The Challenge That’s Bigger than Fake News: Civic Reasoning in a Social Media Environment”, American Educator, vol. 41, no. 3, 2017, p. 4.
Rane, Halim, and Sumra Salem. “Social Media, Social Movements and the Diffusion of Ideas in the Arab Uprisings.” Journal of International Communication, vol. 18, no. 1, 2012, pp. 97-111.
Shin, Jieun, et al. “The diffusion of misinformation on social media: Temporal pattern, message, and source.” Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 83, 2018, pp. 278-287.
Shu, Kai, et al. “Fakenewsnet: A Data Repository with News Content, Social Context, and Spatiotemporal Information for Studying Fake News on Social Media”, Big Data, vol. 8, no. 3, 2020, pp. 171-188.
Irish Revolution And Civil War Of 1918-1923
Introduction
The Irish Revolution and Civil War that started gathering impetus on the eve of the World War I and came to the peak by its end was unique in nature. Many forces fueled it and determined its direction and form. In Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World, Maurice Walsh argues that “the Irish Revolution was part of the unraveling of empires provoked by the First World War, but the state born at its conclusion was unique in western Europe.”1 This paper aims to analyze Walsh’s ideas about the place of the Irish Revolution and Civil War in the context of the postwar world and the struggle for self-determination.
Self-Determination of Nations in the Framework of Post-War Modern Movement
The main idea of Maurice Walsh, the author of Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World, was to place Ireland in a global context since, as a rule, the Irish Revolution was viewed only in the context of the confrontation between Ireland and Great Britain. In particular, the authors traditionally placed Ireland in an “island context.” They identified only two driving forces – the supporters of the home rule and unionists, south-east Catholics and north-east Protestants. However, when analyzing the events that later became known as the Irish Revolution and Civil War of 1918-1923, it is important to consider the influence of events and trends associated with World War I.
First, the outbreak of the war enabled Ireland, which in 1914 had broad support for the Irish Conservative Party and its leader, John Redmond, to side with Great Britain against the Habsburg Empire, in return for the promise of home rule after the war ends.2 Redmond convinced Irish volunteers and advocates of a more radical solution to the Irish independence to participate in the war for their country’s greater good. Redmond believed that the idea of more radical nationalists to take advantage of Britain’s vulnerability during the war was doomed to fail. However, the war did not last four months, as Redmond expected, but four years, and therefore by 1918, the issue of the Irish home rule was relegated to the background. Of course, this situation caused discontent among volunteers and a direct protest from radical nationalists.
On the other hand, the end of the World War and the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty on June 28, 1919, unofficially secured European nations’ right to self-determination. One of the main reasons for the rise of nationalist movements and their success was the policy of American President Woodrow Wilson. He sought to demonstrate to Europe the advantages of American liberal democracy.3 The signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty implied a change in many states’ borders and was a symbol of the collapse of empires in Germany, Russia, and Turkey.
By the end of WWI, Woodrow Wilson had outstanding support among the European population. He saw the Versailles Peace as the beginning of a new era in Europe and the end of the imperialists’ old world. Therefore, he promoted the idea that the boundaries of an ideal state should coincide with the historical territories of certain peoples. Within the framework of this approach, new states were formed in Eastern Europe: Hungary, Czech Republic, Ukraine, and Poland.
New Challenges for Commonwealth
The Treaty of Versailles transferred many territories that previously belonged to Germany into the possession of Great Britain, including Palestine, the Persian Gulf, and East Africa.4 However, given the emergence of the “New World,” Great Britain’s role had to change from an ambitious owner of many overseas territories to the role of a wise mentor who helps immature states fight external hostile influences and establish democracy. In fact, Great Britain remained a super-state, under the influence of which there were many colonies and dominions. But by form, in the New World, the British government now needed to pay much more attention to the moral objections or ‘pretensions’ of peoples from its colonies.5 Moreover, thanks to the invention of the telephone and the telegraph, political news now spread much faster. Therefore, incorrect actions concerning one of the colonies’ protest mood could become a reason for unrest or unpredictable consequences in another. In other words, Great Britain fell prey to the ‘overstretched’ empire phenomenon.
According to the unwritten rules of the New World, the globe was divided on a national and race basis, into the developed countries of the old Europe, whose peoples were ready to accept responsibility for self-government, and the countries of the “colored nations,” who needed British leadership.6 This unprecedented situation has made it possible for Ireland to appeal that it remains the only European nation denied independence. The success of the Irish Revolution was also shaped by Woodrow Wilson’s desire to see Europe as a peaceful market for American goods.
Interestingly, some American companies have started investing in Ireland, using it as a local European outlet for their factories. The first such investor was Henry Ford, who built a car factory there. Noteworthy, modern Irish society plunged into a kind of cultural chaos after the arrival of thousands of demoblized American soldiers when young people had to choose between traditional Irish and new American culture: figuratively speaking, between Irish dancing and American jazz and cinema.
Irish ‘Martyrs’ and Sinn Fein Political Movement
In 1914, on the eve of WWI, Sinn Fein was an Irish political party that few people knew. But due to many circumstances, after the war, it became extremely popular. It won 73 seats in the parliamentary elections of 1918, leaving the former leader – the Irish Parlamentary Rarty with only six seats.7 One of the most critical factors in the growing popularity of Sinn Fein, which translated as “freedom within” or “freedom in you” or “freedom in ourselves,” was the failure of Redmond’s initiative, which planned to exchange support in the war for Irish self-government.
In particular, in 1918, when the more radical and nationalist part of society realized the conservatives’ failure, Sinn Fein decided to take power in the country by force through an armed uprising. Polite and attentive to their people, but armed rebels occupied Dublin residents’ houses, hiding from persecution and fighting the British police.8 However, the British reaction to the uprising was overwhelming when they decided to execute all eight party leaders. This decision changed the moderate mood and made the executed young politicians martyrs and a symbol of the struggle for freedom in Ireland.
Sinn Fein grew rapidly, recruiting young progressive Irishmen, and by the elections of 1918, the number of political clubs roughly coincided with the number of Catholic parishes in the country.9 It is noteworthy that according to the new electoral law, women over 30 took part in the elections for the first time, and the age limit for men was reduced to 21 years. As a result, the number of voters increased from 700 thousand to 1.9 million.10 Women came to the polls en masse to express their opinion on the future of the state, which the Irish pinned on the hopes of a Sinn Fein’s victory.
The party leader was Eamon de Valera, who came across as a patriotic realist. Interestingly, the global context for the Irish emergence as an independent state was different from Poland or Hungary’s circumstances. In particular, Eastern European countries were no longer dependent on the will of the disintegrated Russian and German empires. On the other hand, the British Empire retained its greatness and power, although it changed shape under the influence of the tendencies of the New World. Therefore, Ireland counted on the United States’ political support, another empire with growing global influence. Hence, Ireland’s victory in the struggle for independence was due to the right time and external circumstances, and the existence of a united internal front.
Thus, Walsh’s ideas about the place of the Irish Revolution and Civil War in the context of the postwar world and the struggle for self-determination were analyzed. After World War I, Ireland had many prerequisites for continuing the struggle for independence. The main ‘pillars’ of the movement were enduring internal strength in the form of the growing political party Sinn Fein and the concept of a New World to be built on the ruins of old empires, brought by Woodrow Wilson as a gift from the American liberal democratic society. Therefore, Great Britain, which had many colonies where it was necessary to maintain order, found itself in a situation of no choice regarding Ireland’s future. Fear of the consequences of Irish independence for other colonies likely provoked Great Britain into a prolonged confrontation, which could be avoided if Irish volunteers’ participation in the war was immediately appreciated.
Reference
Walsh, Maurice. Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World. New York: WW Norton & Company, 2016.
Footnotes
- Maurice Walsh, Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2016), 25.
- Walsh, Bitter Freedom, 21.
- Ibid., 40.
- Ibid., 47.
- Ibid., 49.
- Ibid., 51.
- Ibid., 39.
- Ibid., 31.
- Ibid., 33.
- Ibid., 28.
Mass Communication And Media Risk And Uncertainty
Risk Society and its Relationship to Modernity
Ulrich Beck, a German sociologist, is the contemporary theorist of modernity. He proposed his modernity theory in his book, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (1992). He suggests that modern society’s inherent risk would result in the foundation and development of a universal chance (Sørensen, 2017). His theory implicates the notion that there is an increase in skepticism towards knowledge and scientific rationality and further mirrors reactions to these risks.
The risk society theory reflects how contemporary society is structured around the responses to the risks modernization presented. Beck (1992) further argues that in late risk-characterized recent institutions, naive confidence in scientific knowledge is diminishing. According to Beck (1992), the world is undergoing a new wave of modernism. Unlike the modest modernity of the industrial age, the new modernity is reflexive, marred by the novel risks that potentially impact the globe (Sørensen, 2017). Through individualization, a person may fault society then decide to detach from the community, which is likely to introduce new risks.
The media played pivotal roles in risk creation, and Beck (1992) argues that the mass media and the professionals in science and legal fields took fundamental positions socially and politically. However, risk aversion much depends on available information, and mass media plays this role of risk creation by making these risks known to the public. Risk debates and contextualization, according to the scholar, acquire such a platform from media entities. The media then indirectly create a potentially new conflict between those that define risks, like the legal professionals and the victims of those risks.
Media Reports on Migration Crisis
The ‘refugee crisis’ became one of the top news stories that dominated the European media’s headlines in 2014; over 200,000 refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea to flee safety. The early months of 2015 were not much different, as April alone recorded 1300 deaths of migrants due to drowning. The complication and extent of the ‘crisis’ generated a cloud of vagueness (Heidenreich et al., 2019). The uncertainty gave a chance for mass journalism to craft the public’s understanding of what the arrival of refugees meant for them.
Despite calls from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other humanitarian organizations, the media was not united to appeal for more help from European countries. Media in Germany and Sweden overwhelmingly used the terms ‘refugee’ or ‘asylum seeker.’ At the same time, Italy and the UK press preferred the word migrant, while in Spain, the word ‘immigrant’ was used by the media.
The terms used by the reporters hugely influenced the country’s debate on the migration issue. Media theme coverage across these countries also differed, where, for instance, humanitarian themes were covered by the Italian and Swedish press compared to German and Spanish news outlets (Heidenreich et al., 2019). The journalists focused on empathetic reporting, upholding human interest in Italy, and Spanish and British reports were all characterized by threats.
Health Risk Communication
Health risk communication involves deliberate and unplanned messages about the nature, impact, and management of various health threats such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, cancer, and HIV/AIDS. The new approach to health communication emphasizes dialogue or a dynamic exchange of information between a communicator and an audience. This new model champions an approach to risk communication as a two-way traffic process between two parties. According to Joav and Marijke (2013), it is crucial to understand and take risk communication as an interactive procedure because the threat has subjective and objective qualities.
Appraisal of the objective likelihood of health risk consequences is not the only concern in the audience’s understands of a health risk because the outcome of a subjective evaluation also matters. Unlike the new approach to health risk communication, the traditional communication model emphasized a single channel flow of health risk information to the public. The classic process involved a top-down message on health risk, majorly through top government officials and other dignitaries such as health officials from organizations (Joav & Marijke, 2013). Unlike the traditional approach, the interactive perspective focuses on how health communications can prompt diverse responses based on different factors such as who delivers the message, how it is presented, and how the audience processes the communication.
Challenges and Opportunities in Media Science
The prominent challenge to journalists is a constant threat to their life. Whereas earlier they were seen as intermediaries, they are now judged as either with us or against us. These risks are often conceived from changes in geopolitics and the alleged loss of neutrality for media personalities. Institutional threats to journalism have also surged in the past decade. Political and government players now jam the independence of journalism, public relations and advertising, and activism or propaganda, which were once separate entities with ill intentions to public interests.
Media and journalists are the public watchdogs in a state, giving the public all information affecting their daily lives. One cannot, therefore, separate a country’s democracy from the media (Heidenreich et al., 2019). This role has now been compromised due to threats that limit them from fulfilling their mandate, including physical harm. High expenses in international affairs coverage production is another challenge, whose consequences are such as under-informed democratic decisions.
Media also has many opportunities, despite a range of challenges. Audience participation and journalistic practice are now majorly simplified through social media platforms. On these platforms, individuals share news and engage in local and global debates and trends. Turner et al. (2015) argue that audience participation has offered a new ray of hope for journalism, as groups of hobbyists and civic activists using social media platforms have cropped up due to this.
Media Coverage of Risk and Science
Moral panics can be defined as a social reaction to a specific condition or an individual, considered a threat to society’s values, a response that is hostile and disproportional. Allen Stuart in the book Media, Risk, and Science, he characterizes reports on diverse literature, ranging from environmental, health, and physical science based on “moral panics” (Allan, 2002). Stanley Cohen first analyzed the term moral panic in the United Kingdom, covering media focus on Mods and Rockers around the 1960s, and found inflated reports on damage reports, statistics of youth involved, and the extent of violence preceded.
This paragraph espouses Cohen’s description of the three common characteristics of moral panics. These are diffusion, escalation and innovation. Explaining diffusion as a characteristic, he describes it as situations in some places related to the actual condition (Falkof, 2017). He explains innovation as extra powers granted to courts and the police to neutralize the threat from panics, and escalation as demands for ‘extreme’ actions to be sanctioned so that the threat is eradicated or reduced.
Other than the three main characteristics of moral panics, other scholars provided more features of the same. Ben-Yehuda and Goode (1994) who characterized moral panics included concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality, and volatility. These features implied that an event sparks panic in public, and consequently, a person or a group of individuals are termed as ‘folk devils,’ which further give rise to a unified societal reaction.
References
Falkof, N. (2020). On moral panic: Some directions for further development. Critical Sociology, 46(2), 225–239.
Goode, E., & Ben-Yehuda, N. (1994). Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction. Annual Review Of Sociology, 20(1), 149-171.
Heidenreich, T., Lind, F., Eberl, J., & Boomgaarden, H. (2019). Media framing dynamics of the European refugee crisis: A comparative topic modelling approach. Journal of Refugee Studies, 32(1), 172-182.
Joav, M., & Marijke, L. (2013). Health Risk Communication. Nova Science Publishers.
Sørensen, M. (2017). Ulrich Beck: Exploring and contesting risk. Journal of Risk Research, 21(1), 6-16.
Allan, S. (2002). Media, risk and science (1st ed.). Open University Press.
Beck, U. (2000). Risk society revisited: Theory, politics and research programmes. In B. Adams. Beck, & J. van Loon (Eds.), The risk society and beyond: Critical issues for social theory (pp. 211-229). SAGE Publications Ltd.