Social media 'cannot yet replace traditional news'

14:00 2nd June 2010

Social media is not yet ready to replace traditional news channels such as the television and the radio, a leading industry commentator has claimed.

Jennifer L Jacobson, a social media author and director of public relations at consumer electronics review and shopping website Retrevo.com, stated that there is a much more profitable business model behind broadcasted news channels.

She said: "The easiest transition from traditional news platforms to social news platforms, I feel, are in print, as stories spread via text are the easiest to create, distribute and access."

Ms Jacobson stated that one of the biggest advantages social media has over other methods of spreading information is its immediacy, adding that traditional news channels can find it difficult to compete with this.

She said the increasing usage of social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter in the last four years or so could signify a shift in power.

Recent research by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that there is a difference between the news issues and stories that gather pace on social media websites and those that are given lots of coverage in the mainstream press.

It also discovered that Twitter, YouTube and blog sites very rarely shared the top news story being discussed.