Using social media as a reliable research tool

Social media often gets a bad reputation for being filled with unreliable nonsense that helps further turn our brains into a nice big ball of mush. What most people don’t realize is that social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have journalistic and newsworthy credentials. Many conventional news outlets such as newspapers, magazines, radio programs, and even traditional websites have begun to integrate into the new world of news gathering. I, for one, am a journalism major focusing on sports reporting and use Twitter and Facebook on a daily basis to gather news about the sports world. People believe that most information on sites such as these is incredible and therefore should not be taken seriously. My brother is more obsessed with sports than I am, but he continues to hunt away on the internet, browsing the same old websites every day with little variation. Yes, he has found something that has worked for him, but the world of social media opens doors to corners of the internet that might not have been accessed otherwise. Just as in any other instance in which one needs to gather information, sourcing is everything. As long as you keep in touch with the proper sources, the information is extremely quick and quite reliable. Even if something is reported and is incorrect, it is fixed as quickly as it was originally posted. Though, some people still believe that social media is not a reliable source of real substantial information, especially from sites like Twitter. Yes, the news in Twitter most naturally be condensed into 160 characters, hardly enough to express more than one thought. What uninformed people don’t realize is that these sites are SHARING sites. I can get information from sources that I would never have found if not for someone I am following posts a link. Links are everything in the social media news world, whether it be a link to an article, a webpage, a photo set, a video, or someone else’s profile, it is simply about the sharing of information. The following is a composite of multiple sites explaining the importance, risks, and reality of the shift that the news gathering world is taking in the light of social media.