How conventional media can survive social media onslaught – NASU

To remain relevant in the face of the increasing influence of social media, the conventional media must provide contents that are credible and reliable.

This was the submission of Peters Adeyemi, general secretary of the Non- Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) at a 2-day capacity building seminar organised for labour writers, last weekend, in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State.

According to Adeyemi, who was represented by Ivor Takor, a legal practitioner and former president of NASU, the convention media must raise the bar of credibility and trust in the information dissemination in a world where information consumers are beginning to doubt some of the things being purveyed in the social media.

The union leader, who spoke on the theme, “Empowering media practitioners for future challenges reflection on COVID-19”, argued that “credibility and trust of the community can only be built by professionals who adhere to the ethics of journalism”.

He said: “The biggest challenge to journalists in the print and electronic media, including labour writers is the digital information era, which is synonymous with the competition between media mainstream and new media in this case online media. The party who are feeling a significant impact with the presence of online media is journalism which of course already has a new channel to spread information and news.

“Traditional media which at its birth did not use internet channels in the practice of news production now inevitably have to follow the flow of online media if they do not want to be abandoned by their audiences. The new type of journalism that had emerged, namely online journalism which was followed by the development of citizen journalism, has made the mainstream media worry about its existence, although not many traditional media are open to new concepts.

“To survive, conventional media must be able to maintain credibility and trust in the information presented. This credibility and trust of the community can only be built by the spirit of professionalism of journalists who adhere to the ethics of journalism, which is to present factual information that is well verified. This is a strong offer for print media to be able to survive. The media industry, especially print media, must make changes if it does not want to be marginalised. One of them is a change in strategy, which must be made so that print media can survive. Print media must be able to define itself from the medium. Print media cannot be just paper. The strength and value do not only come from content control and distribution. Another strategy carried out by print media is by integrating newspaper content into electronic tablets

“Social media algorithms are, unsurprisingly, the newest technology impacting journalism today. The modern journalists may find themselves competing with the social media content flow while juggling their other interests, such as reporting on the facts and the truth of a story, as well as seeking to increase readership and engagement with their work (often via social channels). While social media algorithms are demanding more and more attention, the relevance of artificial intelligence and machine learning seems to be impacting journalists significantly less, according to this year’s data.”