'Accidental journalism' rather than 'Citizen journalism': a few years ago we were talking about 'user generated content', where ordinary people would increasingly take on the role of journalist. Today we see that the whole 'user generated content' story turns out to be disappointing. Most people do not have a strong opinion, or are simply not creative enough to maintain an audience for a long time. Much more powerful is the phenomenon of 'accidental journalism': due to the rapid spread of smartphones with internet and cameras, nothing can happen in the world without witnesses. These events are immediately captured and spread via social media. In the future, classic media will therefore rarely be able to really 'break' the news.
The symbiosis of classic and new media is gradually taking shape : it is striking israel phone number list how much 'footage' in classic media of the Pukkelpop disaster came from social media: images of people who had filmed the drama with their smartphones, albeit in low quality, but 'during' the event and not afterwards, which gives the authenticity a completely new dimension, which classic media have almost never been able to offer. Classic media also integrated Twitter widgets on their own news channels, which shows that they are gradually paying more attention to the power of social media as a news source.But the main thing now is to go a step further, and not only integrate material from social media on their own traditional channels, but also try to be actively and relevantly present on the new digital channels themselves.
Where media used to be very separate channels with their own formats, we see that these unique characteristics (newspapers and magazines in print, television visual, radio auditory) are increasingly fading. In the future, media will distinguish themselves more as a brand and as a 'community' than as a format. A good example of this are the Twitter messages of the weekly magazine Humo on Twitter after the disaster: