Journalism in a digital age

We live in a world where words, people, sounds and places are digitalised. Millions upon millions of data circulate beneath our fingertips. With a press of a button, our pupils dilate with the letters and digits taking over the screens. Electric currents carry this data towards our brain, where we make up our mind to store, forget or share this information. Another click - this information is halfway across the world bathing in cheese and croissants below the Eiffel tower.

Where does journalism fit in all of this?

The Internet can often be described as a modern-day, cultural evolution. This evolution transformed the virtual world into a "collective intelligence" linked to digital communication (Levy, 1998).

What is the societal role and relevance of journalism, other than the practice of gathering and delivering factual and essential information to the world's communities?

The digital era has provided tools for journalist-public interaction. In the wrinkly crevices of journalism, the distribution of current information ranged from breaking news and the weather report to the companies smiling down from their towers of gold after the month's sales. Media institutions have now rethought and redesigned the spectrum across which the distribution spreads (Peters and Broersma, 2016).

On April 14, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt stood before Washington, D.C to give his infamous speech entitled "The Man With the Muck-Rake." In it, he suggested that some journalists were very much like the man with the muck rake; fixated solely on the terrible things in the nation.

So, is a journalist's sole purpose in society to break the bad news?

Journalists educate the public about events and issues and how they affect their lives. Whether a negative attachment is present depends greatly on the times. For centuries, journalists have acted as the mediator between communities, borders, and experiences. News has the power to break or make an individual or even a nation. However, without the mouths that speak it and the hands that write it, the lines between fiction and reality blur, regardless of them being ink on paper or a computer screen.

References:

1. Hanitzsch, T. and Vos, T. P. (2018) ‘Journalism beyond democracy: A new look into journalistic roles in political and everyday life’, Journalism. London, England: SAGE Publications, 19(2), pp. 146–164. doi: 10.1177/1464884916673386. 2. Levy, P. and Bononno, R. (1998) Becoming virtual : reality in the digital age. New York: Plenum.

3. Peters, C. and Broersma, M. (2016) Rethinking Journalism Again Societal role and public relevance in a digital age. London, England: Routledge.

4. Theodore Roosevelt Center (2020)Muckraker. Available at: https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Learn-About-TR/TR-Encyclopedia/Culture%20and%20Society/Muckraker .