How Social media is reshaping the news

Social media and the use of social media has changed and in some ways revolutionised how certain industries work. This can definitely be said for the news industry which has nearly been turned on its head since the advent of social media. The sales of broadsheet newspapers has dropped dramatically in the past few years with more and more people turning to apps on there smartphones and tablets to read or watch the news of the day. One of the main online driving forces for news telling has to be Facebook. Most news companies have a Facebook page where they can upload articles which can be read by their whole audience simultaneously. Facebook is also a great place for a news company to expand it's readership figures, in the US over 64% of adults are on Facebook which is a huge number and the opportunities present for enticing new readers is in plentiful of supply.

Twitter is also an extremely useful resource for news-cooperation's . Twitter has for some become there main source of news and more and more people are turning to it as a resource. There are a few good reasons for this. On Twitter you can follow both the newspaper and the journalists and receive updates on the news from both sources, This was almost unheard of in the not so distant past and has given people much better access to news and news stories then ever before.

  And its not just access to the news that social media has given people but it's also the ability to comment on the news. Now we have always been able to share our thoughts on a news item but it was a rather longer process then how we do so today. If you read something in a newspaper that stirred a reaction in you say twenty years ago, you would send a letter to the editor and if you were lucky it may get published for all to see. These days social media users can read a piece on Facebook or Twitter and they can immediately share a comment on it and publish it for the world to see. Now this is both a good thing and a bad thing as things can be said or in this case typed in the heat of the moment and immediately published for the world to see. Of course the author of the comment may later regret there words but at that stage its already too late, even if you delete potentially thousands of people have already seen it. So caution is needed when commenting online.
   

Social media is also reshaping how people discover news. A lot of people, young people in particular, simply dont buy newspapers any more, and in a age where knowing the news is quite possibly more important then ever it's good to know that there are a vast array of news publications now available online and that news is shared online so widely by so many different mediums its quite hard not to be kept in the loop when it comes to news.

So thats just a few way's of how social media is reshaping the news, Thanks for reading!

References:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/24/how-social-media-is-reshaping-news/

  http://www.economist.com/ideasarena/news/by-invitation/questions/will-rise-social-media-fundamentally-reshape-news-industry-o

Ryanair: How they turned there image around using social media.

Ryanair is one of the most recognisable brands in Europe. They have made there name on low fares, no frills and the ability to fly you anywhere in Europe quicker and more efficiently then any other airline in Europe and because of that there profits and there business grows year by year. Despite there success Ryanair had a reputation for being difficult to deal with and sometimes downright rude to there customers. When social media really became prevalent in the mid two thousands the company saw it as a real opportunity to enhance there image by creating fun colourful and often ridiculous social media pages. The companies two main social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter surely do push the quirkiness and colourfulness of the company in a big way.

So what does Ryanair use there often eccentric social media platforms for? Well like most airlines they use it as a means to communicate with there customers and they seam to be quite open across Facebook and Twitter and answer most questions and queries that are thrown there way. They also use social media to advertise seat sales and other promotions in relation to the airline. On Twitter they also run a competition using the hashtag #Ryanairfotofriday  which picks the best picture of a Ryanair aircraft taken by a member of the public and the winners photo is then used as the pages cover photo for the following week 

Running competitions and simply answering customers queries online has really helped the airline enhance its image and has boosted peoples enthusiasm for the brand. Ryanair has put a lot of money into maintaining a professional but fun social media presence. Posting and uploading content to social media is now a full time job at Ryanair and the airline hire people specifically for that purpose.

By having people manning the social media sites full time means that customers always have fast way of contacting the airline and that openness has really gone a long way of turning Ryanair's image around and making them a lot more user friendly. 

   References:

https://www.facebook.com/ryanair/?fref=ts

https://twitter.com/Ryanair

http://zartis.com/tech-focus-ryanairs-digital-strategy-2015/

Wikileaks: Pr through social media

Wikileaks is a non profit organisation that publishes secret government secrets from anonymous sources. The organisation was set up by Australian Julian Assange in 2006 and since then has been routinely publishing government secrets from many different countries most notably the United States Of America. This has led to many calling for Assanges's arrest and since 2012 he has lived in the embassy of Ecuador in London to avoid extradition to the USA. Wikileaks, like many other organisations chooses social media as its direct communicator to the public. Wikileaks , however is no ordinary organisation. Wikileaks mainly uses Facebook and Twitter as it's main methods of communication. Both pages are used for the release of sensitive information and also acts as a PR template for the organisation

  The Facebook page has over 3.6 million likes while its Twitter page has over 4 million followers

Both pages serve a similar purpose and it's posts reach a huge amount of people. Wikileaks dose not directly communicate with its public however, they publish information and for the most part let the viewer decipher the message thats been released. 

Julian Assange, founder of wikileaks has not been seen alive since the start of October with many followers fearing he may be dead or that he may have come to harm. Wikileaks designed what is known as a dead man's switch into Twitter and Facebook and they warned if Assange comes to harm at any time they would activate it. The dead man's switch is essentially a threat to upload a large amount of very sensitive information to the internet in the event of Assange's death and followers of Wikileaks have noted a large increase in activity in the past few months with many fearing the dead man switch may have been activated.

To date information on Assange has been hard to come by except for the odd post about him on Wikileaks Facebook page

  Its still unconfirmed whether he is dead or alive although what we do know is that Wikileaks use of social media is truly unique and almost unheard of. They have used social media in a completely new way using it as a platform to release government secrets that would have been almost impossible to get hold of before the digital age. They have in many ways reinvented how social media can be used by organisations and proven it can be used not just for PR but to bring about change and even perhaps bring down governments. Social media is fast becoming not just a tool for PR but a vast resource for change and Wikileaks arent the first nor the last to exploit it in this way.

References:

 https://www.facebook.com/wikileaks/?fref=ts

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/01/14/what-do-social-media-and-wikileaks-have-in-common/

https://twitter.com/wikileaks?lang=en