Journalism Is Going Into the “Re-Information” Age
Enrique Castejón-Lara
Abstract
The
explosive emission of information through the social media has generated an extreme
confusion in society. People need help to understand what is really happening
in their countries and the world, and also to evade fake news. So, contemporary
journalism has to provide a new type of reporter capable to analyze that
information mess and provide trusty versions of what social media reflect.
The overwhelming
stream of information generated by the increasing users of blogs, Web sites, and
social media has been producing in the last decade a terrible communicational concern
on people. Present-day society is immersed in a torrent of uncontrolled data
that, usually, include fake news and unconfirmed facts. That means that journalism
is going, formally, into the “re-information” era. Every day, reporters have to
search intensively among an enormous quantity of messages to try unveiling
truth.
In this new
mass communication scenario, the traditional press reporter feels lost,
confuse, and unfit. In fact, some technology fanatics have predicated the end
of newsmen, and journalism itself.
Question
is, who is nowadays prepared to clean up that huge information mess? Nobody, I
am sure, expected this massive and uncontrolled data flow that is generated by
billions of people worldwide. On the contrary, some media and news agencies are
right now appealing to “robotic” software to minimize the effect of data
saturation and fake information. That is the case of Reuters, which is using
its “News Tracer[1]”
system to identify last minute affairs on Twitter and other social media
reducing research time and inaccuracies.
However, the
accelerated information environment change will require a new kind of
professional that can classify, organize, and interpret all data that come from
anywhere, including from the “intelligent robots.” That job cannot be assumed
by the “spontaneous news men,” usually called “citizen reporters,” that continuously
transmit information through social media.
Nowadays,
most Mass Communication Schools around the world are making changes in their
curricula to adjust key journalism courses to the new reality, but they mainly are
doing that to give to their students the necessary skills and tools to use
social media. Nevertheless, it is necessary that academic institutions take a historical
step forward, and begin the training of a new generation of reporters capable
to become, in this crushing torrent of data that has been generated by the
cyberspace, a sort of guards that protect a stunned society from confusing
reports and fake news diffusion. They should be smart enough to take the
information from the social media data storm and process it to give to the
audiences confirmed and trusted stories. That means, journalism is right now at
the beginning of a “re-information” age.
