The Link Between Mainstream Media and Reputations
The mainstream media has changed tremendously over the past few years. The internet has played a big role in this, as people now prefer to go online to find their news. Furthermore, with social media and smartphones, people are more connected than ever before. This has played a huge role in how people access the news, as well as how media outlets engage in social media marketing efforts.
The Mainstream Media
Publishing houses have really felt the effects of the internet and social media. Journalists were made redundant across various publishing houses and some have even ceased physical production. This makes sense, since people can access any news they want, from the “horse’s mouth” by searching trending items on Twitter or just performing a quick Google search. An added consequence is also that revenues from advertising, which is what papers relied on to continue their print, have also moved away from traditional print.
Online Media
Some media outlets have embraced these changes. They have engaged in strong social media campaigns, reputation management efforts, and search engine optimization. This has proven to be challenging, because they are competing not just against other news outlets but also against the general public, but it is working. Some outlets are doing this the wrong way, however, being through clickbait. Not only is this unethical, the public also doesn’t like it and thousands of complaints are sent to various watchdogs in relation to these practices.
The mainstream media, meanwhile, is also facing difficulties through the fact that people scrutinize the information they receive, expecting that they are reliably informed. This is now truer than ever, with President Donald Trump lashing out at media outlets, branding them “fake news”. At the same time, however, the comments he makes, many of which are bigoted, racially motivated, or just plain wrong, are making their rounds across the internet, some of which are presented as actual news, and some of which are again clickbait.
And, while Donald Trump says many things that are nothing short of wrong, some news is indeed “fake news”. In fact, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has had to admit that there is a significant problem with this on his platform and that more needs to be done to prevent this. It is also said that this spread of fake news across social media has had a significant impact on the political landscape, including the 2016 Presidential Election and the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom.
2016 Made History
2016 has gone down the history books as a year of division in politics, but it is also the year when the way people looked at mainstream media changed completely. Seemingly overnight, traditional media lost its reputation as being the most reliable source of news. This reputation has been damaged to such a degree, that most people now simply do not know who to trust for their news information anymore. While social media seemed like a good replacement, it has equally large limitations.