Using Social Media for "Non-Social" Things

In The Beginning...

Social Media is everywhere. Kids use it. Adults use it. Your Grandma uses it. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, Tumblr, Vyou, Blogspot....and so many more. At first these sites began appearing to connect people all over the world socially. Commenting on pics, chatting on the web, sharing quotes on blogs. All of these sites were intended to make sharing easy and dependable in a fun way. Although there are hundreds of social media sites there are always newly emerging ones as well. But because of their "fun" nature and ability to distract you from anything you are doing, schools and workplaces began banning the use of them. Middle school teachers give penalties for kids caught in the library on myspace and sites like facebook were blocked from work computers. Thankfully, we have moved away from this and have started to really embrace social media not only as a fun "after work" thing but as an important tool in the workplace.

Today!

Social media is incredibly important in today's workplace. Particularly in journalism. Public relations uses Twitter incessantly to gain a following, promote brands and to keep an open forum between the business and the people. Advertisers put ads on the sides of facebook and google/amazon can even figure out your interest and gear the advertisements to you! Newspapers and Broadcast journalists use facebook, twitter, blogs to find sources or story ideas and to even get the details on events happening around their town. Business and corporate workplaces have even started to embrace social media by having conferences with employees about how to use them personally and professionally. College professors have even encouraged their students to have bulletin boards, blogs and twitter feeds to discuss their class. It is safe to say that in this century social media is here to stay and will probably continue growing.

But is it ethical?

Should we use information from twitter and facebook to get sources and story ideas? Are these sources credible? In social media - everyone is a journalist. Anyone can stream video, tweet and blog about breaking news or issues and sell it as news. What separates us from them? It's hard to say. Especially when a source can be at the location and send pictures/videos/tweets directly from their phone. No time is wasted, no preparation, no editing. Just straight information. However, with using these people as sources and grabbing story ideas from them, we must be careful that we are being credible and ethical with every move. We, as journalists must be more in depth and detail oriented than ever before. When we place our product out there we must be sure that all our facts are correct. We are forced to be better journalists in this way because if we get something wrong someone in the public will figure it out. With all the interactivity that the web and social media has to offer we have to be prepared to get continuous feedback (and corrections) from our public.