When Social Media Are the News

Abstract

As social media become commonplace, they reorganize publics, places, and politics in ways history cannot predict. Over a decade ago, a tectonic shift in communication technologies began remaking the media landscape in the US and elsewhere. During the 2004 presidential election, television network news lost ground to talk-based cable news, especially conservative Fox News. Print newspaper subscriptions were declining and online news had yet to demonstrate pro–tability. Yet Pew researchers rejected dystopic predictions that major tech companies like Google and Amazon would merge and destroy the credibility of print and broadcast media, in an algorithmic " bouillabaisse of citizen blog, political propaganda, corporate spin and journalism. Each consumer would get a one-of-a-kind news product each day based on his or her personal data " (2005). Following the 2016 US presidential election, two things stand out: First, this nightmare scenario was more prescient than we who resist technological determinism want to admit. Yet, second, it was not possible in 2004 to foresee the merging of news and computer networking through the rise of social media. 