THE TRANSFORMATION OF JOURNALISM: FROM PRINT MEDIA TO ELECTRONIC MEDIA AND THE RISE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Abstract

Journalism is one of the three legs of democratic society. Over the last century, Journalism has gone through a remarkable evolution from an over reliance on print media to an explosion of medium, mostly as a consequence of technological advancements and audience engagement. It started with primarily print media where newspapers and magazines served as the key / primary component of the information economy. They set the standards for a professional practice of reporting, engaging in editorial accountability, and investigative reach. Subsequently, when radio and television came on the scene, these electronic media offered immediacy and visual storytelling that newspaper reporting could not compete with, annihilating local newspapers and magazines in terms of influence, and circulation. However, it did usher in a decline in print media which initiated a slow and sustained erosion of the threat to the predominance of print media. More broadly, when the internet is built out, it ushered in an era of Journalism characterized by speed, breadth of involvement, interactivity, and global reach. Social media Facebook, Twitter (X), YouTube, and Instagram is also used to connect people like previous traditional networks had done; namely communicating information to the masses, but they began to leverage immediacy, citizen journalism, and participatory communication as an interaction between user engagement and business practices designed to recommunicate information. This reconfiguration of user relationship(s) became as much the limiting media company engagement factor as the tempo of what, when, and how they communicate. What used to be a predefined mass of individuals, is now enabling the analytics of producing trends over time or space that can potentially inform real time linkages for one off engagements; and some subsequent universality under disintermediation (holding consumer interest’s hostage) to demonstrate usefulness to / by accountability. Of course, with a better information economy, comes other pressures namely clutter / overconsumption, decimation of appropriate journalism practices, misinformation / news factories and the rise of fake news, the tangle of information overload and the crisis in confidence / trustworthiness and accountability. This paper examines the evolution of journalism across three distinct stage namely the era of print, the era of electronic media and the growing supremacy of social media. More specifically it examines the issues related to the transition between one stage to another, indicating how technology, audience preferences and economic pressures have reshaped the media landscape. This paper also examines the dimensions of journalism that have changed as a result of this transformation in the dissemination process encompassing news gathering, editorial procedures, audience engagement, and business practices. The overall finding depicts how journalism in the digital age encounters challenges unlike ever before with increased competition for people's attention, loss of trust with the media and how journalism as a profession faces never before encountered challenges but has new opportunities for inclusivity, immediacy and storytelling opportunities. The transformation of journalism demonstrates not only the resilience of the profession but demonstrates journalism's capability to advance with a society in an increasingly interconnected world