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?
I think social media has decreased the quality of news and information. The dangers of having unreliable news sources and so many social media tools is the small fraction of time it takes for false information to spread around the world. When social media does initiate the spreading of news, it really is up to the reader whether or not they take the information for face value or to do further research to confirm what they read is correct or not.
When I think of social media passing out news, I think of it spreading out in a "broken telephone" sort of way. Meaning, the content of the news travels from person to person, post to post, that throughout the travel the content changes. People like to exaggerate stories to make them sound bigger than what they are.
Just as easily as adding something to a story to make it sound cooler, someone may flat out lie and make up a news story. When it comes to social media and everyday people sharing news and information there is no way in knowing what is true and what is false. I have always considered news content and information posted throughout social media to be similar to tabloids. There may be factual text, pictures, videos, etc. however, it is important to remember that not all of what we see and hear is the truth.
I recommend going to a traditional media outlet to double-check the news we get from social media to find out if the quality can be trusted or not.
