The social media or we call that user-generated media is different from traditional mass media mainly on three dimensions: the frequency, the quantity and the quality. The charts above illustrate that the traditional media has more frequency to reach the audience with higher quality content while the social media has absolute advantage in quantity but with relatively lower quality content, which seems to mean that traditional media are more efficient and better at providing high quality content than social media. It is indeed true that, in some area, traditional media are more efficient and have higher quality. However, if we notice the fact that the social media have a much more wider range of quality, the conclusion might be totally different. From my point of view, it is unreasonable to compare the traditional media with the social media on the quality issue.
First of all, to evaluate the quality of something, there are, at least, some certain criterions to follow. Mass media or traditional media often have clear content position. The catalog of different kinds of information, such as newspaper or magazine, is quite obvious before it is come out to reach the audience, which may due to the form of information or the brand affection. The content providers could be more focusing on the reputation or brand image in terms of quality. For example, the information published on a newspaper with good reputation of objective naturally has objectiveness as the standard to evaluate the quality of the content and of course is more likely to behave well in this area. While different catalog boundaries of information among social media are sometimes pretty blur to identify, therefore it is also hard for people to assess its quality with no reference standards. Even if we consider relevance, accreditation and credibility as criterions to appraise the quality, it is still too hesitate to decide the information's quality, since every audience's purpose of reaching the information is varied. Some are active, while some are passive; some are looking for the authority and reference while some are just for fun or inspirations. Different aims lead to different termination, which means that the same piece of information may be totally dissimilar in term of quality. For example, a ridiculous advertisement which contains the wrong information may be a "trash" for the one who are looking for the relevant product, and meanwhile it could also be a "treasure" for a funny talk show's editor who is hunting for something absurd. So this irrelevant and unaccountable information could please more people rather than disappointing. Then, how should we evaluate its quality? Moreover, considering "the long tail" theory, the relevance is much weaker to be a convincing standard for evaluating the quality. Therefore, it is not the quality of information from social media that matters, but the methods of finding out you self's high quality information that really matters in this information jungle.
Google and Wiki here perform as two models in providing relatively high quality content, which mainly depend on the text-based algorithm and peer-moderation. What merely provide us the ready high quality information is far from enough. Thank for the help of RSS and Bookmarks, consumers manage to customize and build their own high quality information channels. We cannot just sit here counting on others giving us high quality information; ourselves are actually the best information filter…
Just as most of the entries I’ve read so far in this course I find what you have written to be thoughtful. It seems that you have a sort of “relative value” approach, which means that no one can really say what is valuable and what is not for anyone else excluding yourself. I understand your point of view, but I must say that I disagree somewhat with it. I think that there are a lot of thinks that at least almost everyone can agree on to be good and bad. Sure there are grey areas, but they are not really the issue I find. What I find irritating is all the bad content and I think that a lot of people have similar opinions on what is bad.
ReplyDeleteThe second thing which you write that caught my attention is that everyone is its own best information filter. And I somewhat question that too. Can children for instance decide what is best for them? I am not even sure most adults can… Then there is also the problem with time. If I don’t have the time to filter in between work and putting the children to bed, am I not able to use media then? I think a lot of people do not have the time and they need someone to do the filtering for them and as long as that need still exists there will be a need for conventional media.
By: Johan Östberg
You gives a very creative thought, about the comparison of traditional/mass media and the social media. After reading your essay, I notice it true that with some issue it's hard to compare the quality traditional/mass media with the social media. I agree that these are very differnt media style, we can not compare it with some standards. The critia people use to judge the products of traditional/mass media and the products of social media are also differnt. The low quality products in traditional/mass media may be popular in the social media channel, since the audiences have different purposes for things they get from the two media ways.
ReplyDeleteBut one thing about quality I think should notice is about the content really having bad affect to the audiences, such as violence, dirt words etc. Especially for children and teenages, it will make well bad influence for them.I think with so high developed social media network, there will be more and more audiences sitting down before computers to watch, so well controlling about such low quality issue is still important.
Overall, it's a very nice essay to give a differnt view about the quality issue of the social media.
By Wang, Yiqing