MEDIA IN THE DIGITAL AGE

By Tafadzwa Sharaunga

 Media in the digital age is characterized by rapid sharing of information at lightning like speeds. Imagine this fact before discovery of radio broadcasting it used to take up to 3 days to convey an urgent piece of news, then radio came and it became a close to instant a process. The internet has turned all this up on its head providing an ordinary citizen with the capability to publish breaking news events as they happen.  

Welcome to the generation of instant news, a converging of ideas and cultures to one communal global society known as the thumb tribe!

 This age has introduced a lot of new concepts for example the ability of a general citizen to become an opinion leader in their society. Social media has allowed this through micro-blogging sites like twitter and face-book but there is a major down side to all this technological advancement. The lack of professionalism that can be apparent as the public does not uphold the code of conducts held by media practitioners without knowing citizen journalists can incite violence if they go unchecked a good case study for that will be how the masses mobilized themselves during the Arab spring.

Issues of surveillance by state run organizations are now popular in countries around the world in an attempt to monitor internet activity and mitigate the effects of social media. Traditional media is now also investing a lot in this form of new media in order to stamp authority as leaders in current affairs for example CNN has a very strong social media presence to allow them the same capability to break news as it happens sending it straight to the reader using the same platform of blogsites both micro and macro.

Now the state of social media on the international front has been reduced to a level of hackers and hacks, hackers referring to developers and hacks the journalists with the lead story! This starts on a national level with governments creating regiments that monitor suspicious activity on these social networks during the referendum a lot of social media reports were issued on twitter and aroused new interests in reigning in the effects of free expression held by the people, there was a report in the Newsday where there are claims that our government has acquired surveillance equipment from the republic of China to monitor social media activity during the next election!

The republic of China has been on record as having a stern policy against new media and its western influence. In February reports were awash on CNN with the CIA claiming there was a cyber war-fare regiment which is responsible for hacking into the Washington post and the Pentagon websites. The last level and biggest disadvantage of the internet new media is the threat of Cyber war which will leave crucial sectors of both developed and developing nations economies crippled alike Citizen journalists ought to be extremely careful how they handle their business in this Media age!