Transformation from print newspaper to digital: how everything has moved to social network

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru/

National Technical University of Ukraine

"Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute"

Transformation from print newspaper to digital: how everything has moved to social network

Vlasiuk Liya Sergiivna

Faculty of Joumalistics, 1 -st year Master student

Ukraine

Summary

The unstoppable popularity of the Internet and social media remains an undeniable fact. Popular social networks are available in many languages, they provide a wide range of communication and blur the boundaries of where a person can find and access news. The Internet environment and social networks have become the mainstream in today's realities. The present is making adjustments to all spheres of human activity, and there is a fast transformation and modification of society's informatization. The pandemic and the war have changed the way we communicate and deliver the necessary information. Social media is usually considered to be an entertainment platform, but it is worth mentioning that social media has also become a developmental and educational platform where you can find all the necessary information and find out the necessary news. The use of social media on the Internet has changed consumers' preferences and ways of finding information, as well as the speed of waiting and finding the necessary information, which significantly affects the work of journalists and the publication of news on social media.

Recognizing that print media and news in newspapers are losing their popularity, and given the circumstances that have occurred and are occurring in the world and in Ukraine, it is easy to realize the relevance of the transition of all news to social networks. The article analyzes the changes that are taking place on the journalistic front in terms of publishing information and news. Under the influence of globalization and digitalization, the media have to transition and modify their activities and areas of work. With the changes in society, social media have become the main source of information for people, which has led to changes in journalistic activities and changes in the wishes and habits of the audience. The article also discusses the positive aspects and challenges that journalists and readers who consume information and news from social media and the Internet space may face, as it is necessary to be more attentive and critical of the information they read.

In the conclusion, all the information and the main idea from the article are emphasized and summarized. The positive aspects and challenges those users of news from social media and the Internet may face are described and analyzed.

Key words: social media, social network, transformation, information, media, digital, news, journalism, audience, challenges.

Living in the 21st century means constantly facing change, transformation and innovation. Globalization is changing the structure and direction of information channels. The information environment and news consumption practices are changing quickly. The unstoppable popularity of social media remains an undeniable fact. There are fundamentally new trends in the development of the media system and the media market. The key factors behind the dramatic changes in the media field are the Internet, the development of digital technologies that have fully covered journalism, and social media sites are becoming central to how people perceive and learn news. Against this background, there is also a decrease in the use of outdated media on their traditional platforms. Newspapers are currently suffering the most, as the online platform has almost replaced them from general circulation.

The slow decline of print media began long ago, when the development of digital media began to rapidly grow. However, the transition of newspapers to the online format became very noticeable with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At that time, cities and countries seemed to freeze and close down, and there was a large-scale transition of everything to a remote online mode. Subsequently, the second wave of newspapers going online was the full-scale war in Ukraine. Many publishing houses did not survive the first wave of the pandemic and were forced to close, and the war put many of those who remained in existence out of business.

Similarly, one of the trends in the transition of news from paper to digital is the movement for an ecological planet. Paper newspapers were made from trees, and this required constant cutting down of trees. News articles in magazines and newspapers quickly lost their freshness and relevance, so they quickly ended up in the trash. So, following new trends and to preserve environmental friendliness, newspaper news gradually began to move to the online format, and the above factors helped them do it faster.

The Internet, social networks, mobile applications and other digital communication technologies have become part of the daily lives of billions of people around the world. With the help of the Internet, people can communicate with people around the world, share information and learn news quickly, just by having access to the Internet. The number of Internet users is growing every year (Figure 1).

If earlier it was possible to live without the Internet, now it has become a part of life and a necessary skill.

Fig. 1. Number of Internet users from 2018 to 2023, billions of people (globally)

Source: based on Statista data [2].

With the active development and use of the Internet, social networks have also begun to develop. Comparing 2021 and 2023 (Figure 2), we can say. That more and more people are moving to the Internet and registering in various social networks. The use of the above helps people to always find out all the necessary information, stay in touch and maintain communication even over long distances.

Fig. 2 Number of active Internet users as ofJanuary 2021 and 2023, billion people (globally)

Source: based on Statista [3].

Seeing the trend of social media and the decline in the popularity and use of newspapers, journalists and newspapers had to adapt and switch and follow the trend. They had to create news sites, register with social networks, and build and publish their content and information there. While news sites did not need a strong framework for publication, each chose its own style and format, social networks dictate and set the framework for publication and recommendations. Social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, Twitter, and YouTube have their own criteria, and news and information must meet them in order to be accepted. These social networks are very popular among people (Figure 3).

Fig. 3 The most popular social networks by the number of active users, million people (in Ukraine)

Source: Digital 2023 report (research teams from Meltwater and We Are Social) [4].

Digital media, including news websites and mobile apps, have become the primary source of news for many people. The world of technology does not stand still, it evolves, so everything around it evolves too. People are switching to the online format because of its speed and accessibility. The advantage of digital media is that you can read all the news you need in a short time and do it from anywhere in the world, the information is always updated and it is fresh and relevant. At a time when there is a lot of information, when news is updated at a fast speed and when there is no time to wait for newspapers, digital media come to the rescue. Paper newspapers have gone digital because people need fast and up-to-date information all the time. Websites can provide this information; they can update stories in real time. The information can be viewed at any time. Some sites are designed in such a way that news feeds are personalized. These feeds take into account a person's interests and preferences, thus giving them fresh and relevant news on topics that they are interested in and need.

Social networks have gone even further, they have wider capabilities. Video content and live video streaming from a certain place is what attracts people, what captures their attention. When you are tired of reading, or you can't read, watching a video or listening to some podcasts/streams is very beneficial and interesting for the reader. This is where newspapers are losing the battle for primacy. At a time when people are accustomed to consuming information quickly, people no longer want to wait for a newspaper once a week or flip through a magazine in search of an interesting article. At a time when consumers are accustomed to receiving everything at once without unnecessary movements, digital media is the best way out for journalists and newspapers. It also has a positive impact, as digital media reaches a wider audience.

Social media has become an important source of news and information for many people. Previously, to get the news, you had to do a number of different things and pay extra for it. Nowadays, you can get news very easily and without leaving your favorite app. A lot of news has moved to social media on the same platform as entertainment content and advertising, etc. Everything can be found and learned in one place, which helps people and makes it easy to access information. Social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook have become important sources of news and information for many people. People use these applications every day to do various manipulations with information: share, learn, distribute, etc. So, news also began to move to these platforms. At first, people just shared what they read and learned, and then professional journalists started running pages, and later newspapers started their own pages to give people useful and verified content and information.

There are few studies of news on Instagram. Most of the studies conducted so far have focused on user engagement on Instagram, such as surveying social media users, while a smaller number of studies have offered analysis of the textual and visual content of Instagram news. In addition, there are only a few studies about Instagram news, such as Eddie Borges-Rey (2015); Greer and Ferguson (2017); and Holiday et al. (2019), who referred to news value theory, while Al Nashmi (2018) used the information worthiness element in his qualitative study [1].

It should also be noted that social networks have a certain framework for publishing and displaying information. For publication, it is necessary to create a bright, concise visual environment; direct communication, monetization of own virtual (vlogs, photo blogs) and physical (goods) activities. These features have made social platforms an attractive space for e-commerce and could not help but attract the attention of the educational environment. News also now needs to be adjusted to this framework. All factors need to be taken into account for the news to spread and be shared. That is, it is impossible to just post a big article and that's it. To begin with, you need to get people interested in the article with an annotation, and then create a link to a website where they can read the full article.

As a social media platform, Instagram differs from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in that it puts more emphasis on the aesthetic qualities of images and videos, which can potentially increase user engagement (Thomson and Greenwood 2017). For Instagram news, it seems that news organizations emphasize carefully selecting, packaging, and publishing the most attractive stories that have some of these aesthetic features to further engage the audience through, for example, likes. This factor certainly limits the number of news stories that are almost always accompanied by high-quality images and/or videos. A big difference in the amount of news published by one news organization can be seen when comparing Twitter and Instagram. For example, CNN's English-language news on Twitter has more than 300,000 followers, while its Instagram account includes about 6,000 stories, and the same can be seen with BBC English news, which has more than 400,000 on Twitter and about 8,000 on Instagram [1].

One of the main advantages of news on social media is its rapid spread. Even a short summary or abstract from an article spreads very quickly. A few reposts are enough, and this news is already in almost all publics and everyone has already heard something about it. So this is a new challenge for journalists. The shift to digital and social media has had an impact on journalism, including the need for faster and more frequent news updates, the growth of citizen journalism, and the challenges of maintaining editorial standards in a fast-paced and highly competitive media environment. Journalists already have to provide unique and interesting information, and be able to convey it concisely and quickly.

Nevertheless, new media are challenging traditional media. For example, citizen journalism portals and blogs are becoming the first and main sources of information provided by witnesses of events. Their pioneering role is especially noticeable in cases of disasters and accidents [5]. As people often throw information and events they have witnessed into certain publics they read, and from there the information spreads further. To surpass the quick information, journalists need to provide additional facts and details. What was not mentioned in the publics. For newspapers, this is no longer relevant, they don't have time, the only thing left for them is to publish this news as a review of the week and tell it in a broad format, because the short news already exists and in order to be read again, even more information is needed. The main advantage of the Internet over traditional media is the integration of such seemingly opposite qualities as the operational comprehensiveness of television with the library depth of information search. Plus, the ability to express oneself, which can only be compared to the capabilities of a telephone. However, the difference is that on the Internet you can reach a fairly large audience, which is adequate to publishing your own newspaper or TV program [6].

Conclusion

Summarizing, we can say that the transition from a printed newspaper to a digital one was inevitable, news was gradually moving to the online environment, but with the pandemic and war, it has gained greater scale and speed.

The Internet is extremely influential and promising for the media, it acts as an alternative field for communication and shapes the modern information space.

The transition to the social network of news gave rise to the development of the information and communication environment, namely: the evolution of traditional journalism, i.e. its total digitalization and restructuring; the transition of the press and many news to the online environment and social network; a change in the frequency of information updates, i.e. information began to be updated very quickly and the volume increased; almost all countries were moving to the online environment, which gave easier access to various news from different countries; another positive aspect is that online news and social media are mostly free platforms for news. information news social network

The transition from print to online news format has given people freedom, as they are not dependent on newspapers and places and can find out information anywhere. This has created new opportunities for journalists and opens up other areas of work. It also poses new frameworks and challenges for journalists, because this transition has been rapid and it is necessary to quickly adjust. For readers, one of the challenges is that there is a lot of information floating around and they need to be critical and more attentive to it.

So, digitalization of news has reformed the world of journalism. It has changed the way news is delivered to people and created new forms of journalism and media business. It has also created new challenges for journalists and consumers, with more critical thinking required of information and journalists being more responsible for promoting news so that there is not a lot of fake news or misinformation.

References

1. Ahmed Al-Rawi, Alaa Al-Musalli, & Abdelrahman Fakida. (2021). News Values on Instagram: A Comparative Study of International News. Journalism and Media, Volume 2(Issue 2), Article p. 305-320.

2. Business Data Platform Statista. Internet user growth worldwide from 2018 to 2023.

3. Business Data Platform Statista. Number of internet and social media users worldwide as of January 2023.

4. Business Data Platform Statista. We are social 2023: social networks, the Internet and e- commerce trends.

5. Закусило, М. (2011). ХТО ВІДПОВІДАЛЬНИЙ ЗА НОВІ МЕДІА? Нові Медіа, Нові медіа. Укладач Валерій Лисенко. Київ, 2011,4-8.

6. Потятник Б. (2011). Нові і "старі" медіа: передача "Четвертої влади". Медіа Освіта.

7. Нові Медіа, Нові медіа. Укладач Валерій Лисенко. Київ, 2011, 11-15.

Размещено на Allbest.ru