Finally.. a post about the good things in the media..

It’s not all bad news about the media

Kathryn Adams


It has made the front page of print media, it is headline news on the television and radio. It is even flashing over the moving Billboards in Times Square. So what is it? Swine Flu. If you haven’t heard about it you have been living under what many call, a ‘rock’.


Everyday, I, like many other people across the globe, criticise the media. However when it comes down to it, where would we be without the media? How else would we be informed about the latest pandemic? Or as Channel Nine reported on Thursday the 30th of April, how would we know if Dennis Ferguson was living next to our child’s school?


In times of global crisis it becomes evident of the growing reliance on ‘Social Media’. Turow described social media as “Sites that allow people to create networks of acquaintances and friends and to share their writings and audiovisual materials with them.” (2009, 221).


On April 28 Facebook released a network where users can report on Swine Flu. As of Thursday at 7:43pm 582 comments had been made. Facebook also released a series of images mapping the user interest in the Swine Flue. Facebook use a service called Lexicon to track the amount of times certain terms are used on wall posts (Hoffman 2009). Lets not forget about Twitter though, almost 2 percent of Tweets have included some information regarding Swine Flu (Nielsen News 2009).


Glen Nowak, media relations chief for CDC (Centre for Disease Control and Prevention) believes Social Networking Sites are “..generally a useful development..” (2009). He also believes that audiences should not rely solely on these as sources. In times of crisis people turn to social network sites such as myspace and facebook to gather information and in some cases let loved ones know they are still alive.


So where did this phenomena start? With the introduction of internet, audiences became more and more dependant on it as a sole source of information. We live in an age where all the information we require is a couple of clicks and a few pushes of a button away. At the beginning of the 21st centuary Napster was the most popular vision of digital convergence (Turow, 2009, 216). Napster allowed people who had an account with them to search for digital media on other user’s databases.


We use our media in a number of different ways but thanks to the introduction of technology such as the iPhone, we use less devices for the one medium. We use media all the time, be it reading, watching, listening or more recently sending short message service (SMS) text messages (Deuze, 2007, 50). Like the iPhone we can use our mobile phone to take a photo and then upload it to a social networking site. Apple summed it up in the many adds for the iPhone.


The affects of social networking sites can be seen globally as discussed in Victoria Yau’s blog, Susan Boyle – Brought by You tube. Social media has provided a link for many audiences with similar interests. The high use of social media verifies the interest in certain subjects such as Swine Flu (Nowak 2009).



Harrison Hoffman (2009) suggested that “social media is likely to be one of the primary mediums” to gather and spread information in times of crisis. Although the role of social media has been long disputed it is definitely significant in the spread of information about Swine Flu across the globe.


Tweet the word.



Reference List:

Turow, S. 2009. Media Today: An Introduction to Mass Communication. New York: Routledge.
Deuze, M. 2007. Media Professionals in a digital age. UK: Polity Press
Mapping the Swine Flu Discussion. 2009. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=106392&id=20531316728 (accessed April 30, 2009).


Sutter, J. D. 2009. Swine flu creates controversy on Twitter. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/27/swine.flu.twitter/index.html?iref=newssearch
(accessed April 30, 2009).


Apple iPhone TV Ads. 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lfmlKYZ-vU&feature=related (accessed April 30, 2009).


Swine Flu News and Concern Dominates Online Buzz. 2009. http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/swine-flu-news-and-concern-dominates-online-buzz/ (accessed April 30, 2009).


Hoffman, D. 2009. Facebook maps the swine flu hysteria. http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/swine-flu-news-and-concern-dominates-online-buzz/ (accessed April 30, 2009).