It’s not only ‘social’, but sourceful!

Let’s go a few years back. In 2003, ‘Salam Pax’ hosted a blog from Baghdad named ‘Where is Raed?’ to give accounts on the Iraq War to his friend, Raed who was in Jordan that time, about the situation in Baghdad during that period. Though the blog became popular, the authenticity of the regular posts on bombings and war proceedings in this blog was viewed with suspicion by the news world and the larger social sphere until a deliberate endeavour by The Guardian newspaper came out with a flashing report that Salam Pax is not an imaginary character, but a real person named Salam Abdulmunem, an architect by profession. This resulted to an end of all speculations regarding the blog and soon Salam Pax became the most sought out person in the media world both as a source of information and as an interpreter of Iraq war. This was one of the frost instances that world come to know the real power of a common man wielded with the power of new media. While a large majority view it as the ‘next big thing’, for a few it is already part of our routine system of work and life. The Guardian’s ‘Mood of the Nation’ research (2014) conducted on UK citizen found that using social media makes the people happier when compared to money and family. The privilege or choice of being connected to a world outside one’s reach is the core principle that makes these social sites an immediate advantageous tool for marketing or any other online undertakings. With the rapid growth of internet and associated network technologies with a huge rise in the use of tablet and mobile phones, social media is becoming even more ubiquitous and exhilarating. The consequences of these change and evolution are influencing every aspects of human life. As far as traditional media are concerned, online social platforms like Facebook and Twitter with its ubiquitous influence proved to be a threat to their existence. The increasing preference and participation of youth on the online social platforms was seen as a warning alarm, which is met by them by making their presence increasingly felt in the social media platforms as shares and postings. A recent New York Times’s article titled ‘Brian Williams Scandal Shows Power of Social Media’ rightly points to the fact that it is through social media that news get contested, questioned, and investigated to reveal the real news. While taking about the influences that social media make, it is the very redefinition of the concept of ‘informer’ that comes into play if we consider the 140 character word war or hash tag revolution. What we are witnessing now is a conversational news culture--a move back to the old Coffee house culture. To put it in another way, it is the laymen or public who is largely involved in the creation and the dissemination of news. This met with changes even in the craft of Journalism; online editions have snippet news, more illustrations, and options to link to social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter. On the other hand, social networking sites are increasingly trying to gather as much as users into their bouquet. Facebook’s acquisition of Watsapp, a text messaging service is viewed by the world as a clever move to tap even the non-facebookies who regularly use internet for messaging.