Research Scholar

Extension and Communication

The Maharaja Sayajiro University of Baroda

 Vadodara, Gujrat, India 

Technology has changed our way of living and influencing different aspect of our lives, it has changed the way we communicate, doing business and other sectors such as health and transport. Embracing the new technology and adapting our way of living with that is now inevitable, we don’t have any choice but to embrace and impellent the new technology and its advancement in our daily life especially in communication.

With the invention of telephone by Alexander Graham in 19^th century one of the corner stone or the earliest technology feats in the communication made a land mark and achieved. After that huge invention, people only by picking up the phone can communicate and build relation to each other that include from their closest friend in neighboring till relatives and people in far distance in different parts of the world. It helped people despite communicating to each other, building up relation and business, pave the way for a faster a better communication as well. (TACSM, 2019)

As human beings are living in the age of information and the advancement in technology has caused and brought a rapid changes and revolution in the media industry and the way people communicate and it has a huge impact on the media and its way of disseminating the information. With all the technological advancement the media has been replaced by up to date and most advance and sophisticated and along with this technological advancement media industry growing rapidly, faster and the information revolution had made the information process faster, speedy and rapid and information can obviously be sent in different parts and corner of the world in a flash.

Communication is investable part of human beings life as human beings are social beings. Communication and communicating to each other, passing information and disseminating that through the history of human being has witnessed ups and down on its way of developing. From the first and earlier types of communication such as vocal communication, signals and pigeons and simple text messages to its advancing age such internet, mobile, computer, audio and video call, chats platform and other advanced technological communication. (Khattak & Nasir, 2012)

Communication is not a choice it is a necessity and inevitable part of human beings life and technological advancement in communication field has been gained through the time to make it more efficient and accessible.

During the 19th and early 20th century, the radio and television were also developed and with the development of World Wide Web (WWW) and interne in the late 20th century, the communication way reaches its land mark path and changed the way of communication at all.

Social and Online networking website such as Face book, Twitter and Instagram have rapidly changed the way people communicate and communication channels to a rapid and instant communication.  Through YouTube people can search anything at anytime or any moment, it has provided immense sources and ways of communication in different field.

Years back, mainstream news media namely Newspaper, Radio, TV and Magazines were the major source of news for the audience and these mainstream channels were enjoying a huge support by the audience and also the professional journalist of that time were the only source and disseminator of news and information, but with the rise of New Media this privilege for mainstream media came to halt and now the audience has many option of news an even they themselves become the source of news (Bruns et al., 2012).

With the rise of the Internet era, traditional media faced many challenges in transmitting the messages to their audience. With the current changes in news dissemination, the gatekeeper role of writer has been undermined by the emerge of new, news producers which are the active citizens or active internet users. Active citizens or so-called citizen journalists or no more waiting for merely source of news as they themselves are not mere a news consumer. The shift of news consumption to online and social media platforms has disrupted traditional business models of journalism, causing many news outlets to shrink or close, while others struggle to adapt to new market realities.

Current scenario and changes in the media landscape brought the challenge of fake news with itself, it rises the concern about the public and audience ability and vulnerability to combat and come out with fake news especially in the current era of infinite source of news which has been here due to new shift in media paradigm. New media technology and rise of social media provide the scope and challenges of the credibility of the source of news which nowadays audience are facing and heavily relaying on heuristic and social norms and cues in case to be able to determine the credibility of news and information they receive and consume. The issue of the credibility of news leads to further and bigger challenge which the issue of journalism role and credibility at all, because the public may shift to other source of news and may not believe in journalistic practices any more due to fake news and not availability of tool and methods to detect the fake news (Mele et al. 2017).

Technology and new media somehow offer the way to mitigate the challenges of fake news and misinformation as an example the recent initiative which has been taken by Face book in fact checking and delivering warning before people share the disputed or misleading information can be a clear example of technology intervention. Despite taking some measures to combat and curb fake news, still the persuasiveness of these methods and measure are seen not very much applicable and generalizable. Through deep research in this regard and understanding the cause and effect of fake news, media professional and researcher of media and journalism can play vital role in adding values and news measures in curbing and dealing with fake news.

Advancements in technology provides a breeding ground and wide scope for internet users and news consumer to become content creator on different online and digital platforms, this empowerment brought changes in news consumption. The overarching implication of this unprecedented opportunity on media credibility has continued to reverberate among researchers, media practitioners, and media users.

Consequently, the growing spate of fake news, fabricated news reports and hate speech have called into question the credibility of new media, prompting a handful of empirical investigations and research into audience assessment and perception of the credibility of new media.

References:

1. Bruns, A., Highfield, T., & Lind, R. A. (2012). Blogs, twitter, and breaking news: The prod usage of citizenjournalism.https://snurb.info/files/2012/Blogs,%20Twitter,%20and%20Breaking%20News.pdf

2. Khattak, A. W., & Nasir, M. (2012). The Role of Information Technology in Media Industry. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 2(3), 166-183. https://doi.org/10.29333/ojcmt/2395

3. Mele, et al. 2017"Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action."https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/combating-fake-news-agenda-research-and-action#citation

4. Mistura AdebusolaSalaudeen. (2022) From Personal to Professional: Exploring the Influences on Journalists’ Evaluation of Citizen Journalism Credibility. Journalism Practice 16:10, pages 2040-2063.

5. The Technological Advancement in Communication and Society Media. (2019, Aug 19). Retrieved fromhttps://studymoose.com/the-technological-advancement-in-communication-and-society-media-essay

6. https://docplayer.net/23206827-The-development-of-journalism-in-the-face-of-social-media.html

7. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311983.2020.1837461