Snapchat's Potential As A Journalistic Tool

The Power of Context is defined as humans being “more sensitive to their surroundings then they may seem”(Gladwell 29). Snapchat is successful due to the fact that the world is becoming more technically involved. Many people today depend on social media in their lives. The convenience and instant access to the internet drives the need for social media. The youth today want to “to always be connected” to their friends (Kulwin).

Most everyone has some form of social media. Whether it be Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram people have a way of communicating and getting news from all around the world. Unfortunately, this news is not always correct or trustworthy. Many people are not attuned to reading long articles or papers and just want the short story. Social media readily gives them shortened and condensed stories one after the other. Therefore, “traditional media has to adapt to the audience’s new

People are naturally appealed to novel ideas and things that they can relate to in some way. Snapchat is something almost everyone is familiar with. Users of the app are able to connect more with those who use it to speak out. Yusuf Omar, a journalist from Hindustan Times, uses Snapchat to allow young girls who were sexually assaulted to tell the world in their own words their story. Filters on the app allow the girls to do so in confidence by hiding their identity and keeping their privacy. As people watch and listen to these raw and genuine words, people remember how the portrayals of victims of sexual assault in social media are real human beings who have had their lives greatly impacted by terrible events. Hearing the story first hand from the victim reveals that sexual assault is really way worse than how social media portrays. As a consumer of social media,

This research has been conducted due to the fact that some researchers have claimed that “journalism is dying” whilst others have argued that “journalism is not dying but is simply evolving” (Blatchford: 2014). This has been a much contested debate triggered by the decline of news circulation from traditional news sources i.e. newspapers, television and radio together with the technological advances of the internet and social media (Cub Reporters: 2010). This has raised many questions and firstly, this dissertation will assess whether the rise of social media has led to the decline of news circulation from traditional news sources. Secondly, this paper will look at what the advantages and disadvantages of using social media as a news distributor are for professional journalists and the general public. Lastly, this study aims to investigate

With the uprising of smartphones, news is constantly available at the tap of a button, virtually anywhere. News sources such as CNN, NBC, and BBC, have all developed apps in which allow users to customize the type of news they see and what news articles warrant alerts and notifications (Martin and Collin, 31). People no longer need to go to internet cafés or log on to their own personal computers; breaking stories from around the globe are available almost as soon as they happen and now subscribers have the luxury to view these stories no matter their location.

Driven by technology and social media, consumers now demand more information with haste. No company has managed to act on this demand quite like Buzzfeed, a news and entertainment website that drives content to users across all social media platforms in a unique way that has endowed it with more popularity than any competitors or predecessors. Parallel to the rise of Buzzfeed was the emergence of a new cultural shift that can be observed through the content published on Buzzfeed’s website and those who consume it. The emergence of Buzzfeed, and its popularity amongst millennials, points to a shift away from traditional journalism culture with set ethical norms.

As more and more people become inclined to find new news articles through links or shares on Twitter or Facebook, it follows that the need to find news through search engines will consequently keep declining. Online journalism is revolutionising the way that news is reported and read. The rise of the popularity of the internet has forever changed the way audiences interact with the news – instead of having to wait for a printed newspaper stories are posted the moment they break and readers routinely expect to be able to access both the news sources and local

A new form of journalism based on new media is changing the core of news production and consumption. Rebelling against the news models of the past as news migrates onto an online platform. News values are changing even in the ABC and other conventional news outlets. These changes are a response to the external factors that impact the news industry as it evolves into a new era of technological adaption. Although the meaning of news itself is changing, of equal

Twenty-seven individuals were surveyed to determine for how many months do they use SnapChat in comparison to their age and if there is a relationship between age and usage of social media apps such as SnapChat. A Pearson’s analysis revealed a moderate negative correlation, r= -.38. Age does have a relation with the number months individuals used SnapChat, as confidence level in our testing is .049, which is lower than 0.05. The results are reported in Exhibit 1.

Almost immediately, the discussion turned to social media and its impact on both sports and journalism. In the growing digital age, social media is a driving force in how consumers obtain news and sports information. The panelists expressed mostly disconcerting thoughts about its prominence in the media world. Collectively, their biggest issue with social media, especially Twitter, is the 24-hour news cycle it has created. They long for days when you didn’t have to be glued to your phone to hear or report the latest news. The never-ending new cycle has made journalists jobs more difficult than ever.

on keeping a record of events for the user but Snapchat does not. It almost appears as if Snapchat is rebelling against the idea of permanence. Snapchat aims to apply through technological means the temporal time-bound paradigm that characterizes oral cultures (Soffer, 2016). An image becomes a photograph, in part, by having borders. The frame makes the photo. Tellingly, a Snapchat usually exists unframed, full-screen, more moment than an art object. Less than sharing experience-trophies and hoping communication happens around them, an ephemeral network leaves the art objects to fade in favor of focusing on the moments, the experience, the communication; more social than media, more social than network. (Jurgenson, 2014). The Snapchat users like the idea of a safe place where they can control what is shared with the world. Experts in the field of communication state that the ephemeral messaging compels users to do more with less, often generating a better brand. Snapchat’s popularity has helped spur other private messaging apps but none are as successful as Snapchat. The real time communication protocol is what Snapchat is all about. Snapchat keeps people connected without it being public. Some individuals seek the privacy afforded by Snapchat. Snapchat allows the viewer to see the actual face expressions, which allows for better understanding. Snapchat is very much like a conversation taking place, where you can see the person but you can’t go back or rewind

2014), motivations of Snapchat use (Piwek & Joinson 2016), practices of ‘sexting’ (Poltash 2013; Hasinoff & Shepherd 2014), the uses of Snapchat selfies (Charteris et al. 2014; Christensen et al. 2015) and emotional reactions to content shared on the app (Utz et al. 2015). Thus research in this area is slowly accumulating, yet there remains a lack of empirically-grounded research which considers the factors that determine the patterns of Snapchat use and commitment in relation to other established sites like Facebook.

In today’s world, technology is present in every facet of our lives. The media is no exception. Print newspapers are becoming a thing of the past, with new digital, online news taking its place. This change in how we get our news comes with both advantages and drawbacks. While some may prefer printed news, there’s no denying the news is slower and has less ability to change. And while digital articles are quicker to publish and allow for user comments they can sometimes be less accurate when initially printed. However, as society adapts to this new technology, it’s clear that print newspapers are becoming less and less popular and are being replaced (Grabowicz,).

When Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in early 2000s, he would have never imagined that the monthly active users on his social networking website would surpass 1.4 billion worldwide. Let’s look at the inception of Snapchat, originally a photo and video messaging application for iPhone & Android, now it has positioned itself as a “sexting” app—there is no language that suggests that specific use case in its App Store description — Snapchat was able to change how we think about how photos and videos are shared. Well, the numbers never lie: In 2 short years (founded in 2011) the company has gone from an idea to

To wholly have a grasp on how this new founded approach to journalism has changed alongside technology—as well as understanding the dangers such openness brings forth—one has to understand what exactly those changes are. Primarily, those that are writing for the sake of offering information have, whether willingly or not, fed into the usage of social media as it has become a centralized method of distribution that is relatively inescapable with the current times. As such those framing the news for the masses find an authentic avenue to stay in contact via social media that has benefits ranging from, “its extraordinary newsgathering potential; its potential as a new tool to engage the audience; and as a way of distributing our news” (Eltringham, 2012), all of which are deeply different from the presentation of reporting that occurred during earlier eras. Days of strongly structured instances of journalism that could not travel with such speed have been replaced as, “social media has trashed many of the foundations on