Yesterday, I featured an article on social media. One of the points raised in the post was the issue of trust, and how reliable information found on social sites was. It is with this in mind that a connection with news can be found.
The Drum, have today written about a poll asking participants to simply state through which media they heard the news of Osama Bin Laden’s shooting.According to the poll, traditional media was used to hear the breaking story – TV and radio.
There are a couple of interesting points to be made here: Twitter and Facebook accounted for 15% and 8% respectively, whilst newspapers accounted for 0%. It is these figures which calls into question a consumers trust for social networks, are they seen as an unreliable source, more used for viral humour (be it in bad taste) – we’ve seen numerous trending topics of celebrity deaths only to find out they’re hoaxes.
The figures also suggest findings contradictory to those in recent posts and infographics conveying that social networks (in particular Facebook) are more popular than television. Again, is there a trend here in consumers using traditional media for “more important” news, seeing the social networks as less trustworthy?