The Nieman Lab asked the smartest people in journalism and digital media what their predictions were for the year of 2017.
The predictions from those within the world of media ranged from plausible to absolutely bonkers.
Lets take a look at two of these predictions and analyse the chances of such things happening to journalism today.
Samantha Barry, apart of the CNN Social News team, claims that messaging apps will go mainstream in the newsroom, with stories being told through “stickers, emjois, gifs [and] vertical video”.
Whilst this is an interesting idea to consider, the concept of Snapchat, WhatsApp and Kik being utilized to convey news stories is tough to take as a serious possibility.
These apps are mainly used to escape from the realities of life, into an entertainment source rather than a serious news source. It would be hard to convey serious and hard-hitting news stories through gifs and stickers, which are normally employed for comedic purposes.
There is becoming a place for SnapChat, Kik or even Facebook Messenger in hearing about news stories, and finding information to report on, but they will not be the most important tools for journalists and those working in digital media.
One other prediction which was intriguing to look at was Maria Bustillos’ (The New Yorker) claim that the ‘public discourse’ was broken when Facebook fails to eradicate fake news from “AdScammer” sites, or “Fox News Propagandists” from actual news organisations.
This is a really intriguing argument, and plays into the idea of “I saw it on Facebook”, which is apart of the prediction’s headline.
I agree with the sentiment, that public discourse can be damaged by news sources that have not been fact-checked, and spread lies, but I would also argue that Facebook is known as an unreliable source to people, and the argument of “I saw it on Facebook” does not have much merit in the globalised world.
