Farah Amelia Bt Ariff Ong (Thursday Afternoon Class)
Review on Implications of Online Journalism
With the advance of technology and internet in recent days, online journalism has become more and more common, accessible to anyone who possess internet. However, not all implications that came with online journalism, or citizen journalism good, positive or beneficial. To be honest, slightly more bad comes with online journalism than good.
Firstly are the rise of citizen journalism. Unlike journalists, they do not follow the code and morals real journalists have to obey before publishing anything. They can publish anything anytime, and most of the time these are heavily influenced by biases and emotions. It is not exactly reliable material and are misleading. Their readers might be ignorant of the issue and when they read these articles, they might be confused or will also be biased and ignorant about the issue discussed like the writer.
Online journalism is also bad because there is no stopping biased opinions being published, regardless of time,space or people. For example, if your action of violence or bad-mouthing someone or anything that is negative is recorded, whether by friends or strangers, it is of high probability it will be uploaded online, and when it gets online, you can never take it back. The public will watch it and pass judgement according to their own perspective and it is not always good opinions. People will be harsh and judgemental. If your face is easily recognizable, it will damage your reputation as well. Imagine you are going for a work interview and the boss recognized your face from the embarrassing video, your chances of getting hired is surely affected. There are many situations where this problem can occur so you must be careful, wherever and whenever you are.
On the brightside, online journalism also helps the public to voice their opinion. It gives the voiceless a chance to speak up. This also helps the public to look outside of their box and open their eyes to the things happening in the world. To see that the world is bigger than they thought and many things beyond their comprehension are happening every second of the day. In the long-term, online journalism will slowly educate them to think more, research anything you are suspicious of, and be more aware. In the internet, it is very easy to be lied to so people have to more knowledgeable and aware to survive in cyberspace. Hopefully, the public can be smarter with the presence of online journalism. And less prejudiced and less judgemental.
Online journalism, like all other things, has its good and bad sides. It depends on a person to decide which one it is. As an individual, I sometime finds the bad outweights the good when innocent people are judged harshly in the internet and are drove to desperate walls. But I can’t help but hope for the good to increase when some good miracle happens in the internet.
loveisdespair 